The Charlie Daly correspondence from Kerry is one of the most important republican collections in the Letters 1916-1923 project. MA student Sinéad Greene has recently added more of Daly’s letters to our database and says:
“I really enjoyed working on this collection concerning letters between Charlie Daly and his family and friends in Ireland during the Civil War. It was very interesting to get an insight into their family life and also to read the different perspectives of how the Treaty affected people throughout the country, from Donegal to Kerry. The final letters from Charlie to his family on the 14 March 1923 before his execution were very moving and portrayed both the bond between Charlie and his family and also the human side of the Civil War.”
The letters in the Charlie Daly collection concern Irish republican Charlie Daly (in Irish: Cormac Ó Dálaigh). Charlie Daly was born in Knockaneculteen, Firies, Kerry, on 11 August 1896 into a family that was immersed in the Fenian tradition and the Irish Volunteer company in Kerry. Charlie Daly rejected the peace treaty with Britain and became involved in the 2nd Northern Division. Daly was subsequently captured and imprisoned at Drumboe Castle in County Donegal, where he was executed by firing squad on 14 March 1923 along with three other men; Dan Enright, Tim O’Sullivan, and Seán Larkin.
The Charlie Daly collection was photographed with kind permission of the Kerry County Archives. These letters were mostly written between 1918 and 1923. Charlie Daly wrote to his family; his parents, Ellen and Cornelius, his brothers William, Thomas and Cornelius Jnr, and his sisters Mary, Susan, Ellen and Nancy. His also wrote to family friends such as Kate Allman and Shelia Doogan as well as to friends where were also imprisoned throughout Ireland.
We invite you to read this exciting correspondence and help to transcribe more letters written by the Daly family and their friends.
In his letters to his mother, Charlie Daly discusses his reaction to the result of the Treaty which results in his arrest in 1922 and imprisonment in Donegal. His mother divulges information about the situation in Kerry while he is imprisoned in Donegal, mostly discussing those in the area who were arrested for being anti-Treatites. She also discusses her other children in letters to Charlie; the imprisonment of his brothers, Thomas and William, in Tralee, and his sister Susan who is studying to be a teacher in Dublin. The collection also includes letters from Ellen Daly to all her children, in particular her letters following Charlie’s executions. These include letters among the family but also to family friends who wrote to relay their sympathies to the Daly family.
The collection comprises of approximately 70% women and many of the women in the network are still unknown. These women include Charlie Daly’s mother and sisters, family friends, women imprisoned throughout Ireland, and acquaintances of Charlie Daly. If you have any information about the women in the Daly and would like to help us discover who these women are you can find more information here.
Further reading:
Horgan, Tim. Dying for the cause: Kerry’s Republican Dead. Mercier Press, Cork, 2015. 382-385.
Joy, Sinéad. The IRA in Kerry, 1916-1921. Collins, Cork, 2005.