WINIFRED CARNEY, an active feminist and significant figure of the 1916 Rising, known as "the typist with a Webley", will be the subject of a public lecture which takes place in the Galway Mechanics Institute on Thursday September 15 at 8pm.
Born in County Down, Carney trained as a shorthand-typist in Belfast. Already a trade unionist, she became James Connolly’s personal secretary after he was appointed Belfast organizer of the ITGWU. She arrived in the GPO on Easter Monday with a typewriter and a Webley revolver, and held the rank of adjutant throughout the week of the Rising. On her release from prison, she returned to active politics in Belfast, standing for Sinn Féin in the 1918 general election, and subsequently joining the Socialist Party.
The lecture will be given by Helga Woggon, a German-based scholar, and author of Silent Radical: Winifred Carney, 1887-1943. The event is part of a series commemorating and analysing the 1916 Rising, held under the joint auspices of the Galway Council of Trades Unions and the Irish Centre for the Histories of Labour & Class at NUI Galway.
Admission is free and all are welcome.
