Pearse items donated to museum

Pádraig Pearse's chequebook and a number of his cashed cheques are part of some significant memorabilia donated to the National Museum of Ireland.

The items will form part of a major exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts and History, Collins Barracks, to mark the 90th anniversary of the 1916 Rising next year.

The documents include nine proof copies of a prospectus for shares in Scoil Éanna, or St Enda's school, which the Rising leader established in Rathfarnham, Dublin, as well as a copy of the memorandum and articles of association for the school.

Two large bank lodgement books are also among the items and, like the chequebook, are from the Hibernian Bank.

The chequebook, from the bank's Lower Sackville Street branch, contained 27 cashed cheques, including one for £6 made out to Mrs Pearse, Pádraig Pearse's mother, and one for £15 to Clerys department store. They were signed by Pádraig Pearse and Stiofáin Baireád, one of the school's directors. The cheques were all cashed in mid-1912.

A number of bank forms are also among the documents, including a slip that states one account had a balance of £11, four shillings and three pence.

A separate item in the museum's possession which will also form part of the exhibition is a Sinn Féin minutes book of its meetings between 1909 and 1912. It includes the signatures of Sinn Féin's founder Arthur Griffith and Countess Markievicz, among others.

The museum was approached about the Pearse documents by Ita Kavanagh, a friend of the donor Áine Ó Suilleabháin, whose late husband Donnchadh Ó Suilleabháin, a former secretary and president of Conradh na Gaeilge, had acquired them.

Director of the museum Dr Pat Wallace described the chequebook, bank books and school prospectus as "very significant and very relevant just now because they can be included in the 1916 exhibition".

The prospectus copies were proofed and corrected by different people, including Pearse. The prospectus was prepared to offer shares to establish St Enda's school for boys and St Ita's school for girls and to put them "in a thoroughly sound position".

It had a capital provision of £8,000 and shareholders were asked to buy shares for £1.

The schools were intended to provide a secondary education that was "Irish in complexion, bilingual in method, and of a high modern type generally".

Dr Wallace said the prospectus proofs showed the level of Pearse's involvement in the school, including his hands-on role in running it on a day-to-day basis.

One of the entries in the Sinn Féin minutes book for 1911 refers to a call for an inquiry into "police action" outside the City Hall.

The entry says that if nothing resulted from the demand for an inquiry, a conference should be set up by various nationalist bodies "for the purpose of forming a vigilance committee to protect the citizens from a repetition of the treatment meted out to them by the police on recent occasions".

The exhibition will open during Easter week next year. It will include weapons, uniforms and other items among the museum's collection, some of which were acquired as early as 1927.