Draft:Rosamond Jacob

Rosamond Jacob (13 October 1888 - 11 October 1960) was an Irish journalist, author and political activist. Name variations include Rose or Rosa Jacob; (pseudonym) F. Winthrop, Rosamund Jacob, and Róisín Nic Sheamais. She dedicated her life to activism for suffragist, republican, and socialist movements. She kept diaries from 1897 until her death in 1960, which serve as some of the most significant and intriguing sources for historians of Twentieth Century Ireland, as they provide insights into key political and cultural transformations and movements. She wrote a history of The Rise of the United Irishmen (1927), and a novel about the wife of Henry Joy McCracken, The Rebel's Wife (1957). Her other historical novels are Callaghan (1921),The Troubled House (1928); and The Raven's Glen (1980) which is a children's story.

Rosamond Jacob in 1912

Early Life

Rosamond Jacob was born on 13 October 1888 in Waterford City as the third child of parents, Louis Jacob (1841–1907) and Henrietta Jacob (1849–1919). Sister to Elizabeth Hannah Jacob and Thomas Frederick Harvey Jacob. Her father, Louis, worked in a house-agent and stockbroking firm for his father-in-law in Waterford. Her parents were born into Quakers families but identified themselves as humanist agnostics. Her parent's humanist agnostic beliefs and support for Irish nationalism resulted in them feeling isolated in the Waterford protestant community. Rosamond was taught by a family friend named Maria Walpole, then at age 10, she attended a quaker school. Rosamond was miserable in this establishment, which led her to leave after a year and resume home-schooling. From 1902 to 1906, she learnt French and German at the protestant's girls' high school. Her home life influenced her cultural and political activism; she identified as an agnostic, republican, feminist, socialist and vegetarian.

Pre-Independence War

As a young adult, Jacob became involved in organisations such as the Conradh na Gaeilge, the Irish National League, and Inghinidhe na hÉireann, a dedicated women's radical nationalist organisation, formulated in 1900. In 1906, Rosamond was involved in opening the first Sinn Féin club in Waterford. It was that same year that Rosamond became an Irish language speaker and writer, a language she'd go on to speak and write proficiently in. The strong catholic principles of the Gaelic League contradicted her feminist and unconventional religious beliefs which attributed to her transformation into what she described as a "bitter anti-cleric and freethinker." She quickly associated herself with the more radical wing of nationalist and feminist beliefs which led her to join the Irish Women's Franchise League, which was founded by her friend Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington in 1908 as the first Irish Women's Suffrage Society organisation that was willing to use militant tactics.

As a republican, she viewed the first world war as an imperial conflict, and actively protested against the recruitment campaign of John Redmond. Although she was a member of Cumann na mBan, which was founded in 1914 as a women's auxiliary to the Irish Volunteers, she criticised its compliance with Redmond and expressed her discontentment with the home rule bill's lack of provision for women's suffrage. Jacob was infuriated by Unionist Women who spoke "as though Ireland were a part of England, and the women's suffrage agitation in the two countries, one undivided organisation with its headquarters in London." She found it perplexing that Nationalist women supported solidarity with their Unionist sisters based on the claims that the women's movement was non-party and unrelated to ordinary political issues, "forgetting that the issue between Ireland and England is not a Party one, nor a question of ordinary politics, but a question that concerns the very life or death our Nation."

Jacob was involved with Friend's Relief, a quaker charity group, and was elected secretary of the organisation for social reform in Waterford, which called attention to local addiction problems such as gambling and drinking. In 1917 she attended Ardfheis as a representative for Sinn Féinn in Waterford, where she urged for a strong commitment towards women’s suffrage. She canvassed on behalf of Éamon de Valera in the 1918 Irish general election, but was disheartened by the lack of female representation in the meeting of the First Dáil. In 1920, one year after her mother's death, Jacob moved to Dublin and initially stayed with Skeffington in Belgrave Road, Rathmines.

Post-Independence War

From the late 1920s onwards, Jacob began to feel isolated from mainstream Irish society; according to her diary, societal expectations in Ireland during this time placed a strong emphasis on women to become wives and bear children. According to her diary, women were seen as less mature or capable in conversations regarding their role as women and contribution to society. Jacob opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and supported the Anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War, however she desired peace for all, like many did in the labour movement. In July 1922, she alongside Maud Gonne led a group of women activists in the call for ceasefire between the provisional government and anti-treaty forces, however their call was ultimately ignored. Six months later, Jacob was arrested and imprisoned at Mountjoy Prison after Sinn Féin's publicity department were discovered hiding in Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington's house, where Jacob was living at the time. During this time, she shared a cell with the republican writer Dorothy Macardle who she became close friends with and later shared a flat with in Rathmines in the 1920s.

In the 1930s she found herself dissatisfied with the independent Irish state, she viewed it as oppressive, patriarchal, and overly catholic. She continued to involve herself in various political movements and social activism including the International Disarmament Declaration Committee, which resulted in an unsuccessful attempt to create an anti-capital punishment group in Dublin. In 1931, as Irish delegate for the Friends of the Soviet Union, she travelled to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in Russia, and upon her return to Dublin reported favourably on conditions there in lectures in Dublin.

During the 1920s and 1930s, she was involved in a relationship with fellow republican, Frank Ryan (Irish republican). She played a significant role in the political campaign to secure Ryan's freedom for Nationalist Spain, and later actively defended his reputation after news broke of his death in Nazi Germany.

Relationships

Jacob's Quaker and agonistic upbringing, as well as her feminist and anti-clericalism beliefs , contributed to her sense of isolation in Irish society and her resistance to conforming to social norms [6]. She never married and did not bear any children. Her diaries are considered to be valuable documents to key political and social movements and they also offer insight to her personal life. Her diaries describe her relationship to Frank Ryan. Ryan and Jacob met when he was teaching Irish language classes through the Gaelic League. Ryan was much younger than Jacob. In her writings, their relationship, characterized by a significant age difference; Jacob was 40 and Ryan was 26 when their romantic involvement began in 1928 which continued in fluctuating periods of intense connection and withdrawal until the mid-1930s. Additionally, Jacob had a close relationship with republican activist and journalist Robert Brennan (journalist) in 1930. In her diaries, she makes a comparison between the two men, noting, "oh the difference between the touch of him & B - the intoxication of him in comparison." Both relationship's are referred to as "affairs", indicating a lack of formal and or long-term commitment. Despite being a lapsed quaker, Jacob's involvement in these affairs were considered scandalous during this period of time given the dominant Catholicity of the Free State.

Later Life

While not much information is available of her later life, Jacob is said to have lived in the Rathmines area of Dublin from at least 1942. She firstly lived in Belgrave Square, then from 1950, she shared a house with her friend Lucy Kingston at 17 Charleville Road. Jacob spent many years, particularly in her later life, haunted by feelings of inadequacy and lack of fulfilment. As an unmarried woman, she longed for, in the words of her character, Constance Moore in her unpublished novel, "Third Person Singular," – a "happy love affair." Rosamond Jacob kept a diary most of her lifetime, in fact there are 171 of these diaries among her literary and political papers held in the National Library of Ireland.

Writings

Despite Jacob's continuous writing, she noted in her diaries her struggle to find publishers for her fictional work. She published her first novel, titled Callaghan in 1920. She wrote it in 1915 however, it took five years for her to be successful in finding a publisher that recognised her writing. She published Callaghan under the pseudonym “F. Winthrop.” The novel follows the romantic relationship of a Protestant Suffragist and a Catholic Nationalist.

In 1937 Jacob wrote and published The Rise of the United Irishmen, 1791–1794, a historical analysis of the United Irishmen. In the writing process for this novel, she relied principally on the works of T.W. Tone, R. R. Madden, W. E. H. Lecky, Willian Drennan and the files of the Northern Star. After the publication of The Rise of the United Irishmen, 1791-1794, she was met with praise for the insightful nature of her work and for her ability to produce fictional work that was separate and differential to her own personal views. Both Irish Historical Studies and Robert Dudley Edwards in the Dublin Magazine regarded her novel as a stimulating, readable account in which Jacob distinguishes clearly between her own views and those of her subjects. Edwards interpreted her republicanism useful in that it allowed her to take issue with Lecky, but unhelpful in that it coloured her view of eighteenth-century politics. Both reviews faulted her work for insufficient use of sources and inadequate historical perspective.

After more than a decade of failure to publish The Troubled House, the success of her first novel allowed her to find a publisher. The Troubled House was published in 1938, which was first drafted in 1923. Troubled House serves as an avant-garde critique of war and patriarchy, set during the Irish War of Independence. The novel indicates a romantic relationship between two female protagonists. Jacob had an optimistic view towards the civil war, she viewed this era as politically exciting and intriguing and believed that the new state would offer more opportunity for women artists.

In 1957, Jacob wrote The Rebel's Wife, a historical memoir written from the perspective of Wolfe Tone's wife, Matilda. However, she was unsuccessful in finding a publisher for this literature piece until she rewrote it as historical fiction.

Jacob has two unpublished books, 'Third Person Singular' and 'Matilda Tone: a memoir.' She wrote two short stories, 'Two days long ago,' published under the pseudonym F. Winthrop (March/May 1922) and 'Trailing Clouds of Glory,' (December 1922). She also published an essay titled 'The Right to Kill' in December 1937.