Musgrave Park Hospital was the secure Belfast ward to which Dolours Price was transferred from Armagh in mid-April 1981, when her health had deteriorated so far that her life was considered in immediate danger. The hospital became a brief intersection of her medical crisis and the hunger strike surrounding Bobby Sands: she expected to see him there, but he died before they could meet.

Transfer and Medical Crisis

After Price had spent time in the infirmary at Armagh, she was rushed to the secure ward at Musgrave Park Hospital. By the time she was admitted, she weighed seventy-six pounds. Her transfer followed a period of acute decline; the official explanation for her release two weeks before Sands’s death was that she was in imminent danger of sudden collapse and death. The hospital therefore marks the point at which the threat to her life led to release from the remaining balance of her twenty-year sentence.

Waiting for Bobby Sands

As rioting and street fighting continued in Belfast and Derry, people at the hospital repeatedly said that Sands would soon arrive. Price, despite her weakened condition, looked forward to seeing the young hunger striker with whom she felt a strong affinity. She hoped to offer him one final salute. The anticipated meeting gave her a purpose to await in the secure ward, but it did not take place: Sands never came.

Release and Significance

Price was released on medical grounds two weeks before Sands died on 5 May 1981, the sixty-sixth day of his hunger strike. The timing sets the hospital apart from the expected scene of a final encounter: it was where Price waited for Sands, but her release preceded his death and their paths did not cross there. Musgrave Park Hospital thus stands in the account at the convergence of a private medical emergency and a wider political crisis, while the hoped-for gesture of farewell remains unrealized.