In the heartland of Dublin city lies Glasnevin Cemetery, established in 1832. The final resting place for over 1.5 million people, Glasnevin was founded ostensibly as a multi-denominational cemetery, yet it is also a focal point for Irish and nationalist history. Glasnevin is Ireland’s de facto military cemetery and home to casualties of conflict and war, including the well visited graves of both revolutionary and civil war leaders.
The Cemetery sees over a million visitors per year meandering the paths through the graves of the once rich and famous, yet Glasnevin is host to other colourful figures whose stories have slipped from public memory or have never been told at all. And this is the basis of Warren Farrell’s debut book.
As Farrell writes “every grave has a story to tell” yet many of these stories remain obscured from the public. To his credit, Farrell acknowledges that many of these stories are ones he first learned of from other scholars, historians, colleagues and friends – some of which he builds on or indeed retells. In the telling and retelling of these stories, Farrell’s background as tour guide, historian and teacher is evident, with the stories spun into digestible narratives that will appeal to a general reader, cemetery visitor, or both armchair and professional historians alike.
Structure & Methodology
The history of death and burial in Ireland is complex, but has oddly received little attention with few publications reflecting 19th, 20th and 21st century histories. Farrell’s book thus reflects a growing scholarly interest in death histories. Published by Merrion Press, the book runs to 310 pages excluding indices, with the chapters arranged thematically for example, ‘Writers & Poets’. Overall, the thematic organisation of the book makes for a comfortable read, however at times I felt the absence of a narrative or chronological structure, and the slightest inclusion of either may have enhanced its heft.
Exceptionally well researched, including photographs, the book starts with a fairly pacy introduction to the history of Glasnevin Cemetery and its role in the nationalist movement. The book concludes with extensive endnotes and indices, which paired with clear citations enables the reader to trace the genealogy of the grave stories and investigate further if they so choose.
The book has a strong methodological frame and a clear goal. Covering the stories of 84 graves, these bite size biographies recount the stories of innovators and inventors, pioneers and emigrants, rebels and revolutionaries, zookeepers and artists and those who shaped our world through politics, legislation and social change. The curated stories are of variable length which is a limitation of working with sometimes scant source material. At times I found the irregularity irksome – but this is a minor complaint. On the flipside, these petite biographies are quite self contained and perfect for a morning commute – as mini microhistories they are easy to pick up and put down, without feeling like you need to see a chapter through.
Characters
Farrell resurrects the stories of the dead and in doing so, brings them back to life. Amongst them, shines Maura Laverty, a prolific creative, playwright, broadcaster, culinary personality and writer. Her grandmother’s kitchen influenced her love of cooking, for which she would gain notoriety in the 1940s, but her story is itself one of innovation, starting with her travels to Spain in 1924. There she became a journalist, before her return to Ireland where she then took a role as broadcaster with the pre-cursor to RTE, working on programming for women and children. She published a series of novels, of which the (prize-winning) second and third were banned by the Irish censor. In contrast to the official preoccupation with rural life, Laverty instead centered her work on urban living, capturing the essence of everyday life, including extreme poverty, tenement life, and taboo topics such as birth control. The BBC serialised Laverty’s plays for radio and subsequently television. Bar the presence of a single flowerbed in her hometown, no other memorial exists for this exceptional Irish talent.
Daring Mary O’Kelly de Galway, was a Belgian resistance fighter during WWII, acting as courier, weapons smuggler and translator. Betrayed and arrested by the Gestapo, repeatedly beaten and tortured, she was held in various Nazi concentration camps. Selected for extermination at Auschwitz, her train derailed, turning fate’s wheel – shortly after American troops liberated the camp. Her story does not end here, Mary lived a long adventurous life and died in 1999, aged 94.
Whilst I marveled at the courage and resilience of people such as Mary O’Kelly de Galway, as a social historian I found myself drawn to the background characters that are the scaffolding for those in the limelight. Reading between the lines we see much more than these heroes in their own stories but a foreshadowing of maternal and child mortality, the absence of legislative rules and regulations, and a glimpse of life without public health – so there are indicators of other histories to be written.
Final Thoughts
Whilst I would disagree with Farrell’s assertion that we all desire not to be forgotten after death, Farrell’s book has been written sensitively and with care. This is a book about many things – about national identity and politics, conflict and innovation, yet it is also about lives of fortitude, desperation and bravery, skulduggery and stupidity, love and resilience, and the breadth of human experience. The overarching theme is really how these stories represent a hidden heritage of shared humanity, and how such stories shape the spaces and places we live through what we remember and what we choose to forget.
Farrell reminds us that the work of a cemetery is endless – the dead who reside there become its eternal citizenry. Glasnevin as a working cemetery, meaning it continues to play host to Dublin’s dead, will continue to welcome its newest residents – and those future stories will at some point be told. This ultimately is what I find most interesting about the book – it is a tale of those that went before but a tale that will continue to unfold. The story of Glasnevin Cemetery, certainly in the context of biography, remains a never ending story.
Reviewer Biography
Dr Ciara Henderson is a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin. Ciara’s research explores contemporary and historic responses to death and bereavement, specifically maternal, child and reproductive (miscarriage and stillbirth) mortality. Her work traces the evolution of funeral customs through the 19th and 20th centuries for both adults and babies, in urban, rural and institutional environments. She is a reviewer for Mortality Journal and the Science Communications Coordinator for COST Action 22159, European Histories of Healthcare
Women's History Association of Ireland 