BOOK REVIEW: Inspector Mallon: Buying Irish Patriotism for a Five-pound NoteBy Donal P McCracken Irish Academic Press 256pp; €24.95
ONLY ONE real Irish detective has ever been able to match his fictional counterparts in public recognition and acclaim.
That was Inspector Mallon of the old Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) and his place in history is the subject of this excellent new study.
John Mallon was an Ulster Roman Catholic, an unlikely background for a career in the DMP. A native of Meigh in south Armagh, he was rejected for admission to the Royal Engineers and joined the DMP in 1859 at the age of 20.
He was soon part of the DMP’s elite G Division, whose focus was monitoring and subverting revolutionary activity in Dublin. Mallon headed the G division from 1874 until he retired in 1901.
His aim was to prevent political crime – and he developed an extensive network of paid spies and informers and could often nip trouble in the bud through surveillance, warning or intimidation. He once remarked that “patriotism can be bought for a £5 note in this poor country”.
In 1892, Tim Healy supported his promotion to assistant commissioner of the DMP, a rank not previously attained by a Catholic.
The DMP was criticised for failing to avert the murder of the chief secretary for Ireland, Lord Frederick Cavendish, and his under-secretary, Thomas Burke, in the Phoenix Park in 1882. However, it brought Mallon his greatest success, for he secured convictions of the “Invincibles” who carried out the murders.
This he did by inducing some of them to turn informer. However, Cavendish and Burke had been given little police protection, a lapse for which Mallon was partly to blame.
He was well aware of the threat posed by the Invincibles – and was due to meet an informer on the very evening of the murders – but he had not yet discovered their plans. He never caught the shadowy figures who masterminded the Invincibles.
The chief suspect was Patrick Egan, treasurer of the Land League but Mallon was unable to get hard evidence against him.
Donal McCracken’s very readable book puts historians and aficionados of detective stories – both fact and fiction – in his debt.
Felix M Larkin is vice-chairman of the National Library of Ireland Society and edited
Librarians, Poets and Scholars: a Festschrift for Dónall Ó Luanaigh
(Four Courts Press, 2007)