12/05/2026
Seán Mac Diarmada wrote a letter to his brothers and sisters prior to his ex*****on in Kilmainham Gaol on 12 May 1916. While some of his siblings can found in the 1926 census, in these post we are going to look at the Ryan sisters who visited him in Kilmainham the night before he was shot. MacDiarmada mentioned Mary Joseph Ryan, known as ‘Min’, in his last letter to his family and wrote that if he had lived, he would have probably married her. Originally from Tomcoole in Co. Wexford, Min Ryan was a founder member and first secretary of Cumann na mBan. Several of her sisters were also involved in the Irish separatist movement and took part in the 1916 Rising. It was one of these sisters, Phyllis Ryan, who accompanied her to the Gaol on 11 May 1916 to bid farewell to Sean MacDiarmada. Years later she recalled that last meeting: ‘We talked about things that happened during the Week, and about people that were in it, and people that weren’t in it, and we had a good laugh about some of them. It was ridiculous in a way because there was no sign of mourning. We had to hold up, of course, because he held up, and so we showed no sign of sorrow while we discussed things.’
The ten years that followed the Rising were incredibly tumultuous for the Ryan sisters. Phyllis was active in Cumann na mBan during the War of Independence. Min married Richard Mulcahy, the IRA Chief-of-Staff, in 1919 and their home was frequently raided by British forces (image of the couple courtesy National Library of Ireland). He became a leading figure in the Free State government during the Civil War, which led to a split in the Ryan family. A number of Min’s siblings were active on the anti-Treaty side also. Another of her sisters, Nell Ryan, was a republican prisoner in Kilmainham Gaol in 1923. Phillis shared Nell’s political convictions and visited her in the Gaol when she went on hunger strike. Their brother James was also a republican prisoner.
In 1926 Min Mulcahy was listed in the census as Máire, Bean Uí Mhaolchatha and was living with her husband and five children in Lissenfield House in Rathmines. This house was attached to Portobello Barracks and the Mulcahys moved there during the Civil war for security reasons. Despite her political activities, Phyllis managed to pursue her studies in chemistry and became a public analyst. She set up a laboratory on Dawson Street and became the public analyst for several local authorities. She employed many female graduates and her name frequently appeared in the newspapers in 1926 when she and her colleagues tested everything from drinking water in north county Dublin to ice-cream in Wicklow. She married Seán T. O’Kelly in 1936. He had previously been married to her sister Mary Kate who died two years earlier. In 1945 Seán T. O’Kelly was elected the second President of Ireland. It seems that over the years the Ryan family were able to reconcile following the bitter divisions of the Civil War, and even had a family gathering hosted by the O’Kellys in Áras an Uachtaráin.
