Letter from the Most Reverend Henry Henry, Bishop of Down and Connor, to [Fr. Mark McDonnell OSFC], referring to a request made by one of his Belfast priests to establish a Boys’ Brigade similar to the one founded on Church Street. Archbishop Henry asks for a copy of the rules and inquires whether ‘the results produced would justify the expenditure of time and trouble and I suppose funds’.
An unsigned draft letter to Fr. Benignus Gannon, Provincial Minister of the Order of Friars Minor, enclosing copies of the preliminary rules and constitution of the Catholic Boys’ Brigade. The author requests ‘a statement as to how far your Order on Merchants’ Quay, Dublin, is identified with the said “Catholic Boys’ Brigade” …’. Reference is also made to the need for the three Capuchin friars identified as clerical trustees of the organisation to sign over their trusts.
Letters from William Mooney & Sons, solicitors, 16 Fleet Street, Dublin, to Fr. Mark McDonnell OSFC regarding the possession of properties held by John Butterly in May Lane and their transfer to the lay trustees of the Catholic Boys’ Brigade, Dublin.
Minutes of two meetings of the Catholic Boys’ Brigade Committee, Church Street, referring to the payments of subscription fees and the tenders for the installation of railing outside the Brigade Hall.
A photographic print of individuals praying outside Brixton Prison in London during Terence MacSwiney’s hunger strike. The caption refers to the persons as ‘two Irish sympathizers’. The image is credited to Wide World Photos.
A Dublin Fire Brigade tender near the Four Courts following the assault on the building at the start of the Civil War on 1 July 1922. A manuscript caption on the reverse of the print reads ‘Rebel garrison surrenders / Four Courts in flames after great explosion / the Four Courts, the republican fortress in Dublin, unconditionally surrendered to the Free State troops yesterday, and the garrison of about 150 are now in Mountjoy Prison / Photograph shows a fire engine at work’.
A postcard print of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington. The caption reads ‘Arrested on Easter Monday 1916, and shot without trial at Portobello Barracks, April 26th’.
An image of Colm and Máire Gavan Duffy, the children of George Gavan Duffy (1882-1951), an Irish politician, jurist, and solicitor, and one of the signatories to the Anglo-Irish Treaty. As the caption notes, the two are ‘photographed in Paris [in] 1920 during their father’s term of office as representative of the Irish Republic’.
An invitation card for the first meeting of Dáil Éireann held on 7 January 1919. This inaugural meeting was held in private with only Sinn Féin members invited. The principal business conducted at this meeting was the election of a committee tasked with the drawing up of key documents to be discussed at the first sitting of the Dáil proper which was held on 21 January in the Round Room of the Mansion House in Dublin.
