Files from inside the Grangegorman Asylum: ‘We cannot take him home. Please contact us again when he has died’

Professor’s Brendan Kelly’s account of the role of the asylum in Irish society is unsparing

The psychiatric hospital in Grangegorman photographed in 1973

Emily Hourican

Professor Brendan Kelly’s new book, Asylum: Inside Grangegorman, starts with a case study – the history of a 28-year-old woman called ‘Mary G.’ She was admitted to Grangegorman District Asylum in 1908. Married, with a baby of three months old, she had refused food for the previous six days, heard “tapping at night” and believed that “people followed her in the street”.

A year later, Mary was still in the asylum, described by her doctor as “very dull. Does not know who I am or where she is.”