Artistic licence: Recollecting a stolen life

Hanna Greally was just 19 years old when she was committed to St Loman’s psychiatric hospital in Mullingar by her mother.

It was the mid-1940s. Hanna was a tall, willowy girl with auburn hair and an enquiring, artistic mind.

Her mother told the institution that Hanna was having a nervous breakdown. It is possible that this analysis may have been correct, but there were other, less altruistic reasons for putting Hanna into a ...