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Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa review
Forgotten psychiatric patients are resurrected with imagination and compassion in this extraordinary book
TL;DR
- Cork Mental Hospital, once the longest building in Ireland, has been largely redeveloped into apartments.
- Doireann Ní Ghríofa's book, 'Said the Dead', researches and imaginatively explores the lives of patients, mostly women, from the hospital's early years.
- Archival constraints limit the study to records up to a century old, focusing on Victorian and Edwardian voices.
- The book details the stories of various patients, including Bridget, Anna Martha, Dora, and Muriel, whose husband was Terence MacSwiney.
- Patient records often contain doctors' observations on their mental state, affect, and intellect.
- Lucia Strangman, the first woman qualified as a psychiatrist in the British Isles, arrived at the institution in 1896.
- Ní Ghríofa's approach as 'the Reader' involves sensitive treatment of the patients' lives and textual remains, using only first names and pursuing their inner experiences.
- The book is noted for its extraordinary formal and ethical force, stemming from Ní Ghríofa's obsessive pursuit of the dead beyond the written record.