Hot Press Podcasts presents: Airbrushed episode 4: Helen Chenevix

Hot Press's Airbrushed is back for its fourth episode, telling the story of queer Irish revolutionary, suffragist and trade unionist Helen Chenevix.

Born in 1886 in Blackrock, County Dublin, Helen Chenevix was the daughter of Henry Chenevix, a Bishop in The Church of Ireland, and Charlotte Sophia, née Ormbsy.

She attended Alexandra College in Dublin, where her follow suffragist and parter-to-be Louie Bennett had graduated twenty years prior.

Chenevix was a committed pacifist and women's rights activist, and in 1911 co-founded the Irish Women Suffrage Federation as well as the Irish Women's Workers Union in 1916, which was recognised as a trade union in 1918, with over 5,000 members.

In 1945, she, along with Bennett and other members of the Irish Women's Workers Union, led the laundries strikes - which lasted three months and awarded the nation two weeks annual leave.

Chenevix served as vice president to the Irish Trade Union Congress in 1949 and was appointed president in 1951. She also served as acting Lord Mayor of Dublin twice, both in 1942 and 1950, and was active in Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and the Irish Pacifist Movement.

Together with Bennett, Chenevix committed her life to public activism, running the Irish Women's Worker's union for over thirty years.

They lived and travelled the world together until Bennett's death from an illness in 1956 - Chenevix writing in Pax et Libertas that Bennett was "the best loved woman in Dublin."

A bench was erected in St Stephens Green park in honour of Chenevix and Bennett for their political work, reading 'Also of her lifelong friend and co-worker Helen Chenevix, 1888 - 1963 who shared the same high ideals.'

Plaque to Helen Chenevix on Louie Bennet's park bench memorial in St Stephen's Green. Copyright: Emily O'Brien

In this episode of Airbrushed, we discuss all this and more Dr Mary McAuliffe, historian, lecturer and director of Gender Studies in UCD, as well as the author of Richmond Barracks 1916: We Were There, 77 Women of the Easter Rising.

This episode is presented by Niamh Browne and Alana Daly-Mulligan.

The forth episode of Airbrushed is out now on the Hot Press Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Listen below: