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This telegraph was sent by a number of prominent Cork citizens to Sir Ivor Churchill Guest (1873-1939), 1st Viscount Wimborne, lord lieutenant of Ireland. The authors believe their message voices the opinion of the 'vast majority of Citizens of Cork.' It requests an end to the executions and mass arrests that followed the suppression of the Easter Rising. It is argued that to continue would have a 'most serious affect on the people' and be 'extremely prejudicial to the peace'. The letter came on the day that Thomas Kent was executed in Cork Detention Barracks for his part in the death of a policeman.The signatories to the message include Rev. Daniel Cohalan, later bishop of Cork and an outspoken opponent of IRA violence during the War of Independence, the lord mayor of Cork, the high sheriff of Cork and members of the United Irish League. Lord Wimborne was appointed the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1915. Guest worked closely alongside Sir Matthew Nathan (1862-1939) in the administration of Ireland. Following the suppression of the Rising, Guest, under pressure, was forced to resign as Lord Lieutenant. A later inquiry into the Rising exonerated Guest and held Augustine Birrell (1850-1933) chiefly responsible for the events that occurred. Guest would continue to serve as Lord Lieutenant until 1918.
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).