Joan Kelly (1828–1898[1]) was a poet and hand-sewer who published her "Miscellaneous Poems" on 1 January 1884[2] in the hope of raising sufficient funds to be able to leave the Cunninghame Combination Poorhouse.

Kelly was born in Irvine and never married, living with her widowed mother Mary Allan in Bridgegate and later in the High Street.

[3] Kelly died on 4 October 1898 of 'senile debility' aged 70 in the Cunninghame Combination Poorhouse,[1] an establishment to which she had been admitted and discharged on several occasions after her mother's death in 1870.

In 1895 the Irvine Parish Role of Paupers gives her age as 76 which is in conflict with her death certificate and records that she had entered the poorhouse in 1870 as a result of 'Impaired Vision' after her mother had died.

She was born in Irvine, and livedthere with her widowed mother until the latter was eighty-fouryears of age, when the ruthless breaker of love's more thanmortal ties divided them, and the brightest star of poor Joan'slife was extinguished forever.

Left friendless and in a manner helpless, the parish authoritiesfound it necessary to remove her to their Combination Palace nearher native town, but she longed to breathe what she called " the sweet,pure air of liberty," and took unkindly to her new home.

Kelly's poem upon the death of the wife of the Irvine area's laird;[12] In Memory of the Late Countess of Eglinton and Winton.

I've seen the beauteous king of day In splendid glory rise, Chasing the darker clouds away And dazzling eager eyes.