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Glimpses of an Irish Felon's Prison Life
Paperback
Political BiographiesGeneral Political ScienceIrish History
ISBN13: 9781528719254
Publisher: Read & Co. History
Published: Mar 12 2021
Pages: 122
Weight: 0.36
Height: 0.29 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Fifteen years of enforced silence, hard labour and punishment cells in England's convict prisons, set down without self-pity by the Fenian who would sign the 1916 Proclamation first.
Thomas J. Clarke (1858-1916) was sent to England in 1883 by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, arrested in London that April carrying explosives, and sentenced to penal servitude for life. He served the next fifteen years at Millbank, Chatham and Portland under a regime built to wear the Irish prisoners out: hourly inspections at night that made proper sleep impossible, the ban on speaking, censored letters, and a steady drip of provocation from the warders.
Released in 1898, Clarke wrote the story up for the newspaper Irish Freedom in 1912, and it appeared in book form in 1922 as Glimpses of an Irish Felon's Prison Life, six years after his execution at Kilmainham for his part in the Easter Rising. He has an eye for the small mercies and the odd characters as much as for the cruelty - the trade he was taught, the fellow prisoner who kept Burns by heart - and that is what makes it both the most readable and the most damning account we have of how Victorian prison discipline was applied to Irish political offenders.
This edition features:
- The complete text, from Clarke's conviction for treason-felony to his release fifteen years on
- An introductory chapter, 'The Provisional Government of the Irish Republic', setting the wider scene
- Thirteen short chapters, among them 'The Silence Torture' and 'The Inhuman Treatment of Doctor Gallagher'
- A rare first-hand record of how the sleep and silence tortures were used on Irish prisoners
- Essential reading for anyone following the road from the Fenian movement to the Easter Rising
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