On this day in 1910, Michael Power from Carrick on Suir became the last man committed to Clonmel County Gaol. Power had been sentenced to seven days imprisonment for illegal fishing.
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It is not known when exactly the gaol came into being but a survey by Cromwellian authorities in the 1650s stated that a County Gaol was already in existence. Over the centuries, among those imprisoned at the gaol were the 1798 United Irishmen rebels, the Young Irelanders of 1848, and the Fenian rebels of 1867.
Notable political inmates included Thomas Francis Meagher, the man who introduced the tricolour to Ireland, John O’Leary, a Fenian from Tipperary Town, and William O’Brien, one of the heroes of the Land League. Notorious criminals such as highwayman William Brennan (of ‘Brennan on the Moor’ fame) and Michael Cleary, who murdered his wife in the belief that she was a fairy changeling.
By August 1910, the last remaining prisoners in Clonmel were transferred to Waterford and the old county gaol site became the first and only borstal institution in the country. The borstal, a rehabilitation institute for male juvenile offenders, was relocated to Dublin in 1956. The old gaol site is now the site of Tipperary Museum of Hidden History, the public swimming pool and the public library.
All that remains today of the old gaol is the ‘Borstal Gate’.
Sources:
Clonmel County Gaol, Michael Ahern, (2010)
