Blarney Street - March 19 1921

It was shortly after 8:30pm when loud knocking on the door of 198 Blarney Street alerted the residents of the small dwelling. The woman of the house, Mrs Sheehan , asked through the door "Who's there?" But the response she got was a gruff "Open the door!!" 

Mrs Sheehan delayed the men at the door while her husband Con Sheehan was quickly making his way out through the back door. As 54 year old Mr Sheehan ran into the back yard he was met by men brandishing revolvers. Shots rang out and Sheehan was left dead in the yard as his assassins jumped over the wall and into the yard next door.

        The site of No. 198 Blarney Street, the home of Long Con Sheehan and his family.




Con Sheehan was known better as Long Con. The 6ft tall Sheehan was an attendant at the nearby Cork District Asylum, a place he had worked in for over 20 years. Months before his death, Sheehan was injured in a shooting not far from his home.

It was 6:30pm on January 8th 1921 when Sheehan was walking home after work. He stopped near the gates of the Good Shepard Convent to chat with Constable Carroll of the Bridewell when seven men ran up the street and shot at Sheehan and Carroll. The Constable, who was in plain clothes, was shot in the back while Sheehan was hit in his shoulder.

Perhaps Sheehan was unlucky to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, talking to the wrong person or perhaps he was targeted along with the police man as not long before the attack an IRA arms dump in the grounds of the asylum had been discovered and Sheehan was suspected of passing on information to the police. But there could be another, more devious reason , for Sheehan's demise.

                           The Cork District Lunatic Asylum, where Long Con Sheehan worked.




Long Con Sheehan and his family had fallen into a dispute with their landlady, Mrs Walsh, who lived a few doors down at 196 Blarney Street, the same address used by Sheehan's assassins in their escape.

Mrs Walsh was renting No. 198 to the Sheehan's but she fell into dispute with them when she declared that the family were burning bits of furniture and house fittings. The Sheehans claimed Mrs Walsh wanted to increase the rent and the house was falling down. The house was nothing more than a shack, infact the Cork Corporation had declared the dwelling unfit for inhabitation.

In the inquest following Sheehan's death the RIC stated that Sheehan had never supplied them with information and suggested Mrs Walsh had set him up as an informer. Mrs Sheehan declared " The only enemy my husband had was a woman , Mrs Walsh of 196 Blarney Street, who had threatened to shoot my husband."

 Blarney Street, the Sheehan's lived where the red gate is now while their landlady lived two doors below. The brown cottage would be of a similar build to the dwelling the Sheehans lived in.

The Sheehan's depended on Saint Vincent de Paul following the death of Long Con and disputes continued with their landlady. Life for the Sheehan's became difficult on Blarney Street, Long Con had been tagged as an informer and such a title in what would have been a Republican hotbed resulted in the Sheehan's leaving the area.

With a £2,890 compensation claim, the Sheehan's left Cork in 1922. With their money claimed following Long Con's death, they set up a boarding house in London.
No action was ever taken against Mrs Walsh who, it seems, may have taken advantage of the political situation on the tense streets of Cork.