March 4th, 1888
Grace Evelyn Gifford Plunkett (4 March 1888 – 13 December 1955) was an Irish artist and cartoonist who was active in the Republican movement, who married her fiancé Joseph Plunkett in Kilmainham Gaol only a few hours before he was executed for his part in the 1916 Easter Rising.
Her growing interest in the Roman Catholic religion led to the deepening of Gifford and Plunkett’s relationship as she began to discuss Catholic mystical ideas with him – he was from an arch-Catholic family, his father a Papal count. Plunkett proposed to her in 1915; Grace accepted and took formal instruction in Catholic doctrine. She was received into the Catholic Church in April 1916. The couple planned to marry on Easter Sunday that year, in a double wedding with his sister and her fiancé. Her parents were not in favour of her marrying Plunkett, due to the precarious state of his health – he was extremely ill at this time.
After the Rising, her brother-in-law Thomas MacDonagh was shot with PH Pearse and Thomas Clarke by firing squad on 3 May. That day, Grace heard that Joseph was to be shot at dawn. She bought a ring in a jeweller’s shop in Dublin city centre and, with the help of a priest, persuaded the military authorities to allow them to marry. She and Joseph were married on the night of 3 May in the chapel of Kilmainham Gaol, a few hours before he was executed.
