Mary Boyle O'Reilly (May 18, 1873 – October 21, 1939) was an American social reformer, clubwoman, and journalist during World War I. She was of Irish descent.
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Early life and education
editMary ("Molly") Boyle O'Reilly was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the daughter of Irish-born writer John Boyle O'Reilly and Mary Murphy O'Reilly (1850-1897), a journalist for the Young Crusader who wrote under the name of Agnes Smiley.[1] She attended school at the Sacred Heart convent in Providence, Rhode Island and the Gilman School for Girls.[2][3]
Career
editReform work and writings
editIn 1901, O'Reilly helped to found the Guild of St. Elizabeth, a settlement house in South Boston.[4] She was active in the Women's Educational and Industrial Union, the Boston Public Library, the Tuberculosis Society, and the Massachusetts Conference of Charities. O'Reilly was appointed to the State Prison Commission in Massachusetts in 1907, to oversee children's institutions, including reformatories and orphanages.[5] She resigned that position in 1911. Reform writings by O'Reilly included a 1910 exposé on "baby farms" in New Hampshire,[2] and another in 1913, on unsafe working conditions in canneries. "The canned food consumed by the people of the United States is prepared, only too often, amid conditions of revolting filth, by workers whose bodies are unclean and diseased, and who are forced to live and work in an environment that makes cleanliness and health impossible," she wrote, after going undercover as a cannery worker.[6] She testified before a congressional committee about the conditions she saw among women in the canneries.[7]
Foreign and war correspondent
edit
O'Reilly joined The Newspaper Enterprise Association in 1913, as a foreign correspondent; she worked from the association's London office, but traveled to both Russia and Mexico to report stories in 1913.[8][9][10] In 1914 she conducted the first interview with Joseph Caillaux, the French politician, after his wife confessed to killing journalist Gaston Calmette.[11] In 1915, King Haakon VII of Norway spoke to O'Reilly about his country's neutrality during World War I.[12] In 1916 she interviewed Lady Ernest Shackleton about her husband's missing expedition to Antarctica.[13]
During World War I, she traveled to Belgium in disguise, several times, and was briefly a prisoner of the Germans. She wrote about the war for Harper's Magazine, The Boston Pilot, and the Boston Globe. She witnessed the burning of Leuven,[14] and worked with nurse Edith Cavell for a month. In London in 1916 she intervened on the question of Roger Casement's diaries "as the daughter of an Irish patriot" with his solicitor George Gavan Duffy. "She has suffered arrest in every country now at war, save Serbia, where she has never been," reported one newspaper of O'Reilly's war work.[15] She flew above the Chesapeake Bay with the U. S. Coast Guard to report on their work in 1917.[16] She lectured on her war experiences in the United States after 1917.[2][17] After the war, she was especially concerned with the way false and lurid stories about German atrocities were circulating, and sought to correct what she called "the Fakes".[18][19] She also exposed "fake philanthropies" for war relief, often run by and targeting American women.[20]
Fiction
editO'Reilly wrote short stories and at least one novel. Her short-short story "In Berlin" was included in The Best American Short Stories of 1915, edited by Edward J. O'Brien.[21] Her novel, The Black Fan, was published in 1928.[22]
Personal life
editMary Boyle O'Reilly died at home in Auburndale, Massachusetts in 1939, aged 66 years.[23][24] Her papers are archived at the Boston Public Library, and at Boston College.[2][18] Her letters to Rev. Thomas Dawson are archived in the National Library of Ireland.[25] The O'Reilly family's house on Main Street in Hull, Massachusetts has a marker from the Hull Historical Commission.[1]
Philosopher William Ernest Hocking married Mary's sister, educator Agnes Boyle O'Reilly, co-founder of Shady Hill School.[23][1]
She has a street named after her "Mary Boyle Way” in South Boston.
References
edit- ^ a b c "John Boyle O'Reilly House 1889" Historic Marker Database.
- ^ a b c d Heather Mumford, "O'Reilly, Mary Boyle, 1873-1939", Boston Public Library Archival and Manuscript Finding Aid Database.
- ^ "Mary Boyle O'Reilly is a Chip o' the Old Block" Evansville Press (October 7, 1913): 1. via Newspapers.com
- ^ "Comfort and Safety for Boston's 75,000 Lodgers" Boston Globe (January 5, 1908): 37. via Newspapers.com
- ^ "A Friend to those Most in Need of One" Boston Globe (August 7, 1910): 40. via Newspapers.com
- ^ Mary Boyle O'Reilly, "Child Slavery and Filth-Reeking Conditions in American Food Canneries" Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen's Magazine (February 1913): 205-213; quote from 209.
- ^ "Her Story of Conditions in the New York Canneries Moves Congressmen" Pensacola News-Journal (January 27, 1913): 2. via Newspapers.com
- ^ Mary Boyle O'Reilly, "Mary Boyle O'Reilly Interviews King Constantine" Pittsburgh Press (January 3, 1914): 9.
- ^ Rabbi Ch. R. Aaronson, "'No Such Thing as Ritual Murder Among Jews' Says Eminent Rabbi" Evansville Press (October 7, 1913): 1. via Newspapers.com
- ^ "Hand it to Mary" The Wilkes-Barre Record (March 1, 1913): 32. via Newspapers.com
- ^ "Caillaux Breaks His Silence, Talks to Mary Boyle O'Reilly" Vicksburg Evening Post (July 20, 1914): 4. via Newspapers.com
- ^ Mary Boyle O'Reilly, "King Haakon Tells What He Thinks Neutrals Should Do" Evansville Press (June 1, 1915): 6. via Newspapers.com
- ^ Mary Boyle O'Reilly, "Wife Who Waits Tell of the Great Pole Mystery" Muskogee County Democrat (June 8, 1916): 8. via Newspapers.com
- ^ Mary Boyle O'Reilly, "Ten Thousand Women Lost!" The Tacoma Times (September 19, 1914): 1. via Newspapers.com
- ^ "Woman's Irish Fellowship Club" Cincinnati Enquirer (February 24, 1918): 47. via Newspapers.com
- ^ "Mary Boyle O'Reilly Flies Above the Clouds to See Uncle Sam's Air Eagles at Work" Bismarck Tribune (May 8, 1917): 1. via Newspapers.com
- ^ Mary Boyle O'Reilly, "Star Woman Runs Blockade" Seattle Star (February 17, 1917): 1. via Newspapers.com
- ^ a b Will Sennott, "The correspondent who exposed the “fake news” of World War One" The Ground Truth Project (November 10, 2018).
- ^ Chris Dubbs, American Journalists in the Great War: Rewriting the Rules of Reporting (University of Nebraska Press 2017): 40, 181. ISBN 9781496200198
- ^ "Fake Charity in Belgian and French War Zone Wastes Millions U. S. Money" Vicksburg Evening Post (November 3, 1915): 29. via Newspapers.com
- ^ Mary Boyle O'Brien, "In Berlin", in Edward J. O'Brien, ed., The Best Short Stories of 1915 (1915).
- ^ F. A. B., "The Black Fan" St. Louis Post-Dispatch (March 28, 1928): 19. via Newspapers.com
- ^ a b "Funeral Services for Mary Boyle O'Reilly" The Boston Globe (October 24, 1939): 21. via Newspapers.com
- ^ Ruth Cameron, "Feminine Fancies: Paying Debt" Democrat and Chronicle (December 26, 1939): 24. via Newspapers.com
- ^ Letters from Mary Boyle O'Reilly to Rev. Thomas Dawson, regarding war conditions in Belgium and Russia, with references to Irish affairs including Roger Casement, 1913-1915, National Library of Ireland catalogue.
External links
edit- Paula M. Kane, "The Pulpit of the Hearthstone: Katherine Conway and Boston Catholic Women, 1900-1920" U. S. Catholic Historian 5(3-4)(Summer-Fall 1986): 355–370.
- Paula M. Kane, Separatism and Subculture: Boston Catholicism, 1900-1920 (University of North Carolina Press 2017). ISBN 9781469639437
- Works by Mary Boyle O'Reilly at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
