Jailhouse graffiti with a story to tell

The walls of Kilmainham Jail are filled with seemingly inconsequential graffiti, but closer inspection reveals the thoughts of those incarcerated there during the Civil War, writes NIAMH O'SULLIVAN

IT IS NO larger than the palm of your hand. And you have to know exactly where to look for it on the dirty grey wall. But when it comes into focus, in that darkened cell, it is utterly perfect, if somewhat faded.

A near-architectural sketch of James Gandon’s famous Four Courts building is inscribed in black pencil in the early 1920s on a cell wall in Kilmainham Jail. This tiny image silently represents all of the longings and all the bitter loss of our wretched Civil War. Oh, to be able to put the unknown artist’s name to that little illustration. It takes some time to realise the wealth of original prison graffiti scattered throughout the walls of Kilmainham, as there is so much else to discover about this famous building and its history when you first start working there, as I did in 1982.

The distinguished prison contains within its walls vast details of modern Irish history, having opened in 1796, and closed at length in early 1924. So many of them were held there: several 1798 leaders; Robert Emmet with some followers; members of Young Ireland during the Famine years; Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, who, living in America in later years was said to hate chewing gum – useless food to one who helped in a Famine soup kitchen in Skibbereen as a youth.

Other Fenians were detained there also, some home from the American Civil War. Charles Stewart Parnell was given the use of a large room during his months of confinement in the early 1880s; 14 men shot in the Stonebreakers’ Yard after the Easter Rising of 1916 spent their final hours in the jail; and many of those who took part in the War of Independence and/or the Civil War were also incarcerated behind its high walls.

But when I stood in front of Sighle Humphreys’ cell door in 1984 waiting impatiently for the Restoration Society guides to finally unlock it for me, little did I realise I was about to discover an entirely new dimension to the old jail. That single strong lock protected Sighle’s very personality as expressed by her with a thin black pencil on her walls. I felt, looking around, as though I had entered her inner sanctum without really first obtaining her permission.

Her handwritten words endured in the silence, revealing her thoughts on the Anglo Irish Treaty of December 1921: “Men and measures may come and go, but principles are eternal.” A well known Civil War slogan: “An Phoblacht Abu.” Sighle’s sketch of the Cumann na mBan rifle badge, proudly worn by herself and her colleagues. Her hidden offering to those who might be given that cell after she was gone: “Tunnel begun in basement of laundry inside door at left may be of use to successors. Good luck. S Nic A .”

Standing in that cell in an eerie Civil War time warp, I began to appreciate the importance of recording these fragile examples of graffiti; the prisoners’ own contemporaneous words and thoughts on the self-same walls that restrained them.

Having studied that cell, I started to notice the prisoners’ graffiti more frequently, often regrettably concealed under more recent “Kilroy was here” examples. The old black pencil appeared ever more legible as I grew accustomed to it, and I could progressively distinguish the prisoners’ from the visitors’ writings. (In addition to using the pencil, prisoners sometimes gouged out their words on the wall surface – these examples are stronger, and will endure longer than the weaker pencil samples.) Here is a calendar, obviously drawn by a female anti-Treaty prisoner, as it covers the summer months of 1923 when the women were held captive in Kilmainham, with all its many long days crossed off. There is a young Civil War woman’s name on a cell wall, with her added challenge thrown out to haunt us to this day: “May O’Shaughnessy arrested 23rd -3-1923 with a sham warrant.” What was wrong with it?

IN A NEIGHBOURING cell a somewhat damaged War of Independence piece survives with the chilling words “high treason” clearly legible – words which signified the death sentence for some of Kilmainham’s prisoners.

Quiet witnesses too are the names of Kilmainham’s unexpected and most unusual prisoners: young British soldiers serving during the Great War when the jail was a British Army headquarters used, among other things, to house troops on their way to Flanders and Gallipoli. We know now that these soldiers received short sentences for such military offences as being drunk and disorderly, or failing to salute an officer, and if their period of detention was for less than six months, it was issued in days, confirming their British military origins. These young men played their own special part in the jail’s history, and wrote their ranks, names, numbers, and sentences on the cell walls: “Pte P Reddy 25207 2nd Inniskilling 84 days.” Records show that Dubliner Patrick Reddy died later in France, in August, 1917. He was never able to claim the Great War medals that he had earned. Another more simple example reads: “I Harris 84 days.”

STANDING ALONE in the dark and cold cells of the West Wing of the prison reading some of the Civil War graffiti, you could almost be forgiven for feeling that it is not quite over. The atmosphere lingers and the pain experienced by the prisoners survives yet in their contemporary and now fading words: “Up the Slave State with Land Mines and Down with Green Tans . . .” are just some of the bitter expressions that live on.

The prisoners also ask us for our remembrance. Specifically, in a prison autograph book, Nora O’Sullivan from Cork wrote: “Remember me is all I ask. And if remembrance prove a task, forget.” In an official visit to the then-closed prison in 1938, many of the ex-Civil War women took the added opportunity to write their names on the walls once more, with that important title: Political Prisoners. Among these were Annie Dolan, Eileen Tucker, Lillie Gleeson, Peg Quinn and Annie Byrne.

There are also examples of more ordinary, everyday writings. Scattered randomly about are such pieces as “Please, no cursing”, and somebody else scorns this entire body of work by warning: “A man’s ambition must be small, when he writes his name on the wall!” Images of flowers, picture frames, figures of people and even bicycles can be located on the various walls.

I feel honoured to have been in a position to write this book about the prisoners’ graffiti, and to help in this way both to remember them and try to preserve their historic wall writings.

Written In Stone: The Graffiti in KilmainhamJail by Niamh O'Sullivan is published by Liberties Press