 Charles Stewart Parnell
Charles Stewart Parnell,
leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party at
Westminster, and many of his fellow MPs were
detained in Kilmainham after their open
rejection of the Land Act introduced by the
British government in 1881. Parnell was
imprisoned in Kilmainham from October 1881
to May 1882.
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The Children's Exercise Yard
The building is
surrounded by exercise yards, as can be seen
by the plan. Each yard was used by a certain
type of prisoner, for example debtors or
prisoners awaiting transportation etcetera.
One of note was the Children’s Exercise
Yard. All prisoners, including the children
were permitted to roughly one hour of
exercise, which consisted of walking in a
circle. One of the youngest children ever to
be imprisoned in Kilmainham was a young girl
of eight, named Alicia Kelly. She was held
in Kilmainham for five months for stealing a
lady’s cloak and given a hard labour
punishment of making food for the all the
prisoners of the gaol.
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