Kathleen Lynn was 16 when she decided to become a doctor, having watched post-Famine poverty and disease tear through the communities around her wealthy Protestant family's Co Mayo home. She would go on to take up arms with James Connolly's Irish Citizen Army during the Easter Rising, sit as a Sinn Féin TD, campaign for the vote, and in 1919 open St Ultan's Children's Hospital, an institution credited with driving down Ireland's infant mortality rate.
“Kathleen Lynn: The Rebel Doctor" is an Irish documentary that tells the previously unknown story of an extraordinary Irish woman.
Kathleen Lynn was born in County Mayo in 1874 into a wealthy Protestant family. As a young woman, she was deeply affected by the abject poverty and disease that ravaged the lives of local people in the aftermath of the Great Famine.
At just 16 years of age, she decided to become a doctor. In 1919, she established and founded St. Ultan’s Children’s Hospital, an initiative that helped to lower the infant mortality rate in Ireland.
She was also politically active and served in Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army in 1916, was involved in the Suffragette movement, and served as a Sinn Féin executive and as a TD.
Directed by Sé Merry Doyle of Loopline Films, The Rebel Doctor charts the astonishing life and legacy of Dr. Lynn, one of the great humanitarians of 20th-century Irish history.
“Kathleen Lynn: The Rebel Doctor" is part of The Loopline Collection Volume 1.
About the IFI’s Loopline Collection Volume 1
Loopline is an independent production company established in 1992 by award-winning filmmaker Sé Merry Doyle.
Since its foundation, Loopline has been at the heart of Irish independent broadcasting, creating a wealth of important and diverse material on topics such as folklife, ethnology, architecture, art, literature, and inner-city life.
The subjects explored by Loopline were chosen by Merry Doyle for their cultural and social importance. This first tranche of The Loopline Collection covers key areas of Irish history and arts and contains a wealth of stunning images revealing everyday Irish society in urban settings.
The focus of the filmmaker is on national identity in a changing world, and Sé Merry Doyle set up Loopline Film with the specific intention of making creative documentaries that would endure and stand the test of time.
The collection contains a large quantity of urban material that chronicles the changing landscape of Dublin, its buildings, and its citizens’ ways of life. The films include such historically resonant images as the clearance of slums, the closure of traditional markets, and tragic accounts of young teenagers dying from the heroin epidemic of the early ’90s.
Portraits of artists, architects, writers, and poets are also a cornerstone of the collection, with riveting interviews with the very best artistic talent in the country. Patrick Kavanagh, John Montague, Hugh Leonard, James Gandon, Jennifer Johnston, Doris Lessing, John Henry Foley, Eavan Boland, Brendan Kennelly, and Joseph O’Connor are but a fraction of those featured.
“Kathleen Lynn: The Rebel Doctor" is published here with thanks to the Irish Film Institute (IFI), with which IrishCentral has partnered to bring you a taste of what their remarkable collection entails. You can find all IrishCentral articles and videos from the IFI here.
To watch more historic Irish footage, visit the IFI Player, the Irish Film Institute’s virtual viewing room that provides audiences around the globe with free, instant access to Irish heritage preserved in the IFI Irish Film Archive. Irish Culture from the last century is reflected through documentaries, animation, adverts, amateur footage, feature films, and much more. You can also download the IFI Player Apps for free on iPhone, Android, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Roku.
IrishCentral has partnered with the IFI to bring you a taste of what their remarkable collections entail. You can find all IrishCentral articles and videos from the IFI here.
* This article was originally published in 2021 and updated in 2026.
