He reported on the incident in one of his regular weekly reports to the War Office and the Cabinet. Macready said that a court of enquiry was being held. The whole incident had caused him to consider seriously ‘the adequacy of the personnel at present available for manning the armoured cars…’56 Meanwhile, security arrangements were tightened, with instructions issued to the British military that armed men or armoured cars were not to be allowed to enter any barracks or quarters until their identity had been thoroughly established.57
MacEoin went on trial in a military court on 14 June and, as expected, was sentenced to death. Michael Collins insisted on MacEoin being released when arrangements for truce negotiations with the British were being put in place later in 1921. In later years, Emmet Dalton commented on the rescue attempt: ‘It was, I suppose, suicidal but it nearly came off, probably because it was so outrageously silly.’58 Dalton and other members of the IRA rescue group remained loyal to Collins and some, like Dalton himself and Paddy O’Daly, would play significant roles on the Free State side in the ensuing Civil War. The sole woman participant in the rescue attempt, Áine Malone, a glamorous young Dubliner who had been shot in the hip while carrying dispatches during the 1916 Rising, took the republican side in the Civil War.59
Eventually, the British identified Emmet Dalton as one of the bogus British officers who had entered Mountjoy in the attempt to ‘spring’ MacEoin. In the months following the Truce, Dalton’s name entered the public domain in connection with the operation. If the British did not know already, they knew it now. The Dublin Castle file on Dalton includes two press clippings from 1922 that refer to Dalton’s role in the affair. The British also suspected Dalton’s involvement in organizing the February 1921 escape of three republican prisoners from Kilmainham Jail, Frank Teeling, Simon Donnelly, and Ernie O’Malley. The Dublin Castle file details a conversation between a British officer and ‘a captain of the republicans’ in which the latter claims that Dalton was responsible for the escape.
According to the report, the whole Kilmainham escape ‘was arranged by Major General Dalton’ (his Civil War rank). The republican referred to Dalton as an ex-British officer, and said Dalton drove up to Kilmainham Jail in a lorry about an hour before the escape, dressed as a British officer, and entered the jail. He also said that Dalton had entered Kilmainham Jail ‘several times’, dressed as a ‘British officer’.60 The British Administration appeared to give credence to this account, and included the remark in Dalton’s file. In the file there is a summary of Dalton’s career which includes the remark: ‘Organized the escape from Kilmainham Prison of one TEELING a prisoner convicted of murder and awaiting execution… Said to have been responsible for many of the escapes from prisons and is regarded as an expert at such work.’ However, Ernie O’Malley’s first-hand account of the escape from Kilmainham in his book On Another Man’s Wound, makes no reference to any role by Dalton in the escape, nor to anyone entering the prison posing as a British officer. Other IRA documentation does not mention Dalton in this regard either.
Attack on the Custom House
In the earlier part of 1921, members of the Dáil Cabinet decided to strike a major blow at British administration in Ireland by destroying the Custom House by the banks of the Liffey in Dublin. The period building housed important government files and a number of Departments, including Inland Revenue, Local Government, and the Stamp Office. It was one of the biggest operations mounted by the IRA during the War of Independence. The attack was launched on 25 May 1921 by a force of about 120 Volunteers under Commandant Tom Ennis, commander of the 2nd Battalion of the Dublin Brigade. After the raiders struck, there were delays in getting the staff to leave the building. As a result the Volunteers were still on the scene when Crown forces arrived – a unit of Black and Tans backed up by military and armoured cars. While the IRA succeeded in its objective of burning the Custom House, it was a disaster for the organization. Most of the Volunteers who took part were captured and five were killed in the fighting, including two brothers, Paddy and Stephen O’Reilly. Ennis was shot in the leg and the hip and was lucky to get away. Jim Slattery, one of the members of Michael Collins’s Squad who took part in the operation, also got away but lost a hand as a result of injuries. Among the civilian casualties was the caretaker, Mr. F.M. Davis who was fatally wounded after he apparently tried to raise the alarm – he was due to retire the following August. A colleague heard the dying family man say: ‘Who will look after my boys?’61
Dalton was not involved in the Custom House operation or in the planning of it but he monitored developments from the headquarters of the Dublin Brigade, with the brigade adjutant Christy O’Malley. Word came through that the operation had gone awry and that many of the Volunteers had been captured. Dalton and his colleagues tried to organize a force to mount a diversion that would enable the escape of Volunteers who had been lined up by the British but at short notice they could not find anyone available.62
Shortly after the Custom House operation, Dalton called to the Gresham Hotel to see a visitor from America, James Brendan Connolly, who was Commissioner for the American Committee for the Relief in Ireland. Connolly, son of an Irish-speaking immigrant from the Aran Islands, came from Dalton’s home state of Massachusetts and this probably made Dalton all the more eager to meet him. They discussed how Connolly could help in publicizing the IRA’s achievements – Dalton told him to contact republican publicist Erskine Childers who had the records of the IRA ‘in the field’. They also discussed the serious wounds suffered by the Commandant of the Dublin Brigade, Tom Ennis, in the attack on the Custom House. Clearly, Dalton feared the worst and remarked, ‘He can’t live’.63 In fact Ennis would survive to fight alongside Dalton in the Civil War.
Dalton wrote a detailed report on the Custom House operation which included an analysis of what went wrong from a military point of view. He concluded that the main force had inadequate protection: ‘A force can be regarded as secure from surprise only when protection is furnished in every direction from which attack is possible.’ He commented that ambush parties should have been posted at all likely routes for the purpose of holding up the enemy advance and thus gaining time. However, he did praise Commandant Tom Ennis for the initiative he showed in turning ‘what might have been a failure into success’.64 Looking back on the operation in later years Dalton saw the capture of so many Volunteers and the deaths of others as a very grave blow to the Dublin Brigade. In his view, the Volunteers in Dublin were in a hopeless position, there was no fighting force left and there was a lack of arms.65 For this reason he would welcome the Truce between the British and the IRA that was now not far off – it would be concluded just a few weeks later.
The Arrival of the Thompson Guns
There was considerable excitement in the upper ranks of the IRA when the first Thompson sub-machine guns were smuggled in from the United States. Harry Boland, the Irish representative in the US, was involved in procuring the weapons. Just a few guns were brought in after a major consignment was seized in America.66 The Thompson guns that made their way to Ireland, while of great interest to the movement, would not have been sufficient to solve the arms shortage which in Dalton’s view had greatly impaired the capabilities of the Volunteers.
Dalton was one of the IRA GHQ members to examine the rapid-fire sub-machine guns that were imported from the US. In Dublin, he liaised with two Irish-American former officers of the US armed forces, Major James Dineen and Captain Patrick Cronin. They had arrived from Chicago to give classes in the maintenance, dismantling and firing of the weapon. Both men would later become officers in the Free State Army. P.J. Paul67 recalled being brought to a room in University College Dublin, probably some time in May 1921, and there meeting Emmet Dalton, as well as two American instructors, and shown a Thompson. According to Paul, the name on the door where the meeting took place was ‘Owen MacNeill’ – probably a reference to Professor Eoin MacNeill, the noted academic, Gaelic League founder, and later government minister.
Dalton was also present when Michael Collins and a prominent figure in Collins’ Squad were shown a Thompson. The weapon had been brought to the Dublin home of a republican family, and examined and assembled. According to Catherine Rooney68 those present were Collins, Dalton and Paddy Daly. She recalled that after some time the men left and went to Marino where they tried out the gun. Emmet Dalton’s brother Charlie was equipped with a Thompson when he took part in an ambush