Martha "Matty" McTier (c. 1742 – 3 October 1837) was an advocate for women's health and education, and a supporter of democratic reform, whose correspondence with her brother William Drennan and other leading United Irishmen documents the political radicalism and tumult of late eighteenth-century Ireland.
Early life and family
Martha McTier was born Martha Drennan in 1742 or 1743 in Belfast, the eldest of three surviving children born to Ann Drennan (née Lennox) and Reverend Thomas Drennan, minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Belfast. There is no record of her childhood or education, but she appears to have been greatly influenced by her father whose New Light theology bore the imprint of his mentor, the moral philosopher (and father of the Scottish Enlightenment) Francis Hutcheson. She was to read widely in philosophy (Rousseau, de Volney, Montesquieu, Hume), and in literature (Fielding, Edgeworth, Elizabeth Hamilton, Marie-Medeleine de La Fayette).
McTier married Samuel McTier, a widower and chandler from Belfast, in 1773. In 1795 he died intestate leaving McTier and her stepdaughter Margaret McTier (1762–1845) in poverty. She and Margaret continued to live together, supported in small part by a small annuity from a cousin of McTier, and by taking in an orphaned girl as a paying guest. Despite her own financial straights, she sought to support her brother William Drennan and his new family in Dublin where his medical practice suffered as a result of his political notoriety. She persuaded their cousin, Martha Young, to bequeath him her fortune, and this enabled him in 1806 to retire from practice and return to Belfast.
Women's health and education
In 1793 McTier was invited to become the secretary of the new Humane Female Society. The Society helped establish and sustain Belfast's Lying-in (maternity) Hospital, and she would remain active with the Society for many years. At the outset there had been some resistance to admitting unmarried women and prostitutes. McTier reported to her brother that despite "the appearance of unanimity", she saw a "party forming under the pretext of keeping out unmarried women", which she believed was attempting to raise opposition against "those who are now deemed democrats".
When in the same year McTier established a small school in her home for poor girls she began to read more of the literature on women's education by female writers. In addition to Wollstonecraft, she drew inspiration from Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Ann Radcliffe and Belfast-born Elizabeth Hamilton (who visited with her in 1793). It is probable that she was also influenced by the non-coercive ("spare the rod") and peer-tutoring methods of David Manson who was much admired by Hamilton. Manson’s school in Donegall Street had been attended by a number of McTier’s friends and acquaintances including Mary Ann McCracken. "My little girls", wrote McTier, "do not gabble over the testament only, nor read with that difficulty which prevents pleasure in it... I keep up my number and four of them can read Fox and Pitt".
In April 1795 McTier and Lady Harriet Skeffington proposed a more ambitious scheme to a town meeting, a residential school for girls with food and clothing provided. The proposal promoted a debate in the press. A letter to the Northern Star signed "The Bucks" sarcastically declaimed: "We love girls educated above their rank, and their heads filled with ideas beyond their means. We by experience, know the consequence - we shall always have fresh supplies from your excellent seminary". In spite of the opposition, McTier and Skeffington prevailed. Two years later the Union School was supporting twenty-one girls.
United Irishwoman
McTier's forty-year correspondence with her brother William begins in 1776 when he was studying medicine in Edinburgh and continued as he moved, with his obstetrics practice, from Belfast to Newry and Dublin. Frequently "the brighter wit ... and clearer eye", she was both his personal and political confidante. When her husband became president of the United Irishmen in Belfast, McTier was drawn into the group's activities. The leading figures of the movement, including Theobald Wolfe Tone and Thomas Russell (who she was to regard as "another brother"), frequently gathered in her home.