Offering a unique insight into the inebriate offender class in Ireland, this book examines the Inebriate Reformatory system in Ireland, from its foundation in 1900 until its closure in 1920, and the three institutions charged with punishing or rehabilitating habitual drunkards: the State Inebriate Reformatory, the Certified Inebriate Reformatory, and the Voluntary Inebriate Retreat. Using registers of inmates, annual reports, court cases, and institutional records, it presents a stark account of the ways in which alcohol addiction, combined with lack of opportunity, condemned countless Irish victims to lives of poverty and misery in the early 20th century. It looks at the ways in which institutional staff sought to exact reform over the inmates through education, training, religion, and discipline. This book profiles a hitherto little-known system, giving it a place within the historiography of Ireland's complex web of so-called reformative institutions. -- Publisher description

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