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Every country has prisons. Prisons to lock up criminals, or agitators who are seen as opposing the authorities, and for myriad reasons. It is not a new phenomenon either, going back for centuries. Perhaps it’s as old as human beings’ structured society. The famous Bridge of Sighs in Venice is supposed to have got its name from the sighs of prisoners in nearby dungeons of the Doges Palace in the middle ages.
Today, prisons of yesteryears have also become showcases like museums, giving a glimpse of the times. One such example is the Cellular Jail in Andaman & Nicobar Islands which display the cells of India’s freedom fighters whom the British sent away to live in isolation from the mainland.
I have not seen the Cellular Jail but recently, I had the experience of visiting the Cork City Gaol in Ireland. The jail, or gaol, is now a heritage centre inviting scores of tourists and those who look for their roots, particularly from the USA where many migrated following the Great Irish famines during 1840s and 1850s, or were sent away as convicts to far off Australia. Ireland at that time was under British rule. The Irish, mostly Catholics, were also at the receiving end from the Protestant rulers in London. This was also behind the long-drawn Irish conflict. But that’s another story.
One reason for the gaol’s reputation is the life-like representation of the life in the jail through entirely believable wax figures. The prisoners’ dresses, the warden’s and the governor’s etc. meticulously represent the attire of the 19th century Ireland; even the fabric used is reminiscent of those days. This has been possible, informed Elizabeth Kearns, museum director, due to the efforts of researchers.
All the wax figures are historically recorded ones. So here was one of Mary Sullivan, a seamstress, at the entrance who was convicted for seven years for stealing a bag of calico cloth. Seven years for such a petty crime? But then I remembered the slabs on a footpath of a small town in Tasmania, south of Australia, put up by the councils in remembrance of the convicted forefathers. One such read: seven years for stealing a few potatoes! It was obvious that the poor got uncalled-for punishment those days and the expanding British empire needed people to populate those remote fringes of the empire and this was a good way to do it because the England’s genteel class would have refused to go so far way from homeland.
There were other figures in the prison, preserved exactly it was, Thomas Raile in his cell praying with the prison chaplain. His crime was stealing books. Mary McDonnell , 23, who was sentenced to hard labour because she was unable to look after her six children when her husband died and she had to resort to prostitution; she was in prison while her children were sent to Cork Work House to work at industrial products.
Grim though the scenes were inside the prison museum, ironically many prisoners preferred staying inside than outside. And some repeated their crimes just to be inside the jail. For, it at least ensured three meals a day, medical attention, and a shelter. Common people in Ireland at that time were very poor, often starving, and had to live by the roadside for lack of housing In fact, when the prison was opened in the imposing beautiful castle in 1824, it was considered as the “Best in three kingdoms” (Ireland, England, Scotland). Governor John Barry Murphy, whose lifelike figure greets you at the beginning of the tour, tried to introduce lots of reforms in the prison system. The wardens working there, however , did not have a much better time. Their families had to stay within the walls and education for the children also suffered. At first, both men and women prisoners were put there, in different wings, then it became a women-only prison. Afterwards when civil war started in Ireland (against British rule) it was an exclusive male prison for political prisoners. In 1924, the prison was closed
Walking through the Cork City Gaol’s corridors was also a lesson in history, though only a partially, of Ireland. Who says a grim slice of history cannot be also be an enlightening experience?
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