Eva Gore-Booth, one of Ireland’s most overlooked historical figures, is finally getting the recognition she deserves. A special two-day event at Lissadell House in County Sligo will honour her legacy as a suffragist, trade union organiser, and poet, taking place on Friday and Saturday, July 24 and 25.
Most people who know the name Gore-Booth associate it with Constance Markievicz, the revolutionary who fought in the 1916 Rising. But her younger sister Eva carved out her own extraordinary path, one that took her far from the grand estate on the shores of Lough Gill and into the heart of working class struggles in Manchester and beyond.
Eva left Sligo in the late 1890s and threw herself into activism in England at a time when women had no vote and workers had precious few rights. She became a key figure in organising women workers in Manchester, fighting for better pay and conditions for barmaids, textile workers, and other women in low-paid jobs who had almost no voice at the time. She co-founded the Manchester and Salford Women’s Trade Union Council and worked tirelessly alongside her life partner Esther Roper to push for real change on the ground.
Her suffragist work was just as significant. Eva believed in peaceful, constitutional methods to win women the vote, which put her at odds with some of the more militant suffragette factions of the era. She was deeply principled about non-violence, a conviction that extended to her outspoken opposition to the First World War at a time when such a stance was deeply unpopular.
But Eva was not just an activist. She was also a prolific poet and playwright, producing a substantial body of creative work throughout her life. Her writing explored themes of mysticism, nature, justice, and the spiritual, drawing on her upbringing in the wild landscape of Sligo as well as her later philosophical and theosophical interests. W.B. Yeats, who knew both Gore-Booth sisters from his visits to Lissadell as a young man, famously wrote about them in his poem “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz,” describing them as two girls in silk kimonos, both beautiful, one a gazelle.
Despite all of this, Eva has spent much of history in the shadow of her more famous sister. The Lissadell event aims to change that, bringing together historians, academics, and people with a general interest in Irish history to explore the full breadth of what she achieved.
Lissadell House itself is a fitting location for the gathering. The Georgian mansion on the Sligo coastline was the childhood home of both Eva and Constance, and it carries a huge amount of historical weight. It has been open to the public in recent years and has become an important cultural site in the northwest of Ireland.
The conference format means attendees will get two full days of talks, discussions, and presentations covering different aspects of Eva’s life and work. Whether you are coming for the labour history, the suffrage movement, the poetry, or just a general interest in one of Ireland’s most fascinating but underappreciated women, there is likely to be something that grabs your attention.
For anyone with an interest in Irish feminist history or the broader story of the early twentieth century labour movement, this is a rare chance to dig into a life that genuinely deserves more attention than it gets. Eva Gore-Booth was ahead of her time in almost every way, and events like this one help make sure her story does not get lost entirely.