Michael Collins and the Women Who Spied For Ireland (7 page)

There is no clue as to the identity of ‘Lt. G'. Most of her notes gave information on troop movements, their strength and armaments, forthcoming activities of ‘British Military Intelligence, the Auxiliaries and the Black and Tans'. There are, according to Rex Taylor, seventeen notes initialled by this ‘G'.
15
Lt G. was in fact Lily Mernin.

Mick and his men were ready. He drew a detailed plan, setting out streets and routes, marked target houses and put Dick McKee and Peadar Clancy, commandant and vice-commandant Dublin brigade, in charge of the men chosen for house raids in different areas. At precisely 9 o'clock in the morning, on Sunday 21 November, eleven of the Cairo gang were shot dead in various locations, some in their beds in the presence of their wives or companions.

That day all hell broke loose. In the afternoon a Dublin-Tipperary football match was fixed for Croke Park. The match was in progress and the pitch densely packed with men, women and children when lorryloads of military invaded Croke Park and opened fire on the spectators and players. There was panic and people tried to rush for cover. Thirteen spectators and a player, Michael Hogan, were killed, and a great number were wounded. ‘Bloody Sunday', as it became known, made its mark on nationalist opinion.

In Dublin Castle, Dick McKee, the organiser of the assassination campaign, his associate Peadar Clancy and Conor Clune, an innocent football supporter picked up with McKee and Clancy, were tortured and killed. The official line was that they were shot ‘while attempting to escape'.

Collins was among the congregation who attended Mass a few days later for the two men in the pro-cathedral. His wreath read: ‘In memory of two good friends – Dick and Peadar – and two of Ireland's best soldiers. Mícheál Ó Coileáin. 25/11/20'.
16

From this time on a reign of terror was instituted by the military forces. Curfew was proclaimed in Dublin from 10 pm. People were held up on the streets and searched. Outside Dublin the war intensified. The IRA flying columns and active service units grew. They arranged their own attacks on barracks and conducted ambushes, and for the most part worked independently of GHQ. They needed the support of local men, and especially of the women, who billeted them, gave them food, washed their clothes and attended to the wounded. These Volunteers took on the might of over 50,000 regular troops and 15,000 Black and Tans.

Because of widespread devastation an American Committee for Relief in Ireland had been established and food and clothes were sent in shiploads. To coordinate the materials and the money raised, the White Cross was established towards the end of 1920, with an executive which included women such as Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, Kathleen Clarke and Molly Childers. Máire Comerford and Leslie Price were recruited to travel to various counties for the White Cross and assembled information for Collins on the difficulties being experienced, particularly in the farming community by women who had to struggle with the work of the farm while husbands and sons were ‘on the run'.
17

The police had the impression of a reckless and flamboyant ‘terrorist' and ‘murderer' but Mick Collins maintained his businessman demeanour, seldom taking undue risks. When Harry Boland wrote a note from America cautioning Mick to be careful after so many arrests, Mick responded:

I am in love with life as much as the next man. The escapes of others often chill me to the marrow. But for myself I take a logical view of things and act in accordance with what would seem to be a supersensitiveness.
18

On 3 December the military found documents relating to G Division during a raid on the house of sympathiser Eileen McGrane. These were carbon copies given to Mick by Broy and stored in sacks by Eileen. Broy was immediately suspected. He was arrested and taken to Arbour Hill. Collins had Inspector Supple and Detective Inspector McCabe from the Castle intimidated into opening Broy's locker and box. They burned everything so that there was no evidence against Broy. To Collins' delight, Broy was released on bail, and the matter was never reactivated.

Meanwhile, down in Longford a decision had been taken by Seán MacEoin and the local brigade to eliminate RIC Inspector Kelleher, who had come to Longford, he said, ‘to spill blood'. He lodged in the Greville Arms in Granard. On 31 October 1920, he was shot in the bar as he put down his half-finished glass of whiskey.

On the night of 3 November, eleven lorries of military entered Granard, sacked the town and burned down Kiernan's hotel. Larry Kiernan, Kitty and their three sisters were arrested. The others were held overnight but Kitty was detained for three days. Mick was upset. He remonstrated with MacEoin, saying that the hotel should not have been used as the place of execution.

Afterwards he wrote to Kitty, suggesting she come to Dublin for a chat. One night in late November 1920 Mick and Kitty talked well into the night in an upstairs room in Vaughan's Hotel, exchanging news of Harry Boland's activities.

The Kiernans, now homeless, stayed in Omard House, Granard. Later they would move to a large flat over a shop on the New Road.

Tentative peace moves were afoot in December 1920. Lloyd George wanted the Irish problem solved. He decided to make use of Griffith's arrest, knowing that Griffith was a moderate. Archbishop Clune of Perth, uncle of the murdered Conor Clune, arrived on the scene and was asked by influential people to see Lloyd George, who in turn suggested that he meet Arthur Griffith in prison. This he did. But he also met Mick Collins in Louise Gavan Duffy's school on St Stephen's Green. Mick was very conscious of security and left nothing to chance. Through warders in Mountjoy and through women visitors to the prison, Mick remained in close touch with Griffith but did not dare to visit him.

Collins was now in a difficult situation. He was acting president of Dáil Éireann since Griffith's arrest, as well as minister of finance. He was president of the IRB, director of intelligence, and director of munitions in the IRA Army Council and found it difficult to reconcile the military side with the first prospect of negotiations. In a letter published in the
Irish Independent
on 7 December he wrote: ‘At the moment there is a very grave danger that the country may be stampeded on false promises and foolish ill-timed actions. We must stand up against that danger. My advice to the people is, “Hold fast”' and that: ‘Everyone in Ireland has reason to be profoundly distrustful of British politicians of all schools ...'
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From experience Collins knew that Griffith was open to persuasion. He didn't want anybody to be under the illusion that because Lloyd George could have direct access to Griffith he could solve the problem. ‘Does anyone think that Mr Griffith will be so foolish as to negotiate with anybody from behind prison bars, away from his followers, and from his movement?' Collins wrote.
20

On 23 December 1920 the Government of Ireland Act was passed. Ireland was to be divided against the will of the majority. On Christmas Eve morning 1920, with Collins' many agents aiding in the decoy, de Valera, dressed in clerical garb, arrived in Dublin. Mick and he had long discussions.

To celebrate Christmas, Mick that night dined in the Gresham Hotel in the company of Liam Tobin, Tom Cullen, Gearóid O'Sullivan and Rory O'Connor. They had dinner in the public dining-room, and had just finished when the waiter told them Auxiliaries were in the hall. They were on them immediately. All gave false names and addresses. Mick had the narrowest escape so far. He gave his name as John Grace, an accountant.

‘Where do you work?' asked the officer.

‘My office is in Dame Street,' said Collins.

In an ordnance survey map which he carried Mick had ‘6 Refills' scribbled in a corner – a reminder note. The officer tried to persuade him it was rifles. But his clear writing left no doubt, he said; it related to notebook refills which he used at work. The officer, distracted by trying to solve the question of the ‘6 Refills', didn't ask why he carried a map. Nevertheless, he was very suspicious. He took a photograph from his pocket and Collins kept up a pleasant smile as he eyed the revolver in the officer's pocket. He said afterwards that if he was going to be arrested, he would have snatched the revolver. ‘The officer drew an old photograph of me out of his pocket and compared it with my face, drawing my hair down as it was in the picture,' he told Batt O'Connor afterwards. ‘It was touch and go. They were not quite satisfied, and hesitated long before they left us,' he said.

The raiding party left and Collins got very drunk that night.
21

Notes

Mick was happy to see de Valera back home but soon after Christmas he had to fight off an attempt by de Valera, backed by Brugha and Stack, to send him to America to sort out some problems that had arisen in relation to fundraising. It made no sense to Collins for him to leave the country at this stage.

At a Dáil meeting Mick voiced his concern about the ‘atrocities on women' such as the raid one night by men in mufti on the home of Agnes Daly in Limerick. She had a horrific experience, had her hand slashed and her hair cut with a razor, and gashes to her head. The Auxies used the excuse that she tried to run away from them, ‘one young women against a group of strong men!'
1
Agnes, her sister Madge and Peg Barrett from Clare were on Collins' intelligence team. (The Daly girls were sisters of Kathleen Clarke, wife of executed 1916 leader Tom Clarke, and of Ned Daly, also killed in 1916; they were nieces of Fenian John Daly.) They were regular carriers of dispatches for Mick to and from the Limerick and Clare brigades, as were the Barrett sisters, Peg, Josephine and Dell.

The Daly girls helped in the running of the family bakery, and often travelled on the train with dispatches concealed in bags of flour. Mick would meet them at a bakery and flour shop off Parnell Square. One day Agnes, Madge and Peg Barrett were inside the bakery when the Auxies came on a raid. All three had important documents and Peg had proof that a spy going under the name of James Breen had been gathering information on Collins for some time. Breen, who masqueraded as a hat salesman, had become well known to Peg, who risked her life on many occasions to get information.

That day at the bakery door, a young man, ‘cleaning' for a purpose, gave the signal with his whistling lilt. The three girls were ‘sampling cakes' as they wished to place an order. Mick, dressed in a business suit, leaped over a bench at the first whistle, dipped his fingers in flour, ran them through his hair, and behind the bench leaned with pen poised. ‘He was taking the girls' order,' Peg recalls, ‘confidently telling them the difference between the texture of one cake and the other. I was a friend. That day we were about to smuggle guns down south.'

The raiders ripped open bags of flour, knocked over some trays of cakes, took plenty of buns and eventually departed, to the relief of all. The never-used oven with the false back held guns, as it had on other occasions. The girls brought some of these to Limerick and Clare in concealed pockets sewn on the shifts they wore underneath their long skirts.

‘Breen' later met his death like other spies on Collins' track.
2

Eileen McGrane, who kept important documents belonging to Collins, was in her flat one evening when it was raided. Not alone did the raiders carry away important documents but she was arrested and courtmartialled – the first courtmartial of a woman. She did not betray any secrets. She was kept in custody for many months. Other women had the same fate. Mick was enraged, also because ‘the enemy took a whole lot of my old private letters – poor mother's mortuary card not being left even,' he told his sister, Helena (Sr Celestine): ‘Surely there must have been some one of yours [letters] among them. They raided all the known addresses ... I wonder if you were raided!'
3

By now areas in Dublin were being ‘combed out', the inhabitants harassed and searched. Citizens of Dublin had grown to accept the abnormal conditions. The campaign against the crown forces intensified. Collins constantly varied his tactics, and if he suspected a person was curious, he ‘invented Gyntian romances'. Often he pretended to others that he had a date with a girl.
4
So compartmentalised were his intelligence activities that when he was going out to Dalkey or Howth with Dilly he would get rid of ‘those in 44' by saying that they had been invited to a house party.
5
A common ploy used by Mick as well as by others in his intelligence department was to walk down the street linked to a likely young girl.

There were moments of light relief. During the difficult days of January 1921, Mick was a guest at a party given by an Irish-American attorney, James M. Sullivan, at his home in Palmerston Park. Most of the guests were ‘wanted', but among them were three G men – Broy, MacNamara and Neligan. The host was unaware of their identity. Many of Collins' intelligence women were there also – Moya Llewelyn Davies, Máire Comerford, Brigid Lyons-Thornton, Jennie Wyse-Power.

Mick had already imported arms, mainly from Glasgow and Liverpool, and had also been involved in the importation of arms from Italy through his friend Dónal Hales. There were dispatches and pleas to him, especially from the three Cork brigades, that they were in urgent need of arms as they were ‘harassed to a terrible extent by the enemy'.

Dónal's sister, Madge, had already been to Italy in December 1920 and by March 1921 was about to embark on another trip. She was a key link in the arms importation and carried many of Mick's instructions in her head. Often her brother would write to her and she would travel to Dublin by train from Cork to convey the message to Mick. She was also in a position to decode some of Dónal's ambiguous statements in his letters to Collins. Madge was the link between Collins and Liam Deasy and his Third West Cork Brigade, members of which were involved in preparing dumps for the arms.
6

Liam Mellows became director of purchases, in charge of the importation of arms. IRA money had for some time been channelled through the IRB for the arms purchases. Cathal Brugha, who had a deep dislike and distrust of the IRB, used the discrepancies in the transfer of money as a tactic to fault Collins. Collins had been administering two sources of revenue – the public money voted by Dáil Éireann and the secret funds of the IRA and IRB. Though he tried to separate them, often they overlapped. Money was always on the go. A sailor on his way to Hamburg was given money to bring back revolvers but he might not return. Money was given to men unaccustomed to bookkeeping on the off-chance of a substantial purchase. Sentries had to be ‘squared', so too had loading men and taxi-drivers.

One night, quantities of Mick's papers had been seized in a raid on a house in Bachelor's Walk. These included expense accounts for arms purchased in England and their loss made Mick's task of accounting more difficult. Brugha continued to nag for better accounting and was aided by Austin Stack and Liam Mellows. The entire affair upset Collins. ‘Cathal is jealous of Mick,' Richard Mulcahy said.
7

Beaten on this front, Brugha returned ‘to his old mania' – his plan to assassinate the British cabinet. He knew Mick's dislike of this policy, so unknown to him he summoned some daring Volunteers to Dublin. He made Seán MacEoin leader of this London operation. Brugha would not listen to MacEoin's objections. MacEoin then went to Mulcahy, who sent him to Collins. ‘You should be at home attending to your business,' was Collins' response. ‘Do you think that England has the makings of only one cabinet?' On his way back to Mullingar MacEoin was shot by British forces, wounded and arrested. That evening, Mick attempted but failed to rescue him. Later MacEoin was sentenced to death.

On 12 February 1921, Mick who had been in constant touch with Leslie Price, sometimes through her brother Mick Price, sent her a note:

Dearest Leslie

Try to meet me at the usual place on Thursday, 8.30 p.m.

Love, M.

The ‘usual place' was Moya Llewelyn Davies' house at Furry Park. At other times he would use ‘J's place' – that was Jennie Wyse-Power's house. Mick always used Dearest Leslie, Leslie Dearest or some such endearment. He did the same to Moya and the rest and this made the note look like a love note if it was intercepted. ‘If he had important information in a dispatch, this would be in code, we would decipher it [the dispatch] and then destroy ... because the code could be captured. These [codes] were constantly being changed,' according to Leslie.

That evening, 12 February, Leslie went to Moya's house. She had returned from west Cork a few days previously and had told Mick that Tom Barry was pleading for guns. Over a number of months Leslie had been travelling throughout Cork by bicycle or pony and trap, organising Cumann na mBan. Periodically she would return to Mick at GHQ with Cork brigade details. She had occasionally taken one or two guns in her handbag or luggage. But now she was on a bigger mission.

Moya had a motor car. Moya and Leslie prepared for the journey in Moya's house. In bags of flour they hid the wrapped guns. Mick told them ‘to dress up'. Leslie was nervous because the previous year (1920) Linda Kearns had been arrested and sentenced to ten years for driving a car full of arms. (With the aid of a friendly warder and local Volunteers, Linda and her comrades Eithne Coyle, Aileen Keogh and Mary Burke escaped from Mountjoy Jail by means of a rope ladder.)

Moya, ‘dressed as a real lady with flamboyant hat' and Leslie, clad likewise, set out for Cork early next morning. They were stopped at several places, but ‘Moya was very capable'. Most of the guns were left at O'Mahony's of Belrose near Upton and used later by Tom Barry's flying column.

On 24 February Leslie got another, ‘Dearest Leslie' note from Mick. This time Moya and she had a smaller quantity of guns for Liam Lynch. These were again carefully packed by ‘a few of the girls' and next morning, with Mick's blessing, the two ‘ladies' set out for Mourne Abbey outside Mallow for the Cork Number Two Brigade. They had a narrow escape beyond Cashel when they almost ran into an ambush.

Their next journey came after a ‘My Dearest Leslie' note from Mick on 2 March ‘for the usual place'. This mission would take Moya and Leslie to Cork Number One Brigade. They had a small consignment which they wrapped in underwear, ‘corsets and camisoles', with other clothes, and hid in cases. They got a puncture not far from Dublin and a lorryload of Auxiliaries stopped when they saw ‘the ladies in distress'. They were happy to change the wheel and send them on their way. Nora O'Leary and Lil Conlon later took Moya, Leslie and their ‘precious load' to a house on the outskirts of Douglas.
8

On another mission some time previously, Nancy O'Brien was returning from England with a case containing guns for Mick. She got off the tram and was obviously having difficulty lifting the load. A policeman kindly offered to help her, and she ‘gladly' agreed. Mick said, ‘That's one way of bringing in guns!'
9

In early 1921, the hunt for Mick Collins continued. He was at dinner in Linda Kearns' nurses' home one day when suddenly Auxiliaries burst in. Mick, plate and cutlery in hand, in a split second slid under the table. Shielded by the diners and the tablecloth he crouched while the Auxies breezed past to look under beds, in cupboards, and corners. Mick and plate did not emerge until the last sound of the military had died and Linda gave the all-clear.

One night during a raid in Donnybrook, the officer in charge stumbled on some love-letters and became engrossed. The young woman who owned the letters chastised him for invading her privacy. While hastily trying to stuff them into the drawer the officer also pushed in his list of houses to be raided. Next day Mick learned of his narrow escape. Sinéad Mason's house, where he had slept the previous night, was on the list.

Mick's reputation for elusiveness grew. A report in the
Daily Sketch
claimed that he led an ambush in Burgatia near his west Cork birthplace on a white horse: ‘20 constables were attacked by 400 rebels ...' – a greatly exaggerated account of Tom Barry and his flying column. The incident amused Mick.

In a letter on 5 March to his sister Helena (Sister Celestine) he noted:

The English papers have been giving me plenty of notoriety – a notoriety one would gladly be rid of but they must make a scapegoat.
Daily Sketch
had a gorgeous thing once upon a time – ‘Mike' the super hater, dour, hard, no ray of humour, no trace of human feeling – oh lovely! The white horse story was an exaggeration. I have not ridden a white horse since I rode ‘Gipsy' and used her mane as a bridle.
10

Broy again came under suspicion by Dublin Castle and was arrested. His superintendent had no knowledge of his dual role but trusted him and so thought it wise to burn all papers in his policeman's locker. The Castle authorities were unable to sustain any charge against him but they kept him in Arbour Hill. Mick was devastated but this time it was impossible to plan an escape as life in the city was getting too hot. Broy remained in custody until after the Truce.

Shortly after this MacNamara came under suspicion, was dismissed, and ordered to get out of the Castle instantly and never return. ‘You're lucky,' was Mick's response. ‘If they had any suspicion of the real state of affairs, your life wouldn't be spared.'

MacNamara now began work with Collins' own intelligence staff. Neligan, who had been sworn into the secret service, remained undetected. The day after his ‘swearing in' he took a copy of his oath to Collins. ‘To the ends of the earth' they would follow him if he betrayed the service! ‘But betray it I did. For Ireland and for Mick Collins!'
11

Notes