I want you to close your eyes, or, better
still, open your internal mind’s eye, the one that allows you to see what your
imagination paints for you. I want to take you to a time when personal affairs
were much simpler, but could be more dangerous. I want to imagine your ancestors
of approximately 150 years ago. The year is 1849. The location is
Carrickfergus, Ireland. The Great Famine is over, but the effects are still
evident. You can walk down the road towards town, and while doing so, you pass
a number of houses, some of which the former inhabitants have left to go to
either America or Canada. Other empty houses belonged to those who didn’t have
the money to buy food to replace the potato crops that failed over the previous
few years. Many of these people lost energy and, eventually, the will to live. These
are the people who starved to death in their homes on the estates that were
supposed to look after the people that lived there. It seems that those that
emigrated were the lucky ones.
Now, I want you to imagine a man, one who
is shabbily dressed and looking around to see if anyone is looking. This man is
in the process of going into a root cellar of a house that looks well kept. He
makes it into the cellar and, after about ten minutes, emerges, with his arms
full of vegetables. He looks around before coming out of the cellar to make
sure that there is no one around. He can’t see anyone, but that doesn’t mean
that the way is clear. He tries to stay in the shadows and tries to work his
way over to the gap in the hedge. He sees no one on the grounds. He makes it to
the hedge and starts to crawl through, pushing his load of vegetables ahead of
him. He has left a family member on the other side to help him carry the vegetables
to his home. As he crawls through, he softly calls his companion. He doesn’t
hear any answer, but doesn’t think anything of it, assuming that his companion
had moved down the road. As he stands up near the road and picks up his load of
vegetables, he thinks that he will have to go looking for his partner. Looking
up, he sees his partner, who is being held by the servant of the house.
Standing beside the servant is the owner of the house that he had just visited,
who is waiting with other servants and a few members of the local police. At
this point, both of these men are arrested and taken to the County Gaol in Belfast.
The crime that these men would be charged
with is theft. It doesn’t matter that it was food that they stole. It doesn’t
matter that, without this food, they would starve to death. It doesn’t matter
that they cannot earn the money to feed themselves and their families. They
took something that didn’t belong to them. End of story.
Actually, that was not the end of story for
many people. These people were lumped in with people who instigated rebellion,
stole for other reasons, committed murder, and so forth. The innocent, who were
just looking to survive, were children, men, women, and they did not do so
lightly. It was against their principles to do so, but it became a choice of
life and death.
Carrickfergus was the location of the
county gaol prior to 1845. It was also the county seat, looking after the
affairs of two counties, County Carrickfergus, which was a county in its own
right, and County Antrim. Eventually, County Carrickfergus ended up as part of
County Antrim. The gaol was large enough to hold 250 prisoners, of both sexes and
all ages. I haven’t been able to find why a new gaol was built in Belfast, but,
in 1841, Charles Lanyon designed a new gaol to be built. The actual building
was not started until 1843 and was finished in 1845. Prisoners were to be
transferred from Carrickfergus to Belfast and the gaol in Carrickfergus was to
be closed. One hundred and six prisoners were transferred in 1846. They had to
walk the entire way from Carrickfergus to Belfast, a distance of over 40 miles.
Once the prisoners arrived in Belfast, they
were taken to the Crumlin Road Gaol and put into individual cells. This prison
was built in such a way that prisoners could be isolated when necessary. The
cells were mostly used as individual cells, but they occasionally held as many
as three prisoners each. The Crumlin Road Gaol was designed with five wings, a
hospital building and a small graveyard with additions added later including
cottages for prison staff. Four of the five wings housed the prisoners on three
levels with Block A being the largest wing. I believe that Block C was the wing
that held the female prisoners and maybe also the children. Children were sent
to gaol just for stealing a loaf of bread or an article of clothing. History
tells us that one such child, Patrick Magee, was sentenced to three months in
the Crumlin Road Gaol. He was so desperate that he hung himself in 1858. After this
time, children were not allowed to housed in the same facilities as adults.
The Crumlin Road Gaol was across the road
from the courthouse. There are passages underground that lead towards the
former location of the courthouse. That courthouse had been bombed during the
troubled time and was torn down. The passages are now blocked off for public
safety.
The gaol also carried out death sentences. Originally,
the hangings were done in public where all could see that the sentence was
carried out. In 1901, there was a modification done in Block C. One cell was enlarged
to more than twice the size of a normal cell. This cell was used for the last
days of a condemned prisoner. When the appropriate time approached, the
prisoner would be taken through to the execution chamber through a passage that
no other prisoner could see. The prisoner was hung and, when dead, was buried. There
were a total of seventeen executions held at the Crumlin Road Gaol with the
last one being in 1961.
One of the things that prisoners look
forward to is to be free. The prison had a number of prison breaks, but it
still was still known as Europe’s Alcatraz.
It was decided that the Crumlin Road Gaol
would be closed. This happened in 1996. It stood empty until 2010 when it was
announced that it would be renovated. In 2012, it opened as a tourist
attraction and conference center.
On our tour of Ireland, one of the places
that we visited was the Crumlin Road Gaol. We arrived after dark fell, and it
has an imposing feeling when you can’t see the facility in daylight. We were
taken into the facility through the same door that prisoners would have been
taken in. We had a tour of the facility, visiting the administration wing and
only one wing of the prison cells, Block C. We had the opportunity of viewing
the execution chamber, going in the same way that a condemned prisoner went in.
In all, the visit to Crumlin Road Gaol was an eye opener to some of the things
that were experienced by some of our ancestors.
Our ancestors had hard lives. Even the
poorest in Canada have a better life than most of our ancestors. We need to
celebrate their lives, that they had the stamina and determination to live and
to improve life for their children and painted the dream of a good life for
their children for inspiration to continue down the same road.
