Lily Mernin

Elizabeth “Lily” Mernin worked as a shorthand typist in Dublin Castle from 1914 to 1922. During the War of Independence, she worked for Major Stratford Burton, the Garrison Adjutant of the Ship Street Barracks. At the same time, she was secretly working for Michael Collins and the IRA.

Mernin is credited with having been one of Michael Collins’s most important spies, and one of the few who was actually working within the walls of the Castle. Her identity was a great secret, and she was never referred to by her name, known instead as the “Little Gentleman”. She made copies of many of the documents that came across her desk during the course of her working day. She also reported back anything she overheard in conversations happening around her that she thought might be of interest or of use to the IRA. She later recalled in 1950:

I cannot recollect the exact nature of the letters and correspondence that I passed to the Intelligence Staff [of the IRA]. All I can say is that, in general, they dealt with the movement of troops, provisions for armoured trains or cars, and instructions and circulars issued to military units from G.H.Q.

This knowledge would have been essential to the IRA, particularly for one of their most daring attacks – the assassination of fourteen suspected British intelligence officers on the morning of 21 November 1920, better known as “Bloody Sunday”. Mernin also later described how:

The Auxiliaries organised smoking concerts and whist drives in the Lower Castle Yard. I was encouraged by Frank Saurin, a member of the [IRA] Intelligence Squad, to give all the assistance I could in the organisation of these whist drives for the sole purpose of getting to know the Auxiliaries and finding out all I could about them.

She accompanied members of the IRA to football matches and various cafés around the city, where she would point out any Auxiliaries she recognised, giving their names and details to the person she was with. Even after the events of Bloody Sunday, Mernin continued to work at Dublin Castle until February 1922. Following this, she took up a post as a typist with the Irish Army, which she retained until she retired in 1952.

Mernin also had the job of typing up the names and addresses of British agents:

… who were accommodated at private addresses and living as ordinary citizens in the city. These lists were typed weekly and amended whenever an address was changed. I passed them on each week [to the IRA].

Lily Mernin.