Papa had told mother to ask for his personal effects. And mother had asked for them. We only received some of his underclothes and the night clothes he wore in bed while he was wounded. Papa had said that the authorities had his watch, his pocketbook, and his uniform. But the officer in charge knew nothing about them.
Mother made many inquiries. But it was not until she went in person to General Maxwell that she succeeded in having the pocket book returned to her. Major Price, Chief Intelligence Officer in Ireland, had told her that they were keeping it for evidence.
Evidence—what more evidence did they require against a man they had executed?
Some time afterwards we recovered his watch; but we never found his uniform. And since I came to America I have been shown that a copy of the paper my father edited with his last corrections upon it, was put upon the market by a careful British officer who had figured out its value as a souvenir.
And then the whispered warnings came again to awaken my mother's fear. Some messages reached her that the police were again looking for me. Nor could I convince her otherwise. She begged and pleaded with me to go away from Dublin so that I would not be arrested. So that she might feel more at ease in her mind, I went to Belfast.
Even then she did not feel that I was safe. She came to Belfast and asked me to try to get to America alone. In accordance with my father's last wish she had applied for passports to take us all to America, or to take the girls. But the British authorities felt that the arrival of Mrs. Connolly and her five daughters in America would be prejudicial to the interests of the Realm; and refused her the passports. She had gone again and again to the authorities, only to be sent hither and thither on a fool's errand. And as she despaired of ever getting them she asked me to make any attempt I could and to use whatever means I could to get to America.
"Let them see that your comings and goings are not dependent on their goodwill."
And I to please her left Ireland and crossed to England. There I applied for a passport; and was given one. Not as the daughter of James Connolly, however.
It was the last week of June that we received the final refusal of our request for passports, and on the third week of July I sailed from Liverpool. I arrived in New York the first day of August, nineteen hundred and sixteen.