Sir, – I write to congratulate you on your excellent supplement (“How Irish Women Won the Vote”, October 17th). My only cavil is the omission of one of Ireland’s greatest agitators for women’s suffrage, Frances Power Cobbe. Raised at Newbridge House in Donabate, Co Dublin, many considered her the finest female writer in Britain after the death of George Eliot. Moving to England in 1858, she spent the rest of her career living with her female partner there and in Wales. Despite being a conservative, she is best known for Criminals, Idiots, Women and Minors, one of the most important pamphlets in the suffrage cause and still very readable today. As the title indicates, she highlights the injustice done to women by their inclusion in the categories of persons denied both the vote and control over their property. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Conan Kennedy (October 18th) is brave, but naive, in his comments on “How Irish Women Won The Vote” (October 17th). Sure we all know that, for decades, The Irish Times has been the organ of institutionalised woolly feminism masquerading as informed discussion. It is a virtual world where privileged women pontificate, fulminate, are profoundly appalled and deeply, deeply shocked, disquieted, indignant at the plight of women and children, at all times and in all places, less cosseted than themselves.
I look on it as my daily oestrogen supplement. – Yours, etc,