The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken, 1770–1866: A Belfast Panorama

By Mary McNeill

Despite outliving him by 68 years, Mary Ann McCracken’s legacy is overshadowed by that of her more famous brother, executed United Irishman Henry Joy McCracken. She was, however, an abolitionist, a social reformer and an activist who fought for the rights of women and Belfast’s poor throughout a long life that encompassed the most turbulent years of Irish history.

As treasurer, secretary and chair of the Ladies Committee, she helped girls from the Poor House learn crafts that would provide them with livelihoods. Dedicated to championing Belfast’s poor, she was President of the Ladies Industrial School and she campaigned to abolish the use of climbing boys in chimney sweeping. Mary Ann was involved in early women’s suffrage campaigns and prison reform schemes and was a passionate member of the Women’s Abolitionary Committee. In her late eighties, she could be found on the docks, handing out anti-slavery leaflets to emigrants embarking for the slave-owning United States.

The motto of this remarkable woman, which accurately sums up her character, was, better ‘to wear out than to rust out’. But her radical, humanitarian zeal and generous strength of character were indefatigable, and her contribution to Belfast life is still felt and celebrated today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Irish Academic Press
• Release date: Jul 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781788550840

Mary McNeill

Mary Alice McNeill (1897-1984) was born in Belfast and educated in Oxford and Dublin. Returning to Belfast in the mid-1920s, she became a member of the Arellian Association, which established a nursery school for the city’s poor children in 1928 – nearly 100 years after Mary Ann McCracken established a nursery school in the Poor House. McNeill dedicated her life to voluntary projects and served on the Board of the Belfast Charitable Society from 1945 to 1964. She published her first historical biography, The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken, in 1960. Having declined an M.B.E. in 1953, McNeill went on to accept an Honorary M.A. from Queen’s University Belfast in 1961. She published two further biographies: Little Tom Drennan (1962) and Vere Foster (1971).

Book preview

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF

MARY ANN

McCRACKEN

Mary Alice McNeill (1897–1984) was born in Belfast and educated at Richmond Lodge and St Hugh’s College, Oxford. She lost a brother during the Great War and so returned to Ireland to work at a soldiers’ home. After graduating from Alexandra College Dublin, McNeill was assistant editor of the volume The Voice of Ireland (1923). Returning to Belfast in the mid-1920s, she became a member of the Arellian Association, which established a nursery school for the city’s poor children in 1928 – nearly 100 years after Mary Ann McCracken established a nursery school in the Poor House.

McNeill dedicated her life to numerous voluntary projects. She was Secretary for the Irish Christian Fellowship; Honorary Secretary for the Northern Committee of the Irish Association for Cultural, Economic and Social Relations (1938-53); Women’s Voluntary Services District Organiser in Belfast during the Second World War, advancing to Second Vice-Chairman of the Northern Ireland Branch, and she was nominated as a Children’s Guardian in 1943.

Following in the footsteps of her father and grandfather, McNeill served on the Board of the Belfast Charitable Society (1945–64). Working as an independent scholar, she published her first historical biography, The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken, in 1960. Having declined an MBE in 1953, McNeill went on to accept an Honorary M.A. from Queen’s University Belfast in 1961. She published two further biographies: Little Tom Drennan (1962) and Vere Foster (1971).

McNeill died on 25 October 1984, leaving a valuable collection of miniatures and silhouettes to the National Gallery of Ireland, and a significant bequest to the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen’s University Belfast.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF

MARY ANN

McCRACKEN

1770—1866

A BELFAST PANORAMA

MARY McNEILL

250th Anniversary Edition

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First published by Allen Figgis & Co., Ltd., Dublin, 1960

Revised Edition published in 2019 by

Irish Academic Press

10 George’s Street

Newbridge

Co. Kildare

Ireland

www.iap.ie

© Mary McNeill, 1960, 2019

9781788550826 (Cloth)

9781788550833 (Kindle)

9781788550840 (Epub)

9781788550857 (PDF)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

An entry can be found on request

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved alone, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro 11/14 pt

Jacket front: Belfast Poor House, c.1785–90 (Nixon, John, c.1750–1818 © National Museums NI Collection Ulster Museum) and Mary Ann McCracken with her niece Maria, c.1801 (Bigger, F.J. © National Museums NI Collection Ulster Museum).

Jacket back: Williamson map of Belfast, 1791 (© National Museums NI Collection Ulster Museum).

Endpapers: Minutes of the Ladies Committee (MS1/2015/020/0040) © Belfast Charitable Society.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

New Foreword

New Introduction

Original Foreword

Original Introduction

Chapter 1. Francis Joy, 1697–1790

Chapter 2. Henry and Robert Joy, 1720–1785

Chapter 3. Captain and Mrs. McCracken, 1745–1770

Chapter 4. Childhood and Adolescence, 1770–1790

Chapter 5. The United Irishmen, 1783–1791

Chapter 6. The Revival of Irish Music, 1792

Chapter 7. Reform or Revolution, 1791–1795

Chapter 8. Kilmainham Part I, 1795–

Chapter 9. Kilmainham Part II, –1797

Chapter 10. Antrim, 1798

Chapter 11. Thomas Russell, 1798–1803

Chapter 12. Interlude, 1803–1810

Chapter 13. The Turning Point, 1810–1827

Chapter 14. The Ladies’ Committee, 1827–1851

Chapter 15. The Last Years, 1851–1866

Bibliography

Abbreviations

Endnotes

Index

Family Tree of the Joy and McCracken Families

Map redrawn from the 1st edition (1960).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

At the outset, I would like to thank the family of the author, Mary Alice McNeill, for permission to republish this seminal biography. Without their continued support, this republication would not have been possible.

The text remains largely unaltered from the original, but work was required to update the original footnotes due to re-cataloguing of archives since Mary McNeill undertook her research in the 1950s. In particular, special thanks is due to Cathryn McWilliams for her work on the references related to the holdings of the Public Record Office Northern Ireland and Trinity College Dublin as well as the Joy-McCracken family tree; to the Archive and Heritage Development Officer at Clifton House for updating the references for material from the Belfast Charitable Society Archive; Teresa Flanagan for proofreading the original transcript; and to National Museums Northern Ireland for permission to reproduce images from its collections.

I am grateful to the past and present Presidents of the Society. Lady Moyra Quigley, for her continual support and for introducing the Charitable Society to the esteemed historian, Marianne Elliot. Marianne will be familiar to many who are interested in the 1798 Rebellion, and we are indebted to her for writing the new foreword. Also Sir Ronald Weatherup, who has written the new Introduction to this edition and who has, in his short time as President, shown much interest and support for the Society’s work.

Thank you to Conor Graham and the Irish Academic Press for their belief in the project from the beginning and their continued support throughout this process.

Lastly, I would like to acknowledge the contribution of all those at Belfast Charitable Society. The foresight and support of the Board and the work of Paula Reynolds (CEO) and all her staff have made this reprint a reality. I am pleased to have been part of this project working alongside all involved. We have produced a fitting tribute to two Belfast women who both strived to do their part in tackling the social issues of their respective times.

David Watters

Chair of Belfast Charitable Society

NEW FOREWORD

First published in 1960, The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken is a biography written by one remarkable Belfast woman about another. The decade of the 1950s was a hopeful time in Belfast, much as it had been when Mary Ann McCracken was young in the 1790s. People were emerging from enduring wartime rationing and undoubtedly, the terrible experience of World War II and the blitz of Belfast had brought people together. They were the first generation to benefit from the welfare state and although there had been a rumbling IRA border campaign, it impacted little on Belfast and would soon terminate from lack of support.

The 1780s and 1790s had likewise been a time for optimism. Belfast was leading the country in advanced social and political thinking, culminating in the formation of the Society of United Irishmen in the town in 1791. The young Mary Ann McCracken proved herself just as radical a thinker as them, holding her own in advanced political debate and associating with some of the most influential of the United Irishmen, including her own brother Henry Joy McCracken and the legendary Thomas Russell. Anti-slavery, the good of the common man, Catholic emancipation, improving the position of women, Irish music and language, the study of the natural world all occupied her and them as much as the enthusiasm for the French Revolution and advanced political reform for which they are better known. The real strength of Mary McNeill’s book is that she allowed Mary Ann to speak for herself through her extensive correspondence. Those letters provide a remarkable insight into a very special period in Belfast’s history and she lived long enough to pass them on to the nineteenth-century historian of the United Irishmen, R.R. Madden, and through him into the archives of Trinity College Dublin. They were a fundamental part of my own research into the 1790s, much as they have been to successive generations of historians.

Mary Ann was born into a middle-class Presbyterian family which already had a reputation for civic leadership and reformist leanings. Her maternal grandfather, Francis Joy, founded the first Belfast newspaper, the Belfast News-Letter, in 1737, which was a channel for reformist opinion until it became an organ of government under new ownership after 1795. The Joys were also among some of the earliest members of the Belfast Charitable Society, founded in 1752, who designed and built Clifton House which opened in 1774 as Belfast’s first institution to care for the poor – a mission which it strongly maintains in regard to a wide range of social need today. Mary Ann was to continue involvement in its work until her death in 1866, aged 96. The McCrackens and Joys were pioneering textile manufacturers, laying the foundation of Belfast’s industrial heritage. Aged only 22, Mary was to set up her own muslin business with her sister, and with the other McCrackens was a noted philanthropic employer. She thought it an employer’s duty to create time for the workers to pursue leisure and education, and later created programmes for educating the female poor.

It was this reputation as a friend of the poor which made Henry Joy McCracken a very unusual leader of the 1798 Rebellion. Working people, Protestant and Catholic alike, rallied to him even after that curse of modern Irish History, sectarianism, was tearing former allies apart and would soon infect Belfast’s future in a way that it had not done in the eighteenth century. The account of Mary Ann’s trek through the soldier and rebel-infested hills of Belfast in search of her brother after his defeat at the Battle of Antrim is only one example of the actions of this fearless young woman. And her correspondence during the imprisonment, trials and public executions of the two young men dearest to her, Henry Joy in 1798 and Thomas Russell in 1803, movingly describes the disintegration of the ideals and hope which had so marked preceding decades.

Another remarkable Belfast woman and contemporary of Mary Ann’s – William Drennan’s sister, Martha McTier – commented after the bloodbath of 1798 and the sectarian reprisals which continued after it: ‘It will be long before this devoted country recovers’. Mary Ann’s nineteenth-century correspondence reflects that negative change. Here post-union Ulster is a much more restrictive society, particularly for women.

It is easy to romanticise the 1790s – long seen as one of the great might-have-beens of Irish history. Even so, it is a period when Belfast was celebrated as Ireland’s capital of enlightened thinking and even today it commands interest and respect from people of very different political and religious leanings. There is something very symbolic in the Belfast Charitable Society reproducing this impressive book in its 267th anniversary year, for it has continued unbroken that philanthropic mission of the Joys, the McCrackens and the other Belfast reformers of the eighteenth century.

Marianne Elliott

September 2019

NEW INTRODUCTION

Belfast Charitable Society

This publication of Mary McNeill’s biography of Mary Ann McCracken has been promoted by the Belfast Charitable Society to renew interest in the life of an extraordinary woman. The book was first launched in the boardroom of the Society at Clifton House, Belfast on 10 October 1960. Mary Ann was an active member of the Society for many years in the early and mid-nineteenth century, as was Mary McNeill over one hundred years later.

Mary McNeill

First of all, a word about the author. Mary Alice McNeill was known as Molly and was born in Belfast on 21 August 1897. She was a pioneer in education and the interests of children as well as a supporter of the Society, of whom Mary Ann McCracken would have been proud. She was admitted as a student to St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, in 1916 to what was then an all-women college. The college had been founded in 1886 by Elizabeth Wordsworth, great-niece of the poet William Wordsworth. Back in Belfast she became a member of the Arellian Association, former pupils of Richmond Lodge School, which opened a nursery school for the children of the poor in Belfast in 1928, the Arellian Nursery.

Later she became the secretary to the Committee for the Nursery School Association of Ireland.

In 1943 she became a Children’s Guardian and would attend the Juvenile Court to act in the interests of the children. She was to become one of the first members of the Child Welfare Council and a member of the Board of Management of the Eastern Special Care Service.

George McNeill, her father, was a member of the Board of the Society from 1910 until his death in 1945 and was Treasurer from 1922 to 1938. Following in the footsteps of her father, Ms McNeill served on the Board of the Society from 1945 to 1964.

Further to the publication of this biography, she was awarded an honorary MA by Queens University Belfast in 1961 in recognition of her work as an independent scholar. On receiving the congratulations of the Society, she presented a photograph of Mary Ann to Clifton House on 24 July 1961, a photograph that remains on display.

Ms McNeill’s resignation from the Board was received on 5 October 1964. The minutes of the next meeting refer to her departure as a real blow to the Society, in the work of which and its history, Ms McNeill had taken an intense interest.

Mary Ann McCracken at Clifton House

Mary Ann is described in the text as a pioneer social reformer. The extensive range of her activities included her concerns about poverty, education, working conditions, the status of women, slavery and the philanthropic work of the Society at Clifton House. In a letter written in October 1797 there appears what must have remained a guiding principle – Is it not the duty of every person to promote the happiness of others as much as lies in their power?

The Society, having been formed in 1752, completed the building of Clifton House in 1774. In that year the Society was incorporated by legislation of the Irish Parliament for the better carrying into execution under proper regulations the charitable and humane design of maintaining the poor of the said town and parish. The legislative framework continues in the Belfast Charitable Society Act of 1996, which states the objects of the Society as being to pursue charitable activities for the disadvantaged, including the care of the elderly, the relief of poverty, homelessness, distress, infirmity and sickness and providing for the educational and other needs of such persons. Many of the issues that exercised the Society when Mary Ann was involved find a resonance in the work of the Society today.

The establishment of the Ladies’ Committee of the Society, of which Mary Ann served as secretary, was inspired by the visit of the social reformer Elizabeth Fry to Ireland in 1827, although Mary Ann was involved with the work of the Society before that date. The committee was concerned with the ‘female department’ and the conditions of female children, aged women, those confined in hospital and female apprentices. During this time there were over 100 elderly people and a similar number of children in Clifton House, with several sharing a bed. Education was an important component for Mary Ann and the Ladies’ Committee. A girls’ school already existed and in 1831 the Ladies’ Committee secured the establishment of an Infant School which catered for those aged two to seven. Training for employment was provided which included domestic work, needlework and shoemaking. Apprenticeship schemes included domestic servants and dressmakers. It took a five-year apprenticeship to become a domestic servant. The measure of concern for the welfare of the girls appears in a minute of the Ladies’ Committee to the general committee (of men) recommending that girls should not be apprenticed to weavers …. as the sedentary occupation of winding pirns from noon till night in close damp weaving shops is highly injurious to health and spirits …

The Poor Law Act of 1838 introduced the workhouse system in Ireland and the Belfast workhouse opened in 1841. While the Poorhouse operated at Clifton House was largely a voluntary organisation, the workhouses were of a different character, being paid for by a Poor Rate raised locally, and with conditions made so harsh that only the most desperate would seek admission. The workhouse was designed to accommodate 1000 people who qualified as destitute, as opposed to being in poverty, and the Belfast workhouse was full in 1846, the year after the first failure of the potato crop in Ireland. Mary Ann was involved in famine relief and along with others from the Ladies’ Committee was a member of the Belfast Ladies Association for the Relief of Irish Destitution which was established on 1 January 1847.

Slavery

From a letter Mary Ann wrote to her brother in 1797 appears a forthright view on slavery and the status of women: … there can be no argument produced in favour of the slavery of women that has not been used in favour of general slavery and which have been successfully combatted by many able writers.

A most powerful image is that of Mary Ann in 1859 at almost 89 years of age standing on the docks in Belfast, handing out leaflets to those embarking and disembarking from the ships, seeking support for her opposition to slavery.

Abolition of the carrying of slaves to British territories and to United States territories occurred in 1807. However, slavery continued within the British territories until the Emancipation Act 1834 and in the United States until 1865 when the 13th Amendment abolished slavery throughout the country. Mary Ann must have been exultant to live to see abolition in America.

Nevertheless the enslavement of those of African descent continued in other parts of the world and, for example, was not abolished in Brazil until 1888. The progression from freedom to equality has been an uneven path. Legislation was required 100 years later to prohibit different treatment on racial grounds. No doubt Mary Ann would have been at the forefront in advocating modern equality legislation based on race as well as gender or on any personal status.

Today, in the western world, the slavery that endures is of a different character, is less visible and involves the abuse of power, the enslavement of the vulnerable. In 2017, the Northern Ireland Department of Justice chose Clifton House as the location for the launch of its campaign against modern slavery, a recognition of the historical connection between the Society and campaigns against slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries. As a result of the Anti Slavery Day Act 2018, an Anti Slavery Day was held on 18 October 2018 to raise awareness of human trafficking and modern slavery.

Clifton Street Cemetery

Ms McNeill concluded her biography by referring to Mary Ann being buried in the shadow of the Poorhouse. The graveyard is behind Clifton House. The two areas have now been separated by a road development that required the vesting of part of the lands originally granted to the Society. Clifton Street Cemetery is now under the management and control of Belfast City Council.

Mary Ann’s grave remained unmarked for many years. In 1902, during construction work at St. Georges Church, High Street, Belfast, what were believed to be the remains of her brother, Henry Joy McCracken, were recovered. The remains were kept by Francis Joseph Bigger, a solicitor and antiquarian, at his home at Ardrigh, on the Antrim Road in Belfast, where he housed a private museum of the 1798 rebellion. On 12 May 1909, the remains of Henry Joy were reinterred in the plot with Mary Ann. A sealed glass phial was placed inside the coffin describing the recovery of his remains. At the same time a headstone was erected in memory of Mary Ann. The inscription reads:

MARY ANNE MacCRACKEN

THE BELOVED SISTER OF

HENRY JOY MacCRACKEN

BORN 8 JULY 1770

WEPT BY HER BROTHERS SCAFFOLD

17 JULY 1798

DIED 26 JULY 1866

Díleas go h-éag

The inscription may be based on both Irish and Scottish Gallic and may be translated as faithful to death and refer to the bond between brother and sister. At Clifton House, where Mary Ann provided long years of support to the women and children, it may be taken to refer to her lifelong devotion to the disadvantaged.

The Society in More Modern Times

Accommodation for children ceased in 1882 when other organisations had taken over the provision of care for children. Thereafter, the care facility was provided for the elderly. Dr. Strain in Belfast and its Charitable Society, published in 1961, described the work of the Society (at the time when Ms McNeill was on the Board of the Society and her biography of Mary Ann had just been published). In 1961, there were 144 older men and woman residents at Clifton House who, having secured a place, would have a home for life. Payment was based on ability to pay and no one was refused a place because of inability to pay. Dr. Strain expressed the view that For the elderly applicants for admission poverty has taken a new form. Extreme financial hardship is rare. Instead there is a poverty of care and affection. This may be the result of living alone on the one hand or of the stresses of overcrowding on the other.

As the twentieth century came to a close it became necessary for care facilities to be reviewed. The Society faced new regulations to provide modern standards of care for the elderly. A purpose-built nursing home for the elderly housing 100 residents was completed nearby at Carlisle Circus. Clifton Nursing Home was developed through the unstinting work of Lady Quigley who was chair of the ‘Home from Home’ appeal that raised the funds from business to complete the development and was President of the Society from 2007 to 2017.

Clifton House continues to house the Belfast Charitable Society, which in 2019 held its 247th Annual General Meeting in its 266th year. Under the stewardship of recent Boards of the Society, the strategic move has been made away from the direct provision of care and the emphasis has been placed on philanthropy, the remarkable heritage of the Society and measures designed to address the ever changing face of disadvantage.

Today the Society facilitates the care of older people at Clifton House and at Clifton Nursing Home through delivery of care by a specialist provider for those with supported care, sheltered housing and nursing-care needs.

While Clifton House is located in North Belfast, one of the most deprived areas in Northern Ireland, the Society also seeks to address need beyond North Belfast. Deprivation is addressed through assistance, both directly and indirectly, for those who are disadvantaged in education, training for employment, accommodation and health.

Some of the projects underway in 2019 may illustrate the nature of the work. ‘Building Better Futures’ is a partnership with the Building Change Trust and the Ulster Community Investment Trust which together have established a fund from which small voluntary organisations may obtain loans to tackle disadvantage. For example, the loans may provide training programmes for young adults with learning needs, services to improve mental health and well-being and improving sports facilities.

The ‘Barbour Fund’ was established with the Hilden District Nursing Society to advance education and training by way of bursaries and grants. This has included support for the Belfast Hospital School which provides for those excluded from the education system, whether by reason of illness or removal from formal schooling. Funding has also been provided for activities for older people suffering from isolation.

The ‘North Belfast Heritage Cluster’ involves 15 local heritage-based voluntary organisations headed by the Society that seek to advance the regeneration of the immediate area. The cluster includes various churches, the Carnegie Library and the North Belfast Working Men’s Club. The project receives funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Direct grants have been made to NI Hospice to support those requiring palliative care. The grants have supported a building programme and a renewal of the means of delivering services.

The Society also seeks to encourage philanthropy by influencing others and supporting organisations to further that purpose. The promotion of our rich heritage includes access to an extraordinary collection of archive material dating back before 1752, containing minutes and letters detailing the lives of thousands in the Poorhouse and the actions of those who managed the home, amounting to a social commentary on the times. The archive is an historical treasure. Programmes of tours and talks and lectures allow the sharing of that history.

The Mary Ann McCracken Foundation

The Society has created a Mary Ann McCracken Foundation designed to broaden public knowledge of her immense contribution to addressing the social issues of her day, to increase appreciation of the values of that contribution and to relate that experience to the current work of the Society in addressing the social issues of today. This republication of Ms McNeill’s work is a part of that development.

In her scholarly work, Ms McNeill captured the energy of Mary Ann. The disadvantage Mary Ann confronted all her life has its own form and substance today. That same energy remains essential to address present disadvantage. It is to be hoped that the republication of this life of Mary Ann McCracken will inspire those unfamiliar with her history to added concern for the objects of the Society in the care of the elderly, the relief of poverty, homelessness, distress, infirmity and sickness.

Mary Ann embodied many admirable qualities. She could have been the subject of President Barak Obama’s remarks in the Waterfront Hall in Belfast on 17 June 2013:

So many of the qualities that we Americans hold dear are imported from this land – perseverance, faith, an unbending belief that we make our own destiny, and an unshakable dream that if we work hard and live responsibly, something better lies just around the bend.

Sir Ronald Weatherup

President of Belfast Charitable Society

September 2019

ORIGINAL FOREWORD

At the close of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries the North of Ireland was profoundly influenced by the American, the French and the Industrial Revolutions. Mary Ann McCracken’s long life spanned this great era of upheaval and creative change. A woman of strong character and generous sympathies, with a ready pen and a forthright mind, she was solidly embedded in that vigorous, industrious, intellectually alert middle class which played such a decisive part in moulding British and Ulster life. She suffered deeply from the tragic consequences of rebellion. But she was unbroken, and after the saddening days of 1798 and 1803 she threw herself with enthusiastic energy into living a many-sided life dominated by family affection and humanitarian zeal. Mary McCracken and her circle were keen letter writers and fortunately much of what they wrote has survived. This mass of correspondence has been used by Miss McNeill in composing her account of Mary McCracken’s life. Miss McNeill brings to her task not only industry but also a sympathetic understanding of her subject’s ideals and feelings and keen awareness of Belfast, the growing city, pulsating with energy, in which Mary Ann McCracken’s life was spent.

R.B. McDowell

Trinity College, Dublin

18 September 1959

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

Mary Ann McCracken is known to many as the devoted sister of Henry Joy McCracken, most famous of the Northern leaders in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Few, however, are aware of the other activities of her long career and of the charm and forthrightness of her personality. Except for the short monograph included in Historical Notices of Old Belfast [1896] by R.M. Young, no story of her life has been written. Yet from contemporary sources and from her own letters and writings it is possible to get a complete picture of the sort of person she was, and of her varied and outstanding achievements during one of the most fascinating periods of Irish life.

In a great age of letter-writers Mary McCracken was herself a fluent correspondent, and the series of letters that passed between her and her two brothers while the latter were prisoners in Kilmainham Gaol throws a vivid light on their authors and on the history they helped to make. Only a small part of this correspondence has previously been published. At the end of her life another series of letters shows her as the friend and collaborator of Dr. R.R. Madden, author of The Lives of the United Irishmen. In the years between come her close association with Edward Bunting and the renaissance of Irish Harp Music; the successful muslin business that she established in conjunction with her sister; and her work for the women and girls in the Belfast Poor House, recorded in the Minute Book of the Ladies’ Committee of the Belfast Charitable Society of which, for a quarter of a century, Mary McCracken was Honorary Secretary. I am greatly indebted to Dr. R.W.M. Strain for unearthing this treasure and bringing it to my notice, and to the Belfast Charitable Society for permission to use it.

Any one of these activities would have marked Mary McCracken as an interesting and unusual woman. In 1792 her contemporary, Mary Wollstonecraft, regarded with despair the fashionable young women of her day spending their time going they scarcely care where for they cannot tell what. Why, she asks in The Vindication of the Rights of Women, would they not study politics, enter business, or take up the art of healing? One such occupation per person would have satisfied that most progressive of eighteenth century writers; yet, as Mrs. Wollstonecraft was penning her words, there was in the growing town of Belfast a young woman of twenty-two who herself would achieve all three distinctions, for Mary Ann McCracken was already a student of politics, had already embarked on a business enterprise and was preparing herself to be a healer of physical and social ills.

For the historical and social background against which Mary’s life was lived I have drawn largely from contemporary sources. To all students of the period the correspondence, known as the Drennan Letters, between Dr. William Drennan in Dublin and his sister Mrs. McTier in Belfast, is an inexhaustible mine of information and delight. Both were deeply involved in the political affairs of the day. Mrs. McTier’s husband – Samuel – was President of the 1st Belfast Society of United Irishmen, and Dr. Drennan, eminent physician and author of the Test to which all United Irishmen subscribed, held office in one of the Dublin societies when, in 1794, he was charged with sedition and successfully defended by John Philpot Curran – that marmoset of genius – to use Drennan’s own description of the renowned counsellor.

While Historical Collections relating to the town of Belfast and Belfast Politics were published anonymously, it is known that they were compiled by Mary McCracken’s cousin, Henry Joy, junior. They, with the files of the Belfast News-Letter, the newspaper which his family founded and owned for many years, are invaluable sources of local information, as are, from another angle, the volumes of Wolfe Tone’s incomparable Journal. Dr. Madden’s Lives of the United Irishmen, though not actually contemporary, is based on information gathered from those who had been intimately connected with the Rebellion. It is in the Madden Papers, now in Trinity College, Dublin, that most of Mary McCracken’s letters are to be found.

Though it is true that Mary McCracken lived her life in Belfast and was deeply implicated in matters that, at a first glance, appear to be primarily of Irish interest, she was very definitely a product of two great movements, originating, the one in France and the other in Britain, viz. the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution; and there are few records of a single life that responded with such vigour to both these influences. In the first half of her life Mary is a glowing example of the Ulster middle-class liberalism that flourished in the short heyday of Belfast’s Georgian brilliance at the close of the eighteenth century. With the opening of the nineteenth century she sets herself to discover the only valid answer to the challenge about to be presented by the new industrial age. Her life is, therefore, of interest to students of these two distinctive eras.

In quoting from her own and other letters I have as far as possible retained the original spelling, punctuation, etc., adding only an additional comma and full-stop when otherwise the sense is difficult to discover on the first reading.

In the course of my investigations I have sought help and information from many individuals, some already known to me, others, till then, strangers. In all instances I have been struck by the sense of something akin to family pride that has been evoked by my queries, and which has brought an added pleasure to my work. To all who have ransacked their book-cases, their old letters and their memories, I am most grateful. In one instance only have I talked with someone who herself had known Mary Ann McCracken. Just a few weeks before her death in her 101st year Mrs. Adam Duffin, granddaughter of Dr. William Drennan, related to me how as a small child she had, with her grandmother, visited Miss McCracken. It is perhaps a reflection of Mary’s understanding of little children that Mrs. Duffin’s memories of that visit centred round exciting jelly in little glasses, enjoyed while her elders discussed matters that were no concern of hers.

I am much indebted to the Misses Duffin for permission to use their typescript copy of the Drennan Letters and to quote from them, and for much incidental help and encouragement.

To the following I express my thanks for permission to consult original documents and to quote from them: The Board of Trinity College, Dublin; Queen’s University of Belfast; the Keeper, State Paper Office, Dublin; the Deputy Keeper, Northern Ireland Public Record Office; the Governors, Linenhall Library, Belfast; Belfast Public Libraries; Belfast Museum and Art Gallery; Presbyterian Historical Society, Belfast; and the Belfast Charitable Society. I am indebted to members of Staff in these institutions for advice and help. Of these I must mention by name Mr. J.W. Vitty, Librarian of the Linenhall Library, the successor in office of one of the characters of my story. I am grateful to Mrs. R.M. Beath for permission to use letters in her possession, and to Dr. R.W.M. Strain for permission to quote from The History and Associations of the Belfast Charitable Society. Also to Dr. Constantia Maxwell; Messrs. John Murray & Co.; and the Talbot Press. I am indebted to the Belfast Museum, to the Belfast Charitable Society, and to Mr. H.C. Aitchison, of Blomfontein, South Africa.

It remains for me to thank Prof. T.W. Moody, Prof. J.E. Beckett, Dr. R.B. McDowell and Mr. John Hewitt for reading the manuscript and for much valuable help and advice, and Mr. A.H. George for reading the proofs. I alone am responsible for any errors that remain.

Belfast, 1959.

CHAPTER 1

FRANCIS JOY

1697–1790

I hope the present era will produce some women of sufficient talent to inspire the rest with a genuine love of Liberty and a just sense of [its] value … for where it is understood it must be desired … I therefore hope it is reserved for the Irish nation to strike out something new and