Circular letter from Seosamh Mac Donnchadha (Joseph MacDonagh), Minister for Labour, Dáil Ėireann, to the Superiors of all Religious Houses in Ireland, enclosing a copy statement, written by a Belfast priest, detailing ‘the Orange atrocities committed on Catholic workers and others last July and August’. MacDonagh asks the Religious Superiors to use ‘their wide influence to assist in the rigid enforcement and maintenance of the Belfast Trade Boycott’. MacDonagh was elected unopposed as a Sinn Féin MP for the Tipperary North constituency at the 1918 general election. He was Director of the ‘Belfast Boycott’, an attempt in 1920–21 to boycott goods from Ulster that were being imported into the south of Ireland. With a printed flier titled ‘Black list, Belfast Economic Boycott’ listing the principal firms acting as distributors for ‘Belfast goods’ in Dublin and in other parts of Ireland.
Circular letter from Toirdhealbhach Mac Suibhne (Terence MacSwiney), Sinn Féin Executive, Macroom, re the collection of money for the Dáil Éireann Loan in Mid-Cork. MacSwiney confirms that ‘in our Constituency over £6,000 has been subscribed to the Loan for the Government of the Irish Republic’.
Circular letter from the Most Rev. Denis Kelly, Bishop of Ross, Bishop’s House, Skibbereen, regarding the number of Irish chaplains in the British Army and Navy. Distinctions are made between incardinated secular clergy and regulars ‘who have gone from the Irish Houses of their respective Provinces’. It is noted that two members of the Capuchin Order in Ireland are serving as chaplains. These were Fr. Dominic O’Connor OFM Cap. and Fr. Ignatius Collins OFM Cap.
An autograph book signed by Anti-Treaty IRA prisoners detained in Limerick Jail in early 1923. The text includes patriotic and republican poems and statements composed by the detainees. The volume was compiled by James O’Mahony (Séamus Ó Mathúna) from Mitchelstown in County Cork. O’Mahony joined the Irish Volunteers in September 1917 and was active in the anti-conscription campaign. As an engineering student in University College Cork, he continued his republican activities and by July 1921 held the rank of adjutant of the 6th Battalion of the Cork No. 2 Brigade of the IRA. He participated in several engagements with British forces in Cork during the War of Independence and was appointed the brigade’s principal training officer. He took the Anti-Treaty side during the Civil War and was a member of the republican forces which fought in a large-scale engagement in Kilmallock in County Limerick in August 1922. He was captured by the National Army in December 1922 and was initially confined in Mitchelstown. In early January 1923, he was moved to Limerick Jail and was held there until he escaped on 31 March.
A photographic postcard print with the printed title 'Commandant McKeown T.D.'. The portrait print shows Commandant Seán Mac Eoin (1893-1973), a senior IRA soldier during the War of Independence.
