Lot 124: Constance Gore-Booth, Countess Markievicz

Constance Gore-Booth, Countess Markievicz (1868-1927) VISIT TO A DUBLIN FAMILY DURING THE TUBERCULOSIS EPIDEMIC, 1924 signed with initials and dated lower right pen and black ink over pencil on paper heightened with white 18 by 24cm., 7 by 9.5in. Provenance: The family of Robert Erskine Childers Tuberculosis, or TB, was a major cause of death among Dublin's poor during the early years of the last century. In 1912 it was reported that TB-related deaths in Ireland were fifty percent higher than in England or Scotland. As a champion of the poor and disenfranchised, Constance Gore-Booth often visited families in the Dublin slums, bringing food and support. During the lock-out of 1913, she set up a kitchen in her basement to feed the unemployed, and later, with Inghinidhe na hÉireann, set up soup kitchens for poor schoolchildren in the city centre. Her death in 1927 was possibly the result of TB, contracted whilst visiting the families such as those depicted with such sympathy here. With an unfinished work on reverse, depicting a woman in a yellow dress holding a bowl, watercolour over pencil. Inscribed 'Mrs Kelly', this is possibly a sketch of Mary Kelly née Hyland, who as a member of the Irish Citizen Army served with the Garrison of St Stephen's Green/College of Surgeons during the Easter Rising.