File 5 - Research by Fr. Nessan Shaw on Father Mathew

Notes by Fr. Nessan Shaw OFM Cap. on the life of Fr. Mathew and events connected with the temperance campaign. The file also includes some material relating to the general history of the Capuchins in Ireland. Includes:
• Note re the foundation of the Total Abstinence Association on Halston Street by Fr. Columbus Maher OSFC in c.1880. The note also refers to the foundation of The Father Mathew Record (1908), the Father Mathew Feis (1909), the opening of Father Mathew Park, Fairview, Dublin, by Fr. Aloysius Travers OSFC on 10 April 1910, and the establishment of the Young Irish Crusaders in 1909.
• Letter from the Public Record Office of Ireland to Fr. Nessan regarding a document (1840) in the Chief Secretary Office’s papers referring to an application from the Irish Temperance Union for the use of Smithfield Penitentiary. The letter reads ‘The application is based on the fact that the number of prisoners detained in the Richmond Bridewell was reduced from 313 in September 1839 to 191 in November 1840 “between these two periods the Temperance Reformation had greatly extended itself throughout the city”’. The letter is dated 15 Feb. 1955.
• Photostat copy from Fr. Thomas C. Butler OSA, The Augustinians in Cork, 1280-1985 (1986). The extracts refer to the presence of the Capuchin friars in Cork from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.
• Photostat copy from Desmond Bowen, 'Paul Cardinal Cullen and the shaping of modern Irish Catholicism' (Dublin, 1983). The extracts refer to the relationship between Cardinal Cullen and the temperance campaigner.
• Notes by Fr. Nessan re places visited by Fr. Mathew in support of his temperance campaign in 1842.
• Letter from Michael O’Connell to Fr. Nessan re the preaching of Fr. Mathew at the dedication of Blackrock parish church in Dublin in Sept. 1845. The letter is dated 25 Jan. 1992.
• Note titled ‘The façade and spire of Holy Trinity Church, Cork’. The note provides a general history of the completion of work on the church for the centenary of Fr. Mathew’s birth and also refers to the blessing of the new bell in the church on 26 Apr. 1896. The note reads ‘Having “baptized” the Bell, the Bishop [of Cork] rounded it, being followed by the sponsors Mr Humphrey Donovan (the donor) and Miss H. Donovan, his sister’.
• Note by Fr. Nessan titled ‘O’Connell and Repeal, 1840-47’.
• Cutting from 'The Standard', Dec. 1949, surveying various Catholic churches in Dublin. The article includes photographic prints of St. Michan’s Church, Halston Street. The article also refers to nearby Newgate Prison on Green Street. It reads ‘In 1863 the prison was substantially demolished and converted into fruit market which gave way, in 1893, to St. Michan’s Park, where the statue of Erin stands, with the plaques of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and the Sheares brothers on the pedestal’. The article also refers to the Capuchin chapel on Church Street. It reads ‘In 1720, they [the Capuchins] moved to Church Street, where their chapel in 1749 “had an Altar-piece showing the Crucifixion; though formerly it was a painting of Our Saviour taken down from the Cross, which piece is much esteemed by connoisseurs”. The Capuchin Church, in Church Street, of 1720, was taken down in 1868, and the present church was erected on its site and completed in 1881’.