The GCW Tour, A Few Bits of the UK and Ireland: Dublin Tourist Destination #2, The Kilmainham Gaol

This one's easiest to manage if I bounce around in time a bit, but to do that we first have to sketch out the forward timeline. So, once again, one of my questionably summarized historical crib sheets...

Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin's principle prison, was commissioned 1787, opened in 1796, and then significantly expanded about eighty or ninety years later. Originally intended as your basic run of the mill prison, it achieved a new level of notoriety following the Easter Uprising/Rebellion (depending on your point of view) of 1916, as this was where the leaders of that movement were brought for execution. Following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, and Ireland's shift into civil war, Kilmainham continued to be a site of political imprisonment and execution, until it was decommissioned in 1924. Restoration of the site as a location of cultural and historical value began in the 1950s, and now it's one of Europe's largest unoccupied prisons.

The first thing to note is that in all likelihood you've seen Kilmainham Gaol, even if you've never been there...

In place of the tourists, think Daniel Day-Lewis or possibly Michael Caine. According to our guide, Kilmainham has appeared in over sixty movies, starting with the original Italian Job, and more than ninety television shows. I know I've seen this particular room more than once (which makes it sort of odd to walk into). 

Other parts of the prison were less familiar...

  

But the stories are all pretty tragic, and way too many of them end in executions. For example -- and apologies to everyone for whom the names wouldn't be so easily forgotten as they were for me -- a guy and his fiance are swept up in part of the Easter 1916 events, and he's slated for execution. The couple is allowed to marry, though they are brought together under guard for the service to be performed, and then separated. Later that evening, they're brought together under guard again and given ten minutes, counted down by one of they guards present, to say their goodbyes. They're separated, and in the morning he's executed by firing squad.

Later, in the post-treaty years, the anti-treaty wife will again be imprisoned in Kilmainham by the pro-treaty government, and this time she'll paint an image of the Virgin Mary on the back of her cell...

And since we're on the subject of executions, let's talk about executions.The most striking thing you learn on the tour -- well, besides the fact that they proved really counterproductive -- is that across time the executions move deeper and deeper into yards of the prison.

So, in the exercise yards closest to the cells...

You get this plaque commemorating the last four people executed at the prison in 1922...

Then you move further out into the work yards, where prisoners broke down rocks into gravel...

And you get this plaque to the fourteen leaders of the Easter 1916 events that were executed across five days in May...

But that's not the end of it. The tour ends outside the front door to the prison...

See those two little squares about two rows of bricks above the corners of the door to the balcony? The little squares were a later add. Originally, timbers used for two separate gallows projected from those spots. The original design was for prisoners to be hanged outside the front door to the prison, two at a time. 

Clearly, not the cheeriest of places. But wait. There's more. I mentioned that Kilmainham started as a generic jail, and only later became a political prison. Check out this graph from the museum...

This shows the prison population (vertical access)  by year (horizontal access) throughout the life of the prison. Notice that the political years, the last few on the right, aren't even close to the highest. The highest, by very, very far, are those three years in the middle.

What was unusual about those three years?

Potato famine. 

People were starving, and so stealing food to survive or trying to get thrown in jail to survive (jail, at least, had a meal plan, however meager), and either way finding themselves at Kilmainham.

Sad to think there are those running around today who think we should go back to that. Personally, I like Kilmainham better as a movie set...


P.S. It took me awhile to figure this out, but this year is 2016, which means it's the 100th anniversary of the Easter Uprising. There's a lot happening in Dublin right now to commemorate that centennial. If I'd been paying more attention, I would've tried to see more of it.