Designing Cork City Gaol

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Elizabeth Deane's construction firm was contracted to build the Cork City Gaol to replace the old, overcrowded gaol at North Gate Bridge, which had been in operation since medieval times. Elizabeth Deane, an awe-inspiring woman of extraordinary energy and the daughter of an architect, took over her husband Alexander’s family business after he died in 1806 (Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, n.d.: wall text, The Deanes). Her young son, Thomas Deane, was commissioned to design the jail. The construction of the exterior walls of Cork City Gaol began in 1818, and it was not until 1824 that the building was completed and accepted its first prisoners (Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, n.d.: wall text, Gaol Timeline).

Image of the prison architecture, which is resonant with the total institution

(photo credit: Conach Gibson-Feinblum, 2024)

A period of starvation 

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Throughout the mid-1840s to late 1840s, the Great Famine (1845-1852) resulted in many starving and impoverished men, women, and children committing crimes, largely stealing, for some in the hopes of being sent to the gaol, where they would be fed and clothed (Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, n.d.: wall text, Gaol Timeline). The effects of poverty during the Great Famine acutely affected women (particularly those with caring responsibilities), as Ireland had one of the highest rates of female incarceration in the world during the mid-1800s (Windle et al., 2022). 

Punishment behind closed doors: discipline, control and reform

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By the close of the 18th century, public spectacles of punishment, such as executions and transportation, were gradually replaced with a punishment system centred on penal servitude that occurred behind the prison doors (Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, n.d.: wall text, Punishments introduction). This consisted of mainly laborious tasks developed to keep prisoners active and other disciplinary techniques such as hard labour, general gaol chores or solitary confinement (ibid.).  

Michel Foucault (1979) provides a wonderful analysis of the history of the penal system and documents the shift from the punishment of the body, such as flogging, hanging and being drawn and quartered for crimes associated with the ‘bloody code’ (statutes recommending capital punishment for crimes from theft to murder and treason) to the discipline, control and reform the body and soul in prison. This shift is due to the development of ‘Enlightenment’ thinking, ideas around reason, rights and associated legal, social and prison reform. For example, executions from 1868 (now only for murder and treason) no longer took place in public. They were moved inside the prison. At this time, key Enlightenment thinkers such as Beccaria (1986 [1764])  and Bentham (1787) were writing about the necessary reform of prisons and that punishment should be ‘proportionate,’ that it should fit the crime. Beccaria argued for the abolition of torture and that punishment should be a deterrent. There was also a growing interest in psychology and the treatment of offenders and the belief that social problems should be dealt with by the application of reason. Calls for reform peaked in the mid-1800s. 

In the post-famine years, John Barry-Murphy governed Cork City Gaol from 1858 to 1873. He was the first Irish Catholic appointed to office. During his time in office, Cork City Gaol’s western wing was remodelled into a brighter, more spacious double-sided cell wing in 1870 (Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, n.d.: wall text, Gaol Timeline). The prisoner cells in the gaol were arranged around the outer walls, allowing for constant inspection and resonating with Bentham’s panopticon (see Bentham, 1843; and also Foucault, 1979). As a panoptic surveillance model, the vantage point of double-sided call wings enabled warders to observe all areas of the wings along good sight lines. The panoptic design has also been applied to other prison designs, such as Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin (see Kilmainham Gaol Museum).

"The Panopticon is a marvellous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power" (Foucault, 1979: p. 202)

Image of panoptic view from entrance hall (photo credit: Conach Gibson-Feinblum, 2024)

In summary, the shift from punishing the body to disciplining the body and soul or mind is an important feature of modern societies. Techniques of surveillance and disciplinary power are used to check on/modify people’s behaviour and facilitate reform and rehabilitation.

Cork City Gaol: The Women’s Gaol

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Under the 1878 General Prisons (Ireland) Act, the City Gaol was designated as a female-only prison for the city and county, while the County Gaol was reorganised to house men only (see Munster Express, 1878). It is claimed that the day the act came into force, the women from Cork County Gaol were marched over to Cork City Gaol, and vice versa for the men in Cork City Gaol (T. Spalding, personal communication, September 21, 2023). 

Cork City Gaol saw many female republicans involved in the Irish War of Independence. One well-known prisoner who passed through the corridors of Cork City Gaol was Countess Markievicz, a British-born Irish nationalist revolutionary. Countess Markievicz was given a sentence of four months for a seditious speech she delivered at Newmarket (Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, n.d.: information brochure, 11. Countess Marckievicz). While serving her sentence, the Countess wrote many letters to her sister Eva, remarking how pleasant her cell was at Cork City Gaol (see the image below of Countess Marckievic’s letter to her sister Eva on the 14th of June 1919 courtesy of Cork City Gaol).

Image of Countess Marckievicz's letter to her sister Eva on the 14th of June 1919 
(photo credit: Conach Gibson-Feinblum, 2024)

Image of Countess Marckievicz in her cell writing a letter

(photo credit: Conach Gibson-Feinblum, 2024)

Countess Markievicz’s experience differed from many of the other women alongside her in the cells of Cork City Gaol since, for them, poverty and punishment were very much tied up with the incarceration of numerous women who were convicted of offences such as petty theft,  loitering and prostitution (see Donaldson, 1998). 

Incarceration: containment, punishment and crimes of poverty

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During the 1800s, the pettiest of crimes carried the heaviest sentences (Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, n.d.: information brochure, 13. Julia Twomey). For example, Mary Sullivan, a seamstress by trade, received a seven-year sentence for stealing cloth in 1865 (Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, n.d.: information brochure, 2. Mary Sullivan). The impact of poverty is not only a common thread in many female prisoners' stories, but it is also represented in the physical space of the prison. In one cell is Mary-Ann Twohig, a 16-year-old girl who had her sentence reduced to two months after her son was born in the jail hospital. Her crime - stealing a man's cloth cap, other clothing, and kitchen utensils with the plan to pawn them (Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, n.d.: information brochure, 9. Mary-Ann Twohig). 

Image of Mary Sullivan being escorted by a female warder

(photo credit: Conach Gibson-Feinblum, 2024)

In another cell, a 10-year-old girl, Julia Twomey, was sentenced to 14 days in the gaol for attempting to steal bellows from a shop on Georges Quay (Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, n.d.: information brochure, 13. Julia Twomey). As a form of punishment, she was made to pick oakum. Like many others in Cork City Gaol, Julia Twomey could not read or write. The gaol attempted to provide a basic school for children and adults at one time, but this was quickly abandoned (Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, n.d.: information brochure, 14. Edward O’Brien). After completing her sentence, she was sent to a reformatory school in Dublin alongside eight boys and three other girls (Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, n.d.: information brochure, 13. Julia Twomey). Sadly, Julia Twomey’s case is not unique because the movement of people around institutions was a common occurrence (Professor Linda Connolly cited Walking Borders, 2018; see also Donaldson, 1998). 

Image of Julia Twomey sitting on her cell floor (photo credit: Conach Gibson-Feinblum, 2024)

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Mary McDonnell was charged with neglecting her children. Still only 23 years old, she served one month in Cork City Gaol (Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, n.d.: information brochure, 10. Mary McDonnell). Her children, on the other hand, were taken away and sent to the workhouse, which was known to have high rates of death. For instance, in the year 1865, 156 children died out of a total of 868 in workhouses in Cork (ibid.). The movement of people during this time was also accompanied by a cycle of institutionalisation linked to issues of poverty. A significant number of women left Cork City Gaol unsupported, with criminal convictions, and often had difficulty finding work, leading to re-commitments (Donaldson, 1998). This has been called the ‘revolving door’ phenomenon in Criminology, and despite the intervening years, women in the criminal justice system in Ireland who are incarcerated, often for short sentences for summary offences, face a ‘revolving door’ (O’Neill, 2024; see also Windle et al., 2022).

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Conditions in Cork City Gaol

Cork City Gaol was opened to male and female republicans as a result of the Irish Civil War (1922-1923) (Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, n.d.: wall text, Gaol Timeline). In November 1923, republican prisoner and renowned writer Frank O’Connor (born Michael O’Donovan) documented the gruelling conditions of the jail during his sentence. He wrote that:

There were four of us in a cell that had been condemned as inadequate for one, and the one who had originally occupied it had done so in an age when they didn’t believe in coddling prisoners. It was seething with vermin. Three of us slept on the floor with our heels to the door, and one on the radiator pipes the window, and that took in the total floor space (1988: p. 169).

Image of cell doors along the wing (photo credit: Conach Gibson-Feinblum, 2024)

As one can imagine, the grossly unhealthy environment created the prime environment for the spread of diseases such as typhus fever and smallpox. One overworked and underpaid doctor, Dr. Beamish, visited the gaol at least once daily, seeing around 80 to 100 patients (Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, n.d.: information brochure, 16. Dr. Beamish). He was Cork City Gaol’s longest-serving doctor, working from 1840 until 1881. Dr Lucy Smith, the second female graduate in medicine from Queen’s College Cork, was appointed as the visiting physician to Cork City Gaol when it operated as a female-only prison until c. 1922 (University College Cork Heritage Services, 2020). Accompanying her dedication to maternity work in the Erinville hospital, Dr Lucy E. Smith worked hard to treat the many prisoners suffering from illnesses or ailments during their sentence (Cork City Gaol, 2024).

By 1923, conditions in the gaol had deteriorated so much that male and female prisoners were transferred to other prisons or released (Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, n.d.: wall text, Gaol Timeline). In the same year, Cork City Gaol closed its doors.

Irish prison reform

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Post-independence, the prisons in the south were transferred to the Irish Department of Justice. Many of the state's smaller prisons, including Cork City Gaol, were shut. The level of women imprisoned in penal institutions fell significantly between 1922 and 1970. However, as explained by Windle and colleagues “relatively large numbers of women were confined in other institutions” that were founded in response to local conditions and religious and moral reform demands, which profoundly impacted women's lives (2022: p. 64). These institutions include psychiatric hospitals, Magdalen Asylums (later termed ‘Magdalen Laundries’) and industrial schools. 

With numbers falling, some prisons and wings allocated to women were closed, including “Galway (1930), Waterford (1935), Dundalk (1935), Cork (1940), Sligo (1950) and Portlaoise (1960). By 1970, just two women’s institutions remained in Dublin and Limerick” (Windle et al., 2022: p. 64). The 1960s then saw shifts in criminal justice policy that created a foundation for a more modern prison system. For instance, the Inter-Departmental Committee on the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders was established, which supported a focus on rehabilitation (ibid.). The reforms proposed during this time were considered radical, including “a focus on training, post-release employment and alternative accommodation to prison” (ibid: p. 60). However, from the early 1970s, there was a rise in the prison population, which created a drawback in improving prison conditions. The prison population in Ireland, in line with global trends, had reached an unprecedented high at the beginning of the 21st century.

In line with overcrowding issues, the prison system adopted a more security-oriented approach that focused on crisis management and less on rehabilitation (Windle et al., 2022). Cell sharing and temporary release were implemented to relieve tensions and reduce numbers in Irish prisons. While the Irish prison system has come a long way since the 18th century, due to the age of reform, the reliance on prison as a form of punishment continues to be a troubling aspect of the criminal justice system, while community-based alternatives remain underdeveloped. 

At the time of writing, there are two women’s prisons in Ireland: the Mountjoy Dóchas Centre, a 

medium-security prison that forms part of the Mountjoy Prison Campus and a new female prison in Limerick, a medium-security prison for females for all six Munster counties. Prior to its existence, Limerick Female Prison was a wing of the male prison. When the Dóchas Centre opened in 1999 and the new female prison at Limerick in 2023, both facilities were regarded as ‘state-of-the-art’ units designed to meet the needs of the female population. Despite the desire to provide “progressive gender responsive reforms”, the ever-increasing number of women in prison and the lack of alternative accommodation has resulted in overcrowding in both of the country’s female prisons as they operate above capacity (Baldwin, Elwood and Brown, 2022: p. 107; see also Windle et al., 2022; English, 2024; and O’Neill, 2024).

Cork City Gaol restoration

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The former gaol was idle for years before becoming Cork’s first radio station - 6CK. The centre of the main building was used as a broadcasting station until the end of the 1950s (Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, n.d.: wall text, Gaol Timeline). In the following decades, the building fell into decay despite being used by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs as a training school (1950s to 1960s) and a storage unit (1970s to 1980s) (Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre, n.d.: wall text, Cork City Gaol Restoration).