Kilmainham Gaol & the 1916 Easter Rising

Kilmainham Gaol stands as an important building in modern Irish History. Since 1796, the Gaol has served as the home of many political prisoners, including 13 of the 16 leaders of the pivotal Easter Rising in 1916.

Brief History of Kilmainham Gaol

Kilmainham Gaol opened in 1796 as the County Gaol for Dublin.

The Gaol received the name "Kilmainham" as the British built it in the Kilmainham district of Dublin.

When it opened, Kilmainham was the most modern prison in Ireland.

British reformers designed the original west wing of the prison with a number of cells, each designed to house one prisoner. Previous to Kilmainham Gaol, prisoners intermingled with one another and suffered the arbitrary punishment of the gaol keeper.

This meant that debtors intermingled with murderers, petty thieves, and disturbers of the peace and that those with some resources were able to pay the gaoler for better food and treatment.

The British prison reformers designed Kilmainham to be different.

The reformers removed the arbitrary punishment of the gaoler by treating prisoners with like crimes equally. Prisoners did not intermingle except during their exercise period.

The original prison contained no windows.

Late-18th century prisoner reformers thought that the cool air helped the process of reflection.

Unfortunately for the inmates, Kilmainham has limestone walls, which absorb moisture. The moisture in the walls combined with the cool air to make Kilmainham an unpleasant place.

The Potato Famine & Kilmainham

The unpleasantness of the place increased during the great potato famine (1845-1850).

The potato blight rendered most Irish tenant farmers unable to pay their rents or feed their families. Many of these farmers moved into Irish cities or abroad seeking opportunities.

Disgusted with the number of beggars and vagrants clogging Dublin’s streets, the Irish Parliament passed an anti-vagrancy law. Anyone caught in the streets begging was sent to jail.

The influx of vagrants overfilled Kilmainham Gaol. As many as 5 or 6 prisoners occupied cells that had been designed for 1.

The commandant of Kilmainham cut food rations to 1 meal of bread and water or milk per person, per day. Even with this knowledge, many starving farmers and their families resorted to begging in Dublin’s streets with the hope that they would be thrown in Kilmainham. 1 meal a day was better than none.

Victorian Addition

In 1861, the British built a second wing for the prison.

The newer Victorian wing consists of 96 cells.

Like the original wing, the prison’s architects designed the new wing to house 1 prisoner per cell and the guards enforced silence.

A large glass ceiling draws your eyes toward the heavens. These windows allow a lot of sunlight to pour into the wing.

Victorian prison reformers believed that silence, sunlight (a reminder of God), and solitude would encourage the prisoners to reflect on their deeds and reform.

For those resistant to reform, the Victorians supplied periods of hard labor in the stone breaking yard to break the inmates’ physical and mental will.

Political Prisoners

Kilmainham has a long history of housing political prisoners, mostly Irish nationalists who fought for Irish independence from Great Britain.

Henry Joy McCracken holds the distinction of being the first political prisoner in Kilmainham. He first entered the prison in 1796.

McCracken founded the United Irishmen, an organization devoted to Irish independence.

McCracken reentered the prison in 1798. The British executed him by hanging for his role in the rebellion of 1798.

Inspired by the French Revolution and by the words of Thomas Paine, the United Irishmen led an unsuccessful attack upon the British in an attempt for Irish independence.

The most famous political prisoners held in the prison took part in the 1916 Easter Rising.

1916 Rising

On April 24, 1916, Easter Monday, between 1,500 and 2,000 nationalists seized control of the General Post Office (GPO) and surrounding area on present-day O’Connell Street.

From the GPO, Patrick Pearse read the Proclamation of the Republic, the Irish equivalent of the United States’ Declaration of Independence.

The Rising lasted 4 days before the 5,000-man British Army subdued it.

The British Army counted 116 dead, 398 wounded.

The civilians and nationalists had more casualties: 318 dead, 2,217 wounded.

In addition, the GPO and much of present-day O’Connell Street had been destroyed as a result of fire and British artillery shells.

The British Army arrested 14 of the Rising’s leaders.

They sent 13 to Kilmainham Gaol and 1 to Dublin Castle for medical treatment.

Between 3rd and 12th May, 1916, the British Army executed by firing squad the 14 leaders they had arrested.

Unable to stand up for his execution, the Army tied James Connolly, the wounded leader, to a chair before they shot him.

The stories of the individual men and their executions helped to make this unpopular rising a popular one for many Irish men and women.

Irish history scholars attribute the start of the Irish War for Independence (1919-1921) to the execution of these leaders.

Conclusion

Kilmainham Gaol is a must see.

This 1 hour, guided tour will teach you about prisons and prison life between the late 18th and early 20th centuries.

It will also provide you with a lot of information about Ireland’s various independence movements.

What Do You Think?

What is the most interesting place you have visited?

Trinity College & the Book of Kells

The Book of Kells represents an Irish and cultural treasure. You will find the book in the Old Library of Trinity College, Ireland’s oldest university.

Tim and I made our pilgrimage to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells on our second day in Dublin.

Brief History of the Book of Kells

A group of Irish monks cloistered at St. Colum Cille monastery on the island of Iona penned the 4 gospels contained within the Book of Kells.

In 806, a Viking raid forced the Columban monks to relocate to a new monastery at Kells, County Meath. It is unknown whether they had started their gospel book before or after this raid.

The monks killed 185 calves to create the 340 vellum folios they need for their book. On those vellum pages they transcribed 4 gospels in Latin from the Vulgate text using swan-quill pens.

Scholars, Catholics, and book lovers celebrate this book for the highly colorful and ornate artwork that the monks used to commemorate the text.

For nearly 8 centuries, the Book of Kells sat atop the high alter of the monastery church at Kells. A monastery priest read from the book during special masses.

In 1654, Oliver Cromwell’s Protestant forces approached the Kells monastery. Fearing that the army might find and destroy this treasure, someone smuggled it out of the monestary and took it to Dublin for safe keeping.

Trinity College came into possession of the book sometime between 1654 and the mid-19th century, when the college first placed the book on display.

In 1953, book conservators rebound the book into 4 volumes to help with its continued preservation.

Brief History of Trinity College

Queen Elizabeth I founded Trinity College by royal charter in 1592.

Elizabeth established the college to promote a Protestant way of thinking about God.

The most picturesque buildings of the Trinity College campus date to the early to mid-eighteenth century, a time of political stability in Ireland.

The Irish Parliament commissioned the construction of several new buildings for the college during the eighteenth century. The first structure Parliament built was a new library (1712-1732).

Parliament followed the library with several other buildings, all of which embodied a classical, romanesque appearance: the Printing House (1733-1734), the West Front (1752-1759), the Dining Hall (1760-1765), and the Provost’s House (1759-1761).

Built on marshy land, many of these buildings proved prone to flooding. Our student tour guide informed us that the 2 large trees standing in the college green helped to stop the flooding. Although planted as decoration, the 2 trees take enough water out of the land to even out the water table.

The Old Library, home of the Book of Kells, is one of the principal buildings that the trees helped save from frequent flooding.

Old Library Long Room, Trinity College

After viewing the Book of Kells, the exhibit directs visitors into the Library’s famed Long Room.

As you can see from the pictures, the room is quite impressive.

The Long Room houses some of the Library’s founding book collections.

A second library stores many of its more contemporary collections, although the majority of the College’s 5 million volumes are housed in an off-campus storage facility.

Trinity College has been a copyright library since 1801, a privilege that entitles it to 1 copy of each book published in Ireland and the United Kingdom.

Conclusion

If you love books, art, and eighteenth-century architecture, then you must see the Book of Kells and the Old Library at Trinity College.

Guinness Storehouse

Greetings from Dublin! Tim had to travel to Dublin, Ireland for work this week, so I gladly tagged along to take in the sites of Ireland’s capital city.

I thought it would be fun to share some of my adventures with you.

First Stop: Guinness Storehouse

Tim and I arrived in Dublin at about 4:30 am Irish time, which was 11:30pm EST.

We took a taxi from the airport to our hotel, checked in, and got approximately 2 hours of sleep before we rose to tour the city and adjust our circadian rhythms 5 hours ahead.

Needless to say, we spent most of Saturday looking and feeling like zombies.

This made the Guinness Storehouse the perfect first stop.

Brief History of the Guinness Brewery

Arthur Guinness founded the Guinness Brewery at St. James Gate in 1759.

Arthur built his brewery on leased land. He chose the site because of its ability to draw water from the outlying Wicklow Mountains.

The lease terms Arthur signed stipulated that he would lease the land for 9,000 years and that he and his heirs would pay £45/year in rent. (Guinness later nullified its lease by purchasing the land.)

Not long after opening his brewery, a friend sent Arthur a barrel of porter, which was coming into fashion. Arthur developed his stout recipe to appeal to porter drinkers.

By 1868, Guinness became the largest brewery in the world.

Guinness Storehouse Tour

The Guinness Storehouse museum comprises 7 floors of Guinness’ history, products, and food.

The museum occupies the old fermentation plant, which Guinness used between 1902 and 1988.

In the center of this fermentation plant, Guinness built a giant pint glass.

When you begin your self-guided tour, you start at the bottom of the “world’s largest pint” (if filled it would hold 14 million pints of Guinness) and work your way up to the 7th floor Gravity Bar, where you can drink a pint of Guinness and take in breathtaking, panoramic views of Dublin.

Guinness Coopers

In my opinion, the highlight of the tour was the cooperage exhibit.

Prior to its conversion to aluminum kegs in 1963, Guinness used to employ 300 coopers who made up to 1,000 barrels a week.

The cooperage exhibit depicts how coopers plied their craft. It contains video clips from 1954, that along with a narrator, provides a step-by-step look at how coopers made barrels.

The most amazing part: Guinness coopers only used 1 tool to measure their work, a compass to ensure a water-tight seal when they built the barrel end. They constructed the rest of the barrel using only their eyes and hands to measure their work.

Guinness Advertising

One floor up from the cooperage exhibit, you will find a floor dedicated to the history of Guinness's advertising.

Conclusion

Tim and I capped off our tour at the Gravity Bar with our complimentary pints.

Much to our surprise, we found that we liked the taste of Guinness.

Dutch Food History

Do you enjoy doughnuts, cookies, and pancakes? Thank the Dutch.

You can also thank them for pretzels, coleslaw, and waffles.

A Brief History of Dutch Food in New Netherland

Last week, I read Peter G. Rose’s article “A Taste of Change,” which investigated Dutch foodways in New Netherland.

According to Rose, New Netherlanders adapted traditional Dutch recipes to fit New World ingredients.

Many of the recipes the colonists adapted came from De Verstandige Kock (The Sensible Cook), a 17th-century Dutch cookbook.

For example, the 1683-edition of De Verstandige Kock contained a recipe for olie-koeken pastry that called for “2 pounds of wheat flour, not quite a pint of milk, half a small bowl of melted butter, a large spoon of yeast, mixed with a cup of the best apples, cut into small pieces, 2 pounds of raisins, 6 ounces of whole almonds” seasoned with a mixture of cinnamon, ginger, and cloves.

New Netherland bakers and households did not have ready access to raisins and almonds so they adapted the recipe for the ingredients they had: eggs and butter.

The New Netherlanders created a richer dough to compensate for their lack of raisins and almonds.

Native American Influences on New Netherland Foodways

Rose also found that New Netherlanders acculturated Native American foods such as pumpkins and corn to work with traditional Dutch recipes.

However, the Dutch colonists adopted only one Native American dish into their culinary repertoire: sappaen, a corn mush dish.

According to Peter Kalm and other travelers, the New Netherlanders and their 18th-century descendants ate sappaen often.

Unlike the Native Americans, the Dutch ate sappaen with milk or buttermilk.

The Dutch served sappaen in a communal bowl. Once everyone took their serving, the Dutch dug a circle into the center of their sappaen to create a place for their milk. They ate half a spoon of milk and half a spoon of sappaen. The Dutch added more milk when they ran out and the size of the milk reservoir increased as they ate their sappaen.

New Netherland-Inspired Dinner Party

Needless to say, I grew quite hungry reading Rose’s essay on Dutch foodways.

In a 1-hour span, I wanted to eat cookies, pretzels, olie-koeken, and sappaen. Some of my hunger stemmed from a desire to know what sappaen and other Dutch pastries tasted like.

Therefore, I have decided to use my copy of [amazon_link id="081560503X" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]De Verstandige Kock[/amazon_link], which Rose has translated and republished, to throw a New Netherland-inspired dinner party in the next month or two.

I will be sure to blog about what it is like to cook these dishes and about how they taste.

What Do You Think?

What is your favorite Dutch-inspired food?

*Picture shows traditional Dutch oliekoeken pastries. 

The Dutch Revolt and New Netherland

I wrote a guest post for the Junto Blog that provides a recap of the 36th Annual New Netherland Seminar.

The Dutch Revolt and New Netherland

As my book project explores the cultural legacy of New Netherlanders who lived in Albany, NY, I attended the 36th Annual New Netherland Seminar on Saturday, October 5 at the New-York Historical Society. I admit that I attended the conference as an interloper; I study the revolutionary and early republic periods.

Sponsored by the New Netherland Institute (NNI), the New Netherland Seminar is the only conference dedicated to the study of the former Dutch colony.[1] The seminar convenes in a different location each year, but always within the bounds of New Netherland. The NNI organizes each seminar around a theme. This year, it selected “The Dutch Revolt and New Netherland” in an effort to explore the contributions Flemish and Walloon migrants made to New Netherland.[2] To this end, the NNI invited Guido Marnef, Kees Zandvliet, Maarten Prak, Wim Vanraes, and David Baeckelandt to discuss the Revolt and how and why the event led Flemish and Walloon migrants to participate in the Dutch colonization of North America.

The Dutch Revolt began in 1568 when the Low Countries revolted against the Habsburg Empire that ruled them. The struggle lasted 80 years and centered on political and religious issues. The Revolt ended in 1648, when the Protestant-dominated northern Netherlands (present-day Netherlands) achieved independence; the Southern or Spanish Netherlands (present-day Belgium) remained part of the Habsburg Empire.

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