Michael Collins and the Women Who Spied For Ireland (5 page)

Michael Collins was preoccupied with his many different roles but one of his most steadfast resolves was to crack the British secret service machine. His intelligence-gathering had already begun to bear fruit, with the help of men such as MacNamara, Kavanagh, Broy and David Neligan working for him from within Dublin Castle. He acknowledged the British espionage system as being ‘the most efficient in the world' and knew that he had to have men and women to counteract it.

One night in April 1919 Mick asked Broy to get him into Dublin Castle. ‘Get me into Headquarters,' he said, ‘I have to see what the buggers are up to.'

Detectives were asleep upstairs, and Broy had taken the precaution of locking their dormitory door from outside. Broy led Collins and Seán Nunan, who accompanied them, to a small locked room on the top floor. With his duplicate key he opened the door and gave Mick the key to lock themselves in. Here the two spent several hours among the secret documents, making notes from the many reports. In one report, Mick found himself described as a man who ‘comes of a brainy Cork family'; at this he laughed heartily.
1

Mick's cousin, Nancy O'Brien, had returned to Dublin early in 1916 with her friends Susan Killeen and Dolly Brennan. In 1918, as an employee of the British government, she was summoned one day by Sir James MacMahon and given the job of handling the Castle secret coded messages, because of her efficiency and because Sir James wanted somebody he could trust. When Mick heard the news he gleefully shouted, ‘In the name of Jasus how did they [the British] ever get an empire!' But he knew he had something gold couldn't buy. He knew Nancy well and valued her resilience and daring.

During many a lunch-hour Nancy snatched quiet moments in the privacy of the post office lavatory to copy decoded messages which she then hid in the bodice of her dress or elsewhere on her person. This was done without thought for the risk to herself. In her Glasnevin flat she would sort her messages and clarify further points before passing the messages on to Mick.

This hardworking, brave young woman took many chances but would at times get angry with Mick for taking her for granted. One evening he raged because he maintained that there was an important document that she should have seen which referred to warders. He wanted to know its contents. All she saw, she told him, was some rubbish about ‘Angelus bells' and some admirer talking about ‘the light glinting in her hair'.

‘What sort of an eejit are you anyway?' he cried. ‘That's the message I'm looking for.' In an instant he had figured it out – the warders change at six o'clock and our target man will be in his room when the light goes on! Tears filled Nancy's eyes. Then she exploded and told him what he could do with his messages.

It was well after midnight when Nancy was awakened by pebbles thrown at her window. Mick, defying the curfew, had come to apologise. ‘I'm sorry for what happened, I shouldn't have said it. I'm under the most terrible strain,' he said and as he turned to leave he placed a small paper bag on the garden wall. ‘Here's a little present for you.' Back into the night he went, this man ‘on the run', leaving a bag of bull's-eyes for Nancy.
2

Over the next few years Nancy would continue her detective work for Mick. ‘I used to get private correspondence for him, leaving it each morning at one of his many depots. I copied telegrams in our office at Upper O'Connell Street [then Sackville Street] ... telegrams for detective police – Lord French and others.' Mick had agents ‘in the GPO who gave him each week the code to these private telegrams.'
3

Jim Walsh from Cork, a high official in the Post Office, was one of those in a position to obtain the weekly code. This code he discreetly dropped into Harry Boland's tailor shop for Mick. Piaras Béaslaí then suggested that his cousin Lily Mernin, a typist at Dublin Castle, might be in a position to help Mick with information. During her first interview with Mick, Lily told him things ‘which he carefully noted down on sheets and then concealed them in his socks'. He suggested to her methods of obtaining further information, including the deciphering of Castle carbon paper.

From then on Piaras Béaslaí received documents from Lily every few days which he dispatched to Mick, as director of intelligence of the Volunteers. Mick gave Lily a key to a house in Clonliffe Road. Over the next few years she would let herself in, type up records of her deciphering and place her work in a sealed envelope which Mick later collected. She compiled a list of officers, many disguised as civilians, using pseudonyms and living outside barracks. This list, regularly updated, Béaslaí passed on to Collins. Never throughout the period did Lily meet any of Collins' intelligence officers nor any of the inhabitants of the house on Clonliffe Road. All had their own schedules and worked independently within Mick's intelligence network.
4

From as early as 1917 Siobhán Creedon, who was employed as an official at Mallow Post Office in County Cork, had been engaged in active work for the Volunteers. In 1919 she secured valuable information in regard to British plans, which was promptly passed to Richard Mulcahy. The RIC used the telegraph system for urgent business, and often transmitted messages by cable. The ‘key supplied regularly by Mick Collins, Director of Intelligence' meant that Siobhán could decipher the messages and send the information back to Mick and pass relevant information to the Cork brigades.

This method was used also in Cork City by Josephine Marchmount, head of civilian clerks and typists (a staff of 25), in the 6th Division at Cork Military Barracks. She was therefore in a senior pivotal position with access to information on most internal activities of the 6th Division including the activities of Captain Webb, chief officer to Major General Sir Peter Strickland, commander of British forces in Munster and the counties of Kilkenny and Wexford. Josephine, being of good standing, was absolutely trusted by the authorities. Her father had been a constable in the RIC and a friend of Captain Webb's. Her husband was killed in the Great War.

After her husband's death she retained custody of her younger son, Gerald, but her oldest son, Reggie was placed in the custody of her mother-in-law in South Wales. Josephine expressed her desire, to get Reggie back, to a friend. This information got to the ears of Seán Hegarty and Florrie O'Donoghue of the Cork No. 1 Brigade. Florrie contacted Mick Collins, who immediately saw how valuable she could be, and set about organising an offer she couldn't refuse. After a lapse of time Mick put Florrie in touch with the London IRA and with Pat O'Donoghue in Manchester. Soon Florrie and Jack Cody were on the boat to England. The plan didn't go smoothly, but after much manoeuvring, aided by a Liverpool Volunteer Seán Phelan, Reggie (with his helpers) was on a ferry to Cork and reunited with his mother.

Henceforth, Josephine Marchmount would be an intelligence agent. On many occasions she supplied information about locations earmarked for raids, names of Sinn Féin and Volunteers on the military's wanted list, and most important of all, names of paid informers – data of immense value to the three Cork brigades. She was in a position to confirm troop movements and this in turn helped Volunteers ‘on the run'. Josephine, in such a key position, worked in tandem with Nora Wallace. Nora in her shop in St Augustine Street became the keeper of a police cipher key and with their contacts in Cork city post office ‘wire messages were regularly decoded' thus aiding Florrie O'Donoghue and his intelligence team to keep ‘a step ahead of their enemies'. Intelligence work done by both Josephine and Nora went undetected throughout the war and was regarded by Florrie O'Donoghue as of equivalent value ‘to a strong column of men'. (After hostilities ended, Josephine married Florrie O'Donoghue.)
5

Countrywide reports of ill-treatment by the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) of citizens suspected of being involved in separatist movements were daily reaching GHQ. A decree of social ostracism on the RIC was passed by the members of Dáil Éireann and introduced to the public by de Valera in a strongly worded statement. It was left to Mick Collins to neutralise the intelligence work of the members of this force who acted as agents for the British espionage system.

Through all this time, Mick wove his way through Dublin on an old rusty bike. During business hours he crossed the city, briefcase in hand, his businessman cover helping him to escape detection.

The intensification of the war meant that Mick had to devise means of detecting those who were trying to detect him. In July, 1919, the Squad, later known as ‘Mick's twelve apostles', was recruited and paid as an assassination team. This group of men, under the command initially of Michael McDonnell and later of Patrick Daly, was selected from the intelligence department for dangerous and difficult jobs.

British spies and intelligence officers in mufti mingled with other shoppers and business people on Dublin's Grafton Street and Dame Street. Lily Mernin would saunter up and down these streets on the arm of Frank Saurin or Tom Cullen (two of Mick's principal intelligence officers), ostensibly window-shopping. Her task was to identify these Castle intelligence agents for the Squad. Lily took great risks but remained undetected throughout the period of hostilities.

Mick was regularly in touch with several women including Brigid Lyons (later Lyons-Thornton), a medical student who worked as an undercover agent. Mingled with her college notes she often held messages, sometimes in code, for Mick. As a Cumann na mBan member, Brigid had been arrested for her participation in the 1916 Rising. The early months of 1917 found her with Collins and others electioneering for her uncle Joe McGuinness, as Sinn Féin candidate for South Longford. Especially from 1919 onwards, Brigid was a dispatch carrier for Collins, often acting as a conduit between him and people in the Longford and the Galway area. (She had begun her medical studies UCG, and later qualified in UCD). The intelligence work done by women such as Brigid and women working in post offices, in railway stations, in boarding houses and the many who were in a position to observe the activities of British agents meant that Collins could coordinate all the information. At meetings with the Squad, movements were worked out and tactics were put in place to deal with the regular harassment and terrorisation of citizens. Piaras Béaslaí recalls that for Mick ‘office work was almost as important as outside work'.
6
He certainly had an aptitude for the detailed and methodical handling of information.

Notes

In mid-1919, Mick was appointed president of the Supreme Council of the IRB. At this period tensions with Cathal Brugha came to the fore. ‘I'm fed up,' he wrote to Austin Stack, who was in jail. ‘Things are not going very smoothly ... All sorts of miserable little undercurrents are working and the effect is anything but good.' He was determined that no secret organisation should undermine the Dáil; he saw the activities of the IRB and of the Volunteers as aiding the political process to achieve its aims.

The departure of de Valera for America meant that more responsibility for the Volunteer movement and Sinn Féin was thrown upon Mick and his comrades. In June 1919, though himself opposed to the move, he had helped Dev to fulfil his ambition to go on a fundraising and awareness mission, by arranging for his travel incognito to America, via Liverpool.

As minister of finance, Mick had prepared a prospectus for the fundraising which would be required in the struggle for independence and the construction of a new independent state. The Dáil had agreed to float a national loan along the lines of a scheme organised by the Fenians but de Valera and Collins had disagreed on some of the details.

In de Valera's absence, Arthur Griffith was acting president, and Mick as minister of finance was in constant consultation with him. According to Piaras Béaslaí: ‘It was about this time, while Collins and Griffith were being drawn together, that Cathal Brugha began to be estranged from Collins'. Brugha now advocated ‘extreme and drastic action against the English government,' and wanted cabinet members assassinated. Mick opposed this scheme; he could not in this case see the ends justifying the means. He argued that British cabinet ministers, unlike secret service men, could be replaced, that ‘intelligence data carried in the head had greater significance!'

Mick was director of intelligence of the Volunteers and continued to act as adjutant-general and director of organisation, as well as being minister of finance. He filled all these demanding roles from three offices: Cullenswood House in Ranelagh, Bachelor's Walk and a finance department office at 6 Harcourt Street.

Much of his time was absorbed by the national loan; the work for this was done at Number 6 Harcourt Street. His energy and vitality inspired those around him. He frowned at any laxity during working hours, and did not permit swearing in front of ladies. Once he held Desmond Fitzgerald's head under the tap for refusing to admit Nancy O'Brien to the office. Decorum was important; ladies should get lunch at a proper time and always be respected. For himself there was never enough time and he would hastily devour sandwiches fetched by Joe O'Reilly.

At this time Robert Barton wrote to a mutual friend, Moya Llewelyn Davies, that ‘Mick is very well & very hearty, a tower of strength & by no means the wild extremist he is supposed to be. The only extreme things about him are daring and determination.'
1
Mick had known Moya when he lived in London and through Batt O'Connor, a relative of hers, she had already sent some vital information to Mick about how Lloyd George was determined to quell what he called the ‘terrorists' in Ireland.
2

In mid-1919 Mick's great friend and comrade Harry Boland also departed for America to help de Valera to raise funds and create awareness. The two had grown close when other Sinn Féin leaders were in jail: they were around the same age and wrestled and played hurley together. On Sundays they would often head for Granard to stay in the Greville Arms Hotel. Away from the hectic city life Mick enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere and the companionship of the Kiernan sisters. Harry Boland was in love with Kitty. There was the odd game of tennis, and under the vigilant protection of local scouts the house parties in their rented country cottage were always a time of laughter, music, dancing and conversation. Mick was a good dancer, and in particular he enjoyed the céílís. But above all he loved the countryside, the long walks, the stimulating conversation with the Kiernan girls and their brother.

At all times Collins acted contrary to the authorities' perception of a wanted man. He dressed and acted normally despite their efforts to seek him out and in fact it was this normality and daring that saw him through. In the summer of 1919 his sister Katie (Sheridan) boarded the Mayo train for Dublin. Intelligence men had her under observation from the outset and sent news ahead that a woman clad in a brown gaberdine coat was on her way to meet her brother, Michael Collins. Katie had been ill and was cold and pale. A friend of hers, whom she met at Athlone station, insisted that Katie take a loan of her fur coat and give her the gaberdine instead.

At midnight when the train arrived in Dublin station a military presence was evident. Passengers were ordered to remain seated; there was to be a search.

Mick had asked Joe O'Reilly to meet Katie at the station. As people waited on the platform, Joe looked around, saw Mick standing behind him, then watched as Mick pushed forward and asked a porter, ‘What's the hold-up?' When a British officer replied that it was that ‘damned Collins again' he told the officer that he had already been held up twice that day because of that blackguard! Then he spotted Katie. He told the officer he was meeting that passenger; she was ill. The lady did not resemble the description of the lady they were looking for in a brown gaberdine. The British officer told him to go ahead. Mick stepped on the train, politely took her hand and O'Reilly, in gentlemanly fashion, linked her arm and escorted her out, with Mick at heel, still muttering and shaking his head. They walked past some military men who stood by while their comrades continued to search the train.
3

Each morning O'Reilly met the incoming boat at the North Wall. Gelignite from the Welsh coalfields packed in tin trunks and rifles in wicker baskets and timber boxes marked ‘China – Fragile' were put aside by reliable handlers ‘for collection'. Sailors, workmen or women returning from a visit to relations regularly walked past the military with revolvers and ammunition tucked discreetly into their bags – arms that eventually found their way to Collins and his men.

The photo held by police was totally unlike the real Michael Collins. In
The Police Gazette or Hue-And-Cry,
under ‘Apprehensions Sought', a description and sometimes a photograph ‘of persons who are wanted' was given. It stated, ‘If any of them be found they should be arrested and a telegram sent to Head Quarters'. Michael Collins is described as ‘M. P. (Dublin City and Cork W. R.), age 28, height 5 ft. 11, complexion fresh'.
4
Not much to go on.

Mick's intelligence from Dublin Castle continued to improve. In July 1919, when his information on Detective Sergeant Smith exposed how close ‘Dog Smith' had got to capturing him, Mick decided he had to be cut down. Though Collins has come to be regarded in some quarters as a ruthless orchestrator of killings – he is not known ever to have killed anyone himself – there is evidence from some people who worked closely with him that ordering killings filled him with tension and anxiety. He would pace the floor until news was brought to him that the killing had taken place.

Kathleen McKenna recalls an occasion during a discussion on spies, when a young lady who believed she would please him exclaimed, ‘Of course, every spy should be shot'. Angrily, he turned on her and ‘gave his emphatic view of the conditions of judgement and punishment.'
5

His method of secrecy and segregation of each department worked very effectively. He informed Tobin, Cullen and Frank Thornton which other agents they needed to meet but gave no further information. For instance, they were unaware that he travelled one day a week to Thomas Gay's house in Clontarf to meet Kavanagh, Broy and MacNamara and to collect documents compiled by Lily Mernin.

Guerrilla warfare had begun but as yet only on a small scale. In early August 1919 Mick travelled to the closing stages of a week-long training camp in west Cork and on his return he recommended to brigades countrywide to set up similar training camps. The flying columns were the result.

He was as hard on himself as he was on others. ‘I'll be a slave to nothing,' he told his sister Katie on his decision to abandon his heavy smoking, because he was ‘becoming a slave to cigarettes'.
6

From 21 August 1919 Mick's burden increased with the public announcement that the Dáil had sanctioned a national loan of £250,000 to be raised in Ireland and $5,000,000 in America. Dáil Éireann was suppressed on 12 September, and on that day Mick was in his minister of finance office on the upper floor of 6 Harcourt Street. Shortly after midday he heard a commotion downstairs; a raid was in progress. He opened the back window so that he could slide down a drainpipe but the pipe was out of reach. He handed his revolver and some of his writings, including his handwritten journal from his time in Sligo jail, to his secretary, Sinéad Mason, snatched documents to lob into the specially converted secret closet and was halfway to the door when an inspector from G Division walked in. He didn't know Mick but confronted him and asked to see the papers he was holding.

‘What's it got to do with you? A nice job you have, spying on your fellow countrymen,' said Mick casually, and he brushed past out the door. Once out of sight on the landing he headed upstairs to the caretaker's apartments at the top of the house, through the skylight, on to the roof and across to the roof of the Ivanhoe Hotel. Here he waited until the two military lorries of soldiers armed with rifles and bayonets ‘together with a large detachment of G Division detectives' had departed. Over an hour later he returned to his desk and a room full of scattered documents, to discover that Pádraig O'Keeffe, assistant secretary, Sinn Féin, and Ernest Blythe, TD, had been arrested.
7

The next night Detective Inspector Daniel Hoey was shot dead outside the door of police headquarters in Brunswick Street. Hoey had been responsible for the raid, had worked ‘with zeal', according to Mick, ‘to secure victims for execution,' after the 1916 Rising and had continued to spy ‘on his fellow countrymen'.
8

To counteract the clampdown by the authorities on advertising the national loan in the newspapers. Mick arranged a Movietone mini-film for the American market. It depicted a bond-signing outside St Enda's with a number of people including Kathleen Clarke, Nora Connolly and Pádraig Pearse's mother purchasing bonds from Mick and Diarmuid O'Hegarty. This helped to sell more bonds, gave Mick a high profile in Sinn Féin circles, and added to the allure of the wanted man who continued to evade capture. In the film he wore a hat, which he never wore as he hastened about the city. His friend Harry Boland in the United States was amused: ‘That film of yourself and Hegarty selling Bonds brought tears to me eyes. Gee Boy! You are some movie actor. Nobody could resist buying a bond and we having such a handsome minister of finance.
'
9

The authorities wanted Collins in their grip, held, not dead. He had many close shaves. During the early days of January 1920 all his haunts were raided and it was only thanks to MacNamara's tip-offs from the inner sanctums of the Castle and Mick's teams outside that he was able to remain ahead of the posse. A detective called Redmond came too close for comfort and finally Collins ordered him to be shot, on 21 January, 1920. On 25 January a reward of £10,000 was offered by the British authorities for information leading to the killers, and ‘especially to the man who issued the order.'
10
No one ever claimed this reward.

Martial law came into force in Dublin on 23 February 1920. This made it ‘like a city of the dead', Mick said to his friend Dónal Hales. ‘It is the English way of restoring peace to this country.'
11
Offices at Number 6 Harcourt Street were now being raided so often that Mick instructed Batt O'Connor to buy Number 76, which was for sale. O'Connor, a builder, fitted a room with a concealed hiding place and an escape route through the skylight. Sir Hamar Greenwood, chief secretary at Dublin Castle, had decided to implement a hardline policy because undercover agents and RIC men had been targeted by Collins' Squad without mercy. Greenwood's men now had instructions to retaliate.

After an RIC constable was shot in Cork, a group of men with blackened faces stormed the home of Tomás MacCurtain, lord mayor of Cork, on the night of 20 March 1920, and shot him dead in front of his wife and children. Evidence later revealed that the killers were assisted by the RIC. The episode angered and upset Collins, as he and MacCurtain had been friends since they were interned in Frongoch.

Collins in turn felt that he and his comrades had no option but to ‘adopt more extreme measures'. More extreme, he said, ‘than would have been the case had we had the active, united support of the whole people. I am making no apology for what we did in these succeeding years – I hope merely to explain the necessity which drove us'.
12

In May 1920 Mick's friend Harry Boland returned from America for a month's break. There was a boisterous reunion. Though the two men had corresponded regularly it gave Mick the opportunity to catch up on the news from America. Harry went to Granard to meet Kitty Kiernan, to whom he was more than ever attached. One weekend in early June, Joe Hyland drove Mick and Harry down to Granard, where they danced at a céilí. Mick certainly was fond of Kitty, but she was Harry's girl.

In Dublin on 17 June, Harry spent a few hours talking business with Fr O'Flanagan, vice-president of Sinn Féin, then popped into a tobacconist and scribbled a note to Kitty: ‘... I need not say how truly wonderful my few days holiday were to me. I feel, however, that I treated you rather unfairly in keeping you from your slumbers ... If I could only be with you I would indeed try to make you happy. It may be that I will come back soon again from overseas ... I long to be in Ireland, more so than ever that I have hopes to win the girl I love best in the world ...'
13