New Bailey Prison
Salford, England
November 22, 1867.
Dear Uncle and Aunt Hogan:
I suppose this is my last letter to you at this side of the grave. Oh dear Uncle and Aunt, if you reflect on it, it is nothing, I am dying an honourable death, I am dying for the fatherland, dying for the land that gave me birth, dying for the island of Saints and dying for liberty. Nearly every generation of our countrymen are suffering and where is the Irish heart that could stand by unmoved. I should like to know what trouble, what persecution, what misfortune could separate the true Irish heart from its own native isle.
Dear Uncle and Aunt, it is sad to be parting you all at my early age, but we must all die someday or another, a few hours more and I will breathe my last on English soil. Oh, that I could be buried in Ireland; what happiness it would be to all my friends and to myself where my countrymen could kneel over my grave. I cannot express what joy it offered me when I found, dear Aunt Sarah, that you were admitted yesterday. Dear Uncle, I am sure it was not a very pleasant place I had to receive you and my aunt, but we must put up with all trials until we depart this life. I am sure it will grieve you very much to have me in such a place on the evidence of such characters as the witnesses were that swore my life away, but I forgive them and may God forgive them. I am dying, thank God, a Christian and a Gentlemen.
Give my love to all friends in Ireland and accept the same yourselves from your ever affectionate Nephew, W. P. Allen.
Goodbye and remember me. Goodbye and may Heaven protect you, the last wish of your dying nephew.
W. P. ALLEN.