An Asylum story...

In times gone by, people were sometimes committed to mental asylums for unjust reasons. But sometimes it seemed a compassionate option...

We used to go on long summer holidays to Limerick, my cousin and I, when we were little girls. We loved that.

Our uncle was a psychiatrist there, and he lived in a big house with a walled garden and two bathrooms, one green, one blue, which was a source of great wonder at the time. Over the wall of the garden was the asylum where our uncle went every day, in a white coat.

There was a man called Andy who helped in our uncle's garden and did all the odd jobs around the big house, and a woman called Annie who did the cooking. They made a great fuss the two little girls from Dublin, and Andy showed us many interesting things in the garden.

I remember him as a quiet, contented countryman who could fix almost anything. He had distinguished grey hair on a fine head: he wore a rough tweed jacket of superior quality and he smoked a pipe, whose aroma I can still smell. It was exquisite, with a sweet tinge: something like Balkan Sobranie.

When relaxing, Andy would stoke his pipe, light it and re-light it, talking away with a comical view about sport and animals and the signs that heralded changing weather.

Andy took us for walks, and talked about the growing of herbs and the raising of rabbits and saving the hay, and all the country lore that city children know little about. He was deeply respectful of our uncle and aunt, whom he referred to as "The Doctor" and "Mrs Doctor". My aunt called Andy "Nature's Gentleman."

I took for granted that Andy and Annie were a married couple, as they seemed a natural pair. But it was not so. And it was only many years later that I discovered the truth about their circumstances.

Both of them were patients at the asylum. My cousin and I must have known that, vaguely, because each evening, Andy and Annie went "home", through the garden wall door that led to the asylum. Yet we thought no more of it: children accept a lot of information without analysing it.

The events which had brought Andy to the asylum were rather startling. He was a convicted murderer. His crime had occurred in the following way….

Andy had been one of those lonely, isolated rural bachelors who were a common phenomenon in Ireland in the 1950s, because women emigrated from the countryside in greater numbers than men.

For entertainment, these lonely men would play cards with others, and spend an evening drinking. Sometimes they would drink potcheen, the illegal moonshine distilled in the hills, and extremely variable in quality. Men had been found dead from brain damage after a dose of such potcheen.

And one evening, after a session of cards accompanied by this lethal, 80 per-cent-proof alcohol, a quarrel broke out, and Andy killed a man.

When the case came to court, the judgement passed was "guilty, but insane". Believe it or not this was considered to be a merciful outcome at a time when the death penalty could still be applied for a homicide. To be committed to a mental asylum was regarded as a more compassionate option.

And thus Andy spent the rest of his life in Limerick asylum. His good behaviour had awarded him the day-job of handyman to my aunt and uncle.

I was told afterwards that Andy was given the choice to leave the asylum after he had served his sentence. But it was said that he had become institutionalised. Or, the way he put it was, "wouldn't I be very lonely, now, way out in the countryside, and here, haven't I all the comforts around me?"

Many decades later, we are inclined to condemn the practice of consigning people to asylums who were not clinically insane, but had had some unhappy or unfortunate episode in their lives. Or were just lonely people who couldn't cope with the circumstances of life. Or were committed by uncaring families. Alan Gilsenan's current TV documentary brings out all the poignancy of this world now gone.

And yet, Andy was a man who had committed a serious crime: murder is always heinous, and even the ingestion of lethal alcohol does not excuse it. But he was given the chance to pay his penalty, and to redeem himself, in circumstances that were not unpleasant.

And I very much doubt if, in our more enlightened and liberal times, a convicted murderer would be trusted with two little girls, to take on country walks and talk about country things.

I never did discover Annie's story. But perhaps some day I will. ENDS.

Irish Independent Magazine: 1 October 2005