In the Dark

A few years ago I posted an item about Violet Gibson. Last week Dublin City Council unveiled a plaque in her memory, outside her childhood home, which reminded me of her story.

The story of Violet Gibson is both bizarre and tragic. She was born in 1876 into a well-to-do family living at No. 12 Merrion Square in Dublin, where the above plaque is now located. Her father, Edward Gibson, was made Baron Ashbourne in 1886. To cut a long story short, Violet Gibson turned up in Rome in 1926 where, at 11am on 26th April of that year, she attempted to shoot Fascist Leader Benito Mussolini with a pistol. She only failed in this task because Mussolini moved his head at the instant she pulled the trigger, and the bullet just grazed his nose. She tried to fire again, but her gun jammed. She was then seized by the angry mob of fascist supporters with whom she had mingled to get close enough to shoot. She was almost lynched but saved by the police. Eventually, the authorities came to the conclusion that she was insane and she was sent back to England. She spent the rest of her life in a psychiatric institution in Northampton. She died there in 1956, at the age of 79.

P.S. If you want to find out more about Violet Gibson, I recommend a book about her life called The Woman Who Shot Mussolini by Frances Stonor Saunders.

This entry was posted on October 23, 2022 at 3:04 pm and is filed under History, Politics with tags Benito Mussolini, Dublin City Council, Merrion Square, Violet Gibson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.