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 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’.
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.
Copy letter from Roger Casement, Pentonville Prison, to his chaplain, Fr. E.F. Murnane, regarding the progress of his appeal against the indictment of high treason. With a letter (2 Aug. 1916) from E.F. Murnane, The Presbytery, Dockhead, [Bermondsey, London, S.E.], in the same hand, to George Gavan Duffy regarding Casement’s last hours. Includes a copy extract from a letter from the Prison Chaplain giving a brief account of Casement’s piety before his execution. The file also includes an original letter from Roger Casement, Wellington Club, Grosvenor Place, S.W., to Francis H. Cowper (16 Dec. 1903) declaring that all is well him ‘but fearful Congo row is brewing and I shall be the storm centre I fear’. He adds 'Give the brindled John my love and a kiss on his black nose. I wish I were in Lisbon now …’. The ‘brindled John’ was presumably a domestic cat or dog owned by Cowper; brindled referring to a specific type of patchy colouring most commonly associated with the patterned fur of cats. It is unknown how this letter was acquired by the Capuchin friars but it is likely that it was given to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap. for safekeeping by an nationalist acquaintance.
