Matt Brady missed direct involvement in Mac Eoin’s rise to fame. He rode out the Anglo-Irish War (also known as the Black and Tan War) in hospitals in Dublin under the nom de guerre Tom Browne. It was not an easy existence. RIC and British troops were in and out of the hospitals as patients; when he played cards he would hold his hand so that the obvious bullet wound there was not recognized. The hospitals were also raided regularly. He was moved at various points to the Mater Hospital, to Linden Convalescent Home, and to private homes. There were some problems with hospital staff. A nurse at Richmond Hospital reported to the secretary that Brady suffered from a gunshot wound, not the kick of a horse. Dublin Castle, the seat of British power, got the report, but Mick Collins had agents there. When the British arrived, Brady’s hospital bed was empty. The IRA ordered the hospital secretary to leave Ireland within twenty-four hours and the nurse had her hair cropped.
Matt Brady’s presence in Dublin was an open secret among Longford Republicans. He was “available" for his officers, and engaged in “I.O. [Intelligence Officer] work in [the] Mater and Richmond Hosp.” Certainly wounded RIC and British troops were a source of information that he passed along. Longford people visited him, including Joe McGuinness’s wife. While “in his own keeping,” he followed the revolutionary situation in Dublin. From the Mater he watched cabs and lorries arrive with prisoners at nearby Mountjoy Prison. He later recalled for his children a demonstration outside the prison as six IRA members were hanged there, in pairs, on March 14, 1921, two at seven, two at eight, and two at nine in the morning.
Also in Dublin at this time was May Caffrey. A graduate of the St. Louis Convent in Monaghan, she spent a year back in Donegal studying Irish and then qualified for the National University in Dublin. On campus, she majored in commerce and played camogie, which is similar to hurling. She was on the 1921 team which won the prestigious Ashbourne Cup; the team photo is proudly displayed in Ruairí Ó Brádaigh’s home. Her teammates included fellow Republicans, including the sister of IRA member and future Taoiseach (prime minister) SeQn Lemass. Off campus, she transferred to Dublin Cumann na mBan. Her brother Jack was also at the university and in the IRA; during holidays, she continued to organize Cumann na mBan in Donegal. As a Cumann na mBan volunteer in Dublin, she helped provide packed lunches for Sinn FCiners on polling day in the local council elections in 1920, helped hide “wanted men, and marched in formation to protest meetings and demonstrations outside prisons during hunger strikes and executions. It was standard practice for RIC men based in the countryside to visit Dublin and help the police identify people from their areas who might be on the run or visiting on business; Sein Mac Eoin was captured returning to Longford from an IRA meeting in Dublin. As a counter, the IRA asked people from the country living in Dublin to identify these RIC officers. May Caffrey was asked to identify an inspector from Donegal who was expected to arrive in Dublin on a particular train, res sum ably so the IRA could assassinate him. She was at the station with the IRA when the train arrived, without the RIC officer.
In July 1921, the British entered into a truce with the IRA, presenting an opportunity that brought Matt Brady and May Caffrey together. Matt, under relaxed conditions, transferred to Longford County Home and took a job as a steward. May, who had finished her degree in commerce, was teaching in Bray, County Wicklow. The job of secretary to the County Longford Board of Health became available, and they met when both took the civil service examination. With her degree, May Caffrey was better qualified and she got the job, commencing December 5, 1921. Her letter of appointment was signed by Liam T. Cosgrave, Aire Rialtais PLitiliil (minister for local government) of the Second DLil Éireann. She took up residence in the County Home. Among her duties were the registration of births, deaths, and marriages in County Longford and sending board meeting minutes to the department of local government of the stillrevolutionary Ddil Eireann via a “cover address" in Dublin.
In 1920, Westminster passed the Government of Ireland Act, which created two Home Rule Parliaments in Ireland, one in Belfast for the six northeastern counties and one in Dublin for the rest of the country. Republicans rejected the bill, but unionists immediately formed a government for Northern Ireland, with Sir James Craig as prime minister. In 1921, with a truce and negotiations under way, Republicans believed they could reunite the country and achieve international recognition of the Republic. Instead, in London, representatives of DLil Eireann—including Arthur Griffith and Mick Collins but not am on de Valera—signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty on December 6, 1921. The Treaty confirmed partition, contained an oath of allegiance to the British monarch, and placed the 26-county Irish Free State firmly in the British Commonwealth.
Republicans split over the treaty, which was ratified by the DLil. Protreaty Republicans included Mick Collins, Arthur Griffith, and Seán Mac Eoin. Mac Eoin, in the DG1, seconded Arthur Griffith’s motion “that Ddil Éireann approves of the Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland, signed in London on December 6th 1921.” Éamon de Valera led the opposition. When it was ratified, he resigned as president of the Republic, moving Ireland from rebellion against the British government and closer to civil war. Arthur Griffith formed a pro-treaty ministry, and Mick Collins became president of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State. The anti-treatyites refused to recognize the authority of the new government. Matt Brady and May Caffrey sided with de Valera and the anti-treatyites. Brady was a determined man. His injured leg was rigid and shortened by several inches and he was forced to wear a surgical boot and walk with a cane, but he was still a “Brigade Staff" officer in the IRA. Prior to the treaty he was “preparing forms for intelligence reports from units and indexing correspondence [of] GHQ Brigade and Gen Staff.” After the treaty, he “left Brigade Head Q’s … and started organizing against [the] Treaty.”
1921 letter from Liam Cosgrave appointing May Caffrey secretarylregistrar of the County Longford Board of Health. Ó Brádaigh family collection.
In Dublin, IRA (anti-treaty) forces established their headquarters in the Four Courts, the country’s legal center. The Free State government demanded that they surrender. They refused, and civil war broke out. The IRA was disorganized from the start, and the Free State forces, backed by the British, drove them from Dublin and pursued them into the countryside. In August, Arthur Griffith died of a heart attack and Mick Collins was killed in an ambush in Cork. Liam Cosgrave, 1916 veteran and the person who appointed May Caffrey as secretary in Longford, took over as president of the Irish Free State. Attitudes on both sides hardened. The 26-county Third Dáil of the pro-treatyites, referred to as Leinster House (where it met, in Dublin) by the anti-treatyites, granted the Free State government the power to impose the death penalty. Executions led to reprisals, which led to more executions. On December 8, 1922, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, four prominent anti-treaty Republicans who had been imprisoned without charge or trial for five months-Liam Mellows, Rory O’Connor, Joe McKelvey, and Richard Barrett-were taken out and shot. Between November and May 1922–1923, more than eighty Republican prisoners were executed. Sein Mac Eoin, a general in the Free State Army, had under his command Athlone Barracks. Five antitreaty Republicans were executed there in January 1923.
In Longford, most of the IRA activists supported Mac Eoin, but there was enough opposition that Mac Eoin singled out Sein F. Lynch in a letter, complaining of Lynch’s anti-treaty activities and noting that “it is time to relegate this man to his proper sphere of duties.” Lynch’s brotherin-law, Tom Brady, also rejected the treaty and tried to reorganize the IRA. The IRA was beaten down in Longford and elsewhere, however. Liam Lynch, its chief of staff, was killed in action in April 1923. Soon after this, de Valera met with Lynch’s successor, Frank Aiken, and they ended the fight. De Valera issued a famous statement to the “Soldiers of the Republic, Legion of the Rearguard" and declared that “[the] Republic can no longer be defended successfully by your