The following marriage announcement appeared on the front page of yesterday’s Irish Times: “Plunkett and Gifford, May 3, 1916, at Dublin, Joseph Plunkett to Grace Gifford”. On an inside page of the same paper was the official statement that Joseph Plunkett and three other Sinn Fein rebels had been sentenced to death and “were shot this morning”. The two announcements, coupled with an incident described to me by a Grafton Street jeweller, reveal one of the most remarkable incidents of the past week. Joseph Plunkett put his signature as a member of the Provisional Government to the proclamation declaring Ireland to be a Republic. He was a son of Count Plunkett (who with another son has been sentenced to 10 years’ penal servitude), and the nephew of a prominent member of the Irish Bar who entered the Army in the early days of the war and lost his life in Gallipoli. At one time he edited the Irish Review, a monthly journal which ceased publication not long ago. Grace Gifford is a handsome young woman, 28 years of age, one of four daughters of Frederick Gifford, a Dublin solicitor. She was given a good education, and, developing a taste for art, went to the Slade Art School in London. Wayward and headstrong, she came several years ago under the influence of Countess Markievicz and, much against the wishes of her parents, associated herself with the Sinn Fein movement. Probably she first made Plunkett’s acquaintance when he was editing the Irish Review. At any rate, I have seen several political cartoons and other humorous drawings which she contributed to that paper.
On Wednesday evening a young woman, whose description tallies with that of Miss Gifford, bought a wedding ring at a jeweller’s shop in Grafton-street. She was obviously in great distress, and in reply to a sympathetic inquiry she made the startling statement that her lover, Mr Plunkett, had been sentenced to be shot the next morning and that by permission of the authorities she was to be married to him an hour or two before his death. When Mrs Gifford saw her daughter the next afternoon the latter held out her left hand, showing her ring, and told her mother that between 3 and 4 o’clock in the morning she had been married in prison to Joseph Plunkett.