Letters from Kathleen Clarke (wife of Tom Clarke), 15 Barrington Street, Limerick, to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap., mostly concerning family news. She also wrote: ‘Limerick does not agree with me. I am tired all the time here. I have an unsettled feel here too … . I find it hard to realise that my home and everything is gone, the only thing left is hope, and if our hopes for Ireland’s future are fulfilled the sacrifices will have been worth the making’. She also refers to Ernest Blythe: ‘We had hoped for better for him. I suppose he is left Arbour Hill by this and there would be no use in writing to him
Letters from Nannie O’ Rahilly (wife of ‘The O’Rahilly’), to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap., expressing her regret that a mass in honour of the rebels of 1916 could not be held in Church St. Friary ‘as you did so much for the men who died’. Later she added ‘Thank God we had the Mass at Mt. Argus, it was most touching and edifying and as you say the spirit was splendid, without any outward demonstration. So the priests who refused us might easily have had more courage’.
Letters from Sinéad de Valera to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap., asking for a ‘national novena to the Sacred Heart’. She declares that she has ‘had a letter from Dev this morning. They have had no Sunday mass since they left Ireland. He served Mass on Corpus Christi but that was the only day they had Mass’. She relays De Valera’ request that luxury items such as sweets should not be sent to republican prisoners and suggests that ‘some little committee could be formed to collect the money which would otherwise be expended on postage …’. She adds ‘Please don’t let Eamonn’s name be associated with it as I know he would not like his remark about the luxuries to go around. He has a dislike to being considered a vaitin and his remark might be misunderstood’. In the letter of 24 May 1918 she refers to her anxiety over ‘the midnight raid and Saturday’s paper’. She added: ‘Dev is in Gloucester prison. I had a message from the Governor saying to send on some clothes’.
Letters from William Partridge to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap. giving an outline of his career mostly in the labour and union movement under James Larkin. Partridge was among those rebels who surrendered at St Stephen’s Green in 1916. He was subsequently sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude and sent to Dartmoor and afterwards to Lewes Prison. He was released due to ill-health and returned to Ballaghadreen in County Mayo, but died on 26 July 1917. He refers to his physical condition in some of the correspondence. He writes ‘Please excuse scribbling as my sight got bad in prison and I have not yet got glasses’. With his memorial card and a newspaper cutting of his obituary notice. The file also includes a letter (probably from his brother, Felix Partridge) referring to his last days and thanking Fr. Albert for his words of sympathy.
Notes from Frank Cullen, prisoner no. 135, to his brother Tom and to his mother, mostly referring to prison conditions. He informs his brother that a photograph of ‘poor John J. Heuston which his sister Theresa sent me about a fortnight ago’ was confiscated. ‘I was told that the photograph was of one of the men executed in Dublin and they could not give it to me … you see we are not allowed to have the photograph of an Irishman in our cells who gave his life for his country’. He asks both his brother and mother to remember him to his various friends at home.
Photographic copy print of a letter from Erskine Childers, Beggars’ Bush Barracks, Dublin, to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap., declaring that he is ‘to die tomorrow at 7’. He states he will ‘die happy and undefeated and at peace with God and men’. Fr. Albert referred to this letter in his statement titled ‘The Case of Farther Albert, O.S.F.C.’, defending his actions and declaring his ‘absolute impartiality’ during the War of Independence and later at the outbreak of Civil War hostilities in Dublin in 1922 (CA IR-1-1-2-4-6).
