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Correspondence of Kathleen Murray, Honorary Secretary, Father Mathew Feis, mainly regarding requests from teachers and schools for Feis syllabuses, queries from adjudicators and letters of thanks to various sponsors. Includes a five-page typescript of a talk by Maurice Jacobson titled ‘The adjudicator and the music festival’. Other correspondents include the President of Father Mathew Hall.

Correspondence of Fr. Columbus Maher OSFC and other members of the Father Mathew Temperance Hall Committee, Church Street. Correspondents include Joseph Kelly & Son, 66-7 Thomas Street; Walter Glynn Doolin, regarding seating, lighting and other furnishings for the Hall, F. G. Sullivan, The Square, Bantry, County Cork, regarding fund raising efforts for the Hall; T. Coghlan, 4 Harcourt Street, Dublin, concerning furnishings for the billiards and bagatelle room in the Hall; John Edmundson, 33-6 Capel Street, regarding the supply of footlights for the Hall. The file also includes a letter from Mary McHardy, 2 Bellebue Terrace, Edinburgh, offering to perform a recital in the Hall (5 Sept. 1890).

Letters from solicitors regarding the potential purchase of 151 Church Street (part of the Father Mathew Hall property) by clients who hold the said premises under a lease made on 7 Sept. 1920 from Fr. Peter Bowe OFM Cap. and others to Robert Kavanagh for the term of 150 years at the nominal rent of 5d per year.

Correspondence from insurance companies mainly regarding public liability policies for the hiring by third parties of Father Mathew Hall. The file includes letters from Legal & Commercial Ltd., 23 Clyde Road, Dublin 4; Church & General, Gael Scoil Colaiste-Mhuire, Parnell Square, Dublin 1; M.B. Fitzpatrick, Insurance Consultants, 94 Mount Prospect Avenue, Dublin 3. The issues referred to include claims for theft of cash and personal injury, and insurance cover for Feis trophies and cups.

Letter from Br. Daniel O’Brien OFM Cap., President, Father Mathew Hall, Church Street, to Fr. Dermot Lynch OFM Cap., Provincial Minister, enclosing a report from Kerrigan, Sheanon and Newman, quantity surveyors, Earlsfort Court, 16 Lower Hatch Street, Dublin 2, regarding a schedule of necessary refurbishment and repairs required to the Hall.

Letters regarding a dispute over the editorship of the temperance publication, 'The Father Mathew Record', also known as 'The Irish Home Journal'. The file includes a letter from Brian O’Higgins to Fr. Edwin Fitzgibbon OSFC, Provincial Minister, complaining about his dismissal as associate editor of the 'Record' by Fr. Joseph Fenlon OSFC who ‘desired to keep politics out of the Journal’. O’Higgins, a member of Sinn Féin, admits that he is ‘on what is known as “the run”’. With notes by Fr. Edwin regarding the proprietorship of the Journal, and the need to reserve the appointment of editor to the council of the Capuchin Franciscan Order in Ireland. Later, Fr. Joseph wrote to Fr. Edwin confirming his resignation from the Presidency of Father Mathew Hall and the temperance sodality. The file also includes a signed notice of a special meeting of the Hall Committee affirming that the ‘"Record" was started by Fr. Aloysius [Travers], President of the Hall … [and] that the Office of the Record was transferred to the Hall premises’. The committee members contended that the 'Record' magazine was the property of the committee ‘and that the Provincial Superiors acted without consideration of the circumstances when … they decided to take it over and have it conducted independently of the committee and its President’. (10 June 1920).

Correspondence relating to the financing, construction, fitting-out of Father Mathew Hall. Most of the letters refer to estimates for interior furnishing and the fitting out of the Hall. Correspondents include: The National Bank Ltd.; John L. Smallman, sanitary and gas engineer; Henry Kerrill & Sons, engineers, coppersmiths and electricians; Edmundson’s Furnishing & Engineering Co.; Walter Glynn Doolin, 20 Ely Place, Dublin, secretary of the Father Mathew Hall building committee; the Patriotic Assurance Company, 2 College Green, Dublin.

Correspondence relating to the progress of work on the stairs in the St. Brigid’s Hall extension. Correspondents include Edward Murphy, builder and contractor, E.G. O’Neill, architect, 82 Taney Road, Dundrum, Thomas Garland, consulting engineer, 40 Upper Fitzwilliam Street, and Fr. Virgilus Murtagh OFM Cap. With a specification for the said works.

Correspondence relating to the hiring of Father Mathew Hall mostly for rehearsals and performances of theatre shows and plays, and for use as a polling station. The file includes letters from the Dublin Grand Opera Society (DGOS); the British Federation of Festivals for Music, Dance and Speech; the Irish Life Dublin Theatre Festival; Dublin Corporation (regarding the hiring of the Hall for an exhibition in connection with the North King Street Improvement Scheme); Christ Church Cathedral Group; Opera Theatre Company, 18 St. Andrew Street, Dublin 2. The correspondents include Br. Kevin Crowley OFM Cap., President, and John Hanley, caretaker, Father Mathew Hall.

Correspondence of Fr. Columbus Murphy OSFC, President, Father Mathew Hall, regarding demands for payments of income tax. The file includes demand notices and letters from the Inspector of Taxes. In April 1938 Fr. Columbus wrote ‘The Father Mathew Hall is the social centre attached to the Sacred Thirst Sodality. Since 1891 it has provided a club for the people of the district acting as a powerful factor in uplifting these people and encouraging temperance amongst them. In providing for these people decent and safe pastimes and entertainment we produce each year plays, concerts etc the artists in which are drawn from the members of our hall and are of course members of the Temperance Association Sodality. The Hall is heavily in debt and any profits are applied to reduce this debt’. Fr. Columbus later admitted that a good many of the shows staged in the Hall are run at a loss and that the ‘Feis is usually a financial failure – but it is doing good work so we continue’.