Kilmainham Gaol

Beth and I went down to the City Centre today for a couple of reasons. First off, Beth wanted to see the city. Secondly, I needed to help her get her bearings on how to get around in Dublin. Today's lesson involved riding the bus and the Luas (a light rail that runs through the city). The first destination we aimed for was Kilmainham Gaol.

Kilmainham Gaol (pronounced "jail") is an essential stop on a tour of Dublin - I'd even recommend that it is the first stop on your tour of Dublin. It really gets you familiarized with the history of the city and the country.

I'm not trying to say the country is full of convicts and that the history of the country revolves around the jail. However, the jail maps two important historical events of the country: The Potato Famine and The Easter Rising/Fight for Independence.

The interesting aspect to the Potato Famine is that to keep beggars off the street, they'd often incarcerate them at Kilmainham for some period of time. In the jail's history (over 100 years from the late 1700's through 1924 when it was closed), 800-1000 people were usually jailed per year. During the years of the Potato Famine, that number rose to over 9000 in one year. The meager rations they received in jail was more than they were getting at home. Kilmainham Gaol may well have saved hundreds/thousands of peoples lives.

The other piece of history that I referred to was The Easter Rising - which was the beginning of the country's fight for independence from England. In 1916, a group of Irish Republicans seized the General Post Office and other important landmarks in the City Centre and held off the British army for 1 week before they surrendered, unconditionally, to the army's overwhelming numbers.

This wasn't necessarily what caused the Irish movement for independence, though. There were uprising before, but they never were able to create the tidal wave of support that this movement eventually did. What really caused the support for independence was the execution of all the Irish Republicans at Kilmainham Gaol. In all 90 people were sentenced to death and 15 (mostly the leaders) were executed within a week of their sentence. The jail is a grim reminder of those executions as some of the cells have name placards over their doors commemorating the fallen heroes.

All in all, it was an excellent experience. However, we dropped out of the tour early because RJ was getting a little restless. A fun day for the family, but I think a little more walking than Beth was expecting.