Anna Haslam

Who is Anna Haslam?

Anna Maria Haslam was a suffragist and a major figure in the 19th and early 20th-century women’s movement in Ireland.

She was born in Youghal, County Cork, to a Quaker family. In 1854 she married Thomas J. Haslam, also a Quaker. In 1866 his health broke down and they had to rely on Anna's income from a small business.

Along with her husband in 1876 she founded the Dublin Women's Suffrage Association, the longest-lived Irish suffrage society, with the aim of obtaining women's voting rights. In 1911 the name was changed to the Irish Women’s Suffrage and Local Government Association. Haslam was its secretary until 1913. Members included Jennie Wyse Power, Mary Hayden, and the future founders of the militant Irish Women's Franchise League, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and Margaret Cousins. In 1913 she visited Sheehy Skeffington in Mountjoy Jail.

In 1947, the IWSLGA merged with the newly established Irish Housewives Association.