Eva
Gore-Booth,
the
daughter of Sir
Henry Gore-Booth, was born at Lissadell, County Sligo, in Ireland
on 22nd May, 1870. Gore-Booth, always attempted to act as a good landlord
and provided free food for his tenants during the 1879-80 famine.
It was probably the example of Gore-Booth that help develop in his
two daughters, Eva and Constance Gore-Booth,
a deep concern for the poor.
Eva
Gore-Booth met Esther Roper, secretary of
the Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage while in Italy
in 1896. The two women became life-long friends and Eva moved to Manchester
where she became active in the National Union
of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) and in women's trade union
movement. This included writing propaganda pamphlets and articles
in feminist and trade union journals.
The
editor of Women's Labour News, Gore-Booth became one of the
leaders of the radical socialist group,
the Independent Labour Party. A popular platform
speaker for left-wing causes, in 1903 Gore-Booth and Esther
Roper founded
the Lancashire and Cheshire Women's Textile Workers Representation
Committee.
Eva
Gore-Booth
continued to be interested in the struggle
for women's
rights
and in the 1908 joined her sister, Constance
Markievicz, in the campaign against
Winston Churchill in the parliamentary
election in Manchester.
Gore-Booth
published ten volumes of poetry and the verse dramas Unseen
Kings (1904) and Death of Fionavar
(1916). Eva
Gore-Booth died in
Hampstead, London
on 30th June, 1928.
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