When it was first built in the late 1780s it was called the "New Jail" to distinguish it from the old jail it was intended to replace - a noisome dungeon just a few hundred metres from the present site. Over the 140 years it served as a prison it held in its cells many of the most famous people inoved in the campaign for Irish independence. The leaders of the
Easter Rising,
1916 were held and executed here. The last prisoner held in Kilmainham was
Eamon de Valera. It was abandoned as a jail in 1924 and following lengthy restoration it is now a museum of prison life.
- Among its many famous prisoners were:-
- Henry Joy Mc Cracken[?], 1796
- Robert Emmet, 1803
- Anne Devlin[?], 1803
- Michael Dwyer[?], 1803
- William Smith O'Brien[?], 1848
- Thomas Francis Meagher[?], 1848
- Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa[?], 1867
- Charles Stewart Parnell, 1881
- Michael Davitt[?]
- Padraig Pearse, 1916
- Countess Markievicz[?], 1916
- Eamon de Valera