Katie Compa: Comedian

Eurotrip: Dublin - Katie goes to Gaol

In Dublin you can find many places using only the street name, because they change them every block or two. Also, there is no real system for when street signs are available. So make sure you bring a map that gets those names right, in order, without skipping any. Or a phone with GPS (don’t bring it up). Or a compass. Or a rudimentary sense of direction and an ability to stay calm in a crisis. Whatever works for you. Because if you don’t, you’ll get lost, even if you’re looking for a prison.

Wait, who gets LOST looking for a PRISON? Thanks for asking! That’s me, and this one is practically visible from space. After I switched maps (paper ones, like a time traveler!) and discovered that the street I was on DOES exist, I finally found Kilmainham Gaol (jail), and it was awesome.

You may remember it from such films as In the Name of the
Father, Michael Collins, and that one U2 video. Apparently
they have concerts in here a lot because the Panopticon setup
makes for awesome acoustics.

I shouldn’t have been on this tour alone. I needed someone to listen to me exclaim “look at this!” and make meaningful nonverbal eye contact with me, but the only other Americans were these fratbags that I couldn’t look at directly without getting slightly roofied. Anyway.

Everywhere you go in Dublin is a history lesson. Most of the time, something crazy has happened on whatever spot you happen to be standing. But the shit that went down at/around this place was crazy even by prison standards. I love Alcatraz, but that was pretty much gangsters getting their rocks off, and they assumed they’d go to jail. It was basically a rest cure resort compared to this:

1. They imprisoned children for stealing and begging. The youngest one was seven. Begging was a crime, for children, during the potato famine. Great work there, lawmakers. (When the famine got bad enough, people started trying to get into jail so they could eat.) Five prisoners to a cell, including the kids. They all shared one candle for light and heat, and it had to last them two weeks. In Ireland. In the winter!
2. Fourteen of the 1916 Easter Rebellion leaders were imprisoned and executed here, including one who had gangrene and couldn’t even stand up to be shot, so they shot him in a chair. (This turned public opinion against British rule in a pretty major way, which, if you’re from either of those countries, is why the passport control fiasco was SO FUCKING STUPID.)
3. One of the men who was executed got married the night before he died. This is his letter to his fiancee when he proposed:

Could it BE more intense?

Boys, take note! Calling yourself a damned fool and a blind imbecile before admitting your undying love will ALWAYS work. (Write me! HAND WRITE me.)

Grace ended up in Kilmainham herself in 1923, because she was a ride or die lady.

I’m now reading a history book about the Easter Rebellion (I’m only halfway through, but so far: HOT MESS. It’s basically this with weapons), and every time I come across a name from Kilmainham I’m all, “Omg, I know him! …Oh, wait, no.”

That’s a good tour.