A public meeting to press the case to name the new Salmon Weir footbridge after Julia Morrissey, one of the leading figures of the 1916 Rising in Galway, takes place next week.
The meeting, organised by Éirígí For a New Republic, takes place in Áras na nGael, Dominick Street, on Monday March 28 at 8pm.
The meeting will be chaired by Éirígí Galway representative, Ian Ó Dálaigh, and will be addressed by Jamie Canavan, a PhD student in NUIG, whose thesis focuses on foster care in 20th century Ireland. He will discuss how the State has treated women, and how the movement for women's rights has advanced in recent decades.
From Athenry, Julia Morrissey was a member of Cumann na mBan, and was originally the landlady of Liam Mellows when he first came to Athenry in 1915.
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Mellows [pictured above] would eventually become leader of Galway’s part in the 1916 Rising, which saw the largest number of volunteers in action outside of Dublin. Mellows and Morrisey were close and she was devastated by his execution by the Free State in 1922.
She received little or no public recognition for her contribution to the fight for Irish freedom. She was given neither a 1916 medal or the veteran’s pension for her actions during the Rising. In the 1930s, she was admitted to the ‘mental asylum’ in Ballinasloe, where she died in 1974.
An online petition to support naming the bridge after Julia Morrissey, and which has currently gathered more than 300 signatures, can be found by searching 'Julia Morrissey Bridge' on change.org
