The story of extraordinary Wallace Sisters will be told by Anne Twomey of the Shandon Area History Group on Saturday 30th July at 2.30pm at the Maldron Hotel.
Background to the role of the Wallace sisters.
Now a lifeless vehicular short cut, St. Augustine Street in Cork City is barely noticed by many people these days. A bleak, undistinguished street, it has in recent years become an alleyway located between the Queens Old Castle and McHugh House linking the Grand Parade to South Main Street. It was formerly known as Brunswick Street, which appears on the old street nameplate on the western side.
The street’s current dilapidated condition is in stark contrast to its busy nature in the early years of 1900s. In 1911, some ten shops, stores and houses and the back entrance to St Augustine’s Church lined the street.
Six of those houses were inhabited by a total of twenty seven people on census night 1911. Over at no 4, St Augustine Street, Sheila (Julia) Wallace then aged twenty one was described as “Head of Family”, while her sisters Hannah (29) and Norah (15) also occupied the upper rooms where a young seventeen year old lodger Norah Crean also resided.
Daughters of Jeremiah, an agricultural labourer and Mary Wallace of Barrahaurin, Donoughmore and from a family of eight children, the sisters had moved to the city at a young age and opened their little newspaper and cigarette business. The family had been evicted in the late 1800s and now lived in a small two roomed house on the farm of James Twomey, a local farmer in Barrahaurin. This eviction and the resulting traumatic impact on the large Wallace family being dumped on the side of the road, and its implications for the family must have contributed to the radical political views of Norah and Sheila Wallace, which later lead them to embrace the aims of the Irish Citizen Army.
One might be surprised to learn that many of the most famous names in the revolutionary Ireland 1915 to 1922 came and went with regularity through this street. For at number 13 Brunswick St (later 4 St. Augustine St.) was located the small shop of Sheila and Nora Wallace.
During the War of Independence these firm and engaging sisters went about their day to day shop keeping business as normal which provided a perfect cover for what became a vast beehive of revolutionary activity taking place in their shop.
Located behind their small traditionally fronted tobacconist and newspaper shop with holy pictures and statues in the window and labour pamphlets on the shelves lay nothing less than the Head Quarters of the Cork No 1 Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). It was effectively the intelligence centre of the IRA where messages were efficiently received and delivered by a huge network of women and men…..in effect an IRA intelligence General Post Office!
Even more amazing is that this simple shop was located just 250 metres from the Royal Irish Constabulary barracks at Tuckey St and the second barracks at the Bridewell on the Coal Quay and yet remained undetected by the Crown forces for a long time.
James Connolly visited the Wallace sisters on his trip to Cork in January 1916, where he spoke later about military tactics at a meeting organised by Tadhg Barry over in the Grianán building in nearby Queens Street, now Fr. Mathew Street. Sheila and Nora were friendly with Constance Markievicz of the Irish Citizen Army (I.C.A) and both the sisters were active members of the Cork Branch of the I.C.A, which as the War of Independence gathered momentum gradually became absorbed into the I.R.A. The Cork Branch members used to meet in the Transport Workers Room in Merchants Quay where a rifle range had been established for practice by the Citizen Army.
University College Cork (UCC) historian and author John Borgonovo has recounted how the Wallace sisters organised a youth and women’s Citizen Army in Cork which lasted until 1921 and which took part in local parades involving the labour movement during the period. Labour organiser and socialist Cathal O’Shannon also took lodgings over their shop for a period while he worked in Cork.
One of the last actions of the Lord Mayor of Cork, Tomás MacCurtain was to visit the Wallace shop late on Friday night 19th March 1920. Florence O’ Donoghue, then head of intelligence in the I.R.A, later recounted how Tomás left the shop with the recently elected Alderman, Tadhg Barry about 11:00 pm that night on what was his final journey. Just a few hours later the Lord Mayor of Cork was murdered in his bed by the Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C) in the family quarters overhead his own shop at 40 Thomas Davis Street in Blackpool.
There is a family account how MacCurtain’s successor as the Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, who was also a regular caller to the Wallace’s shop, went behind the counter and even sold a newspaper and a packet of cigarettes to a customer shortly before his arrest in August 1920. The Wallace sisters were busy at the particular time, taking dispatches around the city. Muriel MacSwiney, his wife, in her December 1951 deposition to the Bureau of Military History mentions how early on she became aware of “a little newspaper shop kept by the Misses Wallace, who were later connected to The Citizen Army”.
Sheila and Nora both worked in the shop and lived overhead at the time and the room to the rear of the shop was regularly used for Irish Volunteer and I.R.A. Brigade meetings. Sheila held the formal rank of Staff Officer as Brigade Communications officer, this was quite unique and she was possibly the only female officer of rank in the I.R.A.
She was awarded a pension of £55-16-8 under the Military Pension Act from October 1934 and her rank was confirmed. This rank is also inscribed on her gravestone in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery. Later on the shop was raided several times and was finally closed by order of the British Military dated 14th May 1921 and the sisters were ordered to be expelled from Cork City.
It reopened immediately after the Truce, indeed Liam Deasy then Adjutant of the First Southern Division recalled a jovial meeting at the premises on 12th July 1921 with the officers of the First Cork Brigade and Tom Barry. As the sisters took the anti-treaty side in the Civil war, it was raided regularly by the Free State forces. Later on the sisters lived on the Old Youghal Road in Teach Shíle.
The years of “working in impossible conditions”, carrying despatches in all weathers and the associated stress took a heavy toll on the sisters. This was recorded in their military service pension applications in 1934. Sheila died on 14th April 1944, on the Friday of Easter week. It was acknowledged by the Pensions Board that Nora who had developed tuberculosis in the 20s and spent some time in Switzerland, acquired her illness due to her exposure to all conditions of weather, wet and cold due to her intense activities, while acting as an intelligence agent. Nora traded on her own at the shop until 1960 and passed away on 17th September 1970.
The premises was later used as a bookmakers shop and afterwards as a dressmakers. The shop portrayed on a drawing by artist Brian Lawlor* in his book “Cork” appears to have been demolished sometime in the 1970s, during the clearance of the area for the reconstruction of the Queens Old Castle complex.
Anne Twomey of the Shandon Area History group will give an account of the story of the Wallace Sisters on Saturday afternoon 30th July at 2.30 in the Maldron Hotel. All welcome to attend and participate in the discussion afterwards.
The Shandon Area History group organised an unique exhibition entitled “Ordinary Women in Extraordinary Times” featuring remarkable women from the area and their contribution to the War of Independence at the St. Peter’s Church in North Main Street. in June 2016.
* Cork. Drawings by Brian Lawlor. Poems by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanán. Gallery Press, Dublin, Ireland 1977.
Update: October 2023:
A memorial plaque to Sheila and Nora Wallace was unveiled by their niece Bernadette Wallace at the national monument in Stuake, Donoughmore on Sunday 24th September 2023. The plaque and events were organised by the Donoughmore Historical Society and it included a talk by Anne Twomey of the Shandon Area History Group in the nearby community hall afterwards. There was a fine attendance in spite of heavy rain.
The Wallace sisters were natives of Kilcullen South in Donoughmore and when the family were evicted in the 1890s they had to move to the nearby townland of Barrachaurin. Later, the sisters moved to the nearby Cork City where they opened their small shop. The plaque commemorates the very vital role Sheila and Nora played during the War of Independence.
(our thanks to Donoughmore Diary)
