Annie Smithson(1873-1948)
Born into a Protestant family in Sandymount, Dublin, as Margaret Anne Jane.
Smithson, on her conversion to Catholicism at the age of 33, took the names
Anne Mary Patricia, thus the origination of the Annie M.P. name. Smithson
trained in nursing and midwifery in London and Edinburgh, returning to Dublin
in 1900. In 1901 she took up a post as district nurse in Millton, Co. Down. She
nursed in Newmarket-on-Fergus, Co. Clare, between 1907-1910, followed by
twenty months in Donegal from 1910-1912, which inspired her third novel.
Carmen Cavanagh, published by Talbot Press in 1921.
Smithson became a fervent republican and nationalist. She was a member of
Cumann na mBan, and campaigned for Sinn Féin in the 1918 general election
During the Civil War she took the republican side, nursing participants in the siege
at Moran's Hotel. She was imprisoned by Free State forces in Mullingar prison
until her rescue by Muriel MacSwiney and Linda Kearns, posing as a Red Cross
delegation. Her political views led to her resignation from the Queen's Nurses
Committee and a move into private nursing. In 1924 she wrote a series of articles
on child welfare for the Evening Mail based on her work in tenements in The
Liberties, one of the poorest areas of Dublin, where she continued to work until
1929. From 1929 to 1942, she was the highly-efficient secretary of the Irish
Nurses Organisation and managed to significantly increase its membership and
relevance, She wrote for the Irish Nurses' Magazine and edited the Irish Nurse
Union Gazette. From 1932 onwards she shared a house in Rathmines with her
stepsister and family. In February 1948, Smithson died of heart failure at 12
Richmond Hill and was buried in Whitechurch, Co. Dublin. Between 1988 and
1990, Mercier Press reprinted six of her novels to major success.
During her lifetime, Annie Smithson wrote 25 books, all bestsellers. She
was the biggest selling and most widely read author published in Ireland
from the 1920s to the 1940s.
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