CLARE ROOTS SOCIETY PRESENTS...... DR CONOR REIDY

Our February 18th talk is by Dr Conor Reidy in the Old Ground Hotel at 8pm.

The State Inebriate Reformatory: How Ennis became the centre of the war on criminal drunkenness in the early twentieth-century Ireland

The Irish State Inebriate Reformatory was opened at Ennis local prison in county Clare in 1900 for the punishment and reform of habitual criminal drunkards. The reformatory came about as a result of the Inebriates Act 1898 and during a period when British penal administrators were becoming more open to experimentation. The reformatory at Ennis was one of four such institutions that opened in Ireland between 1900 and 1910, the other three being operated by clerical orders, local authorities and philanthropists.

Dr. Conor Reidy is the author of two monographs on penal reform in early twentieth-century Ireland. Ireland’s ‘moral hospital’: the Irish borstal system 1906-1956 was published by Irish Academic Press in 2009 and Criminal Irish Drunkards: the inebriate reformatory system 1900-1918 was published by The History Press Ireland 2014. For eight years he lectured in local and family history at the University of Limerick. In 2015 he joined the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland as a Historical Researcher.