Correspondence regarding a legal dispute arising out of a lease of 48 North King Street offered by the Capuchin friars to Patrick Macken. On 14 Dec. 1871, Fr. Daniel Patrick O’Reilly OSFC wrote to Macken offering him a lease of the said premises at the yearly rent of £38. Correspondents include Terence O’Reilly, solicitor, Patrick Macken and Henry Oldham, solicitor, 42 Fleet Street, Dublin. A note from Fr. Seraphin Van Damme OSFC is also included in the file. It reads ‘Make Mr. T. O’Reilly hasten with the maps and valuation of N. King Street properties and N. Brunswick Street to get the faculty from Rome for selling them’.
Letters and related records relating to the lease of Father Mathew Hall, Cork, by the Everyman Group Theatre Company. The agreement with the Company specified a lease for five seasons (October-April) commencing in November 1972 with a ‘view to increasing the occupancy of the Hall’. The Everyman Playhouse Ltd. agreed to have exclusive use and management of the Hall except during the period when the Feis Maitiú would be held. The file includes letters from Fr. Senan Dooley OFM Cap., Edmund Hayes, solicitor, draft and copy agreements re the lease and reports of the meetings of the representatives appointed by the Capuchin Provincial Definitory to negotiate with the Everyman Company. With a newspaper cutting from the 'Evening Echo' (6 Oct. 1972) titled ‘The Realisation of a Theatre “Dream”’ referring to the co-operative spirit of the Capuchin friars who agreed to a lease of the Hall ‘that covers the auditorium, offices and dressing rooms, but not the recreational rooms on the top floor’. The file also includes a copy page from 'The Father Mathew Record', 49, no. 12 (Dec. 1956), p. 7, giving a history of the Hall in Cork.
The letters relate to the purchase of the ground rent of a property known as ‘Morrissey’s, 17 Friary Street’, from AIB Bank by the FMC Trust for £1,000 and to the proposed purchase of the said premises by Kilkenny Corporation. Correspondents include John Lanigan & Nolan, Abbey Bridge, Dean Street, Kilkenny, Fr. Leo Cullen OFM Cap., the Town Clerk’s Office, Kilkenny Corporation, and the Charitable Commissioners Office. A letter from John Lanigan & Nolan refers to the property as being let to tenants called ‘the Floods … [comprising] two Alms Houses i.e. the old “Munster Arms” at an annual rent of £11.50 due half yearly’.
Correspondence (with invoices) of Fr. Berchmans McCarthy OFM Cap., guardian, Ard Mhuire Friary, with A.H. Masser Ltd., Kylemore Road, Dublin 10, re the installation of a washing machine.
Letters to James Pearse from Annie Besant, Freethought Publishing Company, 63 Fleet Street, and Oatlands, Mortimer Road, St. John’s Wood, London. The letters refer to Pearse’s efforts to have his article published by the Freethought Publishing Company. Many of the letters relate to Pearse’s account with the publishing company and to progress of sales of the publication. Besant’s letter of 29 January 1883 states that Pearse can dedicate his article to Charles Bradlaugh. The letter (13 March 1883) reads ‘I send you the MS of “Heaven”, the printer having found it after considerable trouble. The other MS has disappeared in the bottomless pit of used copy’. Other letters suggest the titles of Pearse’s work are ‘Thoughts or Heaven’ and ‘House of Commons’. In a letter from Pearse to Besant (25 May 1884), he expresses his wish to use the word ‘Humanitas’ rather than his name in any published report. A letter (4 October 1884) from Besant reads ‘your pamphlet, issued anonymously would not sell in large numbers, and you would certainly lose. Further, Socialism is not a selling subject. Even Mr. Bradlaugh’s pamphlet against [it] … have not sold so largely as the other issues of the same series by the same writers’.
Letters to James Pearse from Arthur Bonner, 20 Circus Road, St. John’s Wood, London, providing an estimate for the printing of Pearse’s manuscript titled ‘Socialism’. Includes an Invoice from the Freethought Publishing Company to Pearse for the printing of one thousand copies of ‘Socialism a curse’. The letters (from 1889) refer to the poor health of Charles Bradlaugh (1883-1891).
Correspondence of J.H.J. Edgeley, chief boiler engineer, and H.C. Brown, chief engineer, British General Insurance Company, Ocean Buildings, Cross Key Court, Copthall Avenue, London, with the guardians of the Church Street community, regarding liabilities and insurance for repairs to the Friary’s boiler and water system. With covers.
Correspondence of James Pearse with Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891), 20 Circus Road, St. John’s Wood, London. The letters refer to various publications on atheist and secularist issues by Bradlaugh and to Pearse’s dealings with the former’s publishing house. In a letter (29 September 1884) Bradlaugh wrote ‘As we have started a completely equipped printing office at 67 Fleet Street in addition to our publishing department we shall be pleased if at any time you can favour us with any commands for printing’. A copy letter from Pearse to Bradlaugh (5 December 1884) noted that it has been ‘six weeks since my pamphlet “Socialism a curse” was issued from your office’. A letter (4 July 1885) from Bradlaugh reads ‘I have heard some of your pamphlets [are] highly spoken of by friends. I am glad you liked the Birmingham meeting’. A letter (2 July 1885) from Pearse to Bradlaugh reads ‘I am placed in a very paradoxical position – an image maker by profession and an image breaker by inclination’. He adds ‘I have been dangling – to use a scriptural phrase – between Hell and Heaven for the last twenty five years of my life: only that I reverse the meaning of the words: - everything appertaining to ecclesiasticism I regard as the former; and to be free of which, I regard as the latter’. A letter (7 July 1885) from Pearse reads ‘The fact is I am extremely disgusted with what I read in this morning’s papers, especially the action of the ungrateful Irish Party’. A letter (16 Sept. 1889) from Bradlaugh reads ‘it is quite impossible for me to print in the “National Reformer” anything which William Stewart Ross prints in the “Agnostic Review” as he has ‘circulated the very vilest libels about me’. In a letter (17 Sept. 1889) Pearse writes ‘I have written a letter to the “Agnostic Journal” upon [the] same subject (agnosticism and atheism) principally because my name was mentioned therein’.
