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).
Letter from Nora Connolly (1893-1981) to Hanna Sheehy Skeffington (1877-1946) requesting that Hanna visit her mother. Nora tried to call into Hanna previously but was unsuccessful. This letter was posted on the day of James Connolly's execution, May 12th 1916. Nora Connolly was a socialist activist, member of Na Fianna Éireann's Belfast branch, and the principal organiser of Cumann na mBan's Belfast branch. This branch was noted for the equality awarded to its members as female volunteers carried out similar roles as to male Volunteers, including rifle practice and drill. After the Rising, Nora left for America to find work and spoke there about the republican cause. Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, 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.
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).