Johanna Mary Sheehy Skeffington (née Sheehy; 24 May 1877 – 20 April 1946) was a suffragette and Irish nationalist. Along with her husband Francis Sheehy Skeffington, Margaret Cousins and James Cousins, she founded the Irish Women's Franchise League in 1908 with the aim of obtaining women's voting rights. She was later a founding member of the Irish Women Workers' Union. Her son Owen Sheehy-Skeffington became a politician and Irish senator. Early life Hanna Sheehy was born in Kanturk, County Cork, Ireland, the daughter of Elizabeth "Bessie" McCoy and David Sheehy, an ex-Fenian and an MP for the Irish Parliamentary Party, representing South Galway. Hanna spent her earliest years in a millhouse which her father also grew up in. When Hanna was three years old the family relocated to Loughmore, Tipperary. Hanna had six siblings, one of whom died at an unknown age; there is very little written about this child. Her siblings were Margaret, born 1875; Eugene, born 1882; Richard, born 1884; Mary Sheehy Kettle, born 1884; and Kathleen Cruise O'Brien, born 1886. One of her uncles, Father Eugene Sheehy, was known as the Land League Priest, and his activities landed him in prison. He was also one of Éamon de Valera's teachers in Limerick. When Hanna's father became an MP in 1887, the family moved to Hollybank, Drumcondra, Dublin. The family lived next door to the Lord Mayor of Dublin and poet of "God Save Ireland", T.D. Sullivan. Hanna was sent to Germany for a short period when she was 18 years old to get treatment for tuberculosis. After graduating from the Royal University of Ireland, she worked in Paris for a time as an au pair, returning to Ireland in 1902. Hanna's brother Richard was close friends with James Joyce. Joyce wrote about the Sheehys in his acclaimed novel Ulysses, depicting Bessie as a 'social climbing matriarch', a description to which she vehemently objected. When Hanna was a teenager, the Sheehys held an open house on the second Sunday night of each month, at 2 Belvedere Place near Mountjoy Square in Dublin. They encouraged young people to visit them and their six children. James Joyce, who was a student at the nearby Belvedere College, and his younger brother Stanislaus, were regular visitors in 1896–1897. Joyce nursed a secret love for her sister Mary, the prettiest girl in the family (and later Mrs. Tom Kettle). The Sheehys were fond