Background
She was the eldest daughter of John and Anne Gaynor, of Athlone, County Roscommon.
She was the eldest daughter of John and Anne Gaynor, of Athlone, County Roscommon.
At the age of fifteen she moved with her family to Dublin. At home they made the acquaintance of prominent politicians, journalists and musicians. Regular guests at their house were Doctor John Shaw, editor of the Evening Mail, Rosa Mulholland and Katherine Tynan.
Fever and disease were rife, and the Poor Law of the day was insufficient to meet the needs of the starving population.
Many evictions were taking place in deplorable circumstances, which forced the poor, however reluctantly, to seek refuge in the workhouses. Ellen Woodlock was totally against placing children in workhouses and founded Saint Joseph"s Institute in 1855 to rescue girls from that situation.
With her Mistress Atkinson interested herself in the female paupers of the South Dublin Union.
With much difficulty in the 1860s she gained permission for ladies like herself to enter and inspect the condition of young girls in the North and South Dublin Unions, after which she opened a better home to which many were transferred. She campaigned for years to improve the state of the workhouses and provide better conditions for the poverty-stricken.
She helped Ellen Woodlock establish the Children"s Hospital at 9 Buckingham Saint in 1872, which later moved to Temple Saint, which she visited every day. Every week she visited hospitals and prisons, in the 1880s accompanying Katherine Tynan to visit the last of the Land Leaguers incarcerated in Kilmainham Gaol.
From the 1850s Atkinson contributed a large number of historical and biographical articles and essays to several publications, including the Hibernian Magazin, The Month, The Nation and the Freeman"s Journal.
She later wrote for the Irish Monthly after it was established, and for the Irish Quarterly Review. Her Life of Mary Aikenhead was published in 1875 and was very well received. She followed this with biographies of the Irish sculptors John Henry Foley and John Hogan and also a life of Catherine of Siena.
A collection of her essays, with a preface and biography by Rosa Mulholland, was published posthumously in 1895.