Is this small-scale Proclamation copy one of the very first copies of the Original 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic?
While I was intrigued when I first discovered this small 380 x 250 mm copy of the original 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic in my grandfather’s Collection of 1916 memorabilia back in late 2015, I became even more interested when a well-known Dublin auctioneer told me in 2022 that people were only interested in the original Proclamations. Perhaps, as an auctioneer, it is to be expected that he was only interested in the monetary valuation, which he incorrectly assumed was what I was only interested in, but I was nonetheless very disappointed that he showed no interest in the historical significance of this document despite the fact that he was aware, because I told him, that this copy was identical to another half-scale copy in the O’Hegarty Collection in the Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas. So this newly discovered Proclamation copy in my grandfather’s collection is just one of two such known copies in the world but as an ”expert” on the period he could tell me very little about the history of the aged and very unusual Proclamation copy I was holding in front of him.
The Walton Collection small-scale Proclamation
Following the death of my grandfather, Martin Walton, in 1981 my father, Paddy Walton, had kept many of the rarer Irish history books from his extensive collection of Irish history books and much revolutionary memorabilia, and I discovered this rather old and worn document (now framed above) in my parent’s house in a very large folder in among original 1916 Posters of many of the leaders of the Rising printed by O'Loughlin, Murphy and Boland (including a rare limited edition 1916 lithograph on stone of Roger Casement signed by Colm Ó Lochlainn ), and a half a dozen original British Military posters posted in Dublin during and immediately after the Rising. Among some of the gems there was also an original 1916 “War News” pamphlet published by the Volunteers on the Tuesday 25th of the Rising , as well as virtually every national newspaper from the days and weeks following the Rising. There were many other original 1916 and War of Independence items, which are too many to mention here, but the small Procalamation was nestling in with a larger copy of the Proclamation (630 x 455mm)* on very old paper but in better condition than the small Proclamation copy albeit not as large as the original Proclamation (760 x 510mm) which we know was printed in Liberty Hall on the Sunday before the Rising.
So, who printed this smaller copy and when, and why do we know so little about it?
The possible answers to these questions have taken me on an fascinating journey, which continues to this day, particularly around the more personal aspects of my grandfather’s extraordinary life and involvement in the nationalist struggle which included his small but remarkable involvement in the 1916 Rising as a fifteen year-old boy, serious action during the War of Independence as a full blown Volunteer and later a Senior Intelligence officer for Michael Collins, which in turn led to his imprisonment in Ballykinlar, following his activities on Bloody Sunday, and culminating in his election to the IRB Supreme Council on Collins death at just 21 years of age. Following the truce, he tried politics for six months as Secretary to Cumann na nGaedheal, the Provisional Government party of the day but could not stand the antics of some of the politicians whom he had previously looked up to in the run up to the Civil War, so gave it up , ostensibly to restart his career in business which he had already had some considerable success as Martin Fitzgerald’s personal secretary, and simultaneously running 5 silent movie orchestra’s in Dublin prior to his internment in Ballykinlar. Having left school at fourteen years of age (also having won a Gold Medal at the Feis Ceoil for his violin playing in that year), he had continued his education at night classes where he learnt Irish and acquired the invaluable skill of 150 words-a-minute Pittmann shorthand.
Then there was his later remarkable life as music teacher, horticulturalist, and successful businessman and music publisher in the Irish music industry where he established the Waltons Music retail and importing business, and where among other achievements, he started the first Irish record label ‘Glenside’ and the famous Waltons Irish Music Program in the 1950’s which aired on RTE radio every Saturday for over 25 years. He also found time to stay connected with senior republican veterans and many of his former comrades in the Association of the Old Dublin Brigade (AODB) and other groups he was a member of, as well as keep the memories of Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith alive on their anniversaries every year right up to his death, when these icons were not always in politically in vogue in Ireland. For those who wish to explore Martin Walton’s life a little more I have written a first draft biography on my website https://thewaltoncollection.ie/pages/martin-a-walton-biography *** .
However, importantly, in relation to this small-scale copy of the original Proclamation I believe its discovery, and my thesis, pull together some important observations and facts which have hitherto been missed by Proclamation copy historians in what is often referred to and known as ‘The Story of the Proclamation’. I shall explain the reasons for these historical oversights in due course but I firmly believe my hypothesis should challenge many of the widely accepted and perceived authoritative histories relating to the “epic” history of Proclamation copies which have been published over the last hundred years or so, in which, as far as I am aware, there is no mention of smaller-scale Proclamation copies bar in the very first book on the subject of the “Republican Proclamation of Easter Monday ,1916” published by Joseph Bouch in 1936.
But before highlighting what Bouch had to say I wish to assure the reader that even in this age of powerful internet search engines connecting libraries, academics and historians around the world, it was virtually impossible to find any information on the subject of small half-size or half-scale Proclamation copies, until, by some remarkable luck, I stumbled upon a blog by an English academic, librarian and typographer , James Mosley, who published an extraordinary and unprecedented typographer’s paper on the Proclamation of the Irish Republic in 2010**. Before summarising what Mosely had to say in this critically important paper it is well worthwhile for the reader to take a look at this remarkable typographer’s life in a short profile called “James Mosley: A life in objects” written in Eye Magazine in 2015 https://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/james mosley-a-life-in-objects.
Unfortunately, I have been unable to contact James Mosley, although I have tried several searches and written to his former work email. Given that, according to this biography, he was born in 1935 and retired in 2000, and I am left to conclude the possibility that he may be no longer with us. If he is, I would dearly like to thank him for his diligence and research which has been so helpful and gives us a very good typographical steer about this particular half-scale Proclamation copy which, when combined with a more detailed knowledge about events on the ground in the weeks following the Rising, and a final observation at the end of the book by Bouch, gives added weight to my thesis.
Mosley’s Typography study of the Proclamation and Proclamation copies
Mosley was, first and foremost a typographer, which for anyone with a little knowledge about the print industry knows, is very much an exact historical science. Print fonts and type cases, and print methodologies and processes , very much like a form of print DNA, can be traced to specific dates when they first became available, and they leave clear markers in time which can be remarkably helpful to historians seeking explanations and timelines, particularly when we have a dated original like the Proclamation printed in Liberty Hall on Easter Sunday 1916 as our stating point. And, unlike most previous authors on the subject of Proclamation copies , in his studies of the original 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic, and subsequent copies, Mosley brings a keen typographer’s historical eye to bear which was missing among other historians, and when combined with his indisputable attention to detail, this lends everything he says on the early Proclamation copies a very serious gravitas. As his biography in Eye Magazine so aptly states about this Cambridge educated student of English and expert typographic historian;
“Through his ideas, collecting and dogged research, the former St Bride librarian has shown that printing history can be both lively and opinionated. The world of typography owes him a great debt”
The pleasantly amusing irony we must digest is that it took the curiosity and attention to detail of an elderly English librarian and typographer to lay down such a clear academic marker, which has led me closer to discovering the real story of the first copies of the original Proclamation of the Irish Republic, that document which is so precious to Irish people and students of Irish history around the globe. It is now time for that story to be told.
As a headline starter , in his first paper, Mosley identified a Proclamation copy in the Patrick Sarsfield (P.S.) O'Hegarty collection in the Kansas University Spencer Library Special Collections which is identical to the small Proclamation in Martin Walton’s Collection.
The O’Hegarty Collection Small Proclamation in the Spencer Library, Kansas University
To give some short but essential background, O’Hegarty (1879-1955) was a remarkable Irish political nationalist, historian, philosopher, academic and literary enthusiast who was , although against the use of physical force to attain independence, very prominent in the nationalist movement. Amongst other high profile nationalist roles, he was London Secretary to Sinn Féin in 1907 (where he later approved Michael Collins’ membership card and to whom he became a close friend and mentor) , a member of the Irish Volunteers which he joined at its inception in 1913 , was editor of the IRB Publication, Irish Freedom, and represented Munster on the seat of the IRB Supreme Council from 1911-1915. He was also an avid proponent of a secular Ireland and a friend of WB Yeats, defending him against nationalist criticism of Yeats’ productions at the Abbey Theatre in the run up to 1916. After the War of Independence he served as Secretary at The Department of Post and Telegraphs from 1922 until 1945, and in 1954 he was elected a member of the Irish Academy of Letters. He wrote and published quite extensively during the period 1917-1924 on several nationalist topics, including Sinn Féin’s rise, and later, in 1952, he published, perhaps his best known and most epic book A History of Ireland under the Union 1801-1922 which he dedicated to his closest friends Bulmer Hobson and Robert Lynd . Both extraordinary nationalists and writers in their own right.
Some years after his death O’Hegarty’s collection of papers and ephemera were acquired by the Spencer Research Library of Kansas University and it is from here which Mosley was sent a digital copy of the small-scale Proclamation to review without ever examining it physically. At the time of writing his paper in 2010, Mosley was unaware of the existence of another identical small-scale Proclamation copy in my grandfather’s collection, which, had our paths crossed earlier, he would have been able to examine.
Please hold that thought for a moment…
If we now put images of these two small Proclamations side by side (below) we can see they are identical, both in size and typography. The only difference is that The Walton Collection version is missing the top left-hand corner resulting in the partial loss of the text of "Poblacht" and, unlike the Kansas University copy which has text underlined by pen, the Walton Collection version is unmarked.
The Walton collection version was also folded down to a quarter its size at some point and was heavily creased across the middle so is now in two parts which became separated at the main crease , albeit the text is fully readable when both parts are joined.
As I have mentioned already, until this recent discovery in the Walton Collection, the University of Kansas half-size copy was thought to be only copy of this version in existence. Certainly Mosley was, like me, unable to find any other copies of this size, or information or ideas as to the date of its publication. Unlike other copies, it’s DNA and purpose for use was, in effect, in limbo. Nonetheless, without an Irish historian’s academic background, enter Mosley with his keen typographer’s eye and he immediately identifies this document as worthy of some detailed analysis which he dutifully supplies.
His identification and analysis of this single document in the O’Hegarty Collection, takes on greater significance 15 years later because, with the addition of my grandfather’s copy, we now have two identical small-scale Proclamations, the only ones that, to date, we are aware of are in existence in the world, which have been found, independently, in Irish nationalist historical Collections belonging to two relatively senior members of the Volunteers, both of whom , more coincidently, were friends of Michael Collins, and at varying times members the IRB Supreme council. My Grandfather, Martin Walton, was a Senior Intelligence officer who worked for Michael Collins during the War of Independence and during the Civil War, and, as stated already, was elected to the IRB Surpeme Council immediately following Collins death. Both men were serious students and collectors of Irish historical documents.
While you consider that context, I now wish to digress slightly and go back to Mosley’s research on other early copies of the Proclamation.
The original Proclamation and the official 1916 and 1917 copies
Having expertly identified in his paper many other and commonly used Proclamation copies as being post-1928 reproductions because of the use of Gill Sans text which only became available to printers after 1928, Mosley’s initial typographic research for his paper was particularly focussed on two reproductions of the Original Proclamation (below) which in 2010 were generally deemed to be the first sighted copies of the Original Proclamation produced in Liberty Hall on Easter Sunday, 2016. Until now, the widely accepted first Proclamation copies were published in the Irish Times Sinn Féin Handbook reproduction of August 1916 and the 1917 first anniversary Rising copy was produced by the women of the Irish Citizen Army in April 2017, both of which are also shown below.
Mosley’s facsimile copy of the Original 1916 Proclamation
(courtesy of the Providence Public Library, Providence, Rhode Island, USA)
Mosley goes into some detail in his paper on the adjustments and differences between these copies and the original Proclamation. To understand his findings in full I highly recommend you read his paper in his Typefoundry blog at the link for which I will provide at the end of this paper, and where it is technically possible to magnify the images, but for now I will try to summarise and paraphrase his most salient findings.
The predominant font of the original Proclamation text is identified by Mosley as Antique No.8 a 19th Century font which was still commonly in use. The Proclamation size was 760mm x 510mm and it was printed on poor quality Double Crown paper. However the printers in Liberty Hall on Easter Sunday evening ( Michael Molloy, Liam O' Brien and Chistopher Brady ) ran out of letters within the first three paragraphs of text so a different font (Abbey Text) was used for the letter e in the last lines of the third paragraph (lines 16-19). An inverted e appears in "the" in the first line of the last paragraph (line 32) while a De Vinne font t is found in "to" in line 32. De Vinne text is also used for "Signed on Behalf of the Provisional Government" below the last line (line 38) .Knowing that the original poster was printed in two halves we can also see that the paragraph spacing between lines 20 and 21 differs to the other narrower paragraph spacing throughout the text All of these flaws and characteristics in the original Proclamation are very important markers to note.
The first copy in The Irish Time's Sinn Féin Handbook is undated but, based on a printers imprint in a copy of the Sinn Féin Handbook in the British Library which is dated August 1916 Mosely, in the absence of more accurate information, can date its approximate reproduction to that month and year. In this reproduction, according to Mosley,
" the image of the Proclamation has been very thoroughly improved, especially in the lines of the heading, where there is much redrawing. The damage to the two R’s in line 4 was eliminated. The improvised E in line 5 was completely redrawn to match the others, and the two inconsistent O's in the same line were made more like the others by filling in their decorative indents, though nothing could be done to make their different widths equal. The counter (the enclosed space) in the P of “POBLACHT” was enlarged horizontally. One last, small-scale piece of retouching in line 5 is worth noticing. The lower left-hand serif of the L in IRELAND failed to print well because the E to its left was higher, perhaps because it was less worn. At all events it prints heavily. The retouches carefully restored the imperfect serif on L."
It can be most readily observed from a look at the above copies that most obvious point of difference with the Sinn Féin Handbook version above and the original Proclamation is the filling in of the indented decorative O's in “To the People of Ireland “ in line five. The other corrections Mosley identified may need a closer inspection and an enlarged image to work with but having reviewed his assessment several times myself there can be little doubt about the veracity of all his observations.
The original Proclamation also differs to the later version publishised by " a small group of women attached to the Irish Citizen Army " in Easter 1917 to commemorate the first anniversary of the Rising and published by the well-known Dublin printer, Joseph Stanley, who (according to Joseph Bouch's book on the subject written in 1936 ) claimed to have reprinted this copy using the original font type case that was used in Liberty Hall , including capturing most of its same errors! As Mosley explains in considerable detail and very directly , this is most improbable :
“This account looks to me like nonsense. It is highly unlikely that enough of the original type, which could not set the whole text in the first place, was recovered to make a complete resetting. The illustration of the ‘reprint’ that is given by Bouch shows that it reproduced the original setting of the text very exactly, with all its wrong fount characters and variable word-spacing, although the inverted letter ‘e’ near the end is corrected. (Characters in the right-hand margin are lost in the image shown here, made from a tightly bound copy.) But he also says that the type measure (the length of line) in the reprint was 17.75 inches instead of the 18.25 of the original. Reducing the measure, even by only half an inch, would have made an exact resetting with the original type, line for line, a great deal more difficult if not impossible, and even supposing that it had been possible to find enough of the original type in the Capel office, to attempt to recreate the exact mix of the wrong-fount characters and the inconsistent spacing of the original (including the gap between the third and fourth paragraphs) would have been pointlessly laborious.”
Mosely went on to state he believed this assertion was more likely a tall story made up by the printer to keep the ICA women happy. The print on the first five lines on this 1917 copy has clearly been touched up , albeit keeping the indentation on the O's as per the original Proclamation (in contrast to the Sinn Féin Handbook version). Most curiously the inverted letter e has been corrected on line 32. In addition, in this 1917 Version, in a most glaring error, the M in EAMONN CEANNT’s signature , which had been printed heavily and obscured by some dirt in the printing process, has been incorrectly touched up as an N, and so it reads “EANONN CEANNT”!
How does this relate to the small-scale Proclamation ?
I will now reproduce in full what Mosley says about the small-scale Proclamation he came across in the Spencer Library in Kansas University which by default we can also state applies to its twin in my grandfather’s collection.
“The only other version of the Proclamation that needs to be looked at here, reproduced above, is also known in only one copy, but the conspicuous damage makes it easy to recognise and a relatively high-resolution image is easy to find online, coming up early in a Google image search. It is closely related in its details to the ubiquitous ‘Gill Sans’ version [DW Here Mosley is referring to later copies he identified as being copies produced in the 1930’s as Gill Sans only became available as a font in 1928] . This is the version of the Proclamation in the O’Hegarty Collection of the Spencer Research Library of the University of Kansas, a half-scale reproduction that is 38 cm in height. There is extensive retouching, but it has been done quite independently of the version in the Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook. The retouching was applied not only to the heading but to some quite minute details throughout the whole text, where imperfections in the original are painstakingly redrawn. The M in the name of EAMONN CEANNT is cleaner and sharper than it was in the original. The damage to the R’s in line 4 of the heading is repaired, and the improvised E in line 5 is of course redrawn, but in a different manner from that of the Irish Times version, and several letters like H, of which the serifs were almost closed up, have had them opened out. Another instance of redrawing that is not found elsewhere is the F of OF in line 5 which has a sharp top right-angled corner which looks very different from the equivalent letter in the original. On the other hand, the serif of the L in the same line is not retouched (nor had it been in the ‘1917’ reprint). The broken end to the rule under the first line is repaired for the first time. It seemed worth taking some trouble to analyse this half-scale version because it corresponds closely – with the exception of the reset line – with the ‘Gill Sans’ proclamation with which we began. However, there is one other detail in the ‘Kansas’ version that does not appear in the ‘Gill Sans’ one. On the right-hand side of paragraph 4, the first part of the text that was reset, some spaces between the words have risen in several of the lines and their inked impressions are visible. These rising spaces can be seen in a few copies of the original Proclamation: those at Leinster House and the Ulster Museum, for example. In the ‘Gill Sans’ version they are all eliminated.
In the relatively high-resolution image of the ‘Kansas’ version that has kindly been provided and is shown above by courtesy of the Spencer Research Library, it can be seen that the printing has the even overall ‘colour’ of a photographic reproduction, and is clearly the product either of a line block or photolithography. There appears to be no evidence with which to establish an exact date for this document, and one would need to examine it carefully to be sure of the process used, but it does not show the irregular inking and impression produced by the worn and damaged types of the original Proclamation. If the half-scale ‘Gill Sans’ version was produced in the 1950s or later, as seems at least possible, then printing by offset lithography may have been the more likely process for its production.”
What Mosley is really saying here, and confirmed when you study his paper (several times), is that many of the later Gill sans copies done post-1928 were largely typographically derived from the corrected “Kansas” small Proclamation copy, which although it has several corrections and touch-ups, remains very true to the Original Proclamation. In fact, he highlights in above that in the O’Hegarty and Walton versions in relation to 'l' in "equal" rises well above the 'a', in precisely the same manner as the original Proclamation where, to repeat;
“On the right-hand side of paragraph 4, the first part of the text that was reset, some spaces between the words have risen in several of the lines and their inked impressions are visible. These rising spaces can be seen in a few copies of the original Proclamation: those at Leinster House and the Ulster Museum, for example. In the ‘Gill Sans’ version they are all eliminated.”
I wish to add another similarity to the original Proclamation which has not been mentioned by Mosley. In the first line of the last paragraph is what looks very like a second “e” in “protection” in line 32 which looks remarkably like “proteetion”. While the c’s and e’s of this font are naturally very close, in this particular “c” the top circle of the “c” in both the original Proclamation and the half scale Proclamation is discernibly closed in both, making it look at first glance like an “e”. This is far more obvious in the small proclamation copy where the two e’s in “proteetion” are 90% similar to the original Proclamation and what should have been a ”c” is substantially different to the “c” in the word “cause” on the same line. It almost looks like the second ”e” in the smaller version was incorrectly corrected to remain an “e”!
Line 32 in the original Proclamation
Line 32 in the small-scale Proclamation
If we now combine these remarkable similarities with all the other corrections and flaws Mosely mentioned it is clear, and he confirms, that whenever this small scale version was partially, perhaps quickly (my suggestion), touched up/corrected and printed, it was done entirely independently of the Sinn Féin Handbook and ICA versions, and in terms of the recognisable flaws in the original Proclamation the small-scale Proclamation contains more of the original flaws than any of the other copies.
While Mosely speculated above that it might possible that this small proclamation was produced by a photolithographic process as late the 1950’s he is quite clear in his concluding summary that “ no date or maker can at present be assigned” to this half-scale reproduction. And certainly for an approximate date a physical examination would be required..
BUT, if we add into this mix and now consider Joseph Bouch’s almost throwaway remark on the very the last page of his short 1936 publication on the story of the 1916 Proclamation we can see something which is highly significant. For his presentation to the Bibliographical Society of Ireland on March 25th, 1935, Bouch had extensively interviewed of the printers (all of whom were still alive in 1935) who were directly involved in the epic Liberty Hall story of the printing of the Proclamation and the related printing events surrounding Easter Week. As a ‘by the way’ , in his concluding statement, he happens to state;
Extract from “The Republican Proclamation of Easter Monday ,1916” published by Joseph J. Bouch in 1936
My considered view is that Mosley either missed this relatively innocuous but remarkable comment, or if he saw it he did not fully historically appreciate the public’s mood in Dublin following the Rising, as given his natural historical curiosity, I think he would have connected this statement to the O’Hegarty small Proclamation copy in Kansas, at the very least, as a possible explanation for its existence .
Of course, given he was completely unaware of a second identical copy in another completely independent 1916 memorabilia collection owned by yet another Volunteer and IRB Supreme council member, this is entirely understandable. If one were not looking for a reference to a small-scale proclamation (as I was) when reading Bouch’s book it would be so easy to miss this innocuous but important statement. We can also imagine that when Mosely read Bouch’s his book his primary focus was on the story of the original large Proclamation. Nor do we know when in his research he came across the reference on Google to the half-scale O’Hegarty copy. My guess for why he did not connect the two is that it was probably after he read Bouch’s book. Either way, Bouch’s reference to a smaller copy printed in Easter week must be from his contemporaneous interview sources in 1935, and clearly it was not noticed by Mosley, nor indeed any previous historians of the Proclamation copies. And why would previous Proclamation historians be expected to pick up on this side remark as most, if not all, of the historical books on the Proclamation were written in the 20th century when the writers of these books would not even have been aware of the existence of a small-scale copy in the O’Hegarty Collection in Kansas. This copy was a completely new and unexplained discovery, the knowledge of which has only become accessible since the Spencer collection documented it and , most importantly, the full arrival of the internet, and Google, in the 21st Century.
Given that O’Hegarty died in 1955 it seems highly unlikely that in his mid-seventies he would have been adding a small Proclamation copy of unknown provenance or indeed a copy printed in the 1950’s to his extensive collection of the contemporary ephemera of the period. So, the very fact that it was part of his collection gives it real significance in his own right. Mosley also may not have been fully aware of O’Hegarty’s life story, and standing and connections within the nationalist movement, and later within the political and government establishment which, like my grandfather’s connections to many 1916 Volunteers and IRB veterans, would have given both men access to people who had kept a copy of this small Proclamation when it was first published. Of course there is also the very real possibility that either or both men sought and obtained their copy directly from their activities in and immediately after 1916.
To recap, my grandfather, Martin Walton, was a well-known and very discerning collector and self-taught student of Irish history, leaving over 12,000 books (many extremely rare and mostly on Irish history) and some even rarer items of 1916 Rising and War of Independence memorabilia in his Collection when he died in 1981. It would seem a remarkable coincidence for two senior volunteer and IRB Supreme Council members, and highly discerning collectors of Irish historical documents from the period, to independently obtain and hold on to such a small item, unless it had some real historical significance. Now add to this my assertion that the Walton Collection half-scale Proclamation was found among a treasure trove of original 1916 posters, pamphlets, newspapers, and memorabilia from Easter week. I can also assure the reader that the original copy in the Walton Collection is very aged, delicate and printed on poor quality paper , and I believe very similar to the paper quality used at that period, and that it would be very difficult to artificially reproduce the aging which is so abundantly evident. More importantly, why would O’Hegarty or my grandfather choose to obtain and keep such an item if it was not authentic? In my opinion , it would be out of character and neither man had any motivation to do so.
In his 1972, recently rediscovered, interview with Harlan Strauss which is available from the national folklore archives in UCD and available from me at the links provided at the end of this paper , Martin Walton, stated to the young PhD student that having escaped arrest in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising, he and number (about 6 or 7) of other Volunteers, had their first meeting in a hall in Drumcondra just three weeks after the Rising, from which and where they commenced the rebuilding of the their brigade and the Volunteers more widely, following the widescale arrests and the decimation of their ranks to prisons in England and Wales. He described at length that outside of this group the volunteers could not possibly mention to others any involvement in the Rising given it was so unpopular with the general populace of Dublin. The general degree of public opprobrium towards the rebels was incredibly high and would have led to instant dismissal from any employment. Public opinion only changed to a more sympathetic tone in the weeks and months after the executions and as the negative public reaction to the imminent legislation around conscription gathered momentum approaching 1917. In the context of most of the Volunteer posters and proclamations being destroyed and considered highly toxic and prohibited by the British military authorities, it is very reasonable to assume that the remaining active Volunteers during and immediately after Easter week would have wished to obtain firstly , copies of the Proclamation, and secondly, copies which were not bulky and were easily secreted to avoid detection and immediate arrest. The large size of the original Proclamation would have made its distribution among the volunteers both unnecessarily more expensive and highly risky. Therefore the logical solution would be to produce a touched up and smaller version of the Proclamation for further secret circulation among the Volunteers and which was more easily and speedily reproduced using a photolithographic process.
Of course this could have been orchestrated during Easter week before the surrender in order to get the Proclamation to a wider public but my belief, given that Dublin was effectively militarily shut down so incredibly dangerous during the Rising, leans more towards the week or two following the Rising. Regardless, what I am establishing here is the demand for hard copies of the very scare Proclamation.
Not only is this hypothesis now supported by this critical paragraph in Bouch’s 1936 publication, a book which has been widely drawn upon by all subsequent historians of the Proclamation, but given James Mosley’s lack of familiarity with some well understood (to Irish historians) aspects of the Volunteer behaviour and public opinion immediately following the Rising, it is understandable how the connections and explanations for the existence of this half-scale Proclamation were missed by him.
After all, Bouch didn’t have any smaller copies to take his statement further and it is unfortunate that he did not provide a little more information on his source for this nugget of information, but notwithstanding this he deserves great historical credit and has done us great service in mentioning it bothering to record and I repeat that;
“ a sheet was printed (when I don’t know) which purported to have been issued in a smaller size during Easter week. But I have no confirmation; In fact I don’t have any evidence that such was the case, consequently I pass this statement without comment.”
To be somehwat pedantic and a more forensic about Bouch’s statement and his language above, there is an element of contradiction in these two sentences. Specifically, if we take; “a sheet was printed (when I don’t know)” and then consider the use of the word “purported” (to be issued), meaning ‘alleged, or stated to be true, although not necessarily so’ , this must mean he was told by one or more of his 1935 interviewee’s ( Michael Molloy, Liam O' Brien or Chistopher Brady ) that a sheet was “issued in a smaller size during Easter week”. Oddly, he then says, “But I have no confirmation; In fact I don’t have any evidence that such was the case”.
I believe that for Bouch, given he was clearly told about it, “evidence” would have meant a physical copy to examine and without which he felt obliged to make this qualifying remark. The fact that he even mentions it supports the view that it stuck in his mind as credible but without a sample he could not bring it any further so was honest enough to leave it as it stood. Had he not, I would not have written this paper 90 years later.
And of course, in Mosley’s case in 2010, he only had one small-scale Proclamation to study from a digital image which nobody knew anything about apart from its provenance and which, for logistical reasons (being in Kansas), he stressed that he was unable to examine physically.
Conclusion
So now, in conclusion, consider the following:
· We have the certainty that a contemporaneous witness (or witnesses) from the Liberty Hall saga told Bouch about a smaller proclamation copy being printed during Easter week. He clearly states this in his 1936 book without identifying who told him but he is unable to support this verbal evidence with any physical evidence. Until now there was no real reason to pay any heed to this statement.
· We have the motivation on the part of the 1916 rebels and the volunteers to get copies of the wording of the Proclamation out to the wider public and for Volunteers who were not imprisoned we can understand the necessity for these to be small, cost-effective and easily secreted. And most importantly, in view of the subsequent surrender and until public opinion changed in 1917, to be kept highly secret to avoid arrest.
· Since the beginning of this century we now have independently discovered two identical versions of smaller scale copies in collections from 1916 memorabilia belonging to well-known Volunteers and senior IRB men which are closer to the original 1916 Proclamation in typography than the two other known August 1916 or April 1917 copies.
I remain open to suggestion and any corrections, and the small-scale copy in The Walton Collection is available for inspection by more suitably qualified paper experts than I, but for now I am convinced that the identical half-scale Proclamation copies in the O’Hegarty Collection in the Spencer Library, Kansas, and in The Walton Collection in Dublin , are the first smaller copies of the original Proclamation of the Republic which Bouch alluded to. It is my belief that these copies were touched up from an original Proclamation and reproduced for circulation among the public or Volunteers either during the Rising of Easter week or in the weeks immediately following the Rising by a unknown printer, using a photolithographic process.
If I am correct , this would make these two small-scale copies the very first copies of the original 1916 Proclamation of the Republic.
David Walton
The Walton Collection
April 2025
Notes:
* This larger Proclamation although smaller than the original Proclamation is identical in typography and corrections to the small-scale Proclamation and printed on poor quality paper and has clearly been folded at some point. Further research is planned on this copy to see if other similar copies are available but to date none has been found with these dimensions. A copy of this larger Proclamation can be seen on my website https://thewaltoncollection.ie/collections/1916-proclamations-of-the-irish-republic
** For the two excellent and fascinating reads of Mosley's Blogs on "The Image of the Proclamation of the Republic 1916", go to:
https://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2010/01/image-of-proclamation-of-irish- republic.html
and for a second update following his visit to Dublin and his first viewing of the original Proclamation
https://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2010/09/
(This latter blog mentions another half-size Proclamation in UCD Library which is “not unlike, though not wholly identical with the half-scale version that is placed online by the University of Kansas….”. From my initial enquiry to the archive Department of UCD I understand this copy was found in the papers of Eamonn De Valera and at the time of writing I am currently seeking to arrange a viewing of same to fully compare it, after which I will update this paper and blog.
*** For further biographical detail on Martin Walton’s life you can visit my website:
https://thewaltoncollection.ie/pages/martin-a-walton-biography
There are also links to several RTE and newspaper interviews at the end of the biography but in the below interview links with Harlan Strauss, among other fascinating insights, in the second tape Martin Walton describes, in some detail the mood in Dublin immediately following the Rising and a meeting of 6 or 7 Volunteers he secretly attended in a hall in Drumcondra just 3 weeks after the Rising…..
Harlan J. Strauss Recorded Interview with Martin Walton 1972
Part 1
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U_1vrVBQTZW6Tj4v4sqeSr2ZtOa-GYnZ/view?usp=sharing
Part 2
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U_1vrVBQTZW6Tj4v4sqeSr2ZtOa-GYnZ/view?usp=sharing
I will always welcome any additional information or observations interested parties can provide to david@thewaltoncollection.ie.
