Revolution and vice cross paths

ON MARCH 12, 1925, the newly formed State police force, An Garda Síochána, launched a large-scale raid on Dublin’s notorious red-light district, the Monto, an operation ordered by Garda Commissioner William Murphy. The raid, which resulted in 120 arrests, targeted an area that included Talbot, Amiens, Gardiner, and Gloucester Streets. At its height, the Monto was the largest red-light district in Europe, home to an estimated 1600 sex workers. It had served for decades as a magnet for British soldiers stationed in Dublin.

Coinciding with the police action was a religious procession led by Frank Duff’s Legion of Mary, which carried sacred images through the streets in an effort to ‘cleanse’ the area and reclaim it for the Church. This coordinated effort marked the symbolic and practical end of the Monto immortalised as ‘Nighttown’ in James Joyce’s Ulysses. British Soldiers now had to look elsewhere for entertainment, and the last great stronghold of vice in the capital was dismantled.

But long before its closure, the Monto had played a central and paradoxical role in Ireland’s revolutionary struggle. In 1880, more than a third of the British Army garrison in the city were infected with VD and it was joked that the ‘ladies of the night’ did a better job of weakening the link of the empire than the Republicans of the day!

Rebel publican at the heart of the Monto

At the heart of this infamous district stood Phil Shanahan’s pub, located where the LAB Gallery stands today. Born in Hollyford, County Tipperary, in 1874, Shanahan was a former Tipperary hurler and a veteran of the 1916 Easter Rising, where he fought in Jacob’s Factory. He was elected to the First Dáil Éireann on three occasions, most notably defeating the popular Alfie Byrne in the 1918 general election, one of Byrne’s few electoral defeats. Like other Sinn Féin TDs of the time, Shanahan refused to take his seat in Westminster, instead joining the revolutionary Irish Parliament.

His pub became a magnet for an unlikely mix of revolutionaries, prostitutes, British soldiers, and petty criminals. It was also a hotbed of IRA activity, with guns and ammunition routinely stored, traded, or smuggled through its doors. Thomas Pugh, a volunteer, recalled: “Sometimes an Australian fellow would come in, throw a .45 revolver on the counter and put out his hand for a pound.”

Prostitutes, too, played their part in the fight. They would often steal weapons from their clients, typically British Auxiliaries or Tans—and pass both the guns and any intelligence to the IRA. Dan Breen, the famed guerrilla leader, recalled: “The lady prostitutes used to pinch the guns and ammunition from the Auxiliaries or Tans at night and then leave them for us at Phil Shanahan’s public house.”

Séamus Reader, the IRA’s O/C in Scotland, described how a shipment of arms he sent to Dublin eventually ended up in Shanahan’s pub, many of which made their way to the 3rd Tipperary Brigade.

The night before Bloody Sunday

One of the most dramatic moments in the pub’s history came on Saturday, November 20, 1920. Two of Michael Collins’ top men, Dick McKee and Peadar Clancy, had their last drink there before being followed by the British spy ‘Shankers’ Ryan. That night, they were arrested at a safe house on Gloucester Street—now Seán McDermott Street—along with civilian Conor Clune. Though McKee and Clancy were carrying the list of British intelligence officers marked for execution the following morning, they managed to destroy the documents before being searched.

The next day—Bloody Sunday—Collins’ Squad assassinated 14 British agents across the city. In retaliation, British forces stormed Croke Park during a football match between Dublin and Tipperary, opening fire on the crowd and killing 14 civilians, including Michael Hogan, the Tipperary player for whom the Hogan Stand is named. That night, McKee, Clancy, and Clune were tortured and murdered in Dublin Castle—a brutal reprisal for the morning’s events.

Legacy and final years

Phil Shanahan opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, remaining aligned with the anti-Treaty side during the Civil War. In 1928, he returned to his native Tipperary, where he lived quietly until his death in 1931.

Today, Shanahan’s pub is long gone, and the streets of the Monto have been reshaped by modern Dublin. But for a brief, turbulent moment in Irish history, a small public house in the heart of the city was a crossroads of revolution, espionage, and resistance, where women of the night smuggled rifles, rebels plotted insurrection, and history was written in whiskey and gunpowder.