Letter from John J. McGrath to Pat McGrath, 20 June 1916 Letters 1916-1923 John J. McGrath

This work was originally published by Maynooth University in Ireland in 2017. In 2026 this data, stored in a relational database was extracted and converted into this TEI/XML document.

 Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities Vienna, AT 2026

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This letter is from John J. McGrath, an Irish internee at Frongoch Prison in Wales, to his relative Pat McGrath. In the letter, John discusses conditions at the prison, mentioning the beautiful weather and scenery, the organisation of the Irish internees under their own appointed officers, and the difficulty of finding good reading material. John refers to a parcel recently received from the Breen family, asking Pat to thank them on his behalf. and mentions that he is only allowed to write letters once a week. John compares Frongoch favourably to Wakefield Prison, where he was previously interned.Frongoch was a makeshift prison in Wales which detained approximately 1800 Irish prisoners following the 1916 Easter Rising.

 Military Archives of Ireland Br. Allen Collection, IE/AL/1916/67/1 https://letters1916.ie/item/831 English John J. McGrath 1916-06-20 Frongoch Prison, Wales Pat McGrath 22 Essex Street, Dublin, Ireland Male Easter Rising Ireland 1916

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).

 20 June 1916 No 269. Irish Prisoner of War, Frongoch Dear Pat I trust you and all at home are quite well as I am in the best of health as the weather here is beautiful among the mountains and the air very bracing we sleep & eat in common and are governed by our own officers we are receiving additional prisoners here regular and are not allowed to receive Irish papers there is very little to read here but the day goes over pleasantly rambling about the grounds. The Breens sent a parcel to Wakefield fro me which I received all right which you might thank them for me as we are only allowed to write once a week & one half sheet of note paper. The food is good & a better allowance than Wakefield, we are allowed to receive parcels from home we have a dry canteen where we can purchase food & other articles for use, John Prisoners of War. Letter fromFrongoch Mr Patrick MacGrath 20 East Essex St Dublin Ireland John J MacGrath No 269, Irish Prisoner of War Frongoch Nth Wales Frongoch Prison, Wales Letter from Kate English to her son, Patrick, 9 May 1916Letter from Davie English to his brother, Patrick English, c. June 1916Letter from Kate English to her son, Patrick, 23 May 1916Letter from John J. McGrath to Pat McGrath, 20 June 1916Letter from Messrs. Gaffney & Co. to Rebel Scollan, 25 August 1916Letter to Patrick English from his mother, Kate, 18 May 1916 22 Essex Street, Dublin, Ireland Letter from John J. McGrath to Pat McGrath, 20 June 1916 John J. McGrath Letter from John J. McGrath to Pat McGrath, 20 June 1916