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Full Title
In times of peril : leaves from the diary of Nurse Linda Kearns from Easter week, 1916, to Mountjoy, 1921 / edited by Annie M.P. Smithson.
Author
Kearns, Linda.
Contributor
Smithson, Annie M.P. De Valera, Eamon, 1882-1975.
Date Added
4 February 2016
Format
Book
Language
English
Publish Date
1922
Publisher
Dublin : Talbot Press ; London : T. Fisher Unwin Ltd.,
Source
Joseph McGarrity Books.
Topic
Kearns, Linda. Prisoners > Ireland > Diaries. Nurses > Biography. Ireland > History > Easter Rising, 1916.
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OCR
36 IN TIMES OF PERIL.
"remember that I would not be at my dear father’s
funeral. I know I kept repeating over and over
' again, “Ten years-ten years!” but still it seemed
to me then only a minor consideration in comparison
to my absence at the funeral. I suppose the mind
works so at the time of any great stress, and I know
that for the time being I was heartbroken--every-
thing coming together seemed too much to bear, and
I cried myself to sleep, but woke up again after only
a short time in blessed oblivion, awoke with a terrible
feeling of the utter hopelessness of everything.
A wardress slept in my cell that night, and did so
from that on till I left Armagh.
.Weary, weary days followed, days spent in won-
dering where I would be sent to next, for I knew that
as a convict I could not be kept in Armagh. I
prayed and prayed that I would not be sent out of
Ireland, but Fate was against me. At four o’clock
on the afternoon of April 12th, 1921, an escort came
to take me away, and I had only a few minutes
allowed me to prepare for my departure. I was just
aching to know my destination, but could get no
information. I was taken to the Armagh railway
station, but even then I could not tell whether I was
going to travel towards Dublin or towards Belfast.
But while we were standing in the waiting-room for
the train I managed to ask a girl: “ Did the next
train go to Dublin or to Belfast?”
She told me it was going to Belfast, and then I
knew that my destination was England, and I
shivered at the thought. Before the train left, a
number of well-wishers came to see me off, and I
found it very hard to keep from breaking down and
