Scituate, Massachusetts, USA, part of the South Shore Irish Heritage Trail. (October 2022)
The three men inside Dublin’s Libery Hall surely heard the church bells tolling on Easter Sunday, even over the cacophany of their printing press. Perhaps the trio reflectively straightened to bless themselves. But they quickly returned to their ink-stained work, laboring from midday Sunday until early Monday morning. Hours later, in front the General Post Office on O’Connell Street, Pádraig Pearse read aloud from a copy of their finished work: the 1916 Easter Proclamation:
“IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom. …”
Before that signal moment, the three workers–printer Christopher Brady, and compositors Michael Malloy and Liam O’Brien–produced the Proclamation in two stages, top and bottom, due to lack of type. The two sections are identifiable by different line spacing. The tempramental rollers of their old Wharfdale Double-Crown printing press meant uneven pressure smudged some letters, while others appeared too faint. See images and videio at this online exhibition from University College Cork.
Copies of the Easter Proclamation proliferated quickly. Fascimiles and newly typeset versions appeared in the American press within days of the British military supressing the uprising. More copies appeared after the execution of the rebel leaders.
From the front page of Fall River (Massachusetts) Daily Globe, May 19, 1916. Press reports as early as May 1, 1916, quoted the Proclamation in full.
About 60 origional copies of the Declaration are know to have survived from a press run estaimated at no more than 1,000. That’s 6 percent, 110 years later. As context, there are 26 origional copies of the 1776 Declaration of Independence, known as the Dunlap Broadside, from a press run of 200. That’s 13 percent, 250 years later.
About half the surving origional copies of the Procalamation are held at public institutions in Ireland, including UCC and Trinity College Dublin. But the document has been widely reproduced, including public monuments on both sides of the Atlantic. See top and below.
Dungarvan, County Waterford, Ireland. (June 2026)