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: 28 May 1892, United Kingdom
Died: 11 October 1971
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: Máighréad Ní Scineadora
Skinnider, Margaret (Ní SCINEADÓRA, Máighréad) (1893–1971), republican, teacher, and trade unionist, was born in Glasgow, Scotland, to immigrant parents from Co. Monaghan. Qualifying as a teacher at Craiglockhart, she taught mathematics in Glasgow’s Hillhead district. Active in the women’s suffrage movement, she joined the Glasgow branches of both the Irish Volunteers and Cumann na mBan (c.1914). At the outbreak of the first world war she joined a women’s rifle club, becoming an expert shot. Invited to Dublin at Christmas 1915 by Countess Markievicz, who had heard of her Glasgow activities, she smuggled detonators concealed in her hat, then tested them with Markievicz in the Dublin mountains. Joining the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), she participated in raids for explosives and exercised her mathematical skills by drawing from observation detailed maps to scale of Beggars Bush and Portobello military barracks for use by the republican insurgents. Declaring that she could pass for a boy ‘even if it came to wrestling or whistling’ (Skinnider, 20), she proved the assertion by accompanying a troop of Fianna Éireann cadets about the city, dressed in their uniform. Alerted by Markievicz to the imminence of the rising, she returned to Dublin from Glasgow at the commencement of her Easter 1916 school holidays. She manufactured cartridges in Liberty Hall, and conveyed a message to Belfast (Thur. 20 April), accompanying family members of James Connolly to Dublin the following morning. During Easter Week she served in the ICA’s St Stephen’s Green contingent under the command of Michael Mallin, with Markievicz second-in-command; an advance scout, she was the first of the contingent on the Green. Detailed as dispatch-rider, she travelled by bicycle dressed in women’s clothing to arouse less suspicion (though often drawing hostile fire), but changed into ICA uniform breeches while taking turns on sniper duty in the Royal College of Surgeons. When Mallin rejected her plan to hurl a bomb from a passing bicycle into the British-occupied Shelbourne Hotel as too risky for a woman, she argued that, as women were equal with men under the Irish republic, they had an equal right to risk their lives. While engaged in a sortie attempting to fire a building in Harcourt St. to cut off the retreat of a British sniping party, she was shot and critically wounded (Wed. 26 April). Attended in the College of Surgeons for four days with her life in the balance, she was removed to St Vincent’s Hospital immediately before the garrison’s surrender. The most serious woman casualty among the insurgents, she spent seven weeks recovering in hospital; arrested briefly and questioned, she was released through the intervention of the hospital’s head doctor. Deceiving the authorities with her Scottish accent, she obtained a travel permit to Glasgow.
While speaking in America on a Cumann na mBan propaganda tour (1917–18), she wrote an account of her part in the rising, Doing my bit for Ireland (1917). Back in Ireland, she trained Volunteer recruits and was otherwise active with Cumann na mBan through the war of independence (1918–21). An opponent of the Anglo–Irish treaty, she was IRA paymaster general until her arrest, whereupon she was incarcerated in Mountjoy jail and North Dublin Union (1922–3). Her republican activities notwithstanding, she obtained a teaching position, which she held until retirement, in the Irish Sisters of Charity national school, Kings Inns St., Dublin (c.1923–61). Increasingly active in the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO), she campaigned over many years for equal pay and status for women teachers. During the six-month 1946 teachers’ strike she served on the strike executive committee, then on the salaries and arbitration committee established in the aftermath. Her efforts were instrumental in securing common incremental salary scales for women and single men (1949). She served INTO as central executive committee member (1949–61), vice-president (1955–6) and president (1956–7), in the latter office representing Ireland at the world conference of the Organisation of the Teaching Profession (Manila, Philippines). On her retirement from teaching she served on the Irish Congress of Trade Unions executive council (1961–3).
Skinnider was unmarried. She resided at 3 Sion Road, Glenageary, Co. Dublin with Nora O’Keeffe until O’Keeffe’s death in 1962. Skinnider died on 11 October 1971, and was buried beside Countess Markievicz in the republican plot, Glasnevin cemetery.