Rosie Hackett and The Star
Rosie Hackett was born in Dublin in 1892. Following the death of her father in 1901, Rosie lived with her mother and sister in a tenement building on Bolton Street. Between 1843 and 1914, the number of tenement houses in Dublin rose from 353 to 1200, as the richer population of Dublin city centre moved out into the suburbs to have more space. Their formerly grand Georgian homes were split up and by 1914 there were 90,000 people living in tenements in Dublin. Rosie’s mother remarried in 1911, and her family moved to a small cottage on Abbey Street.
Rosie started working in a paper store as a teenager, before working as a messenger for Jacob’s Biscuits. The working conditions in the factory were exploitative and often dangerous.
When Irish republican, socialist and trade union leader, Jim Larkin, founded the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU) in 1909, Rosie became a member. Jim said that the poor conditions in Jacob’s was
‘sending them [workers] from this earth 20 years before their time’.
On the 22nd of August 1911, aged 18, Rosie helped to galvanise and organise more than 3,000 women working in the factory, encouraging them to down tools to support the male workers who were already on strike. As a result, they received better working conditions and an increase in pay.
The 1913 Dublin Lockout – a major industrial dispute between approximately 20,000 workers and 300 employers – lasted from August to January 1914. There was widespread hunger and poverty in Dublin at the time. Rosie, along with other members of the IWWU, worked tirelessly during the Lockout to support the strikers, setting up a soup kitchen in Liberty Hall and organising a relief fund for the strikers and their families.
In 1914, Rosie lost her job in Jacob’s for the part she played in the Lockout. She took up a post working as a clerk in the IWWU in Liberty Hall and worked alongside other activists such as Delia Larkin, while training as a printer. It was here that she became connected with the Irish Citizen Army.
Rosie was among a small group – along with Constance Markievicz – who occupied Stephen’s Green during the 1916 Easter Rising against British rule. She was also involved with another group that printed the first Proclamation (a document issued by the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army that proclaimed Ireland's independence from the United Kingdom) and gave it to James Connolly, the Scottish-born Irish republican, socialist, and trade union leader. She managed to print it off on a faulty printing press and handed it to him, still dripping wet. Rosie later recounted how the men complained that a woman had been let into the room.
Following the surrender of the rebels at the Royal College of Surgeons, the group, along with Rosie, were brought to Kilmainham Gaol where they were imprisoned for ten days. Sixteen of the leaders of the Easter Rising were executed, including James Connolly.
In 1917, the ITGWU decided to commemorate the anniversary of James Connolly’s death. They hung a sign from Liberty Hall that said ‘James Connolly, Murdered May 12th, 1916’. According to Rosie’s own account, the police took it down within minutes. Rosie and the other ITGWU leaders printed out another poster, climbed to the roof of Liberty Hall and barricaded themselves in. They nailed the doors shut and put coal up against the windows. Rosie said the police mobilised from everywhere, but it took them hours to get in. The poster remained in position until six o’clock that evening. Rosie later bragged that it took four hundred policemen to take down four women.
‘We enjoyed it at the time – all the trouble they were put to’.
After the Easter Rising, Rosie co-founded the Irish Women’s Workers’ Union, (IWWU). The union organised over 70,000 women and lobbied to obtain one extra paid week of holiday leave per year. Rosie went on to continue her work in Liberty Hall for over 40 years. In 1970, she was awarded a gold medal for giving 60 years of her life to the trade union movement. She passed away in 1976, aged 82.
XVII The Star
The Star card follows the transformative disruption of the Tower and can speak of the hope we experience when we can realise that circumstances could be different. The North Star pictured in the card reminds us of the guiding force within us, and this asks us to trust ourselves and our journey. After The Tower has cleared away what no longer serves us, The Star invites us to be true to ourselves and honour our life’s calling. Even if our lives may not look like other people’s, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a pathway for us. Sometimes traditional values or rigid structures might hinder our progress, and a conventional approach can hold us back, forcing us to conform to established norms that are not in our best interests. The Star calls for us to reflect on the benefits of reassessing these structures and to consider whether a more unconventional approach might be in order, even if it means challenging the status quo. The card can suggest that it’s time to tune into our higher power and align ourselves with our deepest values and aspirations to find meaning in any challenges we may have faced. The card helps us trust that things can change for the better, and asks us to hold that vision. It invites us to take some time to resource ourselves, and suggests ‘paying it forward’ when we are sufficiently replenished – to give back if we can, even if it is just by taking the time to remind others of the glimmer of hope that shines in the dark. When The Star lights our way, it may be time to find ways to change those unsupportive and rigid structures and stand up for ourselves, as Rosie did so brilliantly. She took the inequalities she was faced with and worked tirelessly to challenge them to improve her life and that of others, amid a time of great turmoil while playing a pivotal role in the fight for workers' rights and for Irish independence.
Sources
The Dublin Tenement Experience
‘Who was Rosie Hackett?’ by Maeve Casserly on Academia.edu