Three women from Belfast who you’ve probably never heard of (but you should really know about)

If you’re looking for a Belfast walking tour that explores the city’s hidden stories, a women’s history walking tour with Wee Walks Belfast is one of the most unique things to do here.  This experience brings the city’s past to life through powerful stories and overlooked voices, so to whet your appetite here’s three women from Belfast who you’ve probably never heard of (but you should really know about).

Mary Ann McCracken, Belfast Social Reformer

In fairness this woman is probably the woman from Belfast that everyone has heard of, but we couldn’t have a blog about the women of Belfast without mentioning Mary Ann McCracken. She was born here on the 8^th of July 1770 to Captain John McCracken, a Scottish ship owner and a partner in the first cotton mill here and Ann Joy, daughter of Francis Joy founder of the Belfast Newsletter which is the world’s oldest English language daily newspaper still in publication. Mary Ann had six brothers, the most well-known being Henry Joy McCracken and she had one other sister called Margaret. They were a Presbyterian family and she was able to get an education at David Manson’s school in Donegall Street where girls and boys were able to get the exact same education. Mary Ann and Henry Joy later tried to start a school of their own, but it was unsuccessful, and she went into business as a muslin manufacturer with her sister Margaret. Mary Ann was very interested in reading about the political events at the end of the eighteenth century including the end of the American war of Independence in 1783 and the taking of the Bastille in 1789 and the Society of the United Irishmen was established in 1791 in the wake of the French Revolution. The United Irishmen sought to reform the government of Ireland on "principles of civil, political and religious liberty” and Henry Joy was a founding member. Mary Ann, whilst not politically active, almost certainly took the pledge as it would have been out of character for her to expect others to do things that she wouldn’t have done herself. She was present at Henry Joys execution in 1798 when he was hanged here in Belfast for treason. Mary Ann McCracken believed that if women were created as companions to men, they must be equal in understanding, and she believed that keeping women separate “kept them in the dark”. The ladies’ meetings she arranged were called ‘Tea Pot Clubs’ where the women would practice needlework and drink tea while exchanging their subversive gossip and revolutionary ideas. After the death of her brother, Mary Ann formed the Ladies Committee of the Belfast Charitable Society as she believed the children in the Poor House should have the same education that she had. This type of charitable work was one of the few openings for unmarried women during the 19^th Century. She saw parallels between the slavery of women in general and the slavery of Africans in America and in 1845 she helped establish the Ladies Anti-Slavery Association after hearing the freed slave Frederick Douglass speak here in Belfast at Donegall Street Presbyterian Church. She refused to consume rum, molasses or sugar even though she is reputed to have had a sweet tooth as she believed that those who consumed these products were complicit in the slave trade. She campaigned until she was almost 90 and the slave trade was outlawed in America in 1865 a year before her death. She died on the 26^th of July 1866 at the age of 96 and her grave was unmarked until 1909 when the antiquarian Francis Joseph Biggar erected a headstone for her.   Her headstone describes her as the beloved sister of Henry Joy McCracken who wept by her brother's scaffold 17 July 1798

Find out more about Mary Ann McCracken on a walking tour

Rosa Mulholland, Belfast's forgotten Author

The next woman from Belfast you’ve probably never heard of is the writer Rosa Mulholland who was born here in Belfast in 1841. Her father was a medical Doctor with a practice firstly at 80 High Street and then at 44 Donegall Street. He died July 1855 aged 54 leaving a widow, Catherine and it’s hard to say how many children they had as we’re before official records which don’t come in until 1864 by which time Joseph Stevenson Mulholland is long dead. We do know she had some brothers and sisters including sisters Ellen and Maria and a brother called William but she also has some family buried in Friars Bush Graveyard in Belfast along with Dr Mulholland including a brother called Joseph who died 1837 aged two, a brother James who dies 1841 (the same year Rosa is born) aged two, a sister Charlotte who dies 1848 aged three and a half. Another sister Charlotte Maria dies in 1858 aged six and a brother Joseph who dies in Porongos, South America in 1885 aged thirty eight (modern day Uruguay). At the age of fifteen, about a year after her father’s death, she attempts to publish her first book and also meets the author Charles Dickens who supports her writing career. She writes stories for his magazine called ‘All Year Round’ alongside people like Wilkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell and he publishes her first novel. About three years after Doctor Mulholland’s death when Rosa is 17, her mother Catherine moves the family to Connemara (who could blame her!) and Rosa seems to enjoy and become inspired by the scenery in the west of Ireland. Catherine Mulholland dies in December 1864 and interestingly this is the same year Rosa publishes her first novel ‘Dunmara’. She goes on to write 30 novels for adults, 4 books for children as well as poetry and short stories during a 50-year writing career. This amount of writing is on a par with women like Fay Weldon and Rosamund Pilcher. Many of her novels are serialised in newspapers as would have been the norm for the time. She leaves London for Dublin sometime in the 1870s (Charles Dickens dies in 1870) and she starts writing for a publication called The Irish Monthly. She also seems to have acquired the title the “Mistress of the Macabre” but I’m not sure how or from where. She meets and marries a Dublin historian called John Gilbert in 1891. He is knighted in 1897 and assumes the title Lord Gilbert making her Lady Gilbert but he unfortunately dies in 1898 leaving Rosa widowed at the age of 57. She goes on to write 24 books after John Gilberts death including a biography of her husband. Rosa Mulholland died in 1921 aged 80 by which time all of her once bestselling books have gone out of print. Some of her short stories are reprinted in the 1930s and some were reprinted in 2013 in a collection entitled “Not To Be Taken At Bedtime’. She is buried in Glasnevin in Dublin.

Moyna MacGill, Belfast Actress

The third woman from Belfast you’ve probably never heard of is the impossibly named “Chattie” McIldowie who was born Charlotte Lilian McIldowie. Her father, William McIldowie was a solicitor in Belfast and also a director of the grand Opera House and Charlotte was born in December 1895. She was a performer and theatre actress who recited poetry on stage during World War under the name “Chattie McIldowie”, but she was encouraged to change her name to Moyna Macgill which is invariably spelt as Macgill, MacGill or, as I thought it was Magill. She married an English writer called Richard Danum when she was about 23 and they had one daughter but she became romantically involved with a politician called Edgar Lansbury so Moyna and Richard Danum got divorced in 1924 and she married Edgar Lansbury later the same year. They went on to have three children including the actress Angela Lansbury. Edgar Lansbury’s first wife Minnie was a suffragette and Moyna  said in a newspaper article from 1947 that she had also been a suffragette, organising meetings for Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst and reciting poems to get people to come in.  After Edgar died in 1935 she had another relationship but that broke down and she was back and forth between Belfast and London at the end of the war eventually taking her three children and moving to America in 1940. The same year her eldest daughter Isolde married the actor Peter Ustinov. She had a few, mostly uncredited, film roles in the 1920s, but as she had no permit she found it difficult to get work except for a few theatre roles but in 1943 at the age of 48 she was able to resurrect her screen career appearing in films such as National Velvet and The Picture of Dorian grey which also starred her daughter Angela Lansbury. In 1952 she gave a tour of 50 talks around America, using some of the poems that she used to recite here on stage in Belfast during the First World War. She appeared in 20 films after 1943 and she died in California in 1975 at the age of 79.

Belfast's history is often told through the stories of politicians, industrialists and conflict, but women such as Mary Ann McCracken, Rosa Mulholland and Moyna MacGill played an equally important role in shaping the city's cultural and social identity.

Interested in hearing stories about women like these? Book your Belfast walking tour with Wee Walks Belfast today and discover the untold stories behind the city’s women’s history. Our guided tours take place every weekend in Belfast and are all two hours long.

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