This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Gerry McElroy. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Born: 1890 (circa), Ireland
Died: 20 December 1964
Country most active: France
Also known as: NA
McCarthy, Janie (c.1890–1964), resistance worker and language teacher, was born in Bohereengowan, Killarney, Co. Kerry, the fourth of eight children, two boys and six girls, of Jeremiah McCarthy, mason, and Mary McCarthy, both of Co. Kerry. She appears to have been educated locally, before emigrating to France in 1910. She first lived in Brittany, where she worked as an au pair, before moving to Paris. Some time after going to Paris, she attended the Sorbonne, where she studied English and French. She then started a language school, which acquired a considerable reputation; she counted children of royalty and European aristocracy among her pupils.
A British passport holder, McCarthy destroyed her passport at the outbreak of the Second World War, to avoid being taken prisoner by the Nazis. When France fell, she joined the resistance and was involved in many related groups, even starting some at her own initiative in the Paris area. She specialised in rescue work and saved many lives during the occupation of France, including those of members of the allied armies and intelligence services. Her technique was simple: she enrolled each refugee as a member of her staff. Perhaps her most audacious act was bringing an American officer through a Gestapo inspection in the Paris metro and passing him off as a deaf mute because he could not speak French. Throughout the course of the occupation of Paris (1940–44) she had the distinction of losing only one refugee, a French medical student, to a French double agent. As a result of her resistance work, she was honoured by three states: France awarded her the Croix de Guerre and the Medaille de la Resistance; the USA awarded her the medal of freedom and a citation signed by President Eisenhower; and the British awarded her the Tedder certificate for assisting British personnel to escape.
After the war, McCarthy continued to teach her pupils, frequently taking them on summer trips to her native Kerry. Even in failing health, she continued to conduct language classes at her bedside until the end of the summer term in June 1964, only months before her death. Largely forgotten outside her native Ireland, her death went unrecognised by all the national newspapers except the Irish Times. Her work for resistance groups was remarkable in being recognised by three separate states, and it is a moot point whether the policy of Irish neutrality prevented her from being celebrated as a war heroine back home. She appears to have been unmarried and to have had no children. Late in November 1964 she was taken to the Hertfordshire British Hospital, Paris, where she remained until her death on 20 December 1964. She was buried in Paris on 28 December.