Toured the Kilmainham Jail in Dublin. What struck me was that two prisoners had made colored picture journals with great detail and that the paints had been accessible to them as prisoners. The tour guide said that many could not read then so they were given paints. Another striking thing for me was the panopticon design which allowed for maximum security as guards had a panoramic view.
Additionally, prisons, like other institutions, went through a process of change over time, morphing to not have crowded rooms holding all prisoners together, but to keep one to two prisoners in a room. Prison food went from jailers selling it on the side and from the rich prisoners dining in style to measures to prevent corruption and everyone receiving prison food measured to the ounce.
Toured the Guiness brewery in Dublin. There were an ordinary amount of people on the street and then the large Guiness complex of buildings with a few tour busses down a back street, but this did not prepare me for the thong of people inside in a queue akin to a theme park ride line. The building was massive, with seven floors and a skyview lounge on the top floor in which to sip Guiness with truly a mob of people. Other floors included a bicycling fish, replays of past ads, a pour-your-own-Guiness complete with a certificate, and self-tour recorded points.
Of interest to me was the profession of a cooper or barrelmaker/caskmaker (a barrel, I found out is really a size of a cask). At one time the Guiness brewery there had 300 coopers!!
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