Leonora O'Reilly
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Leonora O’Reilly (1870 - 1927) was an American feminist, suffragist, and trade union organizer. She was a founding member of the Women's Trade Union League.
Daughter of John O'Reilly, a printer and member of the Knights of Labor, and Winifred (Rooney) O'Reilly, an Irish-born dressmaker, O'Reilly's father died when she was three years old. Upon his death, Winifred O'Reilly supported Leonora by sewing and taking in boarders. Winifred O'Reilly helped keep the family's love of freedom and justice alive in the girl. Leonora O'Reilly accompanied her mother to meetings at Cooper Union. O'Reilly's father's friend, Victor Drury, helped instill in her an appreciation for the Italian nationalist Mazzini. O'Reilly counted among her influences radical Catholic priest and social justice advocate Fr. Edward McGlynn and anarchist Peter Kropotkin.
O'Reilly began working in a factory at age 12. At 16 she joined the Knights of Labor, and Winifred O'Reilly soon followed her daughter's lead. Leonora belonged to many organizations composed of both working class and elite men and women. Mentors helped further her education. After attending the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, O'Reilly and her mother became residents at the Asacog House, a settlement in Brooklyn. Leonora also taught at the Manhattan Trade School.
Only with the financial support of elite women was O'Reilly able to give up manual labor and become a full-time labor organizer with the Women's Trade Union League. In this capacity she served as a volunteer investigator to the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire of 1911.
An ardent socialist, Leonora O'Reilly attended the 1915 Hague Convention. She also cooperated with Indian independence organizations and the NAACP. Around 1918, O'Reilly stopped working on behalf of labor and devoted herself to the Irish nationalist cause in Ireland around the time of the beginning of the Anglo-Irish War.
Leonora and Winifred O'Reilly both made their home in Brooklyn. Leonora O'Reilly adopted a daughter, Alice, who died in 1911. By the early 1920s, Winifred O'Reilly developed what appears to have been Alzheimer's disease. Leonora providing her mother's care. Leonora died in Brooklyn in April 1927, around age 56.
