Born: 10 February 1862, Ireland
Died: 16 February 1934
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Linde Lunney and James Lunney. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Kelly, Gertrude Brice (1862–1934), surgeon and political activist, was born on 10 February 1862 near Waterford to Jeremiah Kelly and Kate Kelly (née Forrest) who were both teachers, and supporters of the movement for Irish independence. She was one of ten children, including notable scientist and political activist John Forrest Kelly, a pioneer of alternating current in electricity. While the family were living in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, Jeremiah Kelly’s involvement in the Fenian movement apparently forced him to emigrate to the United States to escape possible prosecution. His wife and children followed him (1873), and they settled in Hoboken, New Jersey, where Jeremiah became superintendent of schools.
Gertrude Brice Kelly followed her parents into education and became a school principal in New Jersey when still very young. She left teaching to enter the Women’s Medical College in New York, and became a demonstrator in anatomy and later a well-regarded surgeon, one of the first female surgeons in the city. She worked in the slums of Newark, New Jersey, and in the tenements of New York’s Lower East Side, where she frequently assisted poor patients. Her experience of the poverty and deprivation of the area undoubtedly contributed to the development of her radical political views.
She has been described as a very important but ‘forgotten feminist’ (McElroy), and while she may have been forgotten, she herself might have regarded the term ‘feminist’ as too limiting a description of her beliefs. She and her brother John were major contributors to the radical journal Liberty, which is regarded as the main organ of the libertarian, individualist movement in America in the period 1885–7. Its founding editor claimed she was one of the most important writers of the movement; Kelly later published a good deal elsewhere in support of natural law beliefs, which were no longer acceptable in Liberty, and she supported anarchists such as the Russian prince Kropotkin. She was also an impassioned advocate of Irish independence; in 1914 a donation was accompanied by the hope that it would purchase ‘$100 worth of bullets for the friends of Queen Mary who may try to defeat the cause of political liberty’ (New York Times). She was prominent in the efforts to free Jim Larkin from Sing Sing prison, and was president of Cumann na mBan in New York, and of the United Irishwomen. She was friendly with many republicans including Éamon de Valera, and with Hannah Sheehy Skeffington. Kelly and Sheehy Skeffington both spoke at a meeting in New York on 23 November 1922, when Irish republicans joined forces with the Friends of Freedom for India. She supported other struggling nationalist groups, and with her brother John, ‘during the war time was a thorn in the side of the slavish American government’ (Magennis, 342). She was involved on many occasions with pickets and public protests; though in general she escaped arrest because of her popularity as a medical charity worker, she was arrested in December 1919 after a protest about the continued imprisonment of anti-war activists. She and Muriel MacSwiney organised a picket in January 1923 to try to take over the Irish consulate in New York as a protest against the recently established Free State in Ireland. She was injured in a car accident and was an invalid for four years before her death in New York on 16 February 1934. The Irish government was represented at her funeral in Corpus Christi church on 18 February. Two years later, a playground named in her honour was opened by the mayor of New York, Fiorello La Guardia.