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Rosamond Jacob (13 October 1888 - 11 October 1960) was an Irish journalist, author and political activist. Name variations include Rose or Rosa Jacob; (pseudonym) F. Winthrop..She dedicated her life to activism for suffragist, republican, and socialist movements . She kept diaries from 1897 until her death in 1960, which serve as some of the most significant and intriguing sources for historians of Twentieth Century Ireland, as they provide insights into key political and cultural transformations and movements . She wrote a history of The Rise of the United Irishmen (1927), and a novel about the wife of Henry Joy McCracken, The Rebel's Wife (1957). Her other historical novels are Callaghan (1921) and The Troubled House (1928); The Raven's Glen (1980) which is a children's story (Welch, 2000)

Early Life

Rosamond Jacob was born on 13 October 1888 in Waterford City as the third child of parents, Louis Jacob (1841-1907) and Henrietta Jacob (1849-1919). Her father, Louis, worked in a house-agent and stockbroking firm for his father-in-law in Waterford. Her parents were born into quaker families but identified themselves as humanist agnostics. Her parent’s humanist agnostic beliefs and support for Irish Nationalism resulted in them feeling isolated in the Waterford protestant community. Rosamond was taught by a family friend named Maria Walpole, then at age 10, she attended a quaker school. Rosamond was miserable in this establishment, which led her to leave after a year and resume home-schooling. From 1902 to 1906, she learnt French and German at the protestant’s girls’ high school. Her home life influenced her cultural and political activism; she identified as an agnostic, republican, feminist, socialist and vegetarian

Personal Life

Jacob’s Quaker and agonistic upbringing, as well as her feminist and anti-clericalism beliefs not only left her isolated in Irish society but also resulted in her refusal to conform to social norms She was never married and had no children Her diaries highlighted key political and social movements but also provided insight to her personal life. In one of her diaries, she describes her relationship to Frank Ryan. Ryan and Jacob met when he was teaching Irish language classes through the Gaelic League. Ryan was much younger than Jacob. Their relationship became sexual in 1928 when she was 40 and he was 26, their relationship continued with fluctuating periods of intensity and disengagement until the mid-1930s. Jacob also had an intimate relationship with the republican activist and journalist Robert Brennan in 1930. She compared the two men in one of her diaries: ‘oh the difference between the touch him & B - the intoxication of him in comparison.’ It seems from her diaries that they were both inexperienced sexually: ‘I got him into the other room & into bed – kept his shirt on, but when I was naked he took me in his arms, standing & then got into bed & I cd feel his lovely skin all over – but he’s still inexperienced & I couldn’t get right, except for once when he hurt like hell’. From the perspective of Jacob’s diaries, Ryan at times was unorganised and unreliable in regards to personal relationships and promises. Jacob was never committed to Ryan nor Brennan and both relationships are referred to as ‘affairs

Pre-War of Independence

As a young adult, Jacob became involved in organisations such as the Gaelic League, the Irish National League, and Inghinidhe na hÉireann, a dedicated women's radical nationalist organisation, formulated in 1900. In 1906, Rosamond was involved in opening the first Sinn Féin club in Waterford. It was that same year that Rosamond became an Irish language speaker and writer, a language she'd go on to speak and write proficiently in.The strong catholic principles of the Gaelic League contradicted her feminist and unconventional religious beliefs which attributed to her transformation into what she described as a “bitter anti-cleric and freethinker." She quickly associated herself with the more radical wing of nationalist and feminist beliefs which led her to join the Irishwomen’s Franchise League, which was founded by her friend Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington in 1908 as the first Irish suffrage organisation that was willing to use militant tactics. As a republican, she viewed the first world war as an imperial conflict, and actively protested against the recruitment campaign of John Redmond. Although she was a member of Cumann na mBan, which was founded in 1914 as a women’s auxiliary to the Irish Volunteers, she criticised its compliance with Redmond and expressed her discontentment with the home rule bill’s lack of provision for women’s suffrage. Jacob was involved with Friend’s Relief, a quaker charity group, and was elected secretary of the organisation for social reform in Waterford, which called attention to local addiction problems such as gambling and drinking .In 1917 she represented Waterford at that year's Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, where she forced more commitment towards women's suffrage. During the 1918 Irish general election she canvassed on behalf of Éamon de Valera, but upon the meeting of the First Dáil was disappointed in its lack of female representation.[4] In 1920, one year after her mother's death, Jacob moved to Dublin and initially stayed with Skeffington in Belgrave Road, Rathmines