Maire Quinn

Maire Quinn (9 June 1872 – 21 August 1947) was an Irish actress and republican activist, and one of the founding members of the Irish National Theatre Society.

Early life in Ireland Maire Quinn was born Mary Quinn to Michael Quinn and Margaret Roden in County Fermanagh, but sometimes referred to as Maire T. Quinn or Mary Teresa Quinn.

Initially, Quinn worked alongside Marie Perolz as an Irish teacher in the .

Quinn was a founding member and the first actress of the Irish National Theatre Society, later the Abbey Theatre. She was pivotal in promoting the work of Padraic Colum by giving Fay a manuscript copy of Colum's Broken soil. She played Brigit in Yeats's The hour glass at the society's premiere performance at Molesworth Hall, Dublin on 14 March 1903. She was critical in mobilising members of Inghinidhe na hÉireann and Cumann na nGaedheal to confront the lord mayor of Dublin, Timothy Harrington, at an Irish Parliamentary Party meeting on 18 May 1903 which became known as the "battle of the Rotunda". The members demanded that he answer the rumors that he would give the welcome address at the impending visit of King Edward VII. Quinn defended Maud Gonne's house in Rathgar after Gonne hung a black flag after the death of Pope Leo XIII during the royal visit. The resulting conflict between the neighbours and police became known as "the battle of Coulson Avenue". When the king visited Belfast later the same year, she protested at a rally at the Fall's Road. in response to the portrayal of the heroine who rejects both her mercenary lover and unloving husband. With Digges and MacBride, she formed the short-lived Theatre Company having resigned from the National Theatre Society. The company produced five plays during the Samhain festival in 1903. Throughout 1903, she chaired a number of meetings of . In 1905, she provided a deposition in Maud Gonne's separation from her husband corroborating MacBride's constant intoxication during their marriage. Deciding to remain in America, she and Digges married on 27 August 1907. In 1908 she performed with Digges and Frank Fay in William Boyle's The building fund in Powers Theatre, Chicago. From 1911 to 1914 she toured with George Arliss with Louis N. Parker's Disraeli. After this point, Quinn's acting career declined, while her husband continued to act and direct with the New York Theatre Guild and in film. They lived at 1 West Sixty-fourth Street, New York. Quinn was travelling by boat to their summer home on Fire Island when she took ill, dying 21 August 1947 in South Side Hospital in Bay Shore, Long Island. Digges himself died of a stroke just two months after his wife, aged 68.