Louie Bennett

[5][6] Louisa "Louie" Elizabeth Bennett was born on 7 January 1870 in Temple Road, in the new upper-class suburb of Rathmines in Dublin, into a Church of Ireland family.

[7] Her father, James Bennett, ran the family business as a fine art auctioneer and valuer on Ormond Quay.

[citation needed] She was initially educated at home with her brothers and sisters, but later went to a boarding school in England, and for a time, to Alexandra College in Dublin.

As a young girl she immersed herself in novels by Dickens, Meredith, Austen and Thackeray, and was introduced to women's rights by reading George Eliot.

Bennett had been outspoken against the policy of the Irish Citizen in the past and had actually withdrawn her subscription to the paper the previous year.

[16] In 1916 Hanna Sheehy Skeffington relinquished her role to travel to America and campaign for justice after the death of her husband.

[16] To combat this, Bennett wanted more space to be given towards trade unions (to increase sales) and in 1920 the IWWU and the Irish Nurses' Organisation started using the paper as their official journal – despite Sheehy Skeffington writing in it that it needed to stay distinctly unaffiliated to any party.

The union would not only give women a greater voice in the workplace but would also help to win them the vote and improve their status in society, according to Constance Markievicz.

[5] Helena Molony had approached Bennett to become involved and they, along with Helen Chenevix and Rosie Hackett, became key figures in a re-organised IWWU after 1916.

On 20 November 1935, the IWWU, under Bennett, staged street protests against discriminatory sections of Seán Lemass's Conditions of Employment bill.

[18] In 1945, the Union organised a successful three-month strike for improved conditions and won the entitlement, subsequently enjoyed by all Irish workers, to two weeks' paid annual holidays.

She is buried at Deans Grange Cemetery, sharing a grave with her mother, father and brother Lionel Vaughan Bennett.