Letter to Margaret Pearse from D.P. Martin congratulating her on her recent election victory. The address and date portion of the letter have been torn away. Martin added ‘That business of wrecking your lovely place at Ranelagh was a frightful shame that was talked about all over England by the Labour party and condemned in no half-hearted fashion’.
Letter to Margaret Pearse referring to her intention to go the United States for a ‘lecturing tour’. The letter is seemingly incomplete and is not signed.
A printed appeal ‘to the Irish Race’ for funds to keep St. Enda’s School at the Hermitage, Rathfarnham in Dublin. Published by Comhartha-Chuimhne Phadraic agus Liam Mhic Phiarais. The first page has a photograph of Patrick Pearse.
Flier and subscription card for the St. Enda’s School purchase fund fundraising ‘to return the School to The Hermitage, Rathfarnham’. At foot of second page ‘Signed by F. Murphy and E. Bulfin, Hon. Secs.; Joseph MacDonagh and Rev. Eugene Nevin, C.P. Hon. Treas’. At top right side: ‘St. Enda’s College, Oakley Road, Ranelagh, Dublin’. The text is mainly in English with a small portion in Irish. Published in Dublin by The Gaelic Press. Twenty signatures are extant on the subscription portion of the item.
James Pearse was born in London on 8 December 1839. A gifted sculptor, he came to Ireland in about 1860. In the early 1870s he formed a partnership with Patrick J. O’Neill specialising in monumental works which had its workshop on Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street) in Dublin. This partnership was dissolved in about 1878. Between 1880 and 1891 Pearse worked in partnership with his foreman Edward Sharp (who was also from England). Following the dissolution of this partnership, Pearse ran his own monumental sculpture business in the Irish capital. Pearse married twice. By his second wife, Margaret Brady, whom he married in October 1877, he had two daughters and two sons. Pearse was largely self-educated. As a bibliophile, he was an avid reader and embraced rationalist thinking and scientific method. Although Pearse was nominally a Catholic (he converted to the religion in about 1869), evidence suggests that he was an atheist. He was an avid supporter of the radical English politician and atheist propagandist Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891) and wrote several tracts for various secularist publications under the pseudonym ‘Humanitas’. Influenced by the strongly nationalist opinions of his wife, Pearse was also a supporter of Irish Home Rule. He died suddenly on 5 September 1900 in Birmingham while on a visit to relations. After his death, the family business was carried on for a few years under the name James Pearse & Sons by his younger son, the sculptor William Pearse (1881-1916), with some help from his elder son, Patrick Pearse (1879-1916). Both were executed for their part in the 1916 Rising. The collection includes correspondence (including letters to James Pearse from Charles Bradlaugh, Annie Besant and other prominent secularist and atheist activists) and financial and photographic records relating to his monumental sculpture business.
Letters to James Pearse from a Mr. Humphreys, ‘The National Reformer’, 20 Circus Road, St. John’s Wood, London. The letters to a manuscript sent by Pearse for possible publication. Humphreys affirms that Charles Bradlaugh ‘has been so much occupied with the litigation that he has not yet had time to examine’ the manuscript (29 December 1889).
