Dora Jordan

If I had a chance to have lunch with anyone living or dead I would most certainly chose to have it with Dora Jordan, one of Western history’s most famous comics who graced the British stage for forty years. Not only would she make me laugh, I would uncover some mysteries about her that have persisted for the past two hundred years.

Dora was born in Ireland to a pair of theater folks around 1761. It’s not known for certain if her father was a stagehand or an actor but it is known that when Dora was thirteen, he abandoned his family for a young actress and left them destitute. Fortunately, Dora took to the stage and acted until she was fifty-four, earning around one hundred thousand pounds (approximately 7 million dollars).

Countess Markievicz

Countess Markievicz was a brave woman who fought for Irish independence and was the first woman ever to be elected to the British House of Commons.

Constance Gore-Booth was born on 4th February 1868, the oldest of five children. Her father was a landowner in County Sligo, Ireland.

Constance is most well known for her role in Irish politics, but long before then her first passion was art. In 1892 she went to London to study painting. While there her political beliefs began to take shape and she joined the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). From London she moved to Paris to continue her studies. It was there that she met her soon-to-be husband, a Polish Count.