“I was so moved by the experience of hopelessness I shared with these women”
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome, Deryn Negrifa. How are you this morning? I'm great. Thank you for having me, Deryn.
At least we didn't have a by-election down in Cork and we would have had to drag you into asking you all about that constituency. Deryn, people will know you as a poet, a writer, a multi-award-winning author and, of course, author of the sensational A Ghost in the Throat. But you're here to talk to us about your new book, which explores the history of a particular building. Yes. And it's a building in Cork, but it's one that will probably echo similar buildings that have loomed large over many towns and cities across Ireland. Tell us about it.
I find it so interesting driving around Ireland the way at the at the very edges of many of our towns and cities, there are these looming kind of Gothic buildings everywhere. the relics of psychiatric institutions and the visible relics of our efforts in the past to care for people in mental distress. And so there's one of these in Cork that will be familiar to an awful lot of people. And every time I came close to it or drove past it, it always caught my eye. And what I have attempted with this book is, I suppose it's an effort to draw a kind of history from that building. And I'm writing as someone who's not a historian. I'm just an ordinary person, you know. And I'm inviting readers of this book to come along with me as I try to figure out what was this building, who were the real people who lived inside it, the doctors, the attendants, but also the women who were there.
And I suppose I'm just looking specifically at kind of the 1890s to 1920s in this hospital.
And look, I'm sure everybody listening will, you know, will be familiar with some of these old institutions, many of them which are still standing. And they loom large, not just in a physical or a geographical sense, but they loom large in our imaginations. You know, these district asylums, you know, and I think at one point we had the highest, you know, level of people there.
What is the significance of Cork's Victorian asylum in Doireann Ní Ghríofa's book?
In these institutions, but you grew up near the burn. So what was it? Was it just moving to Cork and engaging with what was the former asylum?
It's hard for me to pinpoint really where this interest started, but there is a similar institution which also still stands in Ennis in County Clare, right across the road from Cork. the primary school that I went to so there really was the sense of a long shadow literally often being cast that I was aware of and as I say it's I have yet to meet anyone that I've spoken to about this subject who doesn't have a sense of similar institutions and also a sense of kind of there but for the grace of God go I and I think that then and now yeah I think it's something that many of us as Irish people share being aware of precisely where those often institutions in ruin are and also that sense of curiosity, but also deep compassion for the people who are held there over the years.
And, you know, and you've just mentioned, you know, the orderlies who work there, the doctors who work there. These institutions were vast employers back in the past. And sometimes we think of them in perhaps not unexpectedly as very dark places, places that were created nearly to control people's lives. And I'm just wondering, you know, when you started looking at this institution, you know, did you see them as places of care or punishment? Was it healing or horror? Are they much more nuanced places than perhaps we recall them now?
I think they're all of those things. And that's why they're so shocking, because it's a very dark history now. And when we look towards the history of psychiatry, we see such moments of darkness. And I think it's understandable when we look towards that history that we can really sense that darkness. What I found is the closer we approach certain points in these institutions' histories, the more nuanced that sense becomes. That despite the fact that these were undeniably very difficult places where people were often held against their will. Sent there against their will.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:16
2
What is the significance of Cork's Victorian asylum in Doireann Ní Ghríofa's book?
2:16–9:05
3
How does Doireann Ní Ghríofa connect personal experiences with historical narratives?
9:05–13:14
4
What role did Dr. Lucia Fitzgerald play in the history of the asylum?
13:14–21:49
5
How does the author navigate the complexities of psychiatric care in her research?
21:49–27:46
6
What challenges did women face in psychiatric institutions during the 1890s to 1920s?
27:46–34:27