This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Patrick Maume. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Born: 29 December 1884, Ireland
Died: 11 April 1977
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: Mary Josephine Mulcahy, Min Ryan
Mary Josephine (‘Min’) Ryan (1884–1977), teacher and political activist, was born at Tomcoole, the sixth child (and fifth daughter) of their parents. She came to Dublin in 1902 to study at the RUI while staying at the Loreto College, St Stephen’s Green; she graduated BA in English, French and German, took a one-year teaching degree from the University of London, and then taught for two years in Fulda, Germany, and (after a period in Rouen, France (1907–9)) for four years in North London Collegiate School, where Sophie Bryant was headmistress. (She may also have taught for some time at a school in Arklow, Co. Wicklow.) By the time she left Ireland she was already involved in the Sinn Féin movement and founded a Sinn Féin branch at London University. Many years later she recalled with some bemusement that she had not taken an interest in the agitation for women’s suffrage because she saw it as a side issue and un-national. (In April 1945 she delivered a speech in favour of greater participation by women in public life and criticising the view that women were more intuitive and less rational than men: ‘Take our own war of independence … The men could not have achieved the success they did but for the support of the womenfolk even under the most dangerous conditions’ (Ir. Times, 16 April 1945).)
With Mary Kate’s encouragement, she wished to return to Dublin, and when Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington was fired from her teaching position in Rathmines, Min sought it. When a London branch of Cumann na mBan was formed in 1914 she became its secretary. The branch disintegrated in November 1914 after the Volunteer split; Min Ryan was responsible for bringing the money it had collected to Eoin MacNeill in Dublin. She then returned to Tomcoole before moving to Dublin in January 1915, teaching German classes at Rathmines commercial college and keeping house for Mary Kate. This left her with free time for her paramilitary activities, which included becoming one of the secretaries of Cumann na mBan.
She first met Seán Mac Diarmada in 1905, and kept in contact with him through meetings at the house of her sister Mary Kate. After her return to Dublin in 1914 they grew closer and developed an ‘understanding’, though they were not formally engaged and Mac Diarmada did not discuss his political activities with her. In a letter to his brother before his execution, however, Mac Diarmada called her the woman he had hoped to marry and bequeathed some of his belongings to her.
In Holy Week 1916 she carried despatches to Volunteers in Co. Wexford, first for Mac Diarmada, and then MacNeill’s Easter Saturday countermanding order. During the Easter rising she and her sister Phyllis spent much of the Tuesday and the Tuesday night in the GPO before being sent out with messages; they were unable to return to the GPO until Thursday evening and then were immediately sent out with further messages. Because of her status as Mac Diarmada’s fiancée, she was allowed to visit him for three hours shortly before his execution on 12 May, and on several occasions throughout her life gave interviews describing the scene. In July 1916 she was sent to America to report to John Devoy and then carried out a lecture tour, describing the rising to Irish-American audiences.
On 2 June 1919 she married Richard Mulcahy ; during their early married life the flat where they lived (and where she had their first baby) was regularly raided by British forces, and for some months in late 1920 she moved to Belfast to live with her sister Agnes. After the treaty split she was active in Cumann na Saoirse, a short-lived organisation representing the pro-treaty minority of Cumann na mBan. For reasons of security, after the death of Michael Collins the Mulcahys leased Lissenfield House, beside Portobello barracks (it had formerly been the commanding officer’s residence). Here they lived until 1966, and brought up their three sons and three daughters, with Min’s managerial skills applied to the task of managing the household (including servants) and keeping the family afloat by growing fruit and vegetables on the few acres attached to the house and keeping fowl and dairy cattle (the produce being for sale as well as domestic consumption). By such means the family made ends meet throughout Richard’s long and modestly remunerated political career. Their children remembered them as a reserved but affectionate couple, and underestimated her early radicalism. Late in life she took up golf and practised less utilitarian forms of gardening.
After the civil war, Min Mulcahy was prominent in the Wounded Soldiers’ Comforts Fund, and in the 1940s worked for the Army Benevolent Fund with her sister Phyllis, although they had been on opposite sides in the civil war. A further sign of wartime reconciliation was her service during the Emergency as treasurer to the ladies’ committee of the 43rd Battalion, which knitted socks and pullovers for the Local Defence Force and was chaired by Kathleen Lemass (wife of Seán Lemass).