Doing My Bit for Ireland

A young Scottish-born Irishwoman chose revolution. In this urgent, intimate account written in 1917, Margaret Skinnider recalls her journey from a child noticing the stark poverty of Irish tenant farmers beside English estates in County Monaghan, to a schoolteacher who walked into Dublin as the Easter Rising was being planned. She trained with guns, carried messages, and fought alongside Countess Markievicz in the rebellion's chaos. What distinguishes this memoir is its fierce personal honesty: Skinnider does not soften her anger at British rule, nor does she romanticize the violence. She simply explains why a woman with options chose to risk everything. The result is a document of extraordinary historical weight, written while the smoke still hung over Dublin's streets. It captures both the intellectual conviction and the emotional heat that drove ordinary people into extraordinary action, and it preserves the perspective of women who history nearly erased from the Rising's story.