Event to honour unmarked graves at St Loman’s on this weekend

An event to honour some 1,300 unmarked graves on the grounds of St Loman’s Hospital in Mullingar is on this weekend.

Taking place in the Annebrook House Hotel at 3pm on Sunday, the event is led by musician and podcaster Niall ‘Bressie’ Breslin who wishes to install a memorial wall and garden at the psychiatric facility.

Members and public, and the families of those buried at the hospital, are invited to come down for an open discussion on how to go get the project done.

Burials took place at St Loman’s Hospital between 1907 and 1970, where crosses with numbers identified individual graves, as opposed to people’s names.

The crosses deteriorated over the years and the last 300 were removed in the early 2010s – since then the site has become overgrown and is unrecognisable as a graveyard.

Speaking to the Westmeath Examiner earlier this month, Bressie said he was motivated to do something about the unmarked graves after studying the Irish psychiatric system through a PHD with Trinity College.

“People who died in those psychiatric hospitals didn’t have families who wanted to bury them and I just found it very sad, to be honest,” he said.

“They buried them like they buried people in penal situations, they were buried like criminals and given numbers, they weren’t buried with names.

“These people were failed; they didn’t fail society, society failed them - and I think people need to understand that.”

Joining forces with Bressie for the project is Julianne Clarke, the great-granddaughter of a woman buried at St Loman’s.

Bressie said he hopes to see everyone there.

““To me, this is the right thing to do and it’s a nice thing to do,” he said. .

“It’s a symbol and I’d like Mullingar to be one of the first to say ‘You know what? We’re going to honour the people who died in this hospital.’”