Sinn Féin Printing & Publishing Company
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| Limited Liability | |
| Industry |
Printing Publishing |
| Founded | 1904 |
| Headquarters | Dublin, Ireland |
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Key people
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Arthur Griffith, Chairman & Editor Seán T. O'Kelly, Secretary Henry Dixon, Board Thomas Kelly, Board Seumas McManus, Board Walter L. Cole, Board Denis Devereux, Technician |
| Products | Sinn Féin & Sinn Féin Daily newspapers |
| Revenue | £6328 (1911–12) |
The Sinn Féin Printing & Publishing Company, Ltd. (1906–1914) was a Dublin-based enterprise founded by Arthur Griffith, chief propagandist of the nationalist Sinn Féin movement. It published, and for several years also printed, the influential weekly newspaper Sinn Féin. It also very briefly printed and published a daily paper. The company was close to bankruptcy in 1914 when it was closed down for sedition by the British authorities under the provisions of the Defence of the Realm Act.
The history of the Sinn Féin Printing & Publishing Company (SFPP) begins in March 1906 when Arthur Griffith, editor of the nationalist propaganda newspaper the United Irishman, was sued for libel by a Limerick parish priest, Father Donor. The offending passage was the following:
The Rev. Mr. Leslie, of Castlebellingham, who threatened the Gaelic league with his wrath for daring to hold a Feis on Sunday, has, we regret to say, found an imitator in a Catholic clergyman at the other side of Ireland – the Rev. Father Donor, of Shanagolden. This gentleman acted similarly towards the Gaelic League of Foynes, which proposed to hold its Feis on a Sunday, and to appease him the Feis was held on a week day, with the result that numbers of people were deprived from attending it. Although the Sunday fixture was abandoned to please him, neither Father Donor nor any of his curates attended the Feis.
The case against Griffith was weak but the judge found him far "too saucy in his attitude" and ordered him to pay £50 in damages to the priest and £253 3s. 9d. for court costs. At this stage the company was already in financial straits and the board of directors did not have the necessary £300. Griffith and the Board had, however, anticipated such an outcome and when the court-appointed bailiffs called on the Fownes Street office of the United Irishman Ltd. to collect the money, they discovered that the company had just gone into liquidation and seized the only assets they could find: a table, a few chairs and some manuscripts. Griffith took advantage of the court case to make a new start with what he hoped would be a more financially viable company, less dependent on funds from the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in the British Isles and Clan na Gael in the United States, both of which had been behind the setting up of the United Irishman in 1899.
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