Contemporary Documents Index

The Bureau of Military History Contemporary Documents (BMH CD) series
This series consists of nearly 5,500 documents, files and publications submitted to the Bureau, many of which are instantly recognisable as iconic documents of the revolutionary period. These documents were sometimes handed in along with a contributor’s witness statement, and provide a fascinating insight into many aspects of the revolutionary period. Letters; diaries; memoranda; maps; (now) rare publications; newspapers and magazines; reports; photographs; pamphlets; propaganda material; drill manuals; posters and many other fascinating documents, sketches and artwork are contained in this series.

Highlights are hard to summarise, due to the richness of the collection, but would include: Photostats of Michael Collins’ diaries from January 1918 to December 1921; a draft memoir dictated by Eoin MacNeill in the 1930s; correspondence between him and Roger Casement just after the meeting in the Rotunda to form the Irish Volunteers in 1913; letters between the main Irish Volunteer leaders in the days before the start of the 1916 Rising; additional statements from the Four Courts Garrison, 1916; the last letter of Sean Heuston before his execution; documents and evidence (including photographs) from the trial of Roger Casement; 1918 Election documentation; War of Independence IRA Battalion records; Cumann na mBan paperwork, photographs and publications; IRA Intelligence material from 1921 into early 1922; Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiation material and later Dáil Eireann documentation; Civil War dispatches, reports and communications between the Director of Publicity of the Irish Republican Army, Erskine Childers, and the President and Ministers of Dáil Éireann, the Chiefs of the Irish Republican Army, Sinn Féin organisation and the editor of “Sinn Féin”, etc.

To view a searchable PDF of the full listing of this collection, please click HERE

*Digitised Original Listings*

There were originally two BMH indexes for the contemporary documents: one included basic descriptions from each contributor, for easy reference, while the larger index gives a detailed description of each item. Due to the large size of the Appendix to Contemporary Index, it has been divided in to five documents to facilitate downloading from this website.