Writing on the Wall

Upon arriving at Kilmainham Gaol I had a twisting feeling in my stomach about a place where some of the most heroic and tragic events took place in Ireland from 1780s to the 1920s. The brisk air touched my nose as my fellow students and I got out of the cab and my eyes were met by a large castle like construction which a solid steel black door for the entrance. I was very intrigued to find out what was behind them. The first thing I noticed was a guest book on an old wooden table. I had the sense of cheating before entering the jail because I could see other people’s comments and reactions which gave me a perception of how things were to follow. “Very sad, interesting, information filled” were some of the comments I read.

The tour started an hour later when we first walked into a chapel where a slideshow gave us a background of the Gaol and where we learned some disturbing facts. A place where there was no segregation of prisoners, men, women and children were incarcerated up to five in each cell. With only a single candle for light and heat, most of their time was spent in the cold and the dark. Over the 140 years it served as a prison--its cells held many of the most famous people involved in the fight for Irish independence. The most significant thing I learned was the story of Joseph Mary Plunkett, one of the leaders of the 1916 Rising and his wife Grace Gifford. Grace learned that her fiancé was going to be executed so she persuaded the authorities to allow a wedding to take place in the very room we were sitting in. The marriage happened and they were allowed ten minutes to spend together and it was rumored that as Grace walked out the prison door she heard a shot and her husband was killed. Grace herself became a prisoner in 1923 during the Civil War and she was an artist and painted pictures on her cell walls, including one of the Madonna and child which survived and is available for view today. As the tour continued I was still stunned by the story of Joseph and Grace.

Names and sayings filled the dirty walls as a reminder of how many men, women and children suffered here. Our tour guide filled in all of the gaps and questions we had about the walls and cells. The Gaol made me realize there was bad and evil in this country and some terrible things went on inside the castle-like walls that are still shown on the inside. One of the things we saw that I felt that was more important was the courtyard was outside. The most famous, or infamous, executions of all in Kilmainham were those of fourteen of the leaders of the failed 1916 Easter Rising. These took place in May 1916, in the early hours of the morning in the Stonebreaker’s Yard where we stood. The guest book comments about Kilmainham being sad were very accurate and the story of Grace and Joseph will be in my heart forever like it is written in my heart and off of the walls.