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“I Thought The Rebellion Was Very Wrong”

Louise Gavan Duffy was writing her MA thesis at her lodgings on Haddington Road when she heard the Rising had begun. She made her way across the city to the General Post Office in O’Connell Street.

I was brought to Pearse and had the temerity to tell him that I thought the rebellion was very wrong as it would certainly fail but that I wished to be there if there was going to be anything doing.

She spent the week on the top floor of the GPO preparing and supplying food. In the kitchen she worked under the leadership of Desmond Fitzgerald and describes how a prisoner, a British soldier named Tommy Murphy was put to work.

Having been unable to change her clothes or footwear for the week Louise Gavan Duffy found a pair of shoes she could wear to relieve her swollen feet.

Louise Gavan Duffy was a member of the Central Branch, Cumann na mBan.

 

 

 

 


Louise Gavan Duffy was interviewed for 'Women of the Rising' broadcast on Radio Éireann, 1 April 1956. Photograph Louise Gavan Duffy courtesy of RTÉ Archives.

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