Death in the lanes: tuberculosis in Limerick City
Death in the Lanes: Tuberculosis in Limerick City is an online exhibition co-curated by Ciara Breathnach, Stuart Clancy and Rachel Murphy.
The multimedia exhibition examines pulmonary tuberculosis in Ireland between 1864 and 1949. Using digital artefacts such as manuscript facsimiles, photographs, video, maps and sound, it introduces the viewer to some of the key themes relating to this infectious disease.
It is organised into four main sections. Beginning with a timeline, it traces developments in the fight against the spread of pulmonary tuberculosis in Ireland, 1864-1949. It outlines some of the subsequent public health initiatives that were taken in Ireland to treat and raise awareness of the disease. It emphasises the importance of the legal framework to control infectious diseases alongside advances in medical science. Until 1882, when German physician, Robert Koch, discovered it was a bacterial and therefore a preventable disease, it was a poorly understood pathogen. That discovery dispelled miasma (bad air) theory, and gave rise to many medical innovations in prevention and treatment. The early twentieth century saw a decline in mortality from tuberculosis in most European countries, but In Ireland it remained high until the 1940s. Section two provides an overview of pulmonary tuberculosis in early twentieth-century Ireland, focusing particularly on Limerick. Using data from the General Register Office (GRO) transcribed by students on the MA History of Family (2022/23) disease hotspots naturally emerged. GRO data underpins the maps, which identify the spatial location of those who died from the disease. Although most deaths from pulmonary tuberculosis occurred in the Limerick Workhouse, the data shows that the poor went there to die and the locus of contagion was in fact the Limerick lanes. Many experimental cures and treatments were developed to combat pulmonary tuberculosis, and these are considered in section three, along with methods of prevention. Here we used excerpts from Voyage to Recovery (Turas Téarnaimh) a short bilingual (Irish/English) public awareness film commissioned by the newly-established Department of Health to provide advice on diagnosis and therapeutics. Its primary aim was to reduce stigma. The final section of the exhibition comprises a short film of Frank McCourt’s Limerick. It uses extracts from his Pulitzer Prize winning biography Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir to show how poverty and the spectre of pulmonary tuberculosis permeated social life in the city of his youth. Narrated by Professor Joseph O’Connor, it describes the damp and crowded laneways of Limerick – conditions which aided the spread of pulmonary tuberculosis.
The exhibition was built in Adobe After Effects, and output in MP4 video format for preservation purposes.
Research Ethics Approval Reference no. 2020_05_02_S&E.
