St Kevin’s Asylum, Cork

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Photographer Michael O’Brien writes:

St. Kevin’s Hospital (a.k.a. St. Kevin’s Lunatic Asylum) is an imposing red brick structure overlooking the banks of the River Lee, in Shanakiel, Cork, Ireland. It is without doubt one of the darkest sites in recent Irish history. A place of such suffering and abuse that questions were raised in the Dáil and which would ultimately result in its overdue closure in 2002.

“Over the years the conditions inside Our Ladys Hospital and St Kevin’s was condemned and declared a total disgrace. The people incarcerated in the asylum were guilty of nothing. Vulnerable, innocent and harmless. They did not deserve what was done to them. Victims of misfortune, victims of illness and indeed, tragically, of abandonment. They were locked up in a vermin-infested, unsanitary, dirty, dark confinement” (the conclusion of the Inspector of Mental Hospitals’ Report).

 Photo Essay: Kevin’s Asylum, Cork, By Michael O’Brien 



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