New Additions to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association Archive

The Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association (RDFA) was established in 1996 to commemorate all Irish men and women who volunteered, served and died in the First World War. In 2005, the RDFA decided to place its archive with Dublin City Library & Archive, where it is available for public consultation in the Reading Room. The RDFA Archive is managed by Dublin City Archives.

Right: Lieutenant Herbert Justin Lemass

Just added to the Collection are

1. Items relating to two brothers, Edwin and Herbert Lemass, who both served in the British Army during the First World War. Second Lieutenant Herbert Justin Lemass and Lieutenant Edwin Stephen Lemass were second cousins of Sean Lemass, one of the most prominent Irish politicians of the 20th century. At the time that Herbert, age 19, and Edwin Lemass, age 21, were in the trenches on the Western Front, their second cousin, Sean Lemass, age 17, was fighting the British in the General Post Office during the 1916 Easter Rising. Herbert dies at the Battle of the Somme on 23rd October, 1916, while Edwin, a barrister-at-law, went on to become one of Egypt's leading judges after the war.
2. Volume 9 of the Monica Roberts Letters. The items contained were donated by Mrs Mary Shackleton, daughter of Monica Roberts, to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association at Dublin City Library and Archive on 28 July 2014. The letters give vivid pen-pictures of conditions at the Western Front and reveal the courage of troops in the face of appalling circumstances.

The Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association Archive Collection currently housed in the Dublin City Library & Archive now includes:

• The Monica Roberts Collection.
• The Corporal Henry Kavanagh Collection of letters and photographs.
• The: Moriarty Collection, which  relates to 19th century India and consists mainly of correspondence from Jeremiah Moriarty of Cork, a travelling magistrate who worked in India during the 1850s and 1860s.
• The Keogh Collection Postcards, covering the period 1897-1922.
• The Gunning Brothers Collection, containing the records of two Enniskillen brothers, George Cecil and Frank Douglas Gunning, who fought at the battle of Gallipoli during the First World War.
• The Irish National War Memorial Committee Archive. Founded in the summer of 1919, the committee contracted Sir Edward Lutyens to design the War Memorial
  
  Gardens at Longmeadows, Islandbridge.
• The Lemass Collection.

Visit the Reading Room, Dublin City Library & Archive, 138-144 Pearse Strett, Dublin 1.