Francis Sheehy-Skeffington

Francis Sheehy-Skeffington was born in Bailieborough, County Cavan, in 1878, the only child of a school inspector and a much older woman from a poor farming family. That household bred a mind hungry for justice but wary of false heroism, shaping the radical who would later demand votes for women and refuse war. Even before he left Cavan, the boy was learning that ordinary rules often protect ordinary cruelty, and that clarity requires rebellion.