McCracken, Mary Ann (1770–1866)

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McCracken, Mary Ann (1770–1866)

Irish political feminist, radical, and philanthropist who was prominent in a range of charitable and reforming societies . Name variations: Mary McCracken. Born on July 8, 1770, in Belfast, County Antrim, Ireland; died in Belfast on July 26, 1866; sixth of seven children of John McCracken (a ship's captain and merchant) and Ann (Joy) McCracken; attended David Manson's Play School in Belfast; never married; children: none of her own, but cared for her brother Harry's illegitimate daughter Maria.

Soon after leaving school, started a small muslin manufacturing business with her sister, Margaret; shared her brother Henry's interest in radical politics and social justice; attended his trial on charges of involvement in the United Irishmen's rebellion of 1798, and accompanied him to his execution at the old Market House in Belfast (July 17, 1798); continued to assist former United Irishmen and their dependents, including Thomas Russell who was executed at Downpatrick (October 21, 1803); retired from business (about 1815); was a member of the ladies' committee of the Belfast Poorhouse (1814–16); was a member of the ladies' committee reconstituted (1827) and secretary (1832–51); was a member of the committee of the Ladies' Industrial School (1847–66); was a member of the Belfast Ladies' Clothing Society and of the Society for the Relief of the Destitute Sick; involved in the temperance and anti-slavery movements and in the campaign to outlaw the use of climbing boys as chimney sweeps.

On July 8, 1798, Mary Ann McCracken's 28th birthday, word was received at the family home in Rosemary Street, Belfast, that her much-loved brother, Harry, had been arrested. The news, though shocking, was not unexpected. As one of the leaders of the radical political society the United Irishmen, Henry Joy McCracken had been a fugitive since the defeat, a few weeks earlier, of the rising against British rule in Ireland. During that period, Mary Ann had spent two days searching for her brother in the mountains outside Belfast and, having found him, had supplied him with money and clothes and had tried to arrange his escape by ship to America. The scheme failed: Harry was taken prisoner on the eve of his departure and, having been held for a few days in Carrickfergus, where he was visited by McCracken and her father, was taken on the evening of July 16 to his home town of Belfast, where he was to stand trial. McCracken, in her correspondence and in later recollections, has left a vivid account of the traumatic events of those days, in which she herself was to play a central part.

On hearing of Harry's arrival in the city, she and her sister, Margaret McCracken , immediately set out to try to see him, and eventually succeeded in gaining access to the prison. Very early on the following morning, and in accordance with her brother's instructions, Mary Ann traveled to Lisburn to fetch a witness whom he wished to testify on his behalf, and, on her return to Belfast, hurried to the Exchange, where the trial had just begun. Having listened to the evidence against her brother, she herself appeared as a witness, drawing attention to some inconsistencies in the prosecution's evidence. However, the outcome was never really in doubt. Having refused to give information on his fellow rebels to the authorities, Harry was already resigned to conviction. As he admitted to his sister, though some of the prosecution witnesses had perjured themselves, "the truth would have answered the same purpose." Mary Ann, despite her exertions, "little expected that any efforts to save him would be successful; but I felt I had a duty to perform—to prevent misrepresentation, and to put it out of the power of his enemies to injure his character while living, or his memory when dead." Visiting him in his cell after the trial, she was in time to hear him informed of his imminent execution. She quickly regained her composure and self-possession in order to support Harry in these final hours. "I knew," she wrote,

it was incumbent on me to avoid disturbing the last moments of my brother's life, and I endeavoured to contribute to render them worthy of his whole career. We conversed as calmly as we had ever done. … We had been brought up in a firm conviction of an all-wise and overruling Providence, and of the duty of entire resignation to the Divine Will. I remarked that his death was as much a dispensation of Providence as if it had happened in the common course of nature; to which he assented. … About 5 p.m. he was ordered to the place of execution, the old Market House, the ground of which had been given to the town by his great-grandfather. I took his arm, and we walked together to the place of execution, when I was told it was the General's orders I should leave him, which I peremptorily refused to do. Harry begged I would go. Clasping my hands around him—I did not weep till then—I said I could bear anything but leaving him. Three times he kissed me, and entreated I would go; and looking round to recognise some friend to put me in charge of, he beckoned to a Mr. Boyd, and said, 'He will take charge of you' … and, fearing any further refusal would disturb the last moments of my dearest brother, I suffered myself to be led away.

The strength, the religious faith, and the independence of mind which McCracken displayed during this period of crisis, and which were to characterize her entire career, were derived from a strong family tradition of self-reliance and of service to the community. In the rapidly growing Belfast of the late 18th century, the McCrackens and the Joys were noted not only for their enterprise, demonstrated by their involvement in the trade and industry upon which the city's fortunes were founded, but also for their sense of civic duty and moral responsibility. Francis Joy, Mary Ann's maternal grandfather, was a lawyer, a leading citizen of Belfast and the founder in 1737 of the Belfast Newsletter, the first newspaper to be printed in the city. Of Francis' sons, Henry was a notable entrepreneur, active in municipal politics, while Robert Joy was the founder of the Volunteer Company in Belfast, a movement established initially to protect Ireland from invasion in time of war, but which quickly became a mouthpiece for demands for the removal of legal disabilities on Catholics and Dissenters and for the establishment of an Irish Parliament for the Irish people. Both men were also active in the creation of the Belfast Charitable Society, founded in 1752 with the object of establishing a poorhouse and hospital in the city. Their sister Ann Joy , Mary Ann's mother, showed a comparable streak of independence when, before her marriage, she opened a milliner's shop and later, after her children had grown up, started a small muslin industry. Her husband John McCracken was, like the Joys, a Presbyterian. A sea captain and a merchant, he was a deeply religious and upright

man, and it was recounted of him as proof of his integrity that at a time when smuggling was a commonplace and profitable activity, he would not engage in it, nor allow his sailors to do so on his behalf. He was also charitable, taking part with Robert Joy and others in efforts to improve the conditions of French prisoners of war held at Belfast, and founding the Marine Charitable Society as a fund to assist sailors at times of need.

Mary Ann was born on July 8, 1770, the second youngest of Ann and John McCracken's six surviving children. She received what was for a girl of the time an unusually full education. Like her brothers, she attended a school which had been founded in Belfast a few years earlier by David Manson, whose views on the education of children were remarkably humane and progressive. Believing that "tuition should be made a labour of love to both the pupil and the master," Manson urged his teachers to gain the affection and confidence of their pupils, to "make them sensible of kindness and friendly concerns for their welfare; and when punishment becomes necessary … convince them 'tis not their persons but their faults which he dislikes." Manson was an enthusiastic exponent of co-education, and female pupils received exactly the same education as their male counterparts. In McCracken's case, this early training must have reinforced the sense of confidence and of responsibility which she was already imbibing at home, while also providing her with the practical skills necessary to achieving a degree of independence. Some time after leaving school, wishing to have some money of her own and following her mother's example, she proposed to her sister Margaret that they should go into business together. The two started a muslin manufacturing industry, which was initially a small scale operation employing workers in their own homes, but which by 1809 had moved into factory production. While Mary Ann paid tribute to the contribution of her sister, it was apparently she who was the moving spirit in the enterprise, and she, with her talent for figures, who was in charge of its financial affairs.

While the McCrackens were an affectionate and united family, Mary was particularly close to Margaret and to her older brother, Henry Joy, called Harry. Harry had been a clever, passionate and popular boy; as he grew older, his idealism showed itself in efforts to improve social conditions and in dissatisfaction with the political establishment. In 1791, he joined the United Irishmen, a new society, inspired by the example of the French Revolution, and dedicated to the achievement of complete legislative reform "founded on a communion of rights, and a union of power among Irishmen of every religious persuasion." The Society became increasingly radical, ultimately demanding a complete separation from Britain rather than merely reform, and was suppressed by the government in 1794. Mary Ann sympathized with her brother's republican and revolutionary views, and was herself deeply interested in the reforming ideology of contemporary writers such as William Godwin, Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft . Indeed, drawing on her reading of Wollstonecraft, she went considerably further than her brother and his associates in her conception of the rights of man as also applying to members of her own sex. While the United Irishmen themselves gave no indication of any concern for the rights of women as citizens within the democratic and secular republic which they envisaged, Mary McCracken rejected any suggestion of women's inability to participate on equal terms within the social and political structure. As she argued, writing to her brother in 1797 when he was imprisoned in Dublin, "if we suppose woman was created for a companion for man, she must of course be his equal in understanding, as without equality of mind, there can be no friendship, and without friendship, there can be no happiness in society." Optimistically, she suggested that the creation of a democratic republican system would usher in a new era of egalitarianism in which women too would assume the obligations as well as the rights of citizenship. "Is it not almost time," she asked,

for the clouds of error and prejudice to disperse and that the female part of the Creation as well as the male should throw off the fetters with which they have been so long mentally bound? … I do not hold out the motive of interest as an inducement for man to be just, as I think the reign of prejudice is nearly at an end, and that the truth and justice of our cause alone is sufficient to support it, as there can be no argument produced in favour of the slavery of women that has not been used in favour of general slavery. … I therefore hope that it is reserved for the Irish nation to strike out something new and to shew an example of candour, generosity, and justice superior to any that have gone before them.

The defeat of the United Irishmen's rising of 1798 put a sudden and decisive end to such hopes. In its aftermath, Henry Joy McCracken, who had acted as general of the rebel forces in the North, was executed, another brother, William McCracken, was imprisoned, and a third, Francis McCracken, also a member of the United movement, left the country temporarily for his own safety. One shred of comfort was provided for Mary Ann in the fact that Harry's friend and fellow radical, Thomas Russell, was currently in prison and could not be implicated in the rising. Writing to inform him of her brother's death, she expressed the hope "that the cause for which so many of our friends have fought and have died may yet be successful and that you may be preserved to enjoy the fruits of it." In fact, Russell was himself to be executed in 1803 for his involvement in Robert Emmet's abortive rising of that year. In the period before his arrest, he had been in hiding in Ulster, during which time Mary had supplied him with money, met him on at least one occasion and, when he was arrested, undertook to pay for his defense from the profits of her own business and from a collection among sympathetic friends.

There is little doubt that McCracken was in love with Russell, but there is also little reason to doubt her protestation that her actions on his behalf were a response to:

a call to duty of such sacred importance that no person similarly situated could have resisted; for how was it possible to shrink back when told that human lives were at stake, which my exertions might be instrumental in saving. … Even had [Russell] not been of the number, I would have felt it my bounden duty to go forward in the business, and, once having undertaken it, there was no question of drawing back from pecuniary risk.

Characteristically, McCracken sought comfort for her losses in practical action. Following Harry's death, she had taken on responsibility for the care of his illegitimate child, Maria, to whom she offered a home and a stable and loving environment. Now she also sent assistance to Russell's sister, Margaret Russell , and to other members of his family, and for the rest of her life was to act as an advisor and benefactor to many needy former insurgents and their dependents. Like many other former Belfast radicals following the defeat of the 1798 rising and the subsequent union of the Irish and British legislatures, she herself had turned from politics and, indeed, from the overt feminism of her youth to a more approved form of service. As an employer and through her family's involvement in various charitable undertakings, she had become aware of the condition of the workers and of the poorest classes in Belfast; in 1803, a letter probably written by her appeared in the Belfast Newsletter, in which factory proprietors were urged to regard themselves as fulfilling a parental role towards their workers and to do all in their power to prevent "emaciation, ignorance, and vice" in their establishments. When in 1815 she was forced by a serious decline in trade and by financial losses to give up her business, she sought new outlets for her energy, embarking in middle age on a second career as a philanthropist and social reformer.

As a child, she had often been taken by her mother to visit the Belfast Poorhouse, founded in 1771 by her uncle Robert Joy, and, in what must have been one of the first of her benevolent enterprises, she and her cousin Bab had collected funds and arranged for the making of new gowns for the girls resident there. By the beginning of the 19th century, the expansion of Belfast, growing rural unemployment, and the decline of the domestic linen industry had resulted in increased destitution, putting pressure on the poorhouse's resources. In 1814, in an effort to deal with the range of problems arising within the institution, the all-male governing body inaugurated a ladies' committee to oversee the welfare of women and children residents. Mary Ann McCracken, who had maintained her interest in the poorhouse and had from time to time offered suggestions to the governors on its conduct, was an obvious recruit, and from the beginning took a leading part in its business. Over the next two years, the committee put forward a number of recommendations for a more humane and efficient regime within the institution, pressing for the provision of an extra dormitory, for improvements in the girls' school, and for increased attention to cleanliness and the avoidance of infection. Although the committee apparently ceased to exist in 1816, McCracken continued to take an interest in the running of the poorhouse and in the condition of its inmates. When in 1827 a visit to Belfast by the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry prompted the foundation of a new ladies' committee, McCracken was once more included, quickly becoming its dominant and most hard-working member. One of her major concerns, reflected in the work of the committee, was the provision of an education which would adequately equip the girls for their future lives: instruction in needlework, straw plaiting, and housework was introduced and, in an innovative move, an infant school was established for the younger children in the house. The ladies also supervised the running of the girls' school, sought employment for children leaving the home, enquired into their progress and treatment during their first months after departure, and made recommendations for improvements in the cleanliness of the living quarters and inmates and in the diet provided. From 1848, the ladies' committee began to be less active, as the functions of the poorhouse increasingly passed to the workhouse established under the recent Poor Law legislation. On some occasions, McCracken was the only member to attend its regular meeting, and in October 1851, when the committee ceased its operations, she made the final entry in its minute book. She was then 81 years old and had been secretary to the committee for the past 19 years.

Is it not almost time for the clouds of error and prejudice to disperse and that the female part of the Creation as well as the male should throw off the fetters with which they have been so long mentally bound and, conscious of the dignity and importance of their nature, rise to the situation for which they were designed?
—Mary Ann McCracken

The poorhouse was only one among a range of Mary McCracken's concerns during the half century of her "retirement." As she told a friend, "I have allowed my out-of-door avocations to increase so much, that I have less command of time now than when I was occupied with business. … I fear that undertaking too many things prevents me from doing anything as it ought to be; but somehow one gets entangled unawares, and cannot draw back, particularly if they [sic] think that they are usefully employed."

The numerous bodies to which she gave her assistance included the Belfast Ladies' Clothing Society and the Society for the Relief of the Destitute Sick, for both of which she was a collector. In 1847, at the height of the Great Famine in which up to a million people died, she was involved in a ladies' relief association and was instrumental in the establishment of an industrial school for poor girls, with which she continued to be associated for many years. In addition to a range of private and church-based charities, she also campaigned against the use of children as chimney sweeps and was an active and voluble opponent of the slave trade. Having seen the abolition of the trade in the British colonies, she continued to agitate against its survival in the United States, noting sadly in extreme old age that America, whose struggle for democracy and independence had inspired her brother and his associates in the 1790s, might now "more properly be styled the land of the tyrant and the slave," and that Belfast, "once so celebrated for its love of liberty is now so sunk in the love of filthy lucre that there are but sixteen or seventeen female anti-slavery advocates … and none to distribute papers to American emigrants but an old woman within seventeen days of eighty nine."

Mary McCracken never lost the passion for justice and the willingness to fight to achieve it which had marked her entire life. "She had naturally," her grand-niece, Anna McCleery noted, "a quick and hasty temper, though evidence of this was rarely seen; but even when at an advanced age, if a helpless person were wronged, or an animal cruelly treated, it was startling to see how her eye would flash, and to hear her indignant words." Increasing weakness, however, gradually forced her retirement from public activities, although, as one of the very few surviving witnesses, she continued to be an invaluable source of information on the republican movement of the 1790s and on the rising of 1798, contributing substantially, for instance, to Dr. R.R. Madden's monumental Lives and Times of the United Irishmen (published 1843–46).

On July 26, 1866, at the age of 96 and having outlived virtually all of her contemporaries, she died in the home which she had shared for many years with Maria, Harry's child and her own "only and affectionate daughter." Her death removed one of the doughtiest fighters for the rights of the poor of her own city, and tributes from the many causes to which she had given assistance celebrated the achievements of "a life so rich in all good works, and a spirit so full of love."

Disappointed in her early hopes of a radical reform in the political and social order, Mary Ann McCracken turned instead to one of the few public areas open to women in the 19th century and, while denied the rights of citizenship, demonstrated her ability to fulfil its obligations through her commitment to public service. It was a commitment based on religious convictions which she saw as the indispensable basis of public no less than of private virtue; in a letter to her long-time friend Dr. Madden, she declared the principles upon which her early radicalism and republicanism as well as the philanthropy of her later years were founded:

Religion also should be called to aid the regeneration … of our political as well as our social and individual character. Its Divine precepts are simple and easily comprehended—to do to others as we would wish others to do to us; to do no evil that good may come of it; to love our neighbour as ourselves, and to be guided by the parable of the good Samaritan, to consider all who are within reach of our kindness as our neighbours, however they may differ from us in our religious belief; thus endeavouring to become in reality what we profess to be, true and sincere Christians; for then indeed would this world become a paradise of peace.

sources:

Curtin, Nancy J. "Women and Eighteenth-Century Irish Republicanism," in Women in Early Modern Ireland. Edited by Margaret MacCurtain and Mary O'Dowd. Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1991, pp. 13–146.

Gray, John. "Mary Ann McCracken: Belfast Revolutionary and Pioneer of Feminism" in The Women of 1798. Edited by Daire Keogh and Nicholas Furlong. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998.

McCleery, Anne. "Life of Mary Ann McCracken, sister of Henry Joy McCracken, by her grand-niece," in Historical Notices of Old Belfast. Belfast, 1896, pp. 175–197.

McNeill, Mary. The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken, 1770–1866. Dublin: Allen Figgis, 1960.