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The letter is from Joseph MacDonagh to his sister Mary MacDonagh. The letter offers condolences after the execution of their brother Thomas MacDonagh in Kilmainham Gaol for his part in the Easter Rising (3 May). Thomas MacDonagh (1878-1916) was a poet and teacher. A leading member of the Dublin Brigade of the Irish Volunteers, he was one of the principle organisers of the Easter Rising and one of the seven signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic.Joseph MacDonagh (1883-1922) was the youngest brother and went on to serve in the First and Second Dáils and opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Mary Josephine MacDonagh (1872-1954) was the eldest sibling. She went on to become a nun with the Sisters of Charity. She was the only member of the family to visit Thomas before his execution. 'Muriel' in the letter is Thomas MacDonagh's wife (1884-1917) and 'Jack' is Thomas's brother John (1880-1961) who had fought under Thomas in the Rising and was imprisoned afterwards.
The data in these XML files was generated based on a data dump from the Magellan database (https://github.com/Maynooth-Center-for-Digital-Humanities/Magellan). Each database record has been converted to a JSON file (https://github.com/letters1916static/letters-data/tree/main/json). The element section of the JSON file contains the TEI-encoded contents of the letters. The TEI XML has been cleaned and made well-formed using a Python script (https://github.com/letters1916static/letters-data/tree/main/src).