Read Time: 3 Minutes
A podcast turned into an Audible Original title, so it more closely follows a podcast format, in particular the editing and other things done for dramatic effect. Not a bad thing, but I say this just to set the scene and tone of the book. I went into this expecting something different than what it’s actually really about.
I thought it was going to be an exposé or something like that that got into exposing the horrible conditions and history of a now shuttered and abandoned psychiatric asylum – St Loman’s Hospital officially, or the Madman’s Hotel by the less charitable.
While we do get some of the backstory and a look at some of the more horrendous conditions and decisions that made it into what it became, the book is more focussed on the story of Julie Clarke who is trying to find out more about her great, great grandmother who was forcibly sent to the asylum back and lived there until her death in the early 1900s.
When it opened, if you were sent to the asylum by either a family member or the police, the only person who could sign you out so you could leave was the same person who signed you in. In the case of Julie’s great, great grandmother Julia, she was sent there against her will after attacking her husband after she found out he was cheating on her. Not someone who would ever be interested in signing her back out, so there she stayed until her death.
The whole setup is extremely convenient if you’ve got someone you want to get out of the way, and you’re sociopathic enough to just dump someone in there. Children from newborns and toddlers through to teenagers and adult were not safe. So many people got locked away, never to be let out again because their family moved on, sometime emigrating to another country.
Julie comes into the picture while trying to find out more about Julia, only to find that in the attached cemetery where just under 1,300 residents were buried, all the grave markers had been removed. To add insult to injury, the grave markers were numbered, so didn’t even carry the name or the poor soul that died within the walls of the asylum.
The rest of the story is mostly around Julie, her family, and the struggle to get information from the government body that is now in charge of the hospital and getting some form of recognition for those in the cemetery.
The whole thing is an incredibly sad situation. On one hand you can’t help but sympathise with Julie and the runaround she’s getting from the government, but on the other the government has rules it has to work within including balancing the right to privacy and respect even after death.
Overall, an interesting look into an extremely dark period in the history of Ireland. The narration by the author was well done, as was the overall production. As mentioned up top, it was made in seven “episodes” as what I assume was a podcast, but the story is coherent if bleak.