Letter from James Joseph Walsh, prisoner no. 899, Mountjoy Prison, to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap., referring to the gradually improving conditions for prisoners. Walsh also refers to the public who ‘in large numbers still crowd to the gate’ of the prison. He informs Fr. Albert that three prisoners are still deprived of the privilege of a daily visit: ‘Sullivan, Cork; Shaw, Stradbally; and Fleming, Galway’. The letter is written on an official form with regulations governing prisoner regulations printed on first page.
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.
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.
Letters from D. O’Callaghan, Lewes Prison, to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap. concerning his prison conditions and to kindness shown to him by a Sister Bridget. He adds: ‘Duggan and Beasely were glad to hear from her and sends best wishes’. He later refers to his actions during Easter Week: ‘ … I done my best to conduct things to the best advantage for all, and if done a great deal of damage to property, it had to be done to insure the safety of the men that were in my charge. But I certainly say no unnecessary damage was done by us’. Reference is also made to his fellow prisoners G. Grofts and Jimmy Brennan. With an undated letter [c. Apr. 1917] from O’Callaghan referring to the deteriorating conditions endured by republican prisoners: ‘On Wednesday, the 9th some of the young fellows started kicking a rag ball at exercise and warder Birch picked it up most abruptly on the fooling day he had Boland charged with using insolent language. Boland got severely punished and on the following day we struck work. … Our experience is that the warders are incapable of making a correct statement about us. McEntee and I were charged with insubordination simply because we spoke on behalf of our comrades’.
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.
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
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’.
Recollections of visits made to Kevin Barry (executed 1 Nov. 1920); to ‘six young heroes hanged at Mountjoy Prison, March 14th 1921’; and to Thomas Traynor (executed 26 Apr. 1921). The recollections refer to visits made by unnamed religious sisters. The transcripts focus on the piety and courage shown by the condemned prisoners. It reads: ‘All the young men were teetotallers and some of them abstained from smoking. We noticed two empty porter bottles in the grate in Flood’s cell. When he saw me looking at them he said “you know our friends can bring us in now anything one asks for. The Black and Tan guards here are decent to us and we ordered in drink for them”’.
This section comprises the correspondence of Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap. with the wives and relations of republican detainees and prisoners including those who were executed in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising. Many of the correspondents were significant political figures in their own right including Kathleen Clarke, Áine b. Ė. Ceannt and Eva Gore Booth.
