Monica deBath

Lily O’ Brennan, Cumann na mBan, kept a diary during Easter Week 1916. On her way to Richmond Barracks she tore it into little pieces to protect those named in her record. The torn up diary gives weight to the sense that significant acts disappear from the official record.

Her diary (Mountjoy 1923) records her shifting between a depressed state and an assertive state. Written partly in pencil, now faded, it is difficult to read.

 

 ‘i láthair / present’ – references these diaries and imagines an entry, both written and painted, that notes the move from a free to an imprisoned space for women, actively involved in the 1916 rising. It shows a roll call of some who were imprisoned in Kilmainham, Mountjoy or Richmond Prison. An illegible layer beneath the top layer holds other names - Winifred Carney, Josie Mc Gowan, Kitty Maher, Máire Perolz, Nora O’ Daly, May Gahan, Nell Humphreys, Helena Molony, Rose Mc Namara.