Hot Press Podcasts presents: Airbrushed episode 6: Margaret Skinnider

For the last episode of Airbrushed, join hosts Niamh Browne and Alana Daly Mulligan as they discuss the life and legacy of Scottish-Irish revolutionary and feminist Margaret Skinnider.

Referred to by the New York Times' Sadhbh Walshe as "the school-teacher turned sniper," Skinnider was born in 1892 to Irish parents in Lanarkshire, Scotland. Later, she trained as a maths teacher and was involved in Cumann Na mBan in Glasgow.

She was a committed suffragette and had trained as a sharpshooter in a rifle club, which had originally been set up so that women could help in defence of the British Empire.

During her trips to Ireland, she met Constance Markvitz and became active in bomb-smuggling campaigns in preparation of the Easter Rising. She also spent time with Madeline ffrench-Mullen testing dynamite in the hills around Dublin.

Skinnider is most famous for her involvement in the 1916 Easter Rising, which she wrote a first-hand account of in her 1917 memoir Doing my Bit For Ireland. She operated as a scout, message runner and sniper, taking part at the Garrison at the College of Surgeons and St. Stephen's Green under the Command of General Michael Mallin and Markievicz, and had 4 men under her command.

She was shot three times during the Easter Rising while attempting to burn down houses in Harcourt Street. She was then carried by fellow rebels to the Royal College of Surgeons, where she was kept until the order to surrender came, before being transferred to St Vincent's Hospital.

During the Irish War of Independence, she was arrested and imprisoned, but became Paymaster General of the Irish Republican Army during the Irish Civil War.

Skinnider shared her life with Nora O'Keeffe, whomst she met in 1917 in New York while collecting funds for the nationalist cause. They lived together as a couple in Dublin until O'Keeffe's death in 1962.

Margaret Skinnider died in Glenageary, County Dublin on October 10, 1971, and is buried next to Markievicz in the Republican plot of Glasnevin Cemetery.

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.

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

Listen below: