Letter from [L.J. Colbert], Shanagolden [Limerick] expressing happiness that ‘the poor martyrs are not forgotten’. Reference is also made to the ‘cruel treatment of the poor young fellows and the gentle and tenderly reared Countess [Markievicz]’.
Dated 9.30 am. Letter from Major A.F. Owen Lewis, General Staff Officer, Irish Command, Headquarters to The Governor, Arbour Hill Detention Barracks: ‘Please allow Father [Columbus] Murphy to interview Pearse the rebel leader and any other rebels whom he may wish to see’. On Royal Arms embossed paper. Faded Ink-stamped: Headquarters Ireland.
Letter from Major Gerald Henry Pomeroy Colley, Headquarters, Irish Command, Parkgate, Dublin, to Fr. Aloysius Travers OFM Cap., declaring that he is ‘glad to say your kind offices will not be required to night’. Colley was referring to Fr. Aloysius’ attendance to imprisoned rebel leaders.
Letter from Margaret 'Aggie' Bibby to Fr. Bonaventure Murphy OFM Cap. She writes that she has met ‘friends of poor Tomás [Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap.] who had just come from America. Immediately after his death the leaders of A.A.R.I.R. made a request on superior Fr. Joseph [Fenlon] to be allowed ship his body to Ireland as Tomás wished. He cabled to Fr. Peter [Bowe]. Reply came two days later: "Bury Fr. Albert in Santa Inez in the usual way". She later notes that care was taken to ensure that Fr. Albert's body was buried in a ‘metal casket hermetically sealed’. She concludes by expressing the hope that her brother's ‘bones will rest in the land he loved so well. Never shall we forget the Franciscan tyrants’.
Letter from Mary Alden Childers [wife of Robert Erskine Childers], 20 Wellington Road, Dublin, to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap., asking him to fulfill a promise and to come to bless their new house.
Letter from Maud Griffith, 132 St. Lawrence Rd., to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap., asking him to ‘find out anything about Arthur. He was arrested at 1 a.m. this morning, what I fear [is that] he may be deported tonight before I could see him …’.
Letter from Miceál Ó Coileáin (Michael Collins), Aire Airgid (Minister for Finance), Dáil Éireann, Mansion House, Dublin, to Toirdhealbhach Mac Suibhne (Terence MacSwiney), regarding monies from the city of Cork in connection with the advancement of the Dáil Éireann Loan. In Irish.
She expresses her regret on hearing of Fr. Aloysius’s recent illness. She wrote: ‘When I asked for you to go and see [her son] Don I had no notion that you were ill …’. She added ‘Please thank Fr. Albert from me and his promise to go and see Don, also for the copy of the Catholic Bulletin which I am delighted to have’. With photographic postcard print of ‘Donagh and Barbara MacDonagh children of Thomas MacDonagh, shot at Kilmainham, May 3rd 1916’.
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.