On November 14th 1918 the British prime minister announced a general election to be held exactly one month later on December 14th. It was the first time that women had a vote, which increased the electorate from greatly from 700,000 to two million. It was also the fist time that women went up for election.

Countess Markievicz and Winifred Carney were the only two candidates in Ireland. They were members of a very small group of females that were in with a chance of gaining seats for Sinn Fein. The other contenders were Kathleen Clarke, who was in jail in Britain at the time, and some of the men had not problem stepping into her place. Another possibility, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington didn’t take up on the offer as she didn’t have much faith in victory. She would however, take her place in history  as of one of the greatest champions of women’s rights in Ireland to this day.

Women did a lot of the canvassing for the 1918 election, it was a first for them in that respect too. Emily no doubt would have done her share. She no longer enjoyed the free time she had grown used of, on two accounts. Firstly it was at the peak of the Spanish flu epidemic,  as a trained nurse she was working flat out at the time. The second was she had to work as she was left penniless due to the loss of her income from Russian industry, due to the Revolution there the previous year. She would have, as a member of Cumann na mBan dedicated what little time she had to the Sinn Fein election campaign.

See below the video from The Easter Rising Stories, by Marcus Howard, that tells of Countess Markievicz election campaign of  1918

sources:

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/1918-timeline-1.3449998

Easter Rising Stories YouTube Channel

http://www.historyvault.ie/the-1918-general-election

https://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/the-league-of-women-delegates-sinn-fein/