Walter L. Cole

As a well-off supporter of the underground Irish republican movement in the early twentieth century, his house on Mountjoy Square seems to have been a regular meeting place for senior figures within that movement. The notes of Seamus Reader, an Irish Volunteer from Glasgow, record a meeting on 2 January 1916 at Cole's house:

Shortly after 5pm on the 2nd, January 1916, I went to Cole's house, Mountjoy Square, Dublin, where, while waiting in the kitchen for tea, I jotted my coded notes for my report to Scotland. I then went to the room where I met Tom Clarke, Sean McDermott, J Connolly, P Pearse and McDonagh.^[4]

All of whom were signatories to the Proclamation of the Irish Republic and all of whom were executed the following May, as leaders of the Easter Rising.

Cole is also documented as having hosted provisional Dáil meetings at his home,^[5][6] the assembly having been driven underground in September 1919. He was arrested by the military at his home at No. 3 Mountjoy Square in 1920.^[1]

Cole supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty and was elected to the 3rd Dáil as a pro-Treaty Sinn Féin TD for Cavan constituency at the 1922 general election.^[7] He was elected alongside party colleagues Seán Milroy and Arthur Griffith.^[8][9] Cole was defeated at the 1923 general election when standing as a Cumann na nGaedheal candidate.^[10]

Cole unsuccessfully contested the 1925 Seanad election.^[11] He was later a commissioner for Mountjoy Square.^[12]

• UCD Archives collection of Cole's papers