What sights these walls have seen! In its working life between 1796 and 1924, Dublin's Kilmainham Gaol witnessed the passage of some 180,000 inmates, the majority of them common criminals incarcerated for assault, burglary, pick-pocketing, rape, murder, prostitution, illicit distilling and, most often, debt. It has housed 10,000 people - many of whom found jail a better alternative than starvation - in a single year during the Famine. It has held nationalist leaders from various eras and seen executions of 138 common criminals and 23 political prisoners.
Without doubt one of Ireland's most important buildings, the gaol draws 120,000 visitors a year, roughly half-Irish and half-foreigners. It is the sixth busiest heritage site in the Duchas system.
The gaol tells three major stories - about modern Ireland's social, political and penal history, says outgoing manager Tim Carey. "People come here to understand Irish history because the experience here is so immediate. They gain some insight into the Ireland of today. It does contextualise things a bit."
The chief "contextualisers" of the experience are the tour guides, who are passionate about "their" gaol and "their" prisoners. Each has his or her own special interest. Carey researched and wrote Mountjoy: The Story of a Prison (Collins Press) during his tenure. Cara Ronan is completing a degree in history and English to complement her B.Sc. in psychology and criminology. Phyl Mason has researched the roles of women and children in the gaol. Sarah Delaney works part-time cataloguing documents at the Pearse Museum. Niall Bergin is exploring the 1960s' restoration of the gaol. In a survey conducted for Duchas by an independent authority last summer, the Kilmainham guides earned top marks for their "professionalism, knowledge and enthusiasm".
Newcomer Lisa Kelly is making the mental shift from a sixth-century heritage site, Clonmacnoise in Co Offaly, to a 19thcentury prison. Accordingly, while the itinerary doesn't vary, you will never get the same tour at Kilmainham.
"It's like they built the gaol with a tour in mind," says Cara Ronan.
Generally, tours start in the East Wing, a striking 200 ft-by40 ft glass-roofed structure, built in 1861, whose 96 cage-like cells surround a central open expanse on three levels. The wing is immediately recognisable from its role in films such as In the Name of the Father and Michael Collins, but unlike its depiction as a screaming beehive of anger in the former film, it was built to be a silent "moral hospital" for the reform of offenders.
In keeping with the Victorian ideology that silent reflection on one's crimes would lead to repentance and conversion to religion, architect John McCurdy (one of whose recent commissions had been refurbishing Dublin's Shelbourne Hotel) designed the extension for the enforcement of silence. All cell doors face into the open centre of the wing, and each cell has a spyhole, enabling constant surveillance by guards. Silence was the rule 23 hours a day; violators were sent to dark, unheated punishment cells.
The scale and severity of the wing is awesome. Visitors are fascinated by the accessibility to cells and widespread graffiti - including a wry "to let" sign scratched above one doorway. Often, guides say, a visitor with personal connections to the gaol will speak up. Ex-offenders make comments on their own prison experiences; things haven't changed much in some modern jails, they say.
After moving upstairs to the chapter and watching a 27-minute film, visitors file into a dank, grotty corridor, lined with small dark cells, in the jail's original building. Even on a hot summer day, it is cold in here, exacerbated by the porous limestone walls. (Guides wear layers all year round; in winter they wear gloves and hats.)
Nevertheless, conditions here were a marked improvement on contemporary penal institutions at the time Kilmainham was built in 1796. Prior to the 1780s, the idea of imprisonment as a punishment did not exist. Convicts awaiting flogging, transportation or hanging were housed in teeming, stinking hovels. Kilmainham was a model of penal reform, although poor management, a rise in crime and the impact of the Famine eventually led to horrible overcrowding.
It was easy to get on the wrong side of the law in the 19th century. In the course of a year spent in the National Archives, cataloguing Kilmainham's registers for the purpose of recording and analysing data, 12-year veteran guide Phyl Mason dug up what guide Sarah Delaney calls "side stories".
"I always felt an awful lot of the stories of ordinary prisoners were untold," Mason says. Unearthing their names, ages, physical appearances, crimes and punishments was a means to humanise them.
A typical page from the register of 1848 includes a man imprisoned for having three geese he could not account for; two young men jailed for attacking a bread cart; another for having "bread and butter in his possession which had been stolen." One year during the 1860s, two boys, age 10 and 11, were jailed for stealing a black rabbit from the zoo. During a warm summer in the 1900s, a number of men and boys were arrested for swimming nude in the Grand Canal. One person spent three days in Kilmainham for pulling flowers in the Phoenix Park.
Policies on women changed. For one year during the 1870s, women prisoners were allowed to bring their babies; the register notes 242 women accompanied by 16 babies. In 1881, the gaol stopped taking women, and it was all male until its closure in 1910. (Subsequently, Kilmainham functioned as a military detention centre. It was operated as a prison by the British Army after the 1916 Rising, during the War of Independence and, by the Free State Army during the Civil War. Eamon de Valera, the last prisoner, was released on July 16th, 1924.)
At this point, the tour reaches the 1916 Corridor, where, off a shaky wooden and cast-iron catwalk, the cells of Joseph Plunkett, Thomas MacDonagh, Michael Mallin, Willie and Patrick Pearse, Tom Clarke and Countess Markievicz are viewed. Here's where the commentary becomes political, and guides say they try to keep the history as simple and balanced as possible.
"Some people come with preconceptions," says Niall Bergin. They might view Patrick Pearse, for example, in a negative light - "that he made a blood sacrifice, was a violent man," but the reality is far more complex.
Cara Ronan often uses patriots' own words - such as Mallin's last letter to his wife dated May 7th, 1916, in which he forgives the British soldiers and police - to tell their stories.
After a turn by the cells of Robert Emmet and Charles Stewart Parnell - bigger and more comfortable than the common criminals' quarters - visitors pass de Valera's cell, then outdoors to the children's exercise yard. In a yard below that, five of the Invincibles were hanged in 1883.
You're struck immediately by the weather - still, or rainy or windy - perhaps in a tiny manner reminiscent of a released prisoner's experience.
As visitors reach the tour's climax, the stone-breaker's yard, where 14 patriots were shot in 1916 and four Civil War prisoners were executed in 1922, they are visibly moved. "You can see that people are really, really listening," says Lisa Kelly.
Some guides end their tours with a comment on the Irish Tricolor that flaps against the yard's east wall. Green signifies the Republic; orange represents William of Orange and the Unionists; white stands for peace.
Foreigners and Irish nationals alike grasp the significance of these words.
Until the end of March, Kilmainham Gaol opens at 9.30 a.m., Monday to Friday. The last tour begins at 3.45 p.m. Closed Saturdays. On Sundays, the gaol opens at 10 a.m. and the last tour begins at 4.45 p.m. From April 1st, it is open every day from 9.30 a.m. and the last tour begins at 4.45 p.m. Tel: 01-4535984