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Do you have an Irish ancestor who served time? You might have one who served time
and you don’t know about it, given that FindMyPast.ie’s
new Irish Prison Registers 1790-1920 database contains 3.5 million entries at
a time when Ireland’s population averaged 4.08 million.

The prison registers, which came the National
Archives of Ireland, cover bridewells (places of detention), county prisons, sanatoriums
for alcoholics and other institutions. Most records give the prisoner’s name, address,
place of birth, occupation, religion, education, age, physical description, name and
address of next of kin, crime, sentence, and incarceration start and ending dates.

Drunkenness accounted for more than 30 percent of crimes reported and more than 25
percent of incarcerations. Other common offenses in the registers are theft (16 percent),
assault (12 percent), vagrancy (8 percent) and rioting (4 percent).

You can access the records with a FindMyPast.ie subscription
or with PayAsYouGo credits. 

For help finding Irish ancestors in court and other records, check out Family Tree
University’s Irish
Research 101 and 102 courses,
as well as our $4 Irish
Heritage Research Guide from ShopFamilyTree.com.