Sarah Atkinson

Sarah (née Gaynor) Atkinson (23 October 1823 – 8 July 1893) was an Irish writer, biographer, essayist and philanthropist.

Biography

She was the eldest daughter of John and Anne Gaynor, of Athlone, County Roscommon. At the age of fifteen she moved with her family to Dublin where her education was completed.

The loss of her only child in his fourth year deeply affected Mrs. Atkinson and she threw herself into charitable and other good works. Ellen Woodlock, a sister of Francis Sylvester Mahony, was born in Cork in 1811 and had been married in 1830 and widowed quite young, just before the birth of her only son. Ellen was the sister in law of Rev. Dr. Bartholomew Woodlock, who was President of All Hallows College. She intended joining a religious community in France but after spending a few years in that country (with her son in a nearby school) returned to Cork and then moved to Dublin. At this time the post-famine city was inundated with poverty-stricken families and abandoned children. Fever and disease were rife, and the Poor Law of the day was insufficient to meet the needs of the starving population. Many evictions were taking place in deplorable circumstances, which forced the poor, however reluctantly, to seek refuge in the workhouses. With her Mrs. Atkinson interested herself in the female paupers of the South Dublin Union.

From the 1850s Atkinson contributed a large number of historical and biographical articles and essays to several publications, including Duffy's Hibernian Magazine, The Month, The Nation and the Freeman's Journal. She later wrote for the Irish Monthly after it was established, and for the Irish Quarterly Review. Her Life of Mary Aikenhead and was very well received. She followed this with biographies of the Irish sculptors John Henry Foley and John Hogan