Waterford Councillors have honoured the late Dr Mary Strangman by naming the large room in City Hall in her honour.
A motion was put forward by Councillor Mary Roche at this month's Plenary Meeting, which was passed by members.
Dr Strangman was a womens' health advocate, suffragist and Waterford's first female councillor.
Dr Strangman's background
She was born on March 16th, 1872 at Carriganore and was the sixth of seven children born to Thomas Handcock Strangman (gentleman) and Sarah White Strangman (née Hawkes) from Cork.
Mary was educated at home at first, with her four brothers and two sisters, but went on to enter the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, along with her sister Lucia, in 1891.
Speaking at the meeting, Councillor Roche outlined how Dr. Strangman made a profound difference in turbulent times for Waterford.
"She qualified in 1896 and set up her practice in Parnell Street.
"Waterford City at the time was notorious for its slums and its extremely high mortality rate and she had an extremely dedicated commitment to health - particularly women and children's health and to dealing with tuberculosis, which people at the time didn't believe was a preventable disease."
According the Dictionary of Irish Biography, Dr Strangman was attached briefly in 1910 to the Irish Women's Franchise League but quickly established a branch of its "more modern offshoot", the Munster Women's Franchise League in Waterford.
Elected to Waterford Corporation
She was also the co-founder of the Waterford branch of the Women's National Health Association of Ireland, which launched a nationwide health-promotion campaign.
Then, on the 15th of January, 1912, Dr Mary Strangman was elected and became Waterford's first female councillor.
She retired from politics eight years later, in 1920 and was appointed as physician at Waterford County and City Infirmary in 1923.
Process for commemorating people
While the motion before Waterford council passed last Thursday (September 8th), it wasn't without some debate as to how the idea was pitched and whether or not decisions like these should be made solely at plenary meetings.
"I just want to say at the outset that I don't think we could commemorate a more appropriate person," Councillor Damien Geoghegan told the meeting, "so I want to commend Councillor Roche on that.
"But I do think that if somebody wishes to bring a motion forward commemorating somebody, I think that bringing it straight to the council chamber here for discussion isn't really the right way to go about it because what would have happened, for example, if it wouldn't have been the most appropriate person to commemorate?
"Maybe we should go and discuss it [elsewhere] first, but having said that, I would be supportive of Mary Strangman being commemorated and I don't have a problem with the large room being changed either."
Dr Strangman died at her sister's home in Dún Laoghaire on the 30th of January, 1943 and in 2018, a plaque was unveiled to her on Parliament Street in Waterford.
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