THE 1916 Rising service medal awarded to Kathleen Lynn sold for a hammer price of 58,000 at Mullen’s Collector’s Cabinet sale today. It was awarded for her service to the Irish Citizen Army, City Hall Garrison and had been estimated at 20,000-30,000. Dr. Lynn gifted the medal to her cousin George Llewellyn Wynne and it was passed on by descent.
The daughter of a Co. Mayo Church of Ireland rector, her upbringing was conservatively Protestant and Unionist but,
like her distant cousin Constance Markievicz, Lynn became politically radicalised through her exposure to the poverty of Dublin’s slums while she studied medicine. She became a suffragette and, influenced by the writings of James Connolly, joined the Irish Citizen Army as Chief Medical Officer. Arrested and imprisoned and was one of only six women to be deported to British jails for their part in the Rising. Following her release she was appointed vice-president of Sinn Fein and was on the run for much of the War of Independence.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for January 15, 2022)