Wednesday, March 11th, 9:35pm
Former rugby player, musician, academic and mental health advocate Niall “Bressie” Breslin is on an emotional quest, with the families of the forgotten, to remember over 1300 Irish people buried in unmarked graves in the grounds of what was “St Loman’s Lunatic Asylum” in his native Mullingar and to restore the graveyard as a sacred place while questioning how similar sites can be found around Ireland.
Niall uncovers stories of adults and children who were committed, died and were buried under numbered metal crosses without names in St Loman’s. Today, even those crosses have been removed.
An online campaign, instigated by a family member Julienne Clarke, has seen some families reinstate the names of their ancestors in the graveyard and is now calling for a memorial wall to be built for all who rest there.
Tens of thousands of people were resident in Ireland’s “mental hospitals”, often for decades and these asylums were at the heart of many Irish communities.
Niall explores the controversial burial practices of patients unclaimed after death and investigates how many more institutional graveyards like this are around the country and what can be done to respect and protect them.
He also questions to what extent these forgotten graveyards of our “lunatic” dead are evidence of the stigma that still surrounds mental health and disability and how that can be changed.
