Related Papers
The Field Day Review
Fenians in the Frame: Photographing Irish Political Prisoners, 1865-1868 (with Breandan Mac Suibhne)
Amy Martin
Jerome Devitt
This article examines the impact of Irish nationalism on the tiny, mid-Atlantic island-colony of Bermuda. It begins by uncovering the numerous institutional, literary, military, naval, and penal connections between the islands in order to establish the context for later Irish-American threats to the island. It examines the place of the island within the nationalist conceptions of the broader British Empire - both in explicit opposition to and implicitly in support of the colonial administration. It continues by tracing three different plots against the island, starting with the New York based Irish Republican Union's plot to free Young Irelander John Mitchel from captivity there in 1848. Next, it moves forward to the Fenian counter-intelligence that promised an invasion of the island in April 1866. It concludes with an examination of the plan (and reaction to) the Dynamiter’s 1882 attempt to attack Bermuda’s world famous HM Floating Dock, one of the Royal Navy’s most geo-strategically significant, and impressive pieces of colonial defensive infrastructure. The final, published version of this article can be found here: http://muse.jhu.edu/article/629423
Service provision in Castlerea prison – adequacy and shortfall from the perspective of prisoners
2005 •
Emmett Tuite
This study is an examination if the needs of Castlerea prisoners and the adequacy of service provision in the prison. The Irish prison population presents as a severely disadvantaged and marginalised group. Castlerea prison houses a broader range of offenders than many other Irish prisons, holding political prisoners, drug offenders and sexual offenders. These prisoners are integrated with each other without undue difficulty. A sample of 88 prisoners was used. The current study found the prisoners exhibited difficulties in relation to medical health, psychological health, education and employment history, addiction and re-offending. Respondents were vocal about areas of need and had considerable insight into the issues they needed to address in order to progress towards a crime-free lifestyle. The prison’s lack of comprehensive addiction treatment facilities and psychology services hinders the rehabilitation of prisoners. Insufficient preparation and planning for release also poses ...
Historical Archaeology
“Against Shameless and Systematic Calumny”: Strategies of Domination and Resistance and Their Impact on the Bodies of the Poor in Nineteenth-Century Ireland
2020 •
Barra O'Donnabhain
Mid-Victorian British characterizations of Ireland and much of its population blamed race and “moral character” for the widespread poverty on the island. The Irish poor were portrayed as a “race apart” whose inherent failings were at least partly to blame for the mortality they suffered during the Great Famine of 1845–1852. Recent excavations at Kilkenny workhouse and Spike Island convict prison have produced skeletal assemblages from this critical period. These collections have enabled bioarchaeological analysis of parameters mentioned by the Victorians as indicative of the distinctiveness of the Irish poor: stature, interpersonal violence, and tobacco use. Bioarchaeological data indicate that the differences between Irish and British populations in stature and risk of violence were exaggerated. Such characterizations, we argue, were part of a strategy of “Othering” that served to legitimize colonial domination. This exertion of power did not go uncontested, as the pattern of tobac...
MA Thesis, University College Cork
Hard Labour: Entheseal Changes, Work Intensity and Forced Labour
2016 •
Amy Quinn
Entheseal changes take place at the interface between a muscle, tendon or ligament and a bone. By scoring the development of these changes this study measured the labour intensity of five skeletal collections from Ireland. The methodology employed was the Mariotti et al. (2007) entheseal scoring method, used to examine twenty-three postcranial enthesis sites on seventy-two male skeletons. Standard methods were utilised for skeletal sex determination and age estimation. One of the collections studied was excavated from a convict graveyard of the Victorian prison on Spike Island and facilitated an assessment of the biological effect of unfree labour patterns in comparison to free communities. The results found that while many prisoners had very high entheseal development, the entheseal evidence does not indicate a higher intensity of labour than the general population. A number of reasons for this were explored, including an unavoidable sample bias and a discussion of the complex concepts of free and unfree. The four other collections examined provided varied samples so that comparisons could be made between early medieval and post-medieval, urban and rural, Catholic and Anglican, young adults and older individuals. The two controlling factors of age and body size (estimated by humeral measurements) were examined; age was found to correlate with greater entheseal development but body size was found to have no correlation, which may be due to the nature of a single-sex study. The results of this study have salient implications for the bioarchaeological study of the unfree, such as prisoners and slaves, as well as for the burgeoning field of enthesis studies.
Rethinking History
Doing Dead Time for the Sovereign: Archive, Abandonment, Performance
2009 •
Kathleen Biddick
Studi Irlandesi : a Journal of Irish Studies
Political prisoners and the Irish language : a north-south comparison
2016 •
Dieter Reinisch
The Irish language is witnessing a revival in some parts of Ulster. This revival is most visible in Belfast where An CheathruGhaeltachta (Gaeltacht Quarter) was founded to promote the Irish language. While Irish was marginalized during the conflict in the North, Belfast, for example, had more Gaelscoileanna (Irish-language schools) than any other city in Ireland except Dublin and Cork in 2013. One of the most important aspects for this development was the release of the Irish Republican prisoners following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. In contrast to the North, although considered as the national language in the southern Republic of Ireland, the Irish language is further declining in the South. Thus, while the former Republican prisoners perform a pivotal role in the North, their role in re-vitalising the language in the Republic is marginalized. By comparing the role of the Irish language in Long Kesh/ HMP Maze and Portlaoise Prison, I will discuss two aspects f...
Surviving the colony: The impact of the Western Australian convict system on prisoner health, 1850-1877
2019 •
Louis Marshall
This thesis examines the severity of convict experiences in Western Australia, through an analysis of prisoner health records. It explores convict diets, living conditions, sanitation, work regimes and medical care, at Fremantle Prison and at regional outstations and work camps. It also investigates living standards among ticket-of-leave convicts. In doing so, the thesis integrates Western Australia into broader Australian historical debates about convict labour management, the treatment of secondary offenders, the after-effects of the convict voyage, and the health impacts of physical and psychological punishments. This research challenges the long-established view that convict treatment in Western Australia was relatively benign.
Prison Service Journal
Interview: Saul Hewish
2013 •
Michael Fiddler
Editorial Comment: The Prison and the Public
2013 •
Alana Barton
