In 1847, Spike Island prison was opened, in Cork harbour. It had been a military installation and had then become arguably the worst gaol in Britain. The 1857 annual report into the improvement of prison discipline noted that convicts were at work there on fortifications, and the diet was very poor. But most staggering of all is their table of statistics for 1854: from a total of 2,290 convicts, around 172 were daily sick and 241 had died. Those figures are outrageous by any standards. The Fenian John Mitchel was there before transportation and he was a witness to the disgusting regime. But there was another prisoner there at that awful and brutal period of prison history, and he was not a political prisoner. He was artist William Burke Kirwan, and he was there for the crime of murder – something he almost certainly did not commit.