Kathleen Lynn Irishwoman, Patriot, Doctor

The life of this prominent female doctor mirrored many of the changes in Irish life between 1874 and 1955. She was Chief Medical Officer of the Irish Citizen Army during the 1916 Easter Rising and vice president of Sinn Féin as well as a TD between 1923 and 1927. She established St. Ultan’s Hospital for Infants in 1919 and her work in the hospital provides a way of analysing medical politics during a public health revolution in mid twentieth-century Ireland. Kathleen Lynn is remembered as a doctor who did her utmost for the poor of Dublin. Her biography deals with a wide range of issues including: suffragism, education, sectarian politics, maternal feminism, ecclesiastical subterfuge, public health, spirituality, ecumenism, the medical profession and social housing.