This work was originally published by Maynooth University in Ireland in
This is an open access work licensed under Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0).
The letter is to Luke Gerald Dillon, 4th Baron Clonbrock. It refers to the proposed foundation of a fund to recognise the service of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police during the Easter Rising. As the British government were only willing to do the 'minimum', a fund was being established to reward the men who served and compensate the dependants of those killed or seriously injured. Clonbrock notes on the letter that he would donate £10 but would not be able to sit on the committee as he feared he would be unable to get many to contribute in County Galway. 'Sinn Fein' was, he believed, so prevalent in the county that people would be 'afraid'. Some of the letter is missing but a list is enclosed of names of those who had been asked to contribute and amounts received. The Irish Police & Constabulary Recognition Fund was founded by the Earl of Meath to recognise the work of the police during the Easter Rising. It presented certificates, war bonds and awards to policemen who were in active service in the Royal Irish Constabulary or Dublin Metropolitan Police during the Rising and compensation to the widows and dependants of those killed or injured.
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).