The lost lives of women prisoners in Grangegorman Female Penitentiary

This lecture by Brian Crowley, Kilmainham Gaol’s Curator of Collections, will explore the lives of some of the women imprisoned in Grangegorman Female Penitentiary in the mid-19th century. Grangegorman was the first female-only prison in Britain and Ireland when it opened in 1836. While the prison was praised for the humane and efficient way it was run, the levels of reoffending among the women held there was remarkably high. This talk will attempt to trace a number of the most recidivist prisoners though the prison registers and get some sense of their forgotten lives.