Kathleen Clarke (née Daly; Irish: Caitlín Bean Uí Chléirigh; 12 April 1878 – 29 September 1972) was a founder member of Cumann na mBan, a women's paramilitary organisation formed in Ireland in 1914, and one of very few privy to the plans of the Easter Rising in 1916.

She was subsequently a Teachta Dála (TD) and Senator with both Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil, and the first female Lord Mayor of Dublin (1939–1941).

Her paternal uncle, John Daly, a subsequent Mayor of Limerick, was at the time imprisoned for his political activities in Chatham and Portland Prisons in England.

[4] When Tom Clarke, who had been imprisoned with her uncle, was released in 1898 he travelled to Limerick to receive the Freedom of the city and stayed with the Daly family.

[5] In 1901 she ceased her business in the city as she had decided to emigrate to the United States to join Tom who had been there since 1900, having secured work through his Fenian contacts.

Through his contacts in the Clan na Gael and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), Tom Clarke continued to be involved in nationalist activity.

[9] As Tom Clarke was the first signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic he was chosen to be executed for his part in the Easter Rising.

Imprisoned in Holloway along with Clarke were several women Irish Republican leaders - Maud Gonne, Constance Markievicz and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington.

She was arrested briefly by the Garda Síochána during this time and her shop in D'Olier Street, Dublin was frequently raided.

In 1930 she was elected to the re-constituted Dublin Corporation for Fianna Fáil along with Robert Briscoe, Seán T. O'Kelly, Thomas Kelly and Oscar Traynor.

[24] She opposed the Constitution of Ireland as she felt that several of its sections would place women in a lower position that they had been afforded in the Proclamation of the Irish Republic.

[28] She also opposed the perceived centralisation of local government and the increased power of County and City Managers which had been introduced by Seán MacEntee.

[29] In 1966, as part of the celebrations of the Easter Rising, she and other surviving relatives were awarded honorary doctorates of law by the National University of Ireland.

and what could he know of Ireland, when he was all the time out of it.”[32] Following her death aged 94 in 1972 at a nursing home in Liverpool, she received the rare honour of a state funeral.