The Squad (13 page)

‘The English in their usual way are trying to make the world believe that poor Tomás was shot by his own friends. That is the English way always,’ Collins wrote to a friend from Clonakilty on 31 March. ‘They will continue until they have no longer the power. The feeling here about the occurrence, and, as far as I can judge, elsewhere throughout the length and breadth of Ireland, was the same as it was in Cork, and many a person who was far away from the scene of the tragedy felt the awful deed in his own very presence.’

The coroner’s jury came to the sensational conclusion that ‘Alderman Tomás MacCurtain, lord mayor of Cork, died from shock and haemorrhage, caused by bullet wounds and that he was wilfully wounded under circumstances of the most callous brutality; and that the murder was organised and carried out by the Royal Irish Constabulary (at this point the verdict was interrupted by loud applause), officially directed by the British government, and we return a verdict of wilful murder against David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of England; Lord French, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; Ian Macpherson, late Chief Secretary of Ireland; Acting Inspector General Smith of the Royal Irish Constabulary, Divisional Inspector Clayton of Royal Irish Constabulary; District Inspector Swanzy (“hear, hear”, people cried and applauded) and some unknown members of the Royal Irish Constabulary.’

Of course, the coroner’s jury had exceeded its authority in functioning like a jury in a criminal case by actually finding people guilty of the murder. But the verdict clearly reflected what people were thinking.

Private Fergus Bryan Molloy – who was introduced to Collins at the home of Batt O’Connor by Dr Robert Farnan, a dáil deputy – depicted himself as the son of a Mayoman forced to emigrate. He operated as a double agent for the British. He was working for Colonel Hill-Dillon, the chief intelligence officer of the British army at Park Gate Street, but he was pretending to be sympathetic to the republicans by offering to provide guns. All the while, however, he was really loyal to the British.

Lily Mernin, was supplying information to Collins on the British army similar to what Broy was supplying on the DMP. A cousin of Piaras Beaslaí, she was a typist for Major Stratford Burton, the garrison adjutant at Ship Street barracks for the Dublin district. Burton assigned her to type reports in connection with both the Volunteers generally and court martial proceedings. The duty included typing reports on the strength of various military posts throughout Dublin. Beaslaí introduced Collins to her as a ‘Mr Brennan’. ‘I promised to give him all the assistance that I possibly could,’ she recalled.

‘Each week I prepared a carbon or a typed copy which ever I was able to get. Sometimes I would bring these to the office placed at my disposal at a Captain Moynihan’s house, Clonliffe Road. He had a typewriter there and I typed several copies of the strength returns and other correspondence, which I may have brought with me that I thought would be of use. I left them on the machine and they were collected by some person whom I did not know. I had a latchkey for the house and nobody knew when I came or went. It was arranged for me that if anything special requiring urgent de livery to the intelligence staff that I would deliver it at Vaughan’s between certain hours and Máire Ni Raghalleigh’s bookshop, Dorset Street.’ She also left messages at Collins’ shop, Parnell Street.

Lily warned that Molloy was really working for the British. At one point he had asked one of his Irish contacts to write the names and addresses of prominent members of Sinn Féin, such as Count Plunkett and Countess Markievicz, on Dáil Éireann notepaper that had been seized in the raids on Sinn Féin headquarters. In the light of what happened to MacCurtain, his request took on a sinister appearance.

‘We have to shoot that fellow,’ Tobin told Collins.

‘Well shoot him so,’ Collins replied.

Frank Saurin, who was Lily Mernin’s handler, was meeting with Molloy on 23 March 1920, and Vinny Byrne was told to get a good look at him so that he could identify him for other Squad members afterwards. Saurin and Molloy went into the Cairo Café on Grafton Street and when Bryne sauntered in, Saurin invited him to sit with them.

‘Our friend is very anxious to meet Liam Tobin and I am sure you could arrange it,’ Saurin said.

At first Byrne hesitated. Molloy mentioned that he could be a great help to the movement, and Vinny then agreed. ‘I made arrangements to meet him the following evening at 5.30 p.m. at the corner of South King Street and Grafton Street,’ Byrne recalled. ‘We would each wear a flower on our coats, so that we would know one another.’

Next day McDonnell and Slattery were to do the killing while Keogh and Byrne covered them. Molloy hung around waiting for Byrne. ‘He waited about three-quarters of an hour and then moved off down Grafton Street,’ Byrne recalled.

‘We followed Molloy down Grafton Street into Wicklow Street and shot him at the corner of South William Street and Wicklow Street,’ Slattery continued.

According to a witness, the gunman brushed aside Annie Hughes, a domestic servant. She was between him and the victim. ‘My God,’ she said, ‘don’t shoot the man.’

As Molloy turned to look he was shot in the right knee and he fell to the ground.

‘Stand back,’ one of them said sternly to the shocked young woman. Byrne and Slattery then shot Molloy twice more, in the abdomen and in the right temple.

‘Help, Help,’ Annie Hughes shouted. ‘The man is killed.’ With that she fainted.

‘The crowd started shouting and made attempts to stop us getting away, but Tom Keogh and Byrne, who was covering us, drew their guns. In this way we succeeded in getting away safely.’

‘Stop them,’ a number of civilians shouted, according to Byrne. ‘This was the first time anything like that had happened.’ When they discussed what happened among themselves next morning, they concluded that, after what had happened in Cork, people mistook them for British military, dressed in civilian clothes.

‘I had to run down towards St Andrew Street,’ Byrne continued. ‘The majority of the squad made for College Green, but I had to go a different way, as I had to report to Liam Tobin and Tom Cullen whether the operation was successful or not.’ While running by St Andrew’s church, where the path narrowed, a civilian tried to block Byrne’s way with a bicycle. ‘I did not pull my gun and fire at him,’ Byrne said. ‘Instead, I used a little bit of strategy. I shouted at him, at the same time pointing towards Suffolk Street, “Stop them, stop them” and he looked around. I darted by and made my escape to Liam and Tom.’

A couple of days later the target was Allen Bell, the resident magistrate who had served on the secret committee that advised the lord lieutenant on the desirability of the ‘shooting of a few would-be assassins.’ Bell was from Banagher, King’s County (Offaly) and had served in the RIC for many years. He was responsible for the arrest of the American journalist Henry George during the Land League troubles of the 1880s and he rose to the rank of district inspector before leaving the service to become a resident magistrate. He served in that capacity in Claremorris and later in Lurgan, before being transferred to Dublin in 1919. He opened a much-publicised inquiry into Sinn Féin funds in March 1920. He was empowered to examine bank accounts in order to locate money deposited in the names of a number of party sympathisers, but the threat he posed was much more than party funds. He had actually been handling the spy John C. Byrne (alias Jameson) and there were published reports that he had been investigating the attempt on the life of his friend, Lord French.

With the help of Mike Knightly, a reporter working for the
Irish Independent
, Collins’ intelligence people managed to get a photograph of Bell that was used to trace him. ‘We discovered that he was living in Monkstown and that he travelled in to Dublin on the Dalkey tram,’ Joe Dolan explained. ‘He used to get off the tram at Cooks, opposite Trinity College, where he would be met by two detectives who escorted him from there to the castle.’

Mick McDonnell detailed Slattery, Byrne and Guilfoyle to help in the killing of Bell as he came into the city on the morning of 26 March 1920. They waited for the tram at the corner of Ailesbury Road, where Tobin and Joe Dolan of the intelligence section joined them. Tom Keogh and Paddy O’Daly went out to Monkstown on bicycles to ensure that Bell got on the tram.

‘After waiting for some time we saw Keogh cycling towards us as fast as he could go, and he reached us just before the tram did. He was breathless and he pointed out the tram to us,’ Dolan recalled.

Byrne and Slattery went upstairs to the open top area, while McDonnell, Tobin, Dolan and Guilfoyle took seats downstairs. There were about sixty people on the tram at the time. Bell was sitting downstairs just inside the entrance on the left hand side. He appeared to have a cold as he had been coughing a lot, according to the conductor. McDonnell and Tobin sat opposite Bell.

‘Are you Mr Bell?’ McDonnell asked. Bell acknowledged that he was.

‘We want you,’ McDonnell said as he and Tobin grabbed him and tried to bundle him off the tram.

The conductor had just finished collecting fares on top and was about three steps down the stairs. ‘I noticed three men having a hold of Mr Bell,’ he said. ‘Mr Bell had his hands on either side of the door of the car, but the three men broke his grip, and they all came out struggling on the platform together. One of the three men was behind Mr Bell pushing him and the other two were in front.’ None of them were saying anything.

‘Then I noticed one of the three men putting his hand in his pocket and taking a revolver from it,’ the conductor continued. ‘When I saw the revolver I went back to the top of the car. I passed a remark to some gentlemen there that “something terrible was going to happen downstairs.” Then I felt very weak and sat down and saw no more.’

‘Let me down off this tram,’ Byrne cried as he cut the trolley rope. ‘Joe Guilfoyle pulled the trolley off the wires and stopped the tram at the corner of Simmonscourt Road,’ Dolan said. ‘I jumped off the tram to cover it in case any detectives would interfere. Tobin and Mick McDonnell shot Bell, and we escaped down Simmonscourt Road into Donnybrook.

‘From our point of view there was a great mistake made that morning,’ Jim Slattery recalled. ‘The place selected for the elimination of Bell was not very populous, with the result that we had a long distance to run before we could mingle with people and lose ourselves. We always felt very secure when a wanted man was shot in a thickly populated district, because when the shooting was over we could easily mix with the crowd and escape the watchful eyes of enemy agents. Such was not the case in the shooting of Bell. There was scarcely anybody on the road that morning, and if enemy forces had come along we would have had no chance of escaping. That was a lesson that we took deeply to heart and remembered for future occasions.’

As they were running down Simmonscourt Road a motorbike with a sidecar passed them. ‘We should have stopped that fellow on the bike,’ Tom Cullen cried. Some of them ran for the Donnybrook tram.

‘Here come the Harriers,’ the conductor remarked. Others ran up to Clonskea. While passing the Donnybrook DMP station they noticed the motorbike with the sidecar outside, which looked ‘as if the cyclist was reporting the plugging,’ according to Byrne. ‘Unfortunately, no one got the number of the bike.’

One rather colourful story told by a priest about Bell was published the following September in an Irish-American newspaper. It stated that Bell had ‘arranged for a Scotland Yard detective to go to Mountjoy Prison, pose as a priest and “hear” confessions of political prisoners there.’ The IRA supposedly learned of this and shot both Bell and the detective the next day. The fact that no DMP detective was killed in the whole month of March was not allowed to get in the way of a colourful story.

Bell’s elimination acted as a very public warning to various individuals not to go looking for the national loan money. Despite early misgivings Collins achieved the goal of raising a quarter of a million pounds. In fact the loan was over-subscribed by some forty per cent and more than £357,000 was collected. Of that the British captured only £18,000. ‘From any point of view the seizure was insignificant,’ Collins wrote, ‘but you may rely upon it we shall see to the return of this money just as someday Ireland will exact her full reparation for all the stealings and seizures by the British in the past.’

Detective Constable Henry Kells of the DMP was also on the Squad’s list for elimination. They went out to look for him on the morning of 14 April, the day of a general one-day strike. Kells had been a detective for only a couple of months, after about twenty years service. His home was at 7 Pleasants Street and they believed that he would walk to work down Camden Street that day as there were no trams running.

‘On our way we picked up Hugo MacNeill, a nephew of Eoin MacNeill, the initial president of the Irish Volunteers,’ Paddy O’Daly recalled. MacNeill was not a member of the Squad but he asked to come along.

‘We told him he could help us,’ O’Daly added. ‘We divided up and patrolled in twos.’

MacNeill was with Joe Leonard. O’Daly then heard a couple of shots and saw MacNeill sauntering down Pleasants Street as if nothing had happened.

‘What was the shooting about?’ O’Daly asked.

‘Kells is up there if you want him,’ MacNeill replied.

‘Where?’

‘On the footpath.’

Apparently nobody witnessed the killing other than the assailants. Jack Jones, who lived on the street, initially thought the shots were a bread van but, hearing a commotion, he went out to see Kells lying about ten feet from the corner of Upper Camden Street. A passing car had stopped to bring Kells to Meath hospital. He was dead on arrival. A bullet had passed right through his chest. It was suggested at the time that the killer had simply vanished into one of the houses.

Detective Constable Laurence Dalton had only been a member of G Division for some months. A stout man in his thirties, he had a charming disposition, according to David Neligan, with whom he was quite friendly. He had recently arrested J. J. Walsh, but that was the only time he had impeded Sinn Féin. He was suspected of fingering IRB people arriving at the Broadstone railroad station.