Parte 72 - Tintown Illustration, Curragh Camp, County Kildare

1 p.; Coloured ink on paper

An illustration by Seán O’Connor (also known as John ‘Blimey’ O’Connor), a London-born republican prisoner at Tintown No. 3 Camp at the Curragh in County Kildare. The drawing is dated July 1923 and is titled ‘Frongoch’, a reference to the well-known internment camp in North Wales in which O’Connor and nearly two thousand Irish prisoners were detained following the 1916 Rising.

After the outbreak of Civil War in June 1922 the newly formed Provisional Government required prisons and camps to house anti-Treaty republicans interned throughout the country. These prisons included the so-called ‘Tintown Camps’ established at the Curragh army base in County Kildare. Thousands of individuals were held for extended periods in these camps without charges or trial. Although the production of numerous examples of prison art suggests a relatively benign regime in Tintown there was censorship of prisoner mail and severe restrictions on visits from relations.