Location | Grangegorman, Dublin 7 |
---|---|
Coordinates | 53°21′16.97″N6°16′41.22″W / 53.3547139°N 6.2781167°W |
Status | Currently in use as the offices of the Grangegorman Development Agency (http://ggda.ie/) and DIT Campus Planning |
Opened | 1820 |
Closed | 1831 |
The Richmond General Penitentiary was a prison established in 1820 in Grangegorman, Dublin, Ireland as an alternative to transportation. It was part of an experiment into a penitentiary system which also involved Millbank Penitentiary, London. Richmond and Millbank penitentiaries were the first prisons in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to specialise in reform rather than punishment. The building was designed by the architect Francis Johnston and decorated by George Stapleton. The building ceased to be a penitentiary in 1831, and later became part of the Richmond Asylum. [1] [2]
In 1810, the Governors of the House Industry situated on North Brunswick Street were instructed by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to purchase land for the construction of a penitentiary. The purpose of the penitentiary was to provide a custodial and rehabilitative alternative to the transportation of prisoners to Botany Bay, Australia. It was hoped that through solitary confinement, hard labour and religious instruction that prisoners might be reformed. [3] They obtained a three half acre site from Lord Monck in Grangegorman which was at that time planted with apple and pear trees. Given that the Governors already had responsibility for the management of several prisons, including the Female penitentiary in Kilmainham, the House of Correction, Smithfield, the penitentiary in James's Street and a prison ward in the House of Industry, they were assigned the task of overseeing the building of the institution that would be known as the Richmond General Penitentiary. The architect appointed was Francis Johnston. [4] The building was completed in 1816, [5] but it served as a fever hospital in that year and was subsequently completely refurbished. It received its first prisoners in 1820. [6]
Architecturally this "brooding" and "dour" building has been described as realising "as bald an expression of the late Georgian penal code as one is likely to get". [7] Sited close to the House of Industry, the forbidding frontage of the penitentiary, which consisted of one central block featuring a clock-tower with two wings either side in which were placed massive entry gates, [8] originally extended 700 feet along Grangegorman Lane. [9] According to one contemporary commentator the exterior of the building was "imposing" and "calculated to produce in the mind of the approaching criminal, an impression of hopeless incarceration, and compel him to resign at once every idea of liberty, unless deserved by a reform of conduct." [10]
Following concepts of prison design that had become popular with progressive architects since the 1770s, the penitentiary employed a complex radial design consisting of a semi-octagonal shape divided down the middle by a long central corridor which was flanked by kitchens, shops, chapels, and yards, and extended from the front to the rear of the building. This central corridor divided the penitentiary into male and female sides. Each half was also subdivided into three individual wedge-shaped compartments divided from each other by radiating corridors and walls. Each of these segments were also divided by transverse walls and corridors the first section of which contained workshops and then cells surrounding an exercise yard. The large outer exercise yard was bisected by a central radiating structure running to the rear perimeter wall which contained solitary cells and infirmaries. [7] [11] According to Markus Reuber this standard penitentiary design, conceived of as an architectural technology to achieve the reform of the prisoner, sought to incorporate monastic principles of seclusion, solitude, silence and work into the spatial organisation of the prison. [12]
Upon committal prisoners were placed in solitary confinement in cells towards the rear of the building and, if their behaviour was seen to warrant it, after a period of at least one week they were removed to cells closer to the front of the building where they were allowed a greater degree of interaction with the other inmates. [13]
The prison's officers were accused of proselytism and cruelty, and the British administration in Ireland ordered a commission of inquiry to investigate the accusations. [14]
The penitentiary was used as a transportation depot to Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) between 1840 and the 1880s. Over 3,200 women and children passed through the Grangegorman Transportation Depot as it was then known, before being sent on ships to Hobart, Tasmania. This was the largest number of transportees of any place in Ireland at the time. The Cascades Female Factory in Hobart where these women ended up is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 1897 ownership of the building was transferred to the Richmond District Lunatic Asylum and it was thereafter referred to as the "annexe" and used to house patients and for administrative functions. [15] The building now referred to as 'The Clock Tower' is used as offices for Technological University of Dublin and the Grangegorman Development Agency. It forms part of the new TU Dublin campus being developed on the former hospital grounds. [16]
The Eastern State Penitentiary (ESP) is a former American prison in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is located in the Fairmount section of the city, and was operational from 1829 until 1971. The penitentiary refined the revolutionary system of separate incarceration, first pioneered at the Walnut Street Jail, which emphasized principles of reform rather than punishment.
Grangegorman Development Agency is an agency of the Government of Ireland charged with redevelopment of the Grangegorman Urban Quarter, formerly within the curtilage of St. Brendan's Hospital. Grangegorman itself is an inner city area on the Northside of Dublin. Grangegorman, at 29 hectares, was the largest undeveloped site in the City of Dublin.
St. Ita's Hospital is a mental health facility in Portrane in the north of County Dublin in Ireland.
H.M. Gaol Hobart or Campbell Street Gaol, a former Australian maximum security prison for males and females, was located in Hobart, Tasmania. Built by convict labour, the gaol operated between 1821 until the early 1960s. In 1961, male inmates were transferred to the H.M. Risdon Prison and in 1963, female inmates were transferred to the Risdon Women's Prison.
Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa was an Irish Fenian leader who was one of the leading members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Born and raised in Rosscarbery, County Cork, he witnessed the Great Famine. Rossa founded the Phoenix National and Literary Society and dedicated his life to working towards the establishment of an independent Irish Republic. He joined the IRB, was arrested by the British and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1869 he was elected to the British parliament while in prison. After being exiled to the United States in 1870 as part of the Cuba Five amnesty, Rossa worked with other Irish revolutionary organisations there to oppose British rule in Ireland.
Thomas Bushell was a convict transported to colonial Western Australia. He was hanged in 1865 after attacking a warder.
Millbank Prison or Millbank Penitentiary was a prison in Millbank, Westminster, London, originally constructed as the National Penitentiary, and which for part of its history served as a holding facility for convicted prisoners before they were transported to Australia. It was opened in 1816 and closed in 1890.
John Haviland was an English-born American architect who was a major figure in American Neo-Classical architecture, and one of the most notable architects working from Philadelphia during the nineteenth century.
Newgate Prison was a place of detention in Dublin, Ireland. It was initially located at Cornmarket, near Christ Church Cathedral, on the south side of the Liffey and was originally one of the city gates before being moved to a new purpose built prison on Green Street on the north side of the city in 1781. The prison finally closed in 1863 while the building was demolished in 1893. The site today contains Saint Michan's Park while the remains of the prison's boundary walls still form part of the boundary of the park.
Sir Thomas Deane was an Irish architect. He was the father of Sir Thomas Newenham Deane, and grandfather of Sir Thomas Manly Deane, who were also architects.
Frederick Villiers Clarendon was an Irish architect noted for his design work on a number of large public buildings in Dublin, including the Natural History Museum and Arbour Hill Prison.
St. Brendan's Hospital was a psychiatric facility located in the north Dublin suburb of Grangegorman. It formed part of the mental health services of Dublin North East with its catchment area being North West Dublin. It is now the site of a modern mental health facility known as the "Phoenix Care Centre". Since the official opening of the Richmond Lunatic Asylum in 1815 the Grangegorman site has continuously provided institutional facilities for the reception of the mentally ill until the present day. As such the Phoenix Care Centre represents the continuation of the oldest public psychiatric facility in Ireland.
Grangegorman is an inner suburb on the northside of Dublin city, Ireland. The area is administered by Dublin City Council. It was best known for decades as the location of St Brendan's Hospital, which was the main psychiatric hospital serving the greater Dublin region. As of 2020, the area is the subject of a major redevelopment plan, running for more than a decade, under the aegis of the Grangegorman Development Agency, including the new Technological University Dublin campus.
United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island, also known simply as Alcatraz or The Rock, was a maximum security federal prison on Alcatraz Island, 1.25 miles off the coast of San Francisco, California, United States. The site of a fort since the 1850s, the main prison building was built in 1910–12 as a U.S. Army military prison.
Eleonora Lilian Fleury (1867–1960) sometimes known as Norah Fleury was the first woman to graduate in medicine from the Royal University of Ireland (1890). She was also the first woman member of the Medico Psychological Association, elected in 1894. After graduating medical school, she worked at the Homerton Fever Hospital in London for a year, and then worked at the Richmond Asylum in Ireland for 27 years, eventually becoming deputy medical director there. From 1921 until 1926 she worked at Portrane Asylum in Donabate, and then she retired. She was arrested in 1921 by Irish state forces for being involved in an assistance and escape program for anti-treaty prisoners which was centred on the asylum at Portrane. After she was released she returned to her work at the asylum.
Woking Convict Invalid Prison was constructed in mid-19th-century England, primarily to hold male invalid convicts who previously had been billeted on hulks and had been moved to the temporary invalid prison at Lewes. The concept of a prison specifically for invalids was seen as progressive at the time.
The Bethesda Chapel, Dublin, was an Episcopal Church of Ireland, church on Granby Row and Dorset Street, Dublin.
Jacob Owen was a Welsh-born Irish architect and civil engineer of the nineteenth century. His architectural work is most closely associated with Dublin, Ireland. He also contributed extensively to the shaping of public architecture throughout Ireland, through his design of schools, asylums, prisons and other public buildings associated with British rule.
George Peter Holford (1767–1839) was an English barrister, politician and author. With a short break 1806–7, he was a Tory Member of Parliament from 1803 to 1826, for a number of constituencies. Holford was an advocate of prison reform.
North Brunswick Street is a street on the northside of Dublin, Ireland. It runs from the junction of Stoneybatter in the east to Church Street in the west and runs parallel to North King Street further south. It is located between the areas of Grangegorman to the north and Smithfield to the south. The street is named for the House of Brunswick, holders of the British and Irish crown from 1714 to 1901.
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