On Christmas Eve 1892, Dame Street stood in an eerie silence. A thick haze drifted from the entrance to Exchange Court. Smashed windowpanes overlooked the debris. The hordes of people who had been out socialising amid the festive atmosphere tried to come to terms with what had happened. Soon, a blackened body was discovered lying on the cobbled channel outside the Detective Office of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP), barely alive. While there was confusion about whether the individual was a member of the force or the public, or even a man or woman, it was soon identified as Patrick Sinnott, a detective who had been with the DMP for seven years.

The G-Man

Born in Clonegal, County Carlow, Patrick Sinnott had a brief spell as a schoolteacher before joining the A Division of the DMP in 1885, aged 22.¹ In April 1891, he transferred to the G Division, a plainclothes detective unit who, alongside routine investigations, preoccupied themselves with following and subverting nationalist activities, particularly in relation to the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). The DMP relied heavily on their network of informers to divulge information on the various associates of republican movements in the city.

The “G-Men”, as they were termed, were headquartered at Exchange Court, a cul-de-sac off Dame Street, adjacent to Dublin Castle. The Court was later described by a journalist as “dark, shadowed, airless, hemmed by the City Hall, and by tall old buildings”.²

Sinnott had been recently released from Meath Hospital after suffering from rheumatism in his knee. He was deemed fit to rejoin active duty and so on Christmas Eve reported to his superiors.³ Leaving the Detective Office and with some time to burn until he started his shift, he spotted his friend James Clancy standing at the corner of the City Hall, where he worked as a caretaker. With only the strip of Exchange Court separating them, Sinnott went over and asked if he wanted to go for a drink. Clancy agreed, and the pair crossed Dame Street and entered Behan’s pub. There, they discussed the upcoming Leopardstown races that were to take place on St. Stephen’s Day³.

Once they finished their drinks, they made the short walk back across Dame Street to their respective workplaces-cum-domiciles so Sinnott could be in time for the roll call. They wished each other a happy Christmas before walking on separate sides of Exchange Court. Clancy entered the Hall’s side door, where he lived in an apartment with his family. As his hand was on the handle of the inner door within the building, he was stunned by an explosion followed by the noise of crashing glass. He ran back and opened the side door, catching a glimpse of a crowd gathered outside the Detective Office, though at this point his wife was crying out, so he returned inside.⁴

Sinnott was brought to Dr. Alexander Smith’s practice on nearby Parliament Street.⁵ Dr. Smith gave him a “stimulant” though it didn’t prove effective. He was then transferred to Jervis Street Hospital where he died just after midnight, never having regained consciousness.¹ The cause of death was stated as shock and haemorrhage due to compound fractures caused by a high explosive.⁶

Anatomy of an Explosion

A constable who was on duty at the top of Exchange Court stated that he saw nothing suspicious, and nobody saw anybody going down the cul-de-sac lane aside from detectives entering the Office.⁵ However, one detective spotted a piece of loose brown paper and, beside it, what looked like the glowing end of a cigar butt. He dismissed it as regular city litter.⁷

Around 11pm, coinciding with the roll call when most detectives would have been in the Office, the explosion tore through Exchange Court, being heard as far as Phibsborough. Glass crashed onto the street from nearby buildings. It all happened within two seconds. Curtains flapped from torn sashes. Doors cracked open on their hinges.⁸ Inside the City Hall, where the table was laid for the following day’s Christmas feast, the side windows exploded inward, scattering silverware and showering a cradle in the lower storey with glass. By chance, the infant inside was unhurt.⁵ The canaries in the window of Madame Margotti’s exotic pet shop were killed.⁹ One detective remarked that “the sound of the glass scattering around on all sides, seemed to me the sweetest musical sound I have heard for a long time.”⁵

The electric light in combination with the gas lights that aligned Exchange Court continued to burn steadily and revealed the aftermath. A sheet of broken glass carpeted the street. As people came to their senses, their ears still ringing, a form was seen lying crumpled in the lane. Its clothes were partially torn, the skin blackened with smoke, hair clotted with blood and eyelids torn.¹⁰ Its right arm was blown off at the elbow, while its right leg was barely clinging on by the muscle fibres, the bones jagged and protruding. It would later be amputated.

On Christmas Day, parts of Sinnott’s coat were found in the Lower Castle Yard. One of his boots, shattered to pieces, was found around 90 metres from the Court. Then, one of his fingers was found in the Chief Secretary’s Library – the first floor of the building at the end of Exchange Court.⁵

After investigation, the “infernal machine” was determined not to be a black powder bomb but a crude yet effective explosive.¹¹ It was likely a small tin box containing nitroglycerine, fitted with a copper detonator and a short length of slow-burning fuse – which was mistaken for the glowing butt of a cigar. The paper could have had the benefit of concealing the explosive while the perpetrator walked the Dublin streets, as it wouldn’t have been unusual for anyone to be holding a package on Christmas Eve. Either due to the fuse burning to the detonator or Sinnott touching the bomb, a charge of fulminate set off the main explosive, producing the sudden, high-pressure blast that shattered glass around the area and ultimately killed Sinnott.

As for the modus operandi, the DMP constable who covered Exchange Court as part of his beat said it would take him approximately three to four minutes to complete. Shortly before 11pm, he stated that he left the City Hall to walk up Lord Edward Street.¹ It is at this point, when the constable had left his position outside Exchange Court and whilst Sinnott and Clancy were still in Behan’s, that the perpetrator could have made the roughly twenty-metre walk down to the Office and back, aligning with the moment other detectives saw what looked like the glowing end of a cigar. Since “G-men” wore plainclothes, the perpetrator walking down the Court wouldn’t have drawn much suspicion outside of members of the DMP – of which there were none at the time.

The Dynamitards

While Alfred Nobel had originally envisioned his invention of dynamite to help blast rock for construction and mining, it wasn’t long before its potency was realised by more politically radical elements of society. The destructive potential enamoured members of the IRB and its transatlantic sister organisation, Clan na Gael.

Bombings by the ‘Dynamitards’, as the press labelled them, made their way to England, targeting symbols of the British Empire and enacting vengeance for executions of IRB members. In 1885, the Tower of London and the Houses of Parliament were attacked all in the same day.¹² However, the campaign was dogged by a certain sense of amateurism, with bombs prematurely detonating or killing innocent people to the point that the British working class were unsympathetic towards the cause of Irish independence.¹³

By the turn of the decade in 1890, the great ‘Dynamite War’ was sputtering out. Its last sparks reached Dublin as faint imitations of the earlier England-based bombings. It ignited in October 1891, two weeks after Charles Stewart Parnell’s funeral, when a device was thrown into the offices of the National Press, an anti-Parnellite newspaper.¹⁴ On New Year’s Eve, an explosion occurred in a cellar of Dublin Castle – leaving behind the signature of a tin box fragment.¹⁵ None caused any fatalities. There was then a lull until nearly a year later with the Exchange Court explosion.

Glasnevin Bound

While his father wanted him buried in Clonegal, it was ultimately chosen to bury Sinnott in the DMP plot of Glasnevin Cemetery.¹⁶ The morning of 28^th December proved to be intensely cold in Dublin, with the city buried in a thick fog. The procession gathered at the area of Dame Street between Exchange Court and Palace Street before making the journey to the Cemetery at 9:30am.

Sinnott’s coffin bore a plaque with the inscription “Patrick Sinnott, aged 29 years, died 24^th December in Jervis Street Hospital, R.I.P.” and the hearse was pulled by four black horses, with the coffin reportedly covered in wreaths and floral tributes.⁵

Led by Sinnott’s brother, the procession traversed the city, passing houses with their blinds drawn and businesses that were shuttered, before arriving at the cemetery gates.¹⁷ The police band played Chopin’s Funeral March before proceeding to the DMP plot, where Sinnott’s name was inscribed in red on the tombstone among the twenty-four other policemen – symbolising that he died in the line of duty.⁵

Who Killed Patrick Sinnott?

On New Year’s Eve, the front page of the Parisian English-language newspaper, The Galignani Messenger, carried the headline ‘Dublin’s Dynamiter Here’. It detailed how the proponent of the attack, ‘Murphy’, a 6’2” broad-shouldered Dubliner, escaped to Paris. Murphy repudiates Home Rule, lambasts the English governance of Ireland and laments the death of Robert Emmett. Further, he warns that he will shift from dynamite to letter bombs.¹⁸

While fanciful, the article doesn’t seem to carry any weight behind it and, instead, seems more likely that the journalist involved was duped by a hoax or concocted the story entirely. No other Irish or British newspapers followed through with the report outside of a second-hand mention of the article’s appearance, and it does not seem that the DMP or other agencies involved took it seriously.¹⁹ Instead, they felt the attack had hallmarks of individuals closer to home, crisscrossing back and forth between Dublin and New York.

Fanning the embers was James Boland, father of future IRB president and TD Harry Boland. Born to Irish parents in Manchester, he joined the IRB in the 1870s before moving to Dublin. After reportedly becoming involved in an attack on a land agent’s house in Laois and associating with the ‘Invincibles’, he fled to New York with his younger brother, John, in 1883.²⁰ John Boland served as the liaison between the IRB and Clan na Gael. While James planned the dynamite attacks, John obtained the funding for them.²¹

John Nolan was a renowned amateur boxer. He, too, became embroiled in the fallout of the Invincibles conspiracy, causing him to flee Stateside. In New York over the next decade, Nolan became further involved in Irish nationalist movements and returned to Dublin in January 1892.²² This time, he returned with a vengeance. In November 1891, Patrick William Nally, a high-ranking member of the IRB, died under controversial circumstances in Mountjoy Prison. Described by DMP Chief Superintendent John Mallon, as “very nimble and destitute of feeling”, this was the point that Nolan was said to have sought a violent response in an act of revenge for Nally’s death.²³

One of Nolan’s companions was another Dubliner named John Merna, an illiterate former grocer’s assistant turned Fenian. The pair created a ‘Nally Club’, with one chapter subsequently established in New York. Merna was well-known to the DMP and had previously tried to murder an informant, John Lucan.²³

However, as was increasingly common in clandestine circles, it was only a matter of time before these sects were infiltrated by government spies and agent provocateurs. Among them was Meyrick Shaw Copeland Jones, an Armagh-via-Cavan operative working for the British authorities since 1890, whose mission was to encourage dynamite plots that could later justify harsh crackdowns on nationalist movements.^24,25 According to Niall Whelehan, Nolan was likely unaware of the manipulation, while Merna may have been drawn – wittingly or otherwise – into the schemes being set in motion.²³

Murder on Cardiff Lane

Subsequent dynamite attacks coincided with IRB-related anniversaries. On a May night in 1893, 11 years since the Phoenix Park murders, there was an explosion at the Four Courts. No major damage was caused outside of shattering the glass panes.²⁶

Six months later, in November, a soldier was passing the corner of Aldborough Barracks on Buckingham Street when he spotted what appeared to be a tin box wrapped in white paper. Attached to it was a two-foot-long fuse connected with a detonator cap. The fuse was ignited but failed to detonate.²⁷ This put the DMP on alert.

In the early hours of Monday morning, two days after the bomb was discovered, Patrick Reid and Walter Sheridan, both members of the IRB, were walking on Henry Street when they were stopped by a policeman.²⁸ Reid was searched, but nothing suspicious was found on him. Sheridan was then searched, under the pretence of being drunk, and on him six detonators were found in a tin box. He claimed to have bought them for a shilling and two pints of porter from a man who came into Nagle’s pub.²⁷ Sheridan was arrested; Reid was let go.

To the ever-paranoid IRB sect, this seemed suspicious, and they suspected Reid of being a traitor. Reid himself must have felt the fuse shortening, as he was now fully bearded, seemingly to disguise himself, and was arranging to leave the country on a steamer.²⁷ He had £7 in his pocket and told his wife that he was going to meet Nolan, who had just arrived with Merna on a boat from Liverpool two days prior, before leaving his Queen Street home for the South Wall for a journey to the United States via Liverpool.²⁹

He called to his brother-in-law, Edward Downes, and they went to a pub near his home in North King Street before taking a jaunting car to Butt Bridge. According to Downes’ testimony, they then went to a house on Creighton Terrace, where Reid went in while Downes waited outside. After leaving, they went to a pub on Sir John Rogerson’s Quay.

Downes faced the door, with Reid’s back turned to it. A figure then appeared at the doorframe, and Downes caught his gaze. It was John Nolan. Upon making eye contact, Nolan quickly turned around. Downes mentioned it to Reid, and Reid went out after Nolan. He shortly returned and gave Downes a shilling to buy himself a drink before leaving again.³⁰

Approximately ten minutes later, Reid was seen arguing with two men under a gas lamp on Cardiff Lane – roughly the halfway point between his home and the South Wall. Then, a shot from a revolver aimed close to his neck rang out, and two men ran away into the darkness.²⁷ Reid bled out on the Cardiff Lane footpath. A DMP constable brought him to Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital, where his cause of death was confirmed.

Nolan and Merna were arrested and held in custody in connection with the murder. However, due to a lack of firm evidence, the case collapsed, and they were released after four weeks.³¹ Two days later, they departed Cobh on board the Gallia for a thirty-seven-day voyage to New York, where they were received by William Lyman, a well-to-do, prominent member of Clan na Gael who was closely aligned to the Bolands and supportive of the dynamite campaigns.³²

The Tangled Web

However, these two incidents only highlight the quagmire of the Dublin underworld at the time. According to Fred Allan of the Freeman’s Journal, the detonators were planted on Sheridan.³³ He would have been an ideal target given his state of inebriation, being described as “silly drunk” by 5pm that day.²⁸ Potentially, when he sobered up and was interrogated, he gave the first plausible answer that came to mind, not knowing if he did, in reality, purchase them. Reid’s role as an informant was later confirmed by the Chief Superintendent John Mallon.³⁴

Adding to the murkiness, Allan, who organised the defence of Nolan and Merna, swore that the pair had been with him at the National Club on the north side at the time of Reid’s murder. In his book Revolutionary Underground, León Ó Broin asserts that the two had indeed been there, and the revolver that killed Reid had been taken from them that same evening. In IRB circles it was said that the weapon ended up in Allan’s office safe. When Mallon confronted him, Allan reportedly handed over his keys, in a bluff, and said, “If what you say is true, here are the keys of the safe – go and find the revolver.”³²

The collapse of the prosecution painted a sordid picture of Dublin Castle justice. Witnesses from the docklands later stated that they had been bullied, detained or bribed to “speak out” against the accused. Allan’s defence committee collected dozens of such statements – young women threatened with prison, offered £1,000 to lie, and a landlady reduced to hysteria by repeated interrogations.³³ It appeared to be an attempt to manufacture guilt on behalf of Nolan and Merna in a situation where none could be proved.

It All Fizzles Out

Aftershocks

Due to it serving as a symbol for British control over Ireland and its proximity to Dublin Castle, Exchange Court was a target for further attacks in the years that followed. On Armistice Day in 1937, the plaster Royal Coat of Arms that stood at the windows of the Chief Secretary’s Library – where Sinnott’s finger was found – was blown up, supposedly with a landmine.³⁵ The gaping hole now left in the building was replaced with a memorial to Dick McKee, Peadar Clancy and Conor Clune, three members of the IRA who were killed by Auxiliaries there on Bloody Sunday in 1920.³⁶

Exchange Court is now practically forgotten as a standalone street. What made up its whole eastern side, including the Detective Office and Madame Margotti’s shop, was demolished in the 1970s, and Exchange Court is now considered one and the same with Barnardo Square, which replaced a number of buildings in the area that were knocked down.

The Last of the Dynamiters

As for the fate of the alleged network involved in the Exchange Court explosion, James Boland died in 1895 from a brain cyst.³⁷ According to David Fitzpatrick, this was the result of two serious head injuries. One was from defending Parnell at Broadstone Station before he made his way to Wicklow, being hit by a stone and receiving a concussion. The other was from a Healyite takeover of the United Ireland offices, where a fight occurred and Boland was struck by an object on the head.²¹

A little over eight months later, his younger brother, John, succumbed to a fever in Liverpool aged 33 while on his way back to Ireland from New York. He also had fingers pointed at him, accusing him of being paid by the British Consul in America in return for divulging information.³² John had a poor reputation among Fenians, in part due to his propensity for alcohol and for being unreliable and ungrateful on a personal level.²¹ This was reflected in his funeral, which garnered far less pomp and attention than his brother’s.

With the death of the Bolands, so came the death of the dynamite campaigns in Ireland. However, it had one more convulsion involving Nolan and Merna. They again travelled across the Atlantic in late 1899, with a view to destroying one of the locks that held back the Welland Canal, which connects Lake Erie to the Atlantic Ocean.

In the months leading up to it, they stayed in the United States, laying low, where they liaised with other Clan na Gael members. Nolan worked in Richmond, while Merna got a job as a barkeeper in Washington DC, living in a room above the premises.³⁸ On 12 March 1900, Merna was found dead in his lodgings with a bullet wound through his heart. Official accounts ruled it as suicide, though others suggested that he was shot by his comrades after being exposed as an informer.^39,40

Later historians would debate his true role. Owen McGee argued that Merna had long been in police pay and was ultimately “removed” for informing.⁴¹ Shane Lynn, drawing on Special Branch records, found no such proof – seeing instead a man caught in the paranoia of an era when spies, informers and provocateurs shadowed every movement.²⁵

Regardless, the plan went ahead in April, sans Merna, though the bombing did nothing except cause some superficial damage, and Nolan and his accomplices were imprisoned in the maximum-security Kingston Penitentiary.⁴²

Nolan was released in late 1915 and returned to Dublin.⁴³ His health was weakened by his time in prison.⁴⁴ He took a job with the Dublin Corporation and didn’t play an active role in the reinvigorated Republican volunteer movements cropping up around the country. As the War of Independence surged nationwide in 1920, he died in his James Street home from a brain tumour, aged 54.⁴⁵ Like the Boland brothers, as well as Patrick Reid before him, Nolan was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, joining three-quarters of Patrick Sinnott.

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