Overview

Walls of Confinement looks at a crucially unexamined aspect of Irish mental illness facilities: their architecture.   Ireland was hardly alone in perpetuating institutional responses to mental illness in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but this small country took things farther than most: by the 1950s, it had the world’s highest number of psychiatric ward beds per capita. Many have sought to explain Ireland’s unusual density of mental illness facilities, but Patrick Quinlan’s book looks to one underexplored aspect of such facilities as a means to an explanation: their architecture. Walls of Confinement examines the spaces and landscapes created to facilitate this spectacular expansion in Irish institutional provision. Quinlan reveals the significance of the architectural and landscape legacy from the earliest days of the asylum system to its extinction, linking indoor and outdoor planning to broader political, economic, and medical changes in the country. His book charts the architectural progression from Enlightenment-era ideals to the construction of massive structures whose primary goal was accommodating historically unprecedented numbers of people. Though these antiquated architectural plans may seem profoundly far-removed from current views on treating mental illness, Quinlan shows that such designs are still testaments to the curative aspirations of their eras.   

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9781910820742

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Reviews

'The Magdalen Laundries and the mother-and-baby homes are not the only institutions Irish society has used for hiding its embarrassments' - Mary Leland, Irish Examiner, February 2022.; 'Quinlan's wonderful book will undoubtedly become the vade mecum for the history of Ireland's mental hospital buildings and, as such, adds significantly to the broader historiography of psychiatry in Ireland.' - The Medical Independent, October 2022.; 'STANDING proudly in its own grounds at Mulgrave Street, St Joseph's Hospital is a landmark building on the edge of the city. Now architect and historian Patrick Quinlan has uncovered a fascinating history of the facility which includes tales of its earliest patients escaping and nocturnal sorties by unmarried colleagues '. - Limerick Leader.

Author Information

Patrick Quinlan is an architect with both a lifelong personal interest in historic buildings and a masters qualification in architectural conservation. He is a past recipient of a Dissertation Commendation at the international RIBA. He has just commenced a PhD at Birkbeck, University of London, where he will be examining the stigma and significance associated with former asylum sites in Ireland.

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