An Anti-Treaty pamphlet by the Irish Republican Army asking ‘on what authority did Michael Collins call off the Belfast boycott’. It also demands to know why Collins associated ‘with the enemy General Macready and, reinforced by English guns manned by English gunners, lay siege to and destroy the Four Courts’.
An Anti-Treaty pamphlet attacking Arthur Griffith sarcastically claiming ‘This is freedom … The Britons in Khaki yesterday raided Republican homes ... The West Britons in green to-day raid Republican homes ...’.
The note affirmed that the extracts ‘are exact copies of the original, which I sent to their friends as I had promised the men themselves (Fr. Albert [Bibby] OSFC, Church St.)’. Includes copy notes from Michael Charlton; Jimmy Bronghan; Martin Shannon (who fought at Stephen’s Green during the Rising).
Letter from A. J. Howlin, prisoner no. 899, Wakefield, to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap., Church St., Dublin, asking to convey his thanks to Fr. Peter [Bowe] ‘for his interest in us all the time. He was greatly knocked about on our account’. Signed Seamus Ua Hualláin. With cover opened by censor.
Letter to Tim Healy from various republican internees asking him intercede in a dispute with prison authorities. The manuscript provides background to the dispute. The letter is in two distinctive hands and is (copy) signed by ‘Michael Staines, Head Leader; James Murphy, leader, no. 1 room; Edward A. Morkan, leader, no. 2 room; R.J. Mulcahy, leader, no. 3 room; Thomas D. Sinnott, Leader no. 4 Room’. The letter reads: ‘Recently the military authorities in charge of the Camp here have adopted such an attitude of consistently vindictive injustice towards us that we are reluctantly compelled to believe that there must be some ulterior motive behind it. … We can do very little to help ourselves, cut off as we are from all the world, and strictly prohibited – officially – from sending out a single complaint’. In September 1917 Healy acted as counsel for the family of the dead Sinn Féin hunger striker Thomas Ashe. He was one of the few King’s Counsel to provide legal services to members of Sinn Féin in various legal proceedings in both Ireland and England after the 1916 Rising. This included acting for those illegally interned in 1916 in Frongoch in North Wales.
Letter from D. O’Callaghan, prisoner no. q 128, Lewes Prison, to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap., offering his thanks to all the ‘patriotic priests who offered up the Masses for the souls of our dear brothers, comrades and relatives …’. He assures that Fr. Albert that ‘all the men you mentioned De Velera [sic], J and G. Plunkett, J.J. Walsh, Desmond Fitzgerald and O’Hanrahan asked me to than you on their behalf, for kindly visiting their people … E. Duggan and P. Beasley were glad to hear from you’. O’Callaghan declares that he does not see much hope of any conciliation as ‘there has been so much blood and frightful suffering for the past seven hundred years, and foreign law is as hateful today as it was in the beginning’. He also gives news of the Jimmy Brennan and the ‘Church St. Boys’. The letter is written on an official form with regulations governing prisoner regulations printed on first page.
Letter from James O’Sullivan prisoner no. q 100, Lewes Prison, declaring that ‘all the men here, look to the Capuchin Fathers, as their especial friends – they found the comrades in times of peril, true friends of the people, the ideal priests’. O’Sullivan adds that ‘Edmund Duggan (my dearest friend), Pierce Beasley, D. O’Callaghan, G. Crofts and Jimmy Brennan, wish to be remembered to you’. James O’Sullivan fought at the General Post Office during the Rising.
Letter from Austin Stack, prisoner no. 148, Manchester Prison, to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap., thanking the ‘friars of Church St.’ for the interest they have shown in their incarcerated ‘fellow countrymen and women’. Reference is also made to their prison conditions and to prisoner Fionán Lynch. With cover. The letter reads: ‘Your letter (which was written on the day following our removal from Belfast) was sent on after me to this place and I received it on the 3rd. I should not have got it at all in Belfast the way things were there. Of course we deem it good of you to think of us in this way but this is only what I should expect of you and the other Friars of Church Street and I hope that we may prove worthy of the interest in us shown by our fellow countrymen and women. There are ten of us here (including Fionán Lynch whom you know). We are devitalised of course after fourteen weeks solitary confinement in Belfast, but otherwise we are fairly well. A month hence I expect to be fit again with God’s help. Our good Capuchin fathers will ever be kindly remembered by the Irish prisoners and their friends, God bless you … Aibhistín de Staic’.
