Parkhurst Prison was the site of Michael Gaughan’s death during a hunger strike in 1974. In the book’s account, the prison’s significance lies not in a description of its buildings or daily life but in the political shock of that death: it made the prospect of further hunger-strike deaths, including those of Dolours Price and Marian Price, harder for the British government to treat as an abstract threat.

Setting and association

The narrative identifies Parkhurst Prison as being on the Isle of Wight. Gaughan, an Irish Republican Army volunteer who had taken no part in the bombing mission discussed in the surrounding account, was serving a sentence for robbing a bank in London. His hunger strike began in April, months after Dolours Price had begun hers in November.

Gaughan’s death

On 3 June, Gaughan died at Parkhurst Prison. When Dolours Price heard a television announcement that an Irish Republican Army prisoner on hunger strike had died, she feared it might be Hugh Feeney or Gerry Kelly, who were also striking in separate prisons. The news first reached her as uncertainty about which of her fellow prisoners was dead; the book then identifies Gaughan as the person who had died.

Disputed cause and wider consequences

The authorities attributed Gaughan’s death to pneumonia. His family suspected that complications associated with force-feeding had contributed, though the account presents this as their suspicion rather than an established finding. Roy Jenkins, already troubled by the possible political consequences of the Price sisters’ deaths, recalled fearing the recrimination that had followed the death of Terence MacSwiney. Gaughan’s death in Parkhurst thus formed part of the mounting pressure around the sisters’ prolonged strike and the government’s eventual decision to arrange their return to Northern Ireland.