Text of a poem or song signed by Fr. Dominic O’Connor OFM Cap. and dated ‘9/4/4/20’. Fr. Dominic occasionally used the republican calendar to denote his years: 1920 was the fourth year of Republic founded in 1916. With a phonetic aid to pronunciation.
Flier for a commemorative event organised by the Corporation of Cork to mark the deaths of Tomás Mac Curtain and Terence MacSwiney, former Lord Mayors of the city.
‘Charles Letts’s Small Octavo Diary and Note Book’. A daily record diary of Fr. Stanislaus Kavanagh OFM Cap., Church Street, Dublin. Routine entries record the ministries and day-to-day activities of various Capuchin friars. The diary also chronicles the detention and trial of Fr. Dominic O’Connor OFM Cap. An entry on 5 Jan. 1921 reads: ‘Fr. Dominic OSFC notified today in Kilmainham Prison of his approaching Court Martial and told to see his solicitor’. Other entries in the diary refer to the activities of British military forces in the wake of an upsurge in Republican attacks. On 16 Jan. Fr. Stanislaus wrote ‘The front portion of our Church and whole street closed with barbed wire. … This was done in early hours of morning. Many unable to go to Mass to day. House to house search by military. Show’s the respect of the English government for the Lord’s day’. Fr. Dominic’s transfer ‘under heavy escort’ to Kingstown for the boat to take him to Wormwood Scrubs Prison was recorded on 31 Jan. 1921. On 13 February, Fr. Stanislaus noted that the Capuchin Friary in Kilkenny was ‘raided by the Black and Tans in their usual rough fashion’. A loose page in the file summarizes some key events in 1921. Reference is made to the court martial in Kilmainham Jail of Fr. Dominic O’Connor OFM Cap. Other events mentioned in the 1921 summary include military raids in Kilkenny (13 February), the imposition of a curfew order (4 March), the executions of the Irish Volunteers (Thomas Bryan, Frank Flood, Bernard Ryan, Patrick Doyle, Patrick Moran and Thomas Whelan) in Mountjoy Jail on 14 March, the death of Archbishop William Walsh (9 April), and the burning of the Custom House in Dublin following an attack by the Irish Republican Army (25 May).
Copy speech made by Terence MacSwiney on the occasion of his election as Lord Mayor of Cork after the assassination of Tomás Mac Curtain. The final page is signed ‘Toirdhealbhach Mac Suibhne’. MacSwiney noted that the ‘circumstances of the vacancy in the office of Lord Mayor inevitably governed the filling of it; and I come here more as a soldier stepping into the breach than an administrator to fill the post in the municipality’. In Irish and English. With Lord Mayor’s Prayer. A message to Republican prisoners on hunger-strike. The text begins: ‘To my Comrades in Cork. On your 57th day I greet you! …’.
Copy note ‘taken from a postcard (blood-stained) taken from the breast pocket of a dead German soldier by young Canniffe of Barrick St., Cork – Dec. 1914’. It is added ‘The p[ost] c[ard] was sent to Canniffe’s father by young Canniffe’. In German.
A copy letter from Fr. Edwin Fitzgibbon OFM Cap. to the Most Rev. Daniel Cohalan, Bishop of Cork, claiming that he knew nothing of Fr. Dominic O'Connor's appointment as chaplain to the IRA until his attention was drawn to a report in the local newspapers.
Copy cable from Diarmuid Lynch (1878-1950), New York, to Terence MacSwiney, City Hall, Cork, confirming that ‘Fogarty got no commission whatever from and was not authorised to act or speak for myself or friends. Advise Dublin’. Annotation reads: ‘Received 16 July 1920’. Copy in the hand of Liam de Róiste; With [copy] letter from Liam de Róiste (1882-1959) to Diarmuid Lynch acknowledging Lynch’s cable referring to the aforementioned Fogarty. In Irish.
Photocopies of letters from Capt. Rev. Dominic O’Connor OFM Cap., 21 Stationary Hospital, Salonika Forces, M[acedonian] E[xpeditionary] F[orce], and the Capuchin Friary, Fr. Mathew Quay, Cork, to his sister, [Sister Constantine O’Connor?], explaining his reasons for becoming an army chaplain. He wrote: ‘Well someone had to do the work and when those who had done all the recruiting were too cowardly to go there was nothing left except to have us who were anti-recruiters go and help the souls of the soldiers the others had sent out’. He later referred to conditions for the troops he is ministering to: ‘We have had more than half the troops down with malaria, dysentery, sandfly fever etc. and it is fortunate that there was no fighting here’. [c. 1915]. In reference to the political situation he later wrote: ‘There is no use in saying anything about the political situation. England seems set upon forcing conscription on us. And the Irish Nation is equally or rather more determined to oppose it. God protect us!’.
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.