Letter from Julia Breen, Upper Church Street, Tipperary, to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap., thanking him for all ‘the trouble you took with our prisoners while they were suffering in Mountjoy, it was prayer and the masses for our prisoners that saved them from death’. With an annotation in Fr. Albert’s hand on the first page: ‘Letter from Commandant Breen’s (I.R.A.) mother. He was on hunger strike at Mountjoy Jail and it was there I met his mother’
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’.
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 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 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 Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap. to Fr. [Aloysius Travers OFM Cap.] referring to his journey to the United States on board the steamship 'Republic'. In Irish
Letters from Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap. to Fr. Augustine Hayden OFM Cap., referring to journey to the United States, from New York to Santa Barbara, California, his declining health and to the consolation he has found as his death approaches. On 25 Jan. 1925 Fr. Albert wrote: ‘I am gradually getting weaker and am preparing for end. … Fr. Dominic O’Connor OFM Cap. came here last night and will remain with me to the end. Tis a great comfort and joy to have him. He will do for me what he did for Terry McSweeney in Brixton Jail’. With a newspaper cutting from the Santa Barbara Daily News (21 Jan. 1925) containing an article with (photographic prints) of the Old Mission of Santa Ynez and ‘Padre Albert’.
Letter from Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap. to Fr. Aloysius Travers OFM Cap., Church Street, Dublin, stating that he is ‘getting weaker gradually – the end is apparently not far off’. Fr. Albert admits that the presence of Fr. Dominic O’Connor OFM Cap. is a great comfort as his death approaches.
Letter from Sister M. Gonzaga, Loreto Convent, Fermoy, County Cork, to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap., expressing her hope that the ‘brave Sinn Feiner you are anxious about is safe now’. She also declares that ‘1916 is a year marked in letters of blood, the heart blood of our best and noblest’. She concludes by asking for a prayer for ‘the brave boys you helped to die’.
Invitation card to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap. for a reception for released prisoners of war organised by the Irish National Aid and Volunteers’ Dependents Fund at the Mansion House, Dublin.
