Clodagh Finn: The secret lives of our revolutionary grannies
![Clodagh Finn: The secret lives of our revolutionary grannies Clodagh Finn: The secret lives of our revolutionary grannies](/cms_media/module_img/7386/3693166_16_articlesmall_Mairin_20with_20a_20rifle_20c_201917.jpg)
Máirín Beaumont with a fishing rod and rifle in the photo that shocked Caitríona Beaumont. Picture courtesy of the Beaumont family.
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![Máirín Beaumont in 1954 aged 60. Picture courtesy of the Beaumont family. Máirín Beaumont in 1954 aged 60. Picture courtesy of the Beaumont family.](https://www.irishexaminer.com/cms_media/module_img/7386/3693178_13_articleinline_Mairin_20in_201954_20aged_2060.jpg)
“To me this description of my grandmother storing arms was reminiscent of a scene from a classic Hollywood gangster movie – not something I ever imagined my maimeó to be doing,” Prof Beaumont wrote in an article in The Conversation, a not-for-profit publisher of research-based analysis.
![Máirín with Caitriona Beaumont in Dublin in 1971. Máirín with Caitriona Beaumont in Dublin in 1971.](https://www.irishexaminer.com/cms_media/module_img/7386/3693181_13_articleinline_Mairin_20with_20Caitriona_20Beaumont_20in_20back_20garden_20in_20Dublin_201971.jpg)
How many other activist maimeós are hiding in plain sight, frozen in the grainy sepia of photographs in attics around the country? Professor Beaumont’s personal experience prompted her to try to find answers to that question by setting up a new history project, Afterlives of Activist Women.
She speaks about it on a riveting History Hub podcast,
along with historians Dr Mary McAuliffe and Dr Fionnuala Walsh, of UCD, who also celebrate the unacknowledged women in their own families.It also offers practical tips on how you too can discover the secret lives of the women we often dismissed as sweet old ladies, or perhaps even grumpy ones, who were rarely encouraged to speak of their earlier lives.