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David Sheehy (1844–1932) writes to his daughter Hanna Sheehy Skeffington (1877-1946) to give his condolences regarding the murder of her husband, Francis. Hanna Sheehy Skeffington (1877-1946) suffragette, nationalist, language teacher, was the founder of the Irish Women’s Franchise League and a founding member of the Irish Women Workers’ Union. She was the widow of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington who was summarily executed on 26 April 1916. She was active during the Rising, bringing food to the Volunteers in the G.P.O. and the College of Surgeons. Four days passed before she found out what had happened to her husband, Francis (1878-1916), and it wasn't until almost two weeks later that the full details of his execution emerged. David Sheehy (1844–1932) was a parliamentarian and the father of Hanna Sheehy Skeffington. Though he supported Irish involvement in the first World War and did not approve of Hanna Sheehy Skeffington's feminist politics, he was a member of the IRB and interceded for the release of his son in law Francis Sheehy Skeffington after he was imprisoned for anti-war protests. He formally declared bankruptcy in 1915 and was forced to sell the family home, living briefly in Bath, England before moving in with his widowed daughter, Margaret Sheehy, in Dublin.
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).