Oonah Keogh

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Oonah Mary Irene Keogh , also Úna Keogh , married Giltsoff , (born May 2, 1903 in Dublin , † July 18, 1989 ibid) was an Irish woman who was the first woman to trade on a stock exchange from 1925 .

biography

Family and education

Oonah Keogh was the child of Annie Kathleen Doyne (1873-1946), daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur, and Joseph Chapman Keogh (1862-1944). The father was Ireland's youngest bank manager as head of a branch of Hibernian Bank in Swinford , Mayo , in the 1880s . After the death of Annie Keogh's father and a subsequent inheritance, the Catholic family moved into their own prestigious Rossbegh property in Dublin, and Josef Keogh became a member of the Dublin Stock Exchange . It was in this house that Oonah Keogh and her eight siblings were born. Josef Keogh was very successful on the stock exchange, and in 1912/13 the family moved into the larger Trentham estate . From the age of about eleven, Oonah, like her sisters, attended the exclusive private school St. Mary's Priory in Princethorpe in Warwickshire , England , and the private Alexandra College near Dublin between 1917 and 1918 . In 1922 she studied for a semester at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art . Later that year she went on trips through Europe and North Africa, accompanied by a governess .

Time on the stock market

In 1925, at the age of 22, Oonah Keogh joined her father Joseph Keogh & Co. Stockbroking's company after previously studying in London . At first she only kept accounts for her father, but when he fell ill for a long time after six months, she took over his business activities. The members of the exchange discussed for three weeks whether Oonah Keogh should be accepted as a member. However, the admission was accepted by the gentlemen after a "gentle hint" from the Chief Justice's office that the corporation was not legally entitled to refuse admission to a lady on the grounds that she was a woman. Otherwise she met all the requirements: After an interview, her “fitness and means” were attested. The necessary wealth was there, as well as the necessary wealthy guarantors, including Irish politician Patrick Hogan , and she was able to raise the enrollment fee of 700 guineas . This fee was increased shortly before Oonah Keogh entered the stock exchange to prevent other women from following her.

As a newspaper reported in its headline, Oonah Keogh became “The First Woman Stockbroker”, which The Crystal magazine classified as a “tremendous sensation”. On her first day at work as a trader, she was, as she later said, “sick with fear”, but contrary to her expectations, her new colleagues treated her politely and considerately. In letters, the customers of her father’s company said they were satisfied with the deals she carried out, and their colleagues on the stock exchange evidently preferred them to their not very sociable father. Although still not in the best of health, Joseph Keogh returned to the company, presumably for fear of becoming redundant. There was a constant quarrel between him and his daughter, which came to a head in the following years. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression , the company ran into economic problems. Joseph Keogh was a "difficult and self-absorbed man," and Oonah Keogh complained that her father wanted to keep his own business path and never asked her for advice. She was entitled to half of the profits made, but never received them. In 1939 Joseph Keogh had to give up the company and leave the stock exchange.

Oonah Keogh was the first woman to penetrate an elite male enclave , but remained locked out of other “male places” such as golf courses and men's clubs and was unable to develop a business network. In 1971, she said in an interview: "One of the drawbacks was then, that women are not in the lounges of pubs met. When the men went to the Jurys [Dublin hotel] after hours to relax, I couldn't go with them. And even when I went to the races with my dad, it was the same: he went to the bar for a drink, and I cut off for afternoon tea. It's so different now. "

In the early 1930s, Oonah Keogh was so discouraged by the differences of opinion with her father and the male structures on the stock exchange that she rarely went to the office and frequently visited her two sisters Eta and Genevieve in Hampshire , England . In 1933, Oonah Keogh retired from her father's company, but explicitly not from the Dublin Stock Exchange . It was not until 1939, when her father left the stock exchange, that she was finally deleted as a member. It took 42 years until 1967, Muriel F. Siebert , the second woman to be admitted to a stock exchange on the New York Stock Exchange .

Marriage and later years

During her visits to Hampshire Oonah Keogh met the Russian emigrant Bayan Giltsoff. Oonah and Bayan Giltsoff married in November 1933 - in the absence of Oonah's parents, since the father in particular disliked the marriage - and moved to Taunton in Somerset, England . The couple had four children, three sons and a daughter. Bayan Giltsoff worked in various fields as an artist: He successfully modernized historic Tudor farmhouses and worked as a sculptor and wood carver. Oonah mostly handled the commercial side of the business.

From 1943 Oonah Giltsoff litigated with the Hibernian Bank . She deposited shares in the bank as security for her personal overdraft, which she has since paid back. She wanted the shares back, or at least an injunction, to prevent the bank from selling them. The bank, however, argued that the shares would serve as security for the debts of Keogh & Co. , of which it was still registered as a partner, and asked Oonah Giltsoff to make a payment of £ 30,000 , "an amazingly large one." “Sum of money in the 1940s. The bank won the lawsuit and Oonah Giltsoff had to pay. The Bellosquardo property had to be sold and fetched the "ridiculously low" price of £ 400. The buyer was the politician and co-founder of Fianna Fáil Patrick Ruttledge .

In 1947 the Giltsoffs moved to Ireland. There they bought a farm in Kilquade , on the site of which 20 houses, designed by Bayan Giltsoff and known as the Russian Village , were built. Their style was modeled on Russian dachas . Later residents included Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh , Irish President from 1974 to 1976. In 1952 the family moved to Oakville , Ontario , Canada for a year . The couple separated in the late 1950s. While Bayan Giltsoff went back to Ireland, where he died in 1977, Oonah Keogh moved with her daughter and her husband to Madrid and worked as an English teacher for six years until the two women returned to Ireland in 1980 after the death of their son-in-law. In the following years, Oonah wrote her first name Úna . In the 1980s she received financial support from her sons as well as members of the stock market community.

In a 1956 portrait in the Times , tall, slender Oonah Gilsoff was described as "elegant" in appearance and clothing. She usually wears silk blouses and scarves and prefers Ma Griffe as a perfume. She rejects women wearing pants and those without make-up . She smoked and enjoyed drinking alcohol herself. In an article in the Evening Press , she vigorously denied being a feminist and stated that she “hated” the words unisex and equality . She emphasized the meaning of “masculine” and “feminine”, so “complement” is the more appropriate term for her.

Úna Giltsoff died in July 1989 at the age of 86, one week after her daughter Tatiana, who had succumbed to cancer; all of Úna's eight siblings had died before her. She was buried in the family grave in Deansgrange Cemetery in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown near Dublin. Her son Bayan said of his mother that despite many setbacks in her life - six of her siblings had died before 1945 - she always remained an optimist . She was humorous, usually looked for a practical solution to problems and always fought, even when the chances were bad.

memory

Oonah Keogh and her pioneering work as a stock exchange trader were forgotten for many decades, until the journals from that time were discovered and processed in the basement of the Dublin Stock Exchange. In 2014, the Irish Stock Exchange issued the Oonah Keogh brochure . A Celebration in their honor.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Oonah Keogh. A Celebration , pp. 9-11.
  2. ↑ Oonah Keogh. A Celebration , pp. 11-13.
  3. ↑ a b c Oonah Keogh, the world's first female stock broker. In: thinkbusiness.ie. March 8, 2018, accessed March 30, 2020 .
  4. ↑ At that time, the Irish Free State constitution , which enshrined equality between women and men, was only three years old. Oonah Keogh. In: Women's Museum of Ireland. Retrieved March 30, 2020 . ; Commentary: What Oonagh Did. In: irishamerica.com. October 1, 2015, accessed March 30, 2020 . However, women's rights in Ireland were steadily restricted by regulations in the years that followed. Oonah Keogh. A Celebration , pp. 6-7.
  5. ↑ Oonah Keogh. A Celebration , p. 4.
  6. ↑ Oonah Keogh. A Celebration , p. 9.
  7. ↑ Oonah Keogh. A Celebration , pp. 13-14.
  8. ↑ a b Oonah Keogh. A Celebration , p. 17.
  9. ↑ Oonah Keogh. A Celebration , pp. 14-15.
  10. ↑ Oonah Keogh. A Celebration , pp. 15-16.
  11. ^ Commentary: What Oonagh Did. In: irishamerica.com. October 1, 2015, accessed March 30, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Oonah Keogh. A Celebration , pp. 18-19. Bláthnaid Nolan, author of the brochure, asks the question to what extent Ruttledge has enriched himself at the expense of the Keogh family.
  13. ↑ a b Oonah Keogh. A Celebration , p. 24.
  14. ↑ Oonah Keogh. A Celebration , p. 23.
  15. ↑ Oonah Keogh. A Celebration , p. 22.
  16. ^ The Keogh family. In: youwho.ie. November 25, 1906, accessed March 30, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Una Mary Irene Keogh Giltsoff (1903-1989). In: de.findagrave.com. Retrieved March 30, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Keogh, Oonah
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Keogh, Úna (different spelling); Giltsoff, Oonah
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish securities dealer
DATE OF BIRTH May 2, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Dublin
DATE OF DEATH July 18, 1989
Place of death Dublin