Present at shooting Of Angliss in Lower Mount Street
Clareman with only one hand, after being injured in the Custom House fire
Tom Keogh, Jim Slattery, Frank Teeling, Denis Begley, and Andy Monaghan went into Lower Mount Street looking for Lieutenant H. McMahon. They found the man, whose real name was Angliss, in bed with the man who became the inquest’s relatively notorious ‘Mr C’.
He testified at Teeling’s court-martial that I was awakened about 9 a.m. by someone shouting ‘Hands up’ when I opened my eyes I saw five men standing at the end of my bed covering me with revolvers. One of the men who appeared to be acting as leader gave the order to keep McMahon and myself covered and he proceeded to search the room. He picked up a civilian coat belonging to McMahon and said ‘ is this your coat McMahon’, McMahon said ‘No.’ He then put his hand in the inside pocket, took out a wallet and said ‘You’re a damned liar ’ and put the wallet in his pocket. He then said ‘where are your guns Mac’. McMahon said ‘look here we are two R[oman] C[atholic]s but the guns are in that bag’. The man then walked over to the bag which was lying in a corner of the room, lifted it on to the table and burst the locks off with his hands and took out three revolvers. They were one service Colt, one Webly-Scott Automatic and one .32 automatic. He put them in his pockets. I then heard firing which seemed to come from the street and I heard a noise as if someone was trying to smash in the front door. A man’s voice on the landing then shouted ‘are you all right there boys. They’re surrounding the house.’ The five men in the room then turned as if to rush out, they went a little way down the room then halted and the man who had been doing the searching raised his revolver – pointed it at the bed and fired. I saw McMahon raise his arm to cover his face and at the same time I threw myself out of the bed on to the floor practically simultaneously I heard other shots ring out from the other men in the room and they all rushed out of the room. McMahon was shot three times in the chest and once in the buttock. The officer in the next room barricaded his door. Seventeen shots failed to penetrate it
W.S.445 Col. J.J.Slattery On the evening of 20th November, 1920, the Squad, the Active Service Unit, and a lot of other Volunteers from individual units were ordered to parade at a house in Gardiner Street, I believe. We were addressed there by Dick Mckee, who told us that an operation had been planned for the following morning, Sunday at nine a,m, to eliminate a number of British Intelligence Agents and spies who were residing in houses throughout the city. He had the names and addresses of the men who were to be executed there were members of the Intelligence Section present.
I was assigned to 22 Lower Mount Street, where 2 enemy agents were located. One was Lieutenant McMahon, but I cannot remember the other mans name.
Tom Keogh and myself from the Squad, with six others from "E" Company of the 2nd Battalion, proceeded to Lower Mount Street, at the appointed hour on the following morning,21st November. We knocked at the door and a maid admitted us. We left two men inside the door to see that nobody would enter or leave the house, and the remainder of us proceeded upstairs to two rooms, the numbers of which we had already ascertained. We had only just gone upstairs when heard shooting downstairs. The housekeeper or some other lady in the house had seen a patrol of Tans passing by outside, and had started to scream. The Tans immediately surrounded the house and tried to gain admission.One of our young men, Billy McClean, fired at them through the door and eased the situation for us for a little while, although he got wounded in the hand himself. I think the Tans fired first.
We succeeded in shooting Lieutenant McMahon, but could not gain admission into the room where the other agent was sleeping. There was a second man in McMahon's bed, but we did not shoot him as we had no instructions to do so. We discovered afterwards that he was an undesirable character as far as we were concerned, and that we should have shot him.
We went downstairs and tried to get out but found the British Forces at the front of the house. We went to the back of the house, and a member of "E" Co, Jim Dempsey, and myself got through by getting over a wall. We understood that the rest of our party were following us, but after going a little distance we found we were alone. What actually happened was that Teeling was the third man to scale the wall, and as he got up he was fired on from the house. We were all fired on, but Teeling was the only man who was hit. Teeling took cover in the garden.The other members of our party retired and got safely through the front door in the confusion. It was only hours afterwards that we discovered Teeling was wounded. Dempsey and myself went round by the South Circular Road, and got a wash - up in Goldens house, Victoria Street. We got home safely. Some time before the football match most of us met again, and it transpired that Teeling was on the missing list.