The Easter Rising in 1916 and the execution of the rebel leaders had a profound effect on Brodrick. She joined Sinn Féin and Cumann na mBan. She visited many of those interned in Frongoch in Wales after the Rising and wrote to newspapers offering advice to those planning to visit the prisoners.6 Brodrick’s new-found republicanism put her at odds with her family’s unionism and she became increasingly detached from her family. Her brother, the Earl of Midleton, was particularly embarrassed. In a letter to The Spectator in 1916, apologising for his sister’s support of the Rising, he wrote: ‘She separated herself from my family thirteen years ago and I have not seen her since; she has always been very unbalanced in her views.’7 During the 1918 general election, she campaigned for Sinn Féin candidates and in 1920 she was nominated for election to Kerry County Council in the Killorglin Electoral Division. Commenting on her candidacy, The Kerryman observed:
Miss Brodrick, since her advent to Kerry, has accomplished an immense amount of great work in social improvement projects, and in carrying out philanthropic schemes generally. Always intensely Irish, she had devoted much time and patient labor [sic] to furthering the cause of the Gaelic League, and she has earned a reputation of being a fluent Irish speaker.8
Brodrick was one of five candidates returned, unopposed, and made history by being the first woman ever elected to Kerry County Council. She was a member of the County Infirmary Committee and became chair of the Kerry County Committee of Agriculture. When the Dáil tried to reduce the number of workhouses operating around the country, she resigned from the council in protest, but resumed her role soon after.9 During the War of Independence, she sheltered IRA members and she campaigned during the Dáil election of 1921, formally nominating candidates Austin Stack, Edmond Roche, Tomás Ó Donnchú and Piaras Béaslaí.10 She took the Anti-Treaty side in the Civil War and was present when the Dáil debated the Treaty and heckled the South Kerry TD, Fionán Lynch, from the public gallery when he spoke in its favour:
LYNCH: I know what the people want, I know that I can speak for my own people – for the people of South Kerry, where I was bred and born.
A VOICE FROM THE BODY OF THE HALL: ‘No.’
LYNCH: With one exception. Yes, a minority of one against, an Englishwoman. Well, if I am interrupted from the body of the Hall, I will reply, I say that that person should be removed from the Hall, a person who interferes with a speaker in this assembly, and I ask the chair to protect me.11
In April 1923, Brodrick was shot in the leg by police when she refused to stop while running errands on her bicycle for the IRA near Sneem. Arrested and jailed in the North Dublin Union, she went on hunger strike for fourteen days before being released. When Fianna Fáil was founded in 1926, she opted to remain in Sinn Féin and she ran the party’s newspaper, Irish Freedom, for ten years, acting as editor for a time. With others like Mary MacSwiney, she left Cumann na mBan to set up the short-lived Mná na Poblachta.
In parallel with her republican activism, Brodrick employed her political nous in nursing. She was a vocal advocate of adequate training and registration for nurses; she had been a member of the Society for the State Registration of Trained Nurses from 1907. Her other area of interest was venereal disease. She wrote a paper called ‘Morality in Relation to the Public Health’ in which she ‘broke down the silence’ around sexually transmitted diseases and she chaired a National Council of Nurses Committee on the subject.12 In April 1921, she chaired a nursing conference in Tralee which debated the need for a new hospital in the town. She lectured on the need for the professional organisation of nurses and nurses’ rights, supporting calls for trade union representation for the profession.
Despite her political views, Brodrick remained a member of the Church of Ireland and played the harmonium in the church in Sneem. She continued to operate a co-operative shop in Caherdaniel. She lived a very frugal life, reputedly wearing the same pair of boots for seventeen years.13 Albinia Brodrick died at the age of ninety-three at her south Kerry home on 16 January 1955. In her will, she left most of her wealth (£17,000) to republicans ‘as they were in the years 1919 to 1921’. The vagueness of her bequest led to legal wrangles for decades. In February 1979, Mr Justice Seán Gannon ruled that the bequest was ‘void for remoteness’ as it was impossible to determine which republican faction met her criteria.14
3
‘Castleisland swam in porter … and drunkenness prevailed’
The Councillor Unseated for Plying Voters with Drink
When proceedings began at the courthouse in Castleisland at one o’clock on a warm summer afternoon in 1908, the room was described as being ‘packed to suffocating point and the windows had to be thrown open’.1 A large crowd, including several journalists, had gathered to hear a series of dramatic and sensational charges against the recently re-elected county councillor, John Kerry O’Connor, who was being accused by his election opponent, Denis J. Reidy, of winning his seat in the Castleisland Electoral Division by illegal and corrupt means. Among the charges brought against Councillor O’Connor were ‘bribery, corruption and intimidation of the greatest character, general treating, public houses kept open in every part of the constituency, and free drinks supplied’ to voters during the election campaign. The presiding magistrate, Commissioner Maxwell, was told that, because of the way O’Connor had procured many of the votes he received, Reidy was seeking his unseating by order of the court. Reidy also wanted the result of the recent election to Kerry County Council held in the Castleisland Electoral Division to be declared void. John Kerry – better known as J.K. – O’Connor was a prominent Castleisland businessman and a Justice of the Peace who presided over the Petty Sessions court hearings in the district. Ironically, given what was to follow, O’Connor had presided over a court hearing in which fourteen men were charged in connection with a brawl in Ranalough near Currow during the 1906 parliamentary election campaign which resulted in an electioneer and a local constable sustaining injuries.2
O’Connor was no political novice. He had been a member of the Tralee Board of Guardians and was elected a member of the first Kerry County Council in April 1899, representing the single-seat electoral division of Castleisland. In that poll, there had been a contest for the only seat available. Redmond Roche of Maglass, also a Justice of the Peace, had been declared elected by a margin of just three votes. An immediate recount sought by O’Connor produced the same result: 469 for Roche and 466 for O’Connor. On the day after the count, however, a ballot paper was found on the floor of the Grand Jury Room in Tralee where voting had occurred. A recount was sought again and all the ballots were examined by the local Under Sheriff T.C. Goodman and legal representatives. The newly discovered paper was found to be valid, as it bore the official stamp. O’Connor was duly elected with one vote to spare over Roche.3 O’Connor was a high-profile supporter of John Murphy, MP for East Kerry, in his political battles with his nemesis, Eugene O’Sullivan. The court hearing was told that O’Connor was a man of influence: a draper, a meal and flour merchant, a creamery proprietor and auctioneer who ‘had business dealings with the great bulk of the electorate, a great many of whom were deep in his books’.4
O’Connor retained his seat in the council elections of 1902 and 1905. He served on several local authority committees, including the Asylum Committee, and was a member of the Tralee and Fenit Pier and Harbour Commissioners. At the 1908 poll which has held on 3 June, O’Connor was challenged, however, for the single seat on offer by another local businessman, Denis J. Reidy. Reidy was active in the Irish Land and Labour Association and had strong political support in the division. O’Connor prevailed by 555 votes to Reidy’s