When the lord mayor of Cork, Donal Ó Ceallacháin, called to the Mansion House in Dublin in 1921, Mary O’Sullivan turned him away. She didn’t like the look of him.
As confidential secretary to the Dublin lord mayor, she had the power to do that — and she used it regularly. This woman at the nerve-centre of activity during the War of Independence and the Civil War fielded hoax phonecalls, vetted visitors and, at one point, managed to hide sensitive letters behind a press just before the Black and Tans raided the building.
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