At twenty-five, she married the much older George Atkinson, a medical doctor and, with Sir John Gray, joint proprietor of the Freeman's Journal.
Regular guests at their house were Dr. John Shaw, editor of the Evening Mail, Rosa Mulholland and Katharine Tynan.
[3] Ellen Woodlock, a sister of Francis Sylvester Mahony, was born in Cork in 1811 and had been married in 1830 and widowed quite young, just before the birth of her only son.
She intended joining a religious community in France but after spending a few years in that country (with her son in a nearby school) returned to Cork and then moved to Dublin.
[1] With much difficulty in the 1860s she gained permission for ladies like herself to enter and inspect the condition of young girls in the North and South Dublin Unions, after which she opened a better home to which many were transferred.
[5] From the 1850s Atkinson contributed a large number of historical and biographical articles and essays to several publications, including Duffy's Hibernian Magazine, The Month, The Nation and the Freeman's Journal.