Page "Constance Markievicz" Paragraph 1

She was born Constance Georgine Gore-Booth at Buckingham Gate in London, the elder daughter of the Arctic explorer and adventurer Sir Henry Gore-Booth, 5th Baronet, an Anglo-Irish landlord who administered an estate, and Lady Georgina née Hill.

During the famine of 1879 – 80, Sir Henry provided free food for the tenants on his estate at Lissadell House in the north of County Sligo in the north-west of Ireland.

Their father's example inspired in Gore-Booth and her younger sister, Eva Gore-Booth, a deep concern for the poor.

The sisters were childhood friends of the poet W. B. Yeats, who frequently visited the family home Lissadell House, and were influenced by his artistic and political ideas.

Yeats wrote a poem, In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz, in which he described the sisters as " two girls in silk kimonos, both beautiful, one a gazelle ".

Eva later became involved in the labour movement and women's suffrage in England, although initially the future countess did not share her sister's ideals.