Clerkenwell Prison (Interior)

A picture of the Clerkenwell Prison, AKA the Clerkenwell House of Detention and the Middlesex House of Detention, located in Clerkenwell, London. Prisoners were housed here as they awaited trial.

This image depicts the prison during visiting hours. The caption reads,

Interior of the house of detention, Clerkenwell, (as it appears at the time of the visits of the prisoners’ friends).

This is the prison that Joseph Casey, a Fenian revolutionary who Joyce met in Paris in 1903 and who inspired the character Kevin Egan in Ulysses, was kept in in 1867. When Joseph’s brother Patrick (celebrated among fellow revolutionaries as “the Dynamiter”) and other Fenians heard of Joseph’s incarceration, they attempted to free him by blowing down the walls of the prison with a bomb. The plan failed, as 17 people were killed, another 120 injured, and over £20,000 in damages were done to the property while Casey failed to break free.