3-070-489 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The State of Ireland: dispersing a Ladies' Land League Meeting, 1881. 'A circular issued by Colonel Hillier, Inspector-General of Constabulary...sets forth that...the proclamation of suppression of the Land League applies to females as well as to males...where any females are assembled under the name of the Land League,...such meeting is illegal. The police are to warn persons in whose houses such meetings have been held...of the unlawful nature of such meetings...Where the police find females assembled with such objects, they are to enter immediately the place of meeting, and to arrest any persons so assembled for pursuing criminal conduct...while the Land League ladies, Miss Parnell and others, have been permitted to hold their meetings at the Central Office in Dublin, the branch ladies' committees in different country towns have been subject to frequent police visitations. They have usually sought to evade the charge of holding a Land League meeting, by the pretext that their object was to carry on the work of a Political Prisoners' Aid Society...In many such instances, the police inspector or head constable has felt obliged to do no more than take a note of the names of all the ladies present, and report them to his official superiors. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.