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The subseries comprises a small collection of material relating to Roger Casement, a humanitarian, diplomat, and revolutionary. Born in Dublin on 1 September 1864, Casement was famous for his reports and activities highlighting human rights abuses in the Congo and Peru. He worked in Africa for commercial interests and later in the British diplomatic service. He was knighted in 1911 for his investigations into colonial atrocities. His consular investigation into crimes in the Congo eventually led him to adopt an Irish republican and radical separatist political outlook. After the outbreak of the First World War, he sought to obtain German military aid for a rebellion in Ireland against British rule. Casement believed that an Irish insurrection would be defeated unless it received substantial assistance from Germany, and when it became clear that adequate military help would not be forthcoming, he decided to travel to Ireland and try to prevent the planned rebellion from taking place. Shortly before the Easter Rising, he landed at Banna Strand in County Kerry. He was quickly arrested by the authorities. Stripped of his knighthood and other honours, he was subsequently convicted and hanged for treason in Pentonville Prison in London on 3 August 1916.

The subseries also includes some material relating to Robert Monteith (1879-1956), a former British army soldier and Irish nationalist. In late 1915 Monteith travelled to Berlin to assist Casement in recruiting an Irish brigade from among Irish prisoners-of-war held in Germany. He accompanied Casement to Ireland in April 1916. Monteith avoided capture and spent six months on the run including a period when he was hidden by Capuchin friars in Rochestown in County Cork. He subsequently escaped to the United States working in disguise as a sailor on a merchant vessel. Montieth returned to Ireland in May 1947. However, his residence in Ireland proved to be a short one. Monteith returned to the United States in 1953 and he died there on 18 February 1956. Fr. Senan Moynihan OFM Cap., the editor of ‘The Capuchin Annual’, was a close acquaintance of Monteith, and the friar seemingly compiled this material for several articles on Casement’s life and career which he published in the periodical.

The subseries comprises a small collection of correspondence and family papers relating to William Woodlock (1832-1890), a barrister, and Dublin Police Court Magistrate.

William Woodlock was a member of a prominent and well-connected middle-class Catholic family. His grandfather was William Paul Woodlock (c.1780-1834). Originally a native of Roscrea in County Tipperary, in 1798 he moved to Dublin where he established a successful hardware business. One of his sons, Bartholomew Woodlock (1819-1902), was an influential Catholic clergyman, the founder of All Hallows College in Dublin (1842), a founding member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Ireland (1844), and the second rector (1861-79) of the Catholic University of Ireland (now University College Dublin). He also served as Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise from 1879 to 1895. Bartholomew Woodlock’s sister Joanna Woodlock married (1829) the eminent Irish physician Dominic Corrigan (1802-1880). Bartholomew’s brother Thomas Woodlock married (1830) Ellen Mahony (1811-1884), a renowned philanthropist and Catholic charity worker who helped establish the Children’s Hospital on Buckingham Street in Dublin in 1872 (now Temple Street Children’s Hospital). The Reverend Francis Sylvester Mahony (1804-1866) or ‘Father Prout’, the well-known priest, writer, and humourist, was an elder brother of Ellen Woodlock.

William Woodlock was born in Dublin in 1832. He was the son of William Woodlock (1801-1883) and Catherine Woodlock (née Teeling). The elder William was a lawyer and an associate of the nationalist politician Daniel O’Connell. His son William was educated at the Jesuit College in Fribourg and was afterwards a gold medallist in oratory at Trinity College, Dublin. He was called to the Bar during Trinity Term in 1855. He was later appointed a magistrate to the Dublin Police Court. He worked from offices at 13 Hardwicke Place, and later at 15 Mountjoy Square in Dublin. He married Frances Dillon (c.1832-1916) on 4 February 1865. They had one son (Henry Woodlock). William Woodlock was a devout Catholic. He was also a keen scholar and linguist, contributing several articles to the Jesuit devotional magazine, ‘The Irish Monthly’. William Woodlock died (suddenly) in Dublin on 12 June 1890 (aged 58). His funeral was celebrated by his uncle, Bishop Bartholomew Woodlock, and he was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.

The content of this small collection is eclectic and includes family correspondence, photographs, ephemera, and writings pertaining to several generations of the Woodlock family of Dublin. Aside from records directly relating to the legal career of William Woodlock (1832-1890), the collection also includes documents pertaining to his siblings, and to his uncle Bishop Bartholomew Woodlock (1819-1902), and to other Catholic religious connected to the Woodlock family (particularly religious sisters of the Society of the Sacred Heart). A small amount of material relating to Thomas F. Woodlock (1866-1945), a Dublin-born economist who emigrated to the United States in 1892, is also extant. Thomas F. Woodlock was appointed editor of the ‘Wall Street Journal’ in 1905. Thomas F. Woodlock was the elder brother of the Irish Jesuit priest Fr. Francis Woodlock SJ (1871-1940), and a grandnephew of Bishop Bartholomew Woodlock (1819-1902).

Fr. Senan Moynihan OFM Cap., the editor of ‘The Capuchin Annual’, was responsible for compiling this collection, presumably for research purposes.

The subseries comprises a small collection of papers relating to the Irish Catholic priest and novelist Canon Patrick Sheehan.

Sheehan was born in Mallow in County Cork on 17 March 1852. He was educated at St. Colman’s College in Fermoy. He studied for the priesthood in St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth, County Kildare (1869-75). Sheehan was ordained on 18 April 1875 for the Cloyne diocese and sent on mission to England, where he served in Plymouth and Exeter. He returned to Ireland in 1877 to take up a curacy in his native Mallow. He was appointed parish priest of Doneraile in County Cork in July 1895. In 1903 he was appointed to the Cloyne diocesan chapter; hence he is most frequently referred to as ‘Canon Sheehan of Doneraile’. He was a prolific and successful author, writing a series of articles and essays on a variety of topics, and several novels, including ‘Geoffrey Austin, student’ (1895) and ‘The triumph of failure’ (1898). His most popular work was ‘My new curate’, published in 1900. Much of his writing centred on the issues faced by priests engaged in parochial work in rural Ireland. Sheehan took a keen interest in promoting modern agricultural methods, especially in tillage and dairy farming. He held weekly meetings with his parishioners in Doneraile and advised them in negotiations with their landlords following the passage of Land Purchase Act (Wyndham Act) in 1903. Sheehan also maintained a life-long friendship with the agrarian agitator William O’Brien (1852-1928). Canon Sheehan was diagnosed as suffering from cancer in 1910. Following a lengthy residence at the South Infirmary in Cork, he died on 5 October 1913. He was buried at the entrance to his church in Doneraile. A bronze statue of Canon Sheehan by Francis William Doyle Jones (1873-1938) was unveiled not far from his grave in October 1925.

Fr. Senan Moynihan OFM Cap., the editor of ‘The Capuchin Annual’, was interested in Canon Sheehan’s literary career. Much of the material listed here was compiled for a special supplement marking the centenary of Canon Sheehan’s birth published in ‘The Capuchin Annual’ in 1952. A good portion of the original material was seemingly acquired by Fr. Senan from Presentation Sisters who resided in Doneraile and who were acquainted with Canon Sheehan during his lifetime.

The subseries comprises a small collection of papers of Frank Fahy, a revolutionary, Irish language activist, teacher, and politician. Born in County Galway in 1879, Fahy was a founding member of the Irish Volunteers and an active member of Conradh na Gaeilge (Gaelic League). He married Anna Barton (1885-1974), a Kerry-born Cumann na mBan activist, in 1908. He worked as a teacher in St. Vincent’s College, Castleknock, Dublin (1906-21). As a captain in the 1st Battalion of the Dublin Brigade of the Volunteers, he commanded the contingent that occupied the Four Courts during the 1916 Rising. He was subsequently sentenced to ten years in prison and spent terms in several British jails. He was released in the general amnesty of June 1917, and was later involved in the reorganisation of the Volunteer movement. He went on to have a long career in politics, serving as a Teachta Dála for thirty-five years, first for Sinn Féin and later as a member of Fianna Fáil. He was elected Ceann Comhairle of Dáil Éireann in 1932. He resigned as Ceann Comhairle on health grounds in 1951. He died in Dublin on 12 July 1953.

This section includes records of community meetings held in the Capuchin Friary, Church Street, Dublin.

This section contains mainly legal documents including various types of deeds of title including leases, mortgages, wills, property abstracts, searches and financial documents. The section also includes correspondence from solicitors engaged in legal work connected with the conveyance of property. The material is divided into various sections relating to the location of the plots of ground to which the document refers.

A Capuchin chapel has stood on Church Street from at least 1720. The present-day Church of St. Mary of the Angels was designed James Joseph McCarthy (1817-1882) in a decorated Gothic style. McCarthy was also responsible for St. Saviour’s Dominican Church on Dominick Street in Dublin (also constructed in the fourteenth-century Gothic style), Mount Argus Church in Dublin, Maynooth College Chapel, and parish churches in Celbridge and Kilcock in County Kildare. The foundation stone for St. Mary of the Angels was laid by the Most Rev. Paul Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin, on 12 June 1868. The sermon for the occasion was preached by the celebrated Dominican preacher, Fr. T.A. Burke OP (1830-1883). The building was constructed under the supervision of the architect and was completed in 1881. The builders were Hammond of Drogheda. Fr. Daniel Patrick O’Reilly OSFC (1831-1894) was responsible for the raising of funds for the church’s construction and adornment. Two side-altars, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and to St. Francis, were installed in 1876. They were the work of Farrell and Sons of North Gloucester Street Lower (now Seán McDermott Street). Their most famous works in Dublin are the monuments to Archbishop John Troy and Cardinal Cullen in the Pro-Cathedral on Marlborough Street, and the statues of Sir John Grey and William Smith O’Brien on O’Connell Street. This section includes records relating to the construction and maintenance of the Sacred Heart Chapel which was built as an aisle church in 1908-9. This chapel was later enclosed and converted into a large sacristy.