MAUD CHILDHOOD
Maud was born in Farnham near Aldershot, Hampshire, England on 13th of December 1866 to Edith Cook Gonne and Captain Thomas Gonne who was transferred almost immediately to The Curragh, the biggest British Military base in Ireland.
Unlikely beginnings for a woman who was to become an iconic figure in Ireland as an anti imperialist, bohemian revolutionary. In 1867 there had been a Fenian rebellion in Ireland and Captain Thomas Gonne had been sent to Ireland to prevent a second. Captain Thomas Gonne, during his time in Ireland, became a supporter of Irish Home Rule. Maud was close to her father and his empathy for the suffering of the Irish under British Rule paved the way for her later, more radical, politics. In fact his daughter, Maud, in her twenties, would admire and visit Fenian John O'Leary, a leader of the second rebellion her father was sent to prevent. |
When Maud was just five her mother, Edith, died of tuberculosis. Edith had lost her own mother when she was only two and had been sent to live with relatives. Before she died she made Thomas promise he would keep the children with him, an unusual thing for the time. And so Maud became close to her father and to her new Nanny, who introduced her to the local women and children of Howth, her new home.
It was from them that she first heard stories of rebellion.
It was from them that she first heard stories of rebellion.