Asylum: Gransha (HOS/17/7)
Registration Number: 6164

I am Alison Duddy.

Eliza was caught stealing a pair of boots from Rose in Tullyverry. Transferred to the Londonderry District Lunatic Asylum from Derry jail on the 3rd June 1917, she was admitted as a Criminal Lunatic. A 37-year-old beggar, with no children or family and she had an official history of theft, vagrancy, drunkenness, malicious damage and a diagnosis of acute mania.

Filthy, with vermin, and matted hair that had to be cut off, she could only answer simple questions. At only 5 feet tall, weighing 118 pounds, she was covered in scratches from thorns. The little toe on her right foot had been so badly damaged by an ill-fitting boot gangrene had set in so the resident doctor “snipped it off”.

Two weeks later, the scar was healing well and she was gaining weight but after six months some paralysis was noted and she was diagnosed with Paraplegia.

Almost a year from admission, she was mostly bedbound and needed to be spoon-fed and her weight had dropped down from 136 to 120 pounds.

On the 12th of July 1918 at four o’clock in the morning, she died. That would perhaps suggest someone was with Eliza in her final moments, an image that contrasted sharply with my impression of the asylum system at that time.

It was noted in her records that there were “No bedsores. No relations”. She was given a pauper’s burial in Derry City Cemetery.

Haiku:

summer storm of 

thorn scarred trouble - 

limping off with Roses’ shoes

When she was born, who she grew up with and who, if anyone, loved her, I could not determine, but with such an unimaginably difficult life, there is a huge amount of irony that the theft of a pair of shoes led to her arrest and transfer to the Asylum where she was cared for when at her most vulnerable.

Eliza Quinn by Alison Duddy

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