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The Ecclesiastical Review on morality of hunger-strike / Rev. Michael Hogan SJ. Reprinted from 'The Irish World', May 1933. Printed by the Catholic Book Publishing Co., 43-45 East 12th Street, New York City.

Father Andrew Cleary, Redemptorist priest, had been a pupil of Castleknock College (1899-1903).
Photograph by Dorothy Horton, Belfast.

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.

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 Robert Barton, Mountjoy Gaol, to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap., stating that ‘prison life is no affliction to me. I much prefer the rest, seclusion and study of a cell to discoursing in public platforms’. He also discusses his reading of economic literature and affirms that he is learning Irish.

Letter from Eva Gore-Booth, 33 Fitzroy Square, London, to Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap.