The 28 children who died during the 1916 Rebellion should be remembered during the 100th centenary commemoration, according to an Irish historian.

A lecturer at the Maynooth’s National University of Ireland, Dr Anne Matthews made the suggestion when she was speaking at the Parnell Summer School in County Wicklow, as part of a panel concerning equality and the Irish Revolution.

She stated that more than 250 civilians were killed by gunfire during the Easter Week of 1916, 28 of whom were children aged between two and 16.  She said they had not been remembered because of their social class.

The children “who lived and died in the city” were from “working-class backgrounds” and “are still not considered worthy of a commemorative plaque,” Matthews said.
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The young children and their mothers have “remained invisible because they do not fit comfortably in the romantic view of 1916”, she said. “I personally do not think it is unpatriotic to also want to remember these women and their children.”

She suggested they could be remembered in the in the 2016 centenary.

Almost 100 years later there “is still a resounding silence about the impact the rebellion had on the lives of men, women and children who for six days lived within a heartbeat of death,” she added.