Yet Constance grew up socially conscientious and aware of the plight of the working classes. When a famine<\/a> struck in 1879, she saw her landowning father, the Arctic explorer Sir Henry Gore-Booth, provide his staff and tenants with free food; an inspiring deed both for Constance and her sister Eva, a future suffragist. Constance looked to go a similar way: in 1893, while studying art in London, she joined the National Union of Women\u2019s Suffrage<\/a> Societies.<\/p>\n Continuing her studies in Paris, she met a Polish count named Casimir Dunin Markievicz. The pair married in 1900, had a daughter (Constance would also help raise Casimir\u2019s son from a previous marriage), and moved to Dublin in 1903. There, they threw themselves into the artistic world, and, increasingly for Countess Markievicz, the political one, too.<\/p>\n In 1908, aged 40, Markievicz embraced Irish nationalism, joining the political party Sinn F\u00e9in and the radical women\u2019s organisation Inghinidhe na h\u00c9ireann (Daughters of Ireland). She also became close with members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), although, as their name suggests, she couldn\u2019t join due to her gender. Wishing to do more, Markievicz formed her own group, Na Fianna \u00c9ireann (Soldiers of Ireland), a paramilitary version of the Boy Scouts committed to training future soldiers to fight for independence.<\/p>\n Over the next few years, her revolutionary activities intensified. Markievicz took part in suffragist opposition to Winston Churchill<\/a>\u2019s election campaign in Manchester (he lost); was arrested for the first time for demonstrating against George V\u2019s visit to Ireland; and during the Dublin Lockout of 1913, a major industrial dispute involving 20,000 workers, she tirelessly collected food and essentials \u2013 even selling her jewellery to buy them \u2013 for the protesters.<\/p>\n Markievicz was willing to fight for real, though, and she got her chance with the Easter Rising of 1916<\/a>. The insurrection against British rule, at a time when focus was on World War I<\/a>, erupted in Dublin with the involvement of the IRB, Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army, which Markievicz helped train and organise. She greatly admired its founder, James Connolly, for \u201cquite ignoring the conventional attitude towards the work of women\u201d.<\/p>\n During the Rising, Markievicz was on the frontline, a living example of the advice she had once given to women who wished to help fight for independence: \u201cDress suitably in short skirts and strong boots. Leave your jewels in the bank and buy a revolver.\u201d Wearing her Citizen Army uniform and accompanied by her cocker spaniel Poppet, she fought for six days with her garrison. But the Rising failed, and Markievicz was eventually forced to surrender, kissing her revolver before handing it over to a British officer.<\/p>\n After her arrest, the countess was court-martialled. Defiant throughout, she declared to the court, \u201cI did what I thought was right, and I stand by it,\u201d and only had her death sentence commuted because she was a woman. This was much to her chagrin: she had seen her friends executed and told her captors, \u201cI do wish your lot had the decency to shoot me\u201d.<\/p>\n Markievicz was released after 14 months \u2013 as part of a general amnesty of those who participated in the Rising \u2013 but she was soon behind bars again for allegedly engaging in treasonable communication with Germany. It was during this stint in Holloway Prison that, in December 1918, she put herself forward as a candidate for the St Patrick\u2019s constituency in Dublin and became the first woman elected to the House of Commons<\/a> in Westminster.<\/p>\n She did not take her seat, however, along with her Sinn F\u00e9in comrades, as it would have meant taking an oath of allegiance to the king. Instead, the republicans formed their own provisional government, D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann, and Markievicz, once released, was invited to serve \u2013 the only woman to do so. She opposed the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty<\/a>, which created the Irish Free State (independent from the United Kingdom, but still part of the British empire), and went on to support the anti-Treaty forces in the ensuing civil war.<\/p>\n But as fighting raged, Markievicz continued to work for an independent nation. This came at the cost of her fortune and her health. In 1927, just a month after being elected again \u2013 this time for the political party Fianna F\u00e1il, formed from a split within Sinn F\u00e9in \u2013 she died at the age of 59. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets of Dublin for her funeral: a tribute to the rebel countess.<\/p>\n![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2022\/11\/KMKA11-e367c22-e1669286070356.jpg?quality=90&resize=619%2C412"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
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