Michael Collins in Cleary's Upper Dorset Tenement

Abridged version of an article published in the Melbourne Age Newspaper in 1996

'Michael Collins? He used to jump grandpa Dan Cleary's back fence at 21 Upper Dorset Street. Hope you're not carrying ammunition, Mick, grandpa Cleary would say. Didn't help during the Civil War though, Collins' men put grandpa's daughters Auntie Maire and Auntie Nellie Cleary straight in gaol for refusing to inform on republicans. They were only girls, it was terrible. Nellie never recovered', Joan Cleary said as we parted company at Dublin airport. It was from safe houses such as Cleary's that Collins mounted his war against the British high command in occupied Ireland. According to family legend Collins regularly passed through 21 Upper Dorset Street. Maire and Nellie Cleary - first cousins of my own grandfather - prayed everyday for an end to British rule. I met them only once, in the Christmas of 1973 in a flat in the Dublin fire station in Upper Dorset Street. Under the watchful eye of the Sacred Heart and a string of crucifixes they took me on a remarkable journey through the life and times of Michael Collins and Ireland's fight for freedom.

Upper Dorset as it looked on a December evening in 2007. On the right is an old Georgian remnant of those heady days. The Clearys lived a few doors up the street in a tenement that backed on to Granby Lane.

Vaughan's Hotel (2007). No longer a hotel, this Georgian building is bordered on the right by Granby Lane, which backed on to the Cleary tenement and Daniel's cooperage. Michael Collins knew it well.

When Maire produced a contemporary newspaper article detailing the gaoling of 'The Cleary Sisters' by Michael Collins' Free State provisional government then proceeded to condemn the connivance of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George in destoying the republic and the igniting a savage Civil War, I understood the depth of their courage and of their animosity towards the British Empire. 'I disliked the British so much for what they did in Ireland I didn't care if they lost the war against Germany.....as for Collins, he should never have signed that treaty. The IRA could have fought on. It's terrible to think of the good men that were lost in the Civil War. I blame Collins for that but the British government was so dishonest,' Mary had told me. . 

While Maire and Nellie walked the anti-treaty path, their cousin Donncadh Oh Ahannagain went Free State. However, not long after the killing of IRA man Dannie Shinnick during an attack on O'Hannigan's Free State battalion at Glenacurrane, only a mile from his own home, on 28 September 1922 he resigned from the army. A fluent Irish speaker - as was his mother Nora Cleary - Oh Annagain had used his gardening and horticulture shop in Mitchelstown as a centre for Volunteer activities and gun smuggling prior to the Easter rebellion. As an IRA man he'd sworn allegiance to the republic and led the East Limerick Brigade into battle against the Black and Tans and the British Army in ambushes throughout East Limerick.

Tthe Cleary women had followed Liam Lynch, Chief of Staff of the IRA and former Galtee Mountain neighbour of OhAnnagain. By the time they'd been released in September 1923, Lynch had joined Collins in the roll call of dead, killed by Free Staters a few miles from his home.

A photo of Nellie (left) and Maire - provided by their niece Joan Cleary. At a guess I'd say Nellie was in her late 30s, which would date the photo at around 1940. Was it a baptism in Anglesboro, County Limerick, where their father had been born? Is the child still alive?

The words of their neice Joan Cleary offer an interesting spin on the times.  'Well, as Maire used say, why was Collins never arrested by the British, when so many of his comrades were?'

Daniel Cleary - born 1916 - on his Ariel, probably around 1930. Daniel was the son of John Cleary (brother of Maire and Nellie) and grandson of Daniel Cleary (see above). On the back of the bike is his cousin, Dan Howard, son of Alice Howard (nee cleary), sister of John, Maire and Nellie.