Irish Volunteers, Galway City Corps

Identity Statement

Content & Structure

• Scope & Content: Irish Volunteers, Galway City Corps ↴

  File of material, primarily correspondence between the Irish Volunteers headquarters in 41 Kildare Street, Dublin and the Galway Corps, in particular regarding the split in the organisation and also requests for guns, also includes circulars and notices of meetings and agenda. Many of the National Council letters are signed by Liam Mellows. Includes for instance:
  – Membership card for Dr Walsh, Dominick Street, enrolled 21 June 1914.
  – A handwritten letter from Liam Mellows, Assistant Secretary, Headquarter’s Staff to the Galway Corps regarding ‘payment of expenses of Mr P. H. Pearse’s recent visit to your city’. (30 Aug 1914).
  – Letter from the Galway Electric Company Ltd regarding lighting the Shambles Barracks Yard (15 Sept 1914).
  – Correspondence (sub-file) relating to the action of Private W. G. Fogarty of “B” company in writing to the Dublin Press regarding the Volunteer military movement and the bid to protect himself from the ‘anti-enlistment speeches and the pro-German opinions of his Officers on parade’ (21 Sept 1914), and to ‘subjecting its chief officers to criticism contrary to military practices’ (18 Sept 1914).
  – A typed circular from the Provisional Committee of the Irish Volunteers recalling the establishment of the organisation 10 months earlier with the ‘sole purpose of securing and defending the Rights and Liberties of the Irish people’ and Redmond’s declaration that ‘it is the duty of the Irish Volunteers to take foreign service under a Government which is not Irish. He has made this announcement without consulting the Provisional Committee, the Volunteers themselves, or the people of Ireland to whose service alone they are devoted’. The Committee thus at its next meeting propose to call a convention to reaffirm the organisation’s Manifesto and also ‘To declare that Ireland cannot, with honour or safety, take part in foreign quarrels otherwise than through the free action of a National Government of her own’. It also rejects Mr Redmond ’s entitlement to ‘any place in the administration and guidance of the Irish Volunteer organisation’ (24 September 1914).
  – Also letter from various members to Martin McDonogh, Chairman Galway City Volunteers asking him to call a meeting to ascertain the financial standing of the Committee and to ‘re-constitute the Committee in accordance with the Policy outlined in Mr Redmond’s Manifesto’ (5 Oct 1914).
  – Includes several sheets of The Irish Volunteers Galway City Corps headed paper, and envelopes with the title printed on the bottom left hand corner.

• Appraisal Destruction ↴

  Permanent Retention

• Arrangement ↴

  Chronological

Conditions of Access & Use

Allied Materials

Descriptive Control Area