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Letter from Muriel MacDonough, 50 Marlbourough Rd., Donnybrook, to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap., apologising for not seeing him when he called to her house. ‘My bell was out of order and it is practically impossible to hear knocks, especially with [her son] Don babbling making an uproar’.

Letter from Padraig Ó Caoimh, General Secretary of the GAA, to Fr. Nessan Shaw OFM Cap., expressing his happiness on hearing that the bodies of Fr. Albert and Fr. Dominic will be repatriated to Ireland. He adds: ‘I had the honour and pleasure of serving mass for Fr. Dominic while in Parkhurst. Up to the time of the truce he was only allowed to say it every Sunday and after that daily … We were life long friends … the night before he left Cork and Ireland – he came to see me in a house where I was on the run’. Ó Caoimh joined the Irish Volunteers in 1916; three years later he gave up school teaching to become an officer with the Cork Brigade of the IRA. In 1920 he was appointed manager of the Employment Bureau established by the First Dáil. Soon afterwards, he was captured by the British and sentenced to 15 years penal servitude. He was released in 1922. In 1929 he resigned from his position as manager of a tobacco company following his appointment as General Secretary of the GAA, a position he held until 1964.

Letter from Rev. Michael Curran, Pontifical Irish College Rome, to Terence MacSwiney, expressing his hope that ‘it may be possible for you to come to Rome for the celebration of the festivities connected with beatification of Oliver Plunkett’. Rev. Curran adds ‘We are fully aware of the extraordinary difficulties that must stand in the way of such a visit at such a time … In case you find yourself unable to come perhaps some other delegate might be sent from the Corporation of Cork’.

Letter from Richard Smyth, 924 Summit Avenue, New York City, to Fr. James O’Mahony OFM Cap., Provincial Minister, regarding a proposal for the reparation of the bodies of Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap. and Fr. Dominic O’Connor OFM Cap., the latter from a ‘non-Catholic cemetery in Oregon, USA’. He affirms that ‘it was impossible to make any move before this time, as one or more of the political parties in Ireland would use the occasion to forward their own political interests’.

Letter from Seán T. O’Kelly, Reading Internment Camp, to Fr. Aloysius Travers OFM Cap., conveying his thanks to Fr. Aloysius, Fr. Augustine and Fr. Albert ‘during “the week” itself and afterwards during those anxious and trying days of our imprisonment in Richmond [barracks]’. Refers to the conditions of other republican prisoners elsewhere: ‘… I only wish the boys in Frongoch were with us. It must be awful for them living under such conditions this harsh weather. The men in Dartmoor, Portland, etc. will I presume be much better off now that they are to be removed to Lewes where it is said too they are to be permitted to associate and to be given facilities for reading and writing’. Some reference is also made to the expulsion of republicans from Dublin Corporation and to the release of Brian na Banba (Brian O’Higgins).