This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Lawrence William White. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Born: 7 May 1874, Ireland
Died: December 1950
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: Máire or Marie Flanagan
Perolz, Mary (Máire, Marie) (1874–1950), republican and trade unionist, was born 7 May 1874 in Market Alley, Limerick city, daughter of Richard Perolz, a Dublin-born, protestant printer of French Huguenot origin, and Bridget Perolz (née Carter), a catholic. The family moved to Tralee, Co. Kerry, and then to Cork city, where her father worked on the Cork Examiner. Reared a catholic, Mary was educated by the Mercy sisters in Tralee, and the Presentation sisters in Cork and in Dublin, where she completed her schooling at George’s Hill Convent. Strongly nationalist under the influence of the Presentation nuns, she joined the Gaelic League, and was a colleague of William Rooney in the Celtic Literary Society during the 1890s. An early member of Inghinidhe na hÉireann, the nationalist women’s organisation founded by Maud Gonne in 1900, she taught Inghinidhe classes in history and Irish by lantern-light in the loft of loaned premises on Dublin’s Strand St., playfully insisting that such conditions rendered the activity ‘more fun’. She acted in several joint theatricals of Inghinidhe and the Celtic Literary Society, appearing in a programme of tableaux vivants illustrating episodes from ancient Irish saga, and in the initial Dublin production of ‘Eilís agus bhean déirce’, by Peadar Mac Fhionnlaoich, the first Irish-language play staged in the city (December 1902).
A close friend to Countess Markievicz and James Connolly, by 1916 she was prominent in both Cumann na mBan and the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), and was registered owner of the Spark, a nationalist weekly printed by Connolly in Liberty Hall. She helped procure arms for the ICA, and in the weeks before the Easter rising served as a courier of messages between leaders of the planned insurrection within Dublin and to Volunteer commandants in the country. When Markievicz was excluded under the defence of the realm act from addressing the Fianna Éireann festival in Tralee, and was ordered by Connolly not to defy the ban and risk arrest with the Easter rising impending, Perolz, who physically resembled Markievicz, and had a suitably nimble tongue, stood in as a replacement. Posing as Markievicz up to the moment of her address, she was shadowed by detectives on the train to Tralee and interrogated about her supposed ‘Russian citizenship’. She electrified the festival audience by reading out the exclusion order, conveying regrets from Markievicz for not appearing, and delivering the text of the latter’s lecture on the 1867 Fenian rising (26 March 1916).
Dispatched as a courier to Cork city on Easter Monday morning (24 April), bearing the remobilisation order issued by Patrick Pearse in the wake of the countermand by Eoin MacNeill, Perolz failed to make direct contact with local Volunteer commandant Tomás MacCurtain, who was elsewhere in the county. Arrested in Dublin shortly after the insurgents’ surrender, she was one of five women internees deported to England (20 June), all of whom, in common with Markievicz (who was imprisoned in England on a life sentence), were ICA members. Released the next month on appeal, Perolz was for a time the most prominent republican woman free to circulate actively in Dublin. Her incarceration so scandalised some members of her family, that they changed their surname to ‘Prole’ to avoid association with her.
Perolz was prominent in the revival after the rising of the Irish Women Workers’ Union (IWWU). Representing the union at the first post-rising convocation of the Irish Trade Union Congress and Labour Party (Sligo; 7 August 1916), she was notable in moving amendments to resolutions, partly to assure that the phrasing included reference to ‘working women’ as well as to ‘working men’, partly to assure that resolutions addressed the particular needs of women workers, and the industries in which they predominated. Especially important was her amendment to the draft national labour programme, advocating strategies to improve the health of working-class women and children, including maternity centres and medical inspection of schoolchildren. Perolz was elected acting president of the IWWU (February 1917), substituting for the still imprisoned Markievicz, who was elected honorary president. She travelled to England with Helena Molony and Kathleen Lynn to welcome the male republican internees on their release (June 1917); hearing that Markievicz was also to be freed, they remained to accompany her home to a tumultuous reception in Ireland. Perolz joined Sinn Féin and canvassed for the party in the 1918 general election. Amid disappointment at the paucity of women candidates fielded in the election, she was mentioned as a possible candidate for Dublin corporation (January 1920). For over thirty years she was an inspector under the 1908 children act with the Dublin board of public assistance.
At age 45 she married in the Roman catholic pro-cathedral (21 April 1919) James Michael Flanagan (sometimes styled O’Flanagan), a clerk known widely by the sobriquet ‘Citizen Flanagan’. They lived with members of his family at 127 Botanic Rd, Glasnevin, and subsequently at St Lawrence cottage, Strand Rd, Sutton, Co. Dublin; it is not recorded that they had children. Perolz remained an outspoken champion of the rights of women in industry and in the labour movement. She died in the early days of December 1950 and was buried at Mount Jerome cemetery, Dublin. A memorial was unveiled over her grave by Senator Margaret Pearse in August 1955.