About


At Easter 1916, a small group of armed rebels staged an insurrection against British rule and declared an independent republic in Ireland. The insurgents were defeated after six days, but Irish politics was transformed by the Rising. In 1922 an independent Irish state emerged, but it soon had to contend with a bloody civil war.

Our small library, established in 1707 by an Anglican clergyman, was associated in the popular mind with the Union between Britain and Ireland. This exhibition uses artefacts and documents from our collections to trace the experience of religious and political minorities during the Irish revolution.


In the line of fire

The library was in the firing line during the 1916 Rising.

A force of rebels under Thomas MacDonagh seized Jacob’s biscuit factory some 200 yards from Marsh’s but there was relatively little fighting in the area, at least compared to the destruction seen in the area around O'Connell Street.

At the end of the week, MacDonagh formally surrendered to the commander of the British forces in the grounds of St Patrick’s Park, an event which would have been clearly visible from the library windows.

Thumb-Rising.jpg
The Record of the Irish Rebellion of 1916 (Dublin, 1916).
Eden Quay, Hopkins Corner
1916: The Sinn Fein Rebellion
(Belfast, 1916)
IT 29041916 OPEN A.jpg
Weekly Irish Times,
29 April-13 May 1916
invoicethumb.jpg
Invoices for repair of bullet damage to Marsh’s Library

Bullet Books

Significant damage was inflicted on the library on the morning of Sunday 30 April 1916.

A British machine gun located in the Iveagh Buildings on Bull Alley sprayed the building with bullets, shattering windows and damaging books.

Most of the damaged books had belonged to Élie Bouhéreau (1643–1719), a French refugee who was the 1st librarian of Marsh’s Library.

R5.4.34 flat 4A.jpg
The track of a bullet
7-R5.4.10 1A.jpg
Machine-gun damage
6___ Marshs 19162641.jpg
Bullet fragment inside a book
8-T3.4.38 A.jpg
Books damaged by rifle fire

Roger Casement

Roger Casement was a British diplomat and humanitarian who became an Irish republican activist.

He was tried and executed in London after being arrested when attempting to land guns and ammunition from Germany for the Easter Rising. Casement was a figure of international repute, but a campaign for clemency was severely undermined when the British government released his private diaries, which recorded his homosexual relationships.

Casement offers multiple facets of Irish identity: a Protestant, a humanitarian in the colonies, a gay man, a republican revolutionary, and, finally, a Catholic convert before his death. These items are taken from our Benjamin Iveagh Library at Farmleigh House.

9-Casement 1864 10 1A.jpg
Letter from Roger Casement
11-Casement 1059 4 2A.jpg
Letter from Roger Casement
10-Casement postcard 1A.jpg
Postcard from Roger Casement
first-page-emmot.png
Letter from Lady Constance Emmott

Jessica Taylor

In 1916, Jessica Taylor was a middle-class teenager living in north county Dublin. Her diary, here made public for the first time, was kept in a series of school jotters.

At the time, the Easter Rising was deeply unpopular with Dublin citizens of all backgrounds. Jessica Taylor was no exception. She was appalled at the destruction of the city centre, especially O’Connell Street, which was in ‘really pityable’ condition.

13-Jessica Taylor 1A.jpg
Diary of Jessica Taylor
15-Jessica Taylor Autograph 1A.jpg
Autograph album
soldier.png
Memo book: Photograph of soldier
Postcard thumbnail
'We will not have Home Rule!'

Librarians at War

Four members of staff at Marsh’s served in the British army during the Great War, of whom one was killed at Suvla Bay. The library’s story was not unusual. More than 200,000 Irishmen fought in the British army during the First World War.

The initial military response to the Easter Rising relied heavily on Irish units stationed in Dublin. Reinforcements arrived from England on Tuesday, but more than a third of the ‘British’ troops who died during Easter Week were Irishmen.

Barker Memorial Records.jpg
Ireland’s Memorial Records 1914–1918 (Dublin, 1923)
18-Suvla Bay 1A.jpg
Henry Hanna, The Pals at Suvla Bay (Dublin, 1917)
19-TCD MISC A.jpg
T.C.D. [Miscellany], Special Trinity Number, June 1916
20- TCD MISC INSIDE 2A.jpg
‘Troops in Trinity College’, photograph from T.C.D. [Miscellany], June 1916

A Civil War Encounter

During the Irish Civil War, a young researcher visited Marsh’s Library only to be refused entry by a woman cleaning the front steps. She suspected he had come to burn the library or shoot the librarian.

Marsh’s Library may have felt especially vulnerable during the Civil War, as it was historically associated with the Anglican church. In an atmosphere of widespread destruction, Protestant institutions often perceived themselves to be particularly at risk.

21-ML11 A.jpg
'You're not getting in here!'
22- ML6.6 A.jpg
Caretaker’s duties, Marsh’s Library
23- ML4.2.4 1A (1).jpg
Fire insurance certificates
25- ACCOUNTS 16A (1).jpg
Compensation Claims

A New Script

The Irish Civil War forced people to address troubling questions of allegiance and self-definition, as shown by the items associated with William Burd and Dr Newport White.

Marsh’s Library itself was unsure of its relationship with the new state and went so far as to refuse to recognise the Chief Justice of the Irish Free State as a legitimate trustee of the library. This estrangement was not overcome until the early 1970s.

Changing of script, detail
William Burd is Ainm Dom
27-STAMP ALBUM SPREAD A.jpg
Stamping a New Identity
Collins.jpg
A Letter from Michael Collins, TD.
28 L ML3.4 L3A (2).jpg
The Chief Justice

Out in the Cold

This section considers two Irish revolutionaries from minority backgrounds who were ill-at-ease in post-independence Ireland.

The playwright Sean O’Casey was born in Dublin to a working-class Protestant family. In early life, he was drawn to nationalism, before becoming deeply involved with trade union and socialist causes in Dublin. His critique of nationalism in his plays drew angry protests. 

Estella Solomons was an important Irish artist of the early twentieth century. She was from a prominent Jewish family, and was a member of Cumann na mBan during the War of Independence before siding with anti-Treaty forces during the Civil War.

O Casey watercolours 3A.jpg
Costumes for 'The Plough and the Stars'
___ ESTELLA 1A.jpg
A Civil War Retreat?

Catalogue

This is an expanded, online version of an exhibition entitled ‘1916: Tales from the Other Side’ which was held in Marsh’s Library to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising. The printed catalogue of the exhibition contained short, introductory essays by Professor Eugenio Biagini of Cambridge University and Dr Jason McElligott of Marsh’s Library. You can see a digital copy of the catalogue here: the hard-copy catalogue is now sold out.

Credits

The original exhibition was curated by Dr Elaine Doyle and the online version has been curated by Ms Arantxa Meíja del Río, a history student at the University of Oviedo in Spain. Header video by Mr Alan Costello, BCFE. Site coded by Dr Sue Hemmens, Marsh’s Library, based on Omeka. We thank the copyright holders of images shown in this exhbition for their kind permission to use the material shown: for details see here. Marsh’s Library gratefully acknowledges the continuing support of the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

Contact The Library

Email: information@marshlibrary.ie

Phone: +353 1 4543511

See here for opening hours and directions.