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PRISONERS AT THE 20th-century prison on Spike Island in Cork were mostly from “black spots of disadvantage”, archaeological excavations have suggested.
Spike Island initially became a convict depot in 1847. By 1850, over 2,000 convicts were detained on the island. The prison then shut down a number of years later in 1883, when the last of the prisoners were relocated to the mainland.
The British Army manned Spike Island through the 1920s and into the late 1930s and some Republican prisoners were held there.
However, almost a century the island became a prison yet again. Between 1985 and 2004 the prison was used for holding young offenders. According to a website about the island, many of those held in the prison were “joyriders” convicted of stealing and recklessly driving cars.
After an initial trial excavation in 2012, the Spike Island Archaeological Project has dug on the island for four weeks each summer. Each season, teams of up to 40 people have participated, living in the fort on the island.
The focus of the excavations was on its conversion in 1847, at the height of the famine-era, to the convict prison that operated until 1883.
Convict-related finds from the excavations included carved gaming pieces and burials from the prison cemetery. The gaming pieces give some insight into how convicts coped with long sentences and a harsh prison regime, according to the researchers.
A team led by Dr Barra O’Donnabhain of University College Cork documented graffiti marked on the walls of the modern prison and found parallels between the backgrounds of the Famine-era Victorian convicts and the prisoners held at the modern jail.
The researchers discovered that the prisoners at the modern jail tended to write their names, their sentence and where they were from on the walls.
“We noticed the same addresses if you like, kept popping up. Some of them were very generic, but it was usually inner-city social deprivation black spots that were showing up on these,” O’Donnabhain said.
“When we started this work, there was a big distinction in my mind between the famine-era Victorian convicts and the prisoners held here until the modern prison was shut in 2004,” he said.
O’Donnabhain, however, noted that as the research went on, he began to see the “uncomfortable parallels” between the two systems.
I was really struck by how being better off, if you like, being from the middle class is a real protection in our society today about being in prison. Over time I began to see the Victorian prison and the modern prison as really being reflections of the same thing.
Other insights from the research
While O’Donnabhain found that the social classes of the Victorian-era and modern prisoners were similar, he noted that the living conditions varied.
The researchers noted that there was inadequate accommodation for prisoners of the Victorian-era.
Forced labour was part of the punishment regime, and the convicts were put to work removing tons of rock from what is now the open parade ground.
However, O’Donnabhain said that the modern prison rooms had televisions in later years and it had full cell sanitation, which many Irish prisons didn’t have at the time.
The team also discovered artefacts in areas where prisoners were housed and in the backfill of some of the graves in the cemetery, including a collection of hand-carved stone and bone objects.
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Best of luck to him , I will always have great respect for Hugo Chavez for trying to be a president for the common man and for sending the yank vultures and their puppets packing .
Absolutely 100% agree with you. Any one in any doubt should google John Pilgers documentary, the war on democracy. Chavez is a man of the people that big business want to see the back of.
Great documentary by Oliver Stone about Chavez “South Of The Border” worth a watch, tells how the US tried and failed to bring him down. Great interviews with him and other South American leaders about their refusal to be governed by US policy, it’s an eye opener.
Best wishes to him. He’s an inspiration.
don’t know much about Chavez,
but the fact that extreme right-wing yanks seem to hate him, makes me think he’s ok.
anyway – hope he defeats his cancer.
There is a very real possibility that his cancer was deliberately induced by the US military industrial complex in my opinion.
seriously? bit too much conspiracy perhaps?
Not really Simon. The CIA tired similar stuff with Fidel down the years.
They tried to give him cancer?
How do you give somebody cancer?
Exactly..
I can selectively quote parts of a random article from the internet too, first line under the heading… “Can you give someone cancer? If they’re healthy probably not”.
You want me to copy and paste entire articles here?
The point – and it’s embarrassingly obvious – is that while nobody knows whether his cancer was deliberately induced, it’s a possibility and a reasonable suspicion given the various ways the US tried to murder Fidel Castro down the years.
ha you quoted one part of an article to suit your own agenda! The US are capable of most things, so if they wanted rid of him I’m sure they could find a more effective way then giving him cancer, which your article goes onto say is a highly unreliable way of assassinting someone.
It’s highly unreliable yea but very discrete , I know it’s what I’d do it can’t be traced
A dose of radiation sufficient to appreciably increase cancer risk would undoubtably cause acute radiation sickness (about 3 to 5 sieverts).
Then, if the exposed person survives radiation sickness, there would be a ~10 year latency period before there’s an increased risk of Leukaemia, then if they don’t get Leukaemia, another 10 to 20 years would pass before there’s an increasing chance of solid cancers.
The maximum increase chance of cancer from radiation is ~40%, the risks are not higher as the exposed person would more likely die from radiation sickness at higher doses, they wouldn’t survive to get cancer years later.
Do you have a source for that, David?
Studies of the Mortality of Atomic Bomb Survivors, Report 14, 1950–2003: An Overview of Cancer and Noncancer Diseases
The Japanese Life Span study is the gold standard, 130,000 atomic bombing survivors monitored since the mid-1950s, since Japanese doctors started to notice increased cases of leukaemia.
The Excess Relative Risk per Gray (roughly the same as a Sievert) is 0.42, since the baseline cancer rate is ~30%, this gives a cancer rate of 42.6% for 1 Gray dose.
For an additional increase of 40% (30+40%)= 70% cancer rate, the radiation dose would need to be massive, undoubtably accompanied with severe radiation sickness.
Where is that’s documentary pls love to see it
Here’s a great one filmed by two Irish reporters, they were in the Chavezs’ office when the coup happened. They stayed behind, when Chavez and his ministers fled; they said they wanted to film the revolution happening. They got both sides from the inside, it’s a real eye opener, an excellent documentry:
Venezuela has one of the most democratic systems in the world.
Here’s what former US President Jimmy Carter of the Nobel Prize-winning election monitoring Carter Center had to say about it:
“Of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”
All Venezuelan expatriates get a vote. Those people are likely to vote for the opponents of Chavez, yet he still gives them the vote.
The people of Venezuela keep voting for Chavez, because he is of them.
It’s amazing that just because Chavez has stood up to the United States people make him out to some kind of hero. He presides over a massively corrupt country, which usually happens when one man resides in power way beyond what is healthy for any supposedly democratic country.
He keeps getting elected. Pesky democracy!
Because he has made it easier and easier for him to get elected. Himself and Putin have a lot in common.
At least he’s not owned and operated by Goldman Sachs, like BOTH of the selected candidates in the USA’s farcical overture to democracy.
That article doesn’t even back you up. Anybody that knows anything about cancer knows you can’t give somebody cancer.
Are you pretending to be dim or does it come naturally. Read. The. Comments. Again… S l o w l y !
I agree its unlikely but to rule if out is daft , best way to kill someone is to make it look like an accident.
Petr no need to get upset because you were wrong
Exactly, Kevin. Quite a simple point to grasp really.
A large dose of dioxins will induce cancer in most people. There are many carcinogenic compounds that can be administered covertly in food. It’s not science fiction
No, the amount of Dioxin required to greatly increase cancer risk would cause obvious symptoms – Chloracne. Just look at what happened to Viktor ‘s Yushchenko’s face after he was poisoned by Dioxin.
Caracas is one of the most dangerous places on earth. I suspect Damascus would be safer. Roaring inflation and shortages makes his rule not much of a success. It would be possible to have clinics in slums areas without wrecking the economy. He or his heir won’t be able to buy support for much longer.
I wish Mr Chavez all the best and I admire what he has done for working people in his country and the region. For too long the United States have treated South America as their own private plantation.
have your say