Within weeks of smuggling guns from Germany to the Irish Volunteers on board the Asgard in 1914 Robert Erskine Childers was called up. His call up papers were delivered to the headquarters of the Irish Volunteers, a move akin today to asking a white supremacist to speak at a Black Lives Matter rally. The author of The Riddle of the Sands became a decorated British naval officer. His sword in gilt brass and leather scabbard is lot 91 at Mullen’s Collector’s Cabinet auction in Bray next Saturday (July 11). Engraved “R E Childers” it is estimated at €3,000-€5,000. Robert Erskine Childers was executed in 1922 by the nascent Irish Free State during the Civil War. Erskine Childers, the Fianna Fail politician who became Ireland’s fourth president, was his son.
The Collector’s Cabinet is a postponed sale originally scheduled for March 28. The 572 lots can be viewed online at The Saleroom. Among them are a copy of Error of Judgement by Chris Mullin signed by the author, the Birmingham Six and solicitor Gareth Peirce. It is estimated at €300-€500. There are 110 lots of Irish and international bank notes from the collection of Patrick Browne, secretary of the Cork Philatelic Society who began collecting banknotes in the 1990’s. Estimates range from €80-€2,500. Among the scarcest of the sporting lots are a competitors badge from the 1908 London Olympic Games and an officials badge from the 1924 Paris Games, immortalised in the film Chariots of Fire.
