This work was originally published by Maynooth University in Ireland in
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This letter is written from the front. Fred apologises for his failure to write any letters recently, having been continually busy for some time. He thanks his father for all the 'gossip' from home, and also mentions his appetite for news from Ireland, particularly news of the Rebellion which he finds 'absorbing for of course I know the places & some of the people by hearsay'. He gives some details of his ordinary daily routine, writing that his 05:00 start makes the day very long, but that as long as he has the opportunity to ride his horse he can bear it. This letter is part of a series of correspondence belonging to Henry Bruce Armstrong (1844-1943). The correspondence largely concerns Armstrong’s estate and financial affairs with correspondents ranging from family members to high ranking Northern Irish politicians. At the time of this letter he was a County Councillor for Armagh, and he would later become a Westminster MP. The author of this letter signs himself simply as 'Fred', although his identity is unclear, given that H.B. Armstrong had no sons with that name.
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).