Item 15 - Letter from Brian O’Higgins to Fr. Aloysius Travers OFM Cap.

4 pp; Manuscript

Letter from Brian O’Higgins, Detention Barracks, Stafford, c/o Chief Postal Censor, to Fr. Aloysius Travers OFM Cap., regarding the conditions of his detention. He writes: ‘We are all in good health and in the best of spirits; we are treated very kindly and have little to complain of. We have the Rosary in public – the whole lot of us together …’. He also asks Fr. Aloysius ‘to call at 117 Capel St. and see if Mrs Doyle and her children are being looked after? Her husband asked me to give this favour of you …’.

Digital Repository of Ireland at https://repository.dri.ie/catalog/x346fb337

Brian O’Higgins (in Irish: Brian Ó hUigínn; 1 July 1882-3 March 1963) was a Sinn Féin politician. O’Higgins was born in Kilskyre, County Meath, to a family with strong Fenian and Parnellite traditions. He moved to Dublin as a teenager and became active in the Gaelic League. He fought in the GPO during Easter Week but due to the state of his health, he participated in little of the fighting. He was later elected unopposed as a Sinn Féin MP for Clare West at the 1918 general election. He opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty and voted against it. He was re-elected as an Anti-Treaty Sinn Féin TD at the 1921, 1922 and 1923 elections. He lost his seat at the June 1927 general election. From the late 1920s he ran a successful business publishing greeting cards, calendars etc. decorated with Celtic designs and O’Higgins’ own verses. He was President of Sinn Féin from 1931-33. From 1938 to 1962 he published the Wolfe Tone Annual which gave popular accounts of episodes in Irish history from a republican viewpoint. He was a devout Catholic and critical of those who believed republicans should be socialists. Several of his sons became Catholic priests.