Constance Markievicz (4 February 1868 – 15 July 1927) was Minister for Labor of Ireland from April 1919 to January 1922, preceding Joseph McGrath. Born into an Anglican Protestant family of Anglo-Irish aristocrats, Constance Gore-Booth became involved with the suffragette, socialist, and Irish nationalist movements during the 1910s, converting to Catholicism and becoming a Sinn Fein revolutionary during the Irish War of Independence.
Biography[]
Constance Booth-Gore was born in London, England on 4 February 1868 to a Protestant Anglo-Irish family of landowners, and she married a Polish art student named Casimir Markievicz while studying at the Academie Julian in France. In 1903, the two settled in Dublin, Ireland, and Constance became involved with socialist and revolutionary politics after meeting Irish nationalists at her art club. In 1908, she joined Sinn Fein, and she was imprisoned in 1911 for speaking at an Irish Republican Brotherhood rally. In 1913, Markievicz joined James Connolly's socialist Irish Citizen Army, and her husband returned to Ukraine that same year, corresponding with her. During the 1916 Easter Rising, Markievicz fought at St. Stephen's Green in Dublin, and she was sentenced to death and then to life imprisonment, but she was released in 1917 during a general amnesty. She converted to Catholicism after her release, and she was one of 73 Sinn Fein MPs elected in 1919. She was also elected to the Dail Eireann, and she served as Minister of Labor of Ireland from 1919 to 1922. In 1922, she left the government in opposition to the peace treaty with the United Kingdom, joining Fianna Fail in 1926. She died before she could take up her seat as a Fianna Fail Teachta Dala, dying of appendicitis on 15 July 1927 at the age of 59.
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