English: [/photos/97197821@N07/ Beara Peninsula] or should that be alusnineP araeB, tells us in the first instance that our photograph is reversed as evidenced by the Left "Red Hand of Ulster" and the words Lord Mayor. All agreed quickly that he was correct in his observations.

[/photos/129555378@N07/ sharon.corbet] builds the story of this photo, we learn that this is not the first sitting of the Second Dail which took place on 16th August 1921 and with a little help from [/photos/79549245@N06/ DannyM8] they reach an agreed position that this photo was probably taken later in the month of August 1921 with the 26th the most probable.

Sharon also discovered that this photo is used in a few places on the web (see links below) as being a photo of the First Dail (1919). Both Sharon and Danny strongly believe that this is not the case.

"There are two other Keogh photos which look to be the same occasion: Ke 220 and Ke 219. (Both of which are the right way round.) Ke 219 is the one which turns up as the First Dail. But it's in any case not the very First Dail session, at least if An Post can be believed. A lot of the other sessions were private, so I'm beginning to think that at some point Ke 219 was identified as the First Dail, and it's been labelled like that ever since"

If our dates are correct, then the main topic of the August 1921 sessions centered around negotiating a framework for the meetings in London which eventually delivered the Treaty.


Photographer: Brendan Keogh

Collection: The Keogh Photographic Collection

Date: August 1921

NLI Ref: Ke 221

You can also view this image, and many thousands of others, on the NLI’s catalogue at catalogue.nli.ie