More tea, Mr Lemass
A World War II era letter from Seán Lemass to a Cork politician and a series of 1960s posters from Mallow cinema house were unveiled by the National Library of Ireland this week.
The acquisitions were amongst 20,000 acquired by the National Library of Ireland (NLI) in 2022.
The letter from Minister Lemass to TP Dowdall TD is part of the Fawsitt-Dowdall Papers, a selection of correspondence, photographs, personal papers, and ephemera from Cork politicians Diarmuid Fawsitt; TP Dowdall; James C Dowdall and Jennie Dowdall, and their son, Finbarr Dowdall. The material dates from 1918 to 1975.
The Lemass letter offers an insight into the lobbying pressures on public figures of the time.
In 1941, Minister Lemass responded wryly to Deputy TP Dowdall, who had been pleading for an increase in his tea ration: “Keeping up with your correspondence is imposing a strain on the resources of my department. However, I feel I must write to you in reply to your representations concerning tea. If, as you say, you require 4 to 6 pints of liquid every day and won't drink whiskey, coffee, cocoa, milk, or even water, you are going to have a problem. I fear, however, that you will have to solve this problem by yourself.”
The posters from Central Cinema in Mallow show the popularity of cinema-going in the 1960s. The period represents one of the peaks of cinema in the social life of Ireland, just ahead of the advent of TV.
Other material collected this year by the NLI includes the Stanyhurst Grant of Arms, which dates from 1554 and is the earliest known Irish grant of arms; a hand-captioned photograph album from Elizabeth ‘Lollie’ Corbet Yeats, sister of WB Yeats, and political letters.
Acting Director of the NLI, Katherine McSharry said: “The job of collecting Ireland’s memory in every age, whether from the 16th century or 2022, is a year-round one for the team at the National Library of Ireland. Tens of thousands of items – books, newspapers, photographs, letters, websites and much more – are added to the NLI’s collections and catalogued every year.
“Some are acquired under legal deposit – the statutory requirement for a copy of all material published in Ireland to be deposited with certain libraries including the NLI – some are donated by individuals or organisations, and some are purchases,” she added.
The NLI’s work is funded from its annual grant from the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.