This postcard was sent to the Archbishop Byrne of Dublin in 1922. It reads ‘May it please your grace to give me £5 to release my clothes out of the pawn shop you have helped me when in [illegible] your very grateful obedient child.’ It was one of many similar requests for financial aid by Dublin’s poor.

Dublin Diocesan Archive, Byrne Charity Cases 1921-1926

Katie Barclay is a historian at Queen’s University, Belfast. She found this letter among several thousand similar requests in the Dublin Diocesan Archive.