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.
A photographic print of Constance Markievicz speaking at a demonstration in Kilkenny on 19 July 1917. Markievicz was speaking at an event held in support of the election campaign of the Sinn Féin candidate W.T. Cosgrave.
A photograph of Fr. Dominic O’Connor OFM Cap. (right) and Fr. Stanislaus Kavanagh OFM Cap. (second from left) with two unidentified republicans in Freemasons’ Hall (or ‘Masonic Hall’) on Molesworth Street in Dublin. The two Capuchin friars visited the Hall following its seizure by anti-Treaty republicans in April 1922.
A postcard print of the attendees at the first sitting of the First Dáil on 21 January 1919. The names of the individuals are printed (in Irish) under the image.
A postcard print of the attendees at a sitting of the First Dáil on 10 April 1919. The names of the individuals are printed (in Irish) under the image.
An illustration by Seán O’Connor (also known as John ‘Blimey’ O’Connor), a London-born republican prisoner at Tintown No. 3 Camp at the Curragh in County Kildare. The drawing is dated July 1923 and is titled ‘Frongoch’, a reference to the well-known internment camp in North Wales in which O’Connor and nearly two thousand Irish prisoners were detained following the 1916 Rising.
A postcard depicting the so-called ‘Ramillies Flag’ captured by soldiers of the Irish Brigade fighting for France at the Battle of Ramillies (23 May 1706). The Irish Brigade was comprised of soldiers of the defeated Irish Jacobite army who arrived in France in an event known as the ‘Flight of the Wild Geese’. The Battle of Ramillies (fought near a small village in what is now Belgium) was a significant Anglo-Dutch victory (led by John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough) over a combined French and Spanish force. Despite their defeat, an Irish officer managed to capture the remains of an English flag, referred to in the Irish captioned postcard as a ‘Bhratach Shasanach’. The flag remnant shows a gold harp on a pale blue background. It was subsequently presented to a community of Irish Benedictine nuns residing in the town of Ypres. It is now held by the Benedictine community resident in Kylemore Abbey in County Galway.
