Letter from Prisoner A 3/56 gives rare insight into plight of imprisoned 'rebels'

A letter home from 35-year-old Eamonn O’Modhráin is just like many others sent by thousands of Irish men detained without charge in British prisons and camps after the 1916 Rising.

But it was only a few years ago that his grand-daughter’s husband, Robert Doyle, found the letter, during a clearout for a house extension, in a treasure trove of items on nationalist Ireland from the end of the 19th century.

Eamonn thanked his mother, Mary, at home in Ballysax, in the Curragh, Co Kildare, for sending newspapers, and told her about conditions in Wakefield Prison, in west Yorkshire. He would soon be moved to Frongoch, in Wales, where a distillery previously converted to a camp for German prisoners-of-war would accommodate what the British authorities considered the most serious Irish troublemakers.