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A WOMAN WHOSE great-grandmother spent over two decades in a Mullingar psychiatric hospital wants to see gravestone crosses remembering former patients moved out of the shed where they were stored four years ago.
Julianne Clarke told RTÉ’s Ryan Tubridy Show this morning that the crosses were taken up in 2011 for maintenance work on the grounds of St Loman’s Hospital.
Her great-grandmother, Julia Caffrey Leonard, was involuntarily admitted to the institution in 1895 after having a row with her husband.
Julia, a housekeeper, suspected him of having affairs and threw hot tea at him.
He subsequently called a local doctor to produce the medical certificate require to commit her to the hospital, then known as an asylum.
Julia was pregnant with her sixth child, Julianne’s grandfather, at the time.
She spent the next 22 years of her life there, until her death at the age of 54.
But she protested her sanity, Julianne said, according to medical notes recorded by psychiatrists.
She would have said, ‘I’m not insane. Half the people in here are not insane. I shouldn’t be here.’
Restoring dignity
Julianne told Tubridy that she was researching her grand-grandmother’s life when she discovered that 1,304 patients had been buried on the grounds of St Loman’s up to 1970.
“They were buried with crosses [displaying] a number, which I suppose smacks of how they were seen at the time,” she said.
By contrast, she said, the founding psychiatrist of the hospital “had a massive tomb with monuments overlooking the empty field where [patients] were buried”.
The graves were left unidentifiable after the crosses marking their location were moved to a nearby shed to make way for work on the grounds.
Julianne is now calling on the HSE and Westmeath County Council to restore the graves in memory of all the patients buried there.
“If this happened to a local graveyard in a community, there would be shock and horror,” she said.
These people led lousy lives and they were incarcerated until they died.
The HSE has been asked for comment.
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Yet another accurate reflection of Ireland cold uncaring and all this fuss over 1916 should all be focused on the people who have treated appalling instead of the patting ourselves on the back I hope they resolve this quickly instead of ignoring it
Resolve what exactly? The woman’s circumstances are tragic but if we had memorials for every dead person in Ireland that was wrongly incarcerated or treated terribly we wouldn’t have room for the living.
She wants a decent grave and headstone for the woman, hardly too much to ask. State were happy enough to take 22 years of her life, they should be responsible for her in death.
@David Browne: surely every human being even the incarcinated in mental institution ,(many of which were as sane as the people who put them there) are intitled to dignity in death ,which they didn’t have in life,why should they not be remembered with some form of identy, Why should we not acknowlege the. “insane ” and the sane as equals, The majority of these poor indivuals would have been used as domestic and laundry as well as manual labour for the men without any wages,,surely we as a caring loving and Catholic country should have respect for dead, and return all markers with the patients identity, where any relative who wishes to visit has somewhere to kneel and pray,RIP
Ashs to Ashs and dust to dust . You will find very few graves & gravestones survive more than 200 years.
Families die out or generations get forgotten about ..That’s part of the cycle of life and death
Well true, i have 8 great grandparents but i’ve only ever seen pictures of one of them and have no idea who any of them were. As for my 16 great-great grandparents…not a clue…they must have existed but they may as well not have…sad but true. I suppose the poets would say they live on in me ;-)
That place should be bulldozed. It is the most macabre looking building I’ve ever seen. I even avoid that road not to look at it. It speaks of tragedy and abuse.
Lunatic Asylum would have been the full description at that time so that’s why they’re not called Asylums anymore.
(In reply to Mr. R)
What I would like to know is why the relatives of the deceased Patients at St Loman’s can be notified about an annual Mass at the Hospital, yet could not be asked if they would agree to having the markers / crosses removed, which identified each grave?
We really are awful to each other
And the fact they put a cross just makes me even angrier. God put them there.
Wow your God sounds like an as$hole.
Yeah he is – kills children – gives them cancer.
But he forgives u
God that’s awful…. Living in Mullingar!
She should not have been committed to an asylum for throwing hot tea at her husband. She should have been sent to prison where she belonged.
Perhaps she had a lot of problems, I think the story is intentionally vague for that reason.
Rubbish!
What I fail to understand is why Relatives and Descendants of the Patients could be sent out a notification every year that there is to be an annual Mass said for those who died in St Loman’s, yet they could not be asked if they agree to the Markers / Crosses that identified the Graves, to be taken up and thrown into a shed. Surely the Patients, some who were sane and incarcerated for years for little or no reason, deserve some dignity in death, if not in life?
From what I heard around Mullingar the headstones had to be removed from where they were as they were been vandalised. So maybe we are not hearing the full story
B@stards… Pure and simple
The crosses were taken up because certain ppl were taking them for scrape metal
Catholic Ireland’s dead and gone
buried with cold priests and nuns.
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