Born: 9 September 1854, Ireland
Died: 4 November 1894
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Mary Ann Moneypenny
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by James Quinn. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Frank Byrne was survived by two children and his wife Mary Ann Byrne (1854–1894), who was born 9 September 1854 in Haddington Road, Dublin, second daughter of Arthur Moneypenny, a plasterer, and his wife Frances (née Kelly). She and Byrne were married on 9 September 1876 in St Mary’s catholic church, Dukinfield, Ashton-under-Lyne. Both were living in Peel St, Dukinfield, at the time. A committed nationalist, when seven months pregnant she delivered the surgical knives used in the assassination of Cavendish and Burke to the Invincibles in Dublin in February 1882 by concealing them under her skirts. On another occasion she brought them a rifle, two revolvers, and a large quantity of ammunition. Implicated in the Phoenix Park killings by the evidence of James Carey, she was arrested in February 1883 at her home on Avondale Road, Peckham Rye, south London. When confronted with her in court on 21 February, Carey could not positively identify her as the woman who had delivered the arms. She was released from custody immediately and some weeks later joined her husband in America. In May 1885 at a meeting to honour the executed Invincibles in New York, she was given a ‘well-filled purse’ and acclaimed as a ‘brave little woman’ who was ‘as true as steel to all those heroic ideas of womanhood which typify the feminine character of Ireland’ (Special commission report, iv, 404). She was a member of an American ladies’ committee that in April 1887 erected a monument in Glasnevin cemetery to Patrick O’ Donnell, who was hanged for shooting dead James Carey. She was struck down by paralysis three years before her husband’s death in 1894. In June 1894, expecting that she was soon to die, she told an American journalist that Parnell had no connection whatsoever with the Invincibles. She died in New York City in early November 1894.