Gone but not forgotten: final beats of the Dublin Metropolitan Police

Irish Times

21-04-2025

The last members of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) walked their final beats 100 years ago this month – April 1925 – and the force that had policed the capital for almost 90 years vanished into history.
The DMP survives in ballad, song and literature, from Are Ye There Moriaritee
to numerous references in
Ulysses
.
There are still some relics. A pair of helmeted constables, hewn in granite, gaze down from the door of present-day Pearse Street – formerly Brunswick Street – Garda station. A monument on Burgh Quay commemorates Limerick-born Constable Patrick Sheahan who died rescuing Dublin workmen from a gas-filled sewer in 1905. One or two old 'POLICE' gas lamps are still extant on the walls of a couple of city stations. And, remarkably, the boundaries of the old DMP divisions, A to F, still survive, virtually unaltered in today's
Garda Síochána
.
The Provisional Government of the Free State had decided that the armed
Royal Irish Constabulary
, which policed outside the capital, should be disbanded and replaced with the new Civic Guard, later named the Garda Síochána. But the DMP was to be allowed to continue, albeit with new insignia and a new commissioner. That job went to General WRE Murphy, a Wexford man who had fought in France during the World War and served with the National Army in the Civil War.
The DMP's numbers never exceeded 1,200. Its jurisdiction ran from Dalkey to Clontarf and westward to Kilmainham. Established under the Dublin Police Act 1836, it seemed little different from any of the police forces established in British cities in the Victorian era. The blue uniform and the Roman-style helmet were standard. The men received basic firearms training but apart from the detectives ('G' Division) did not carry guns. The DMP was different, however, in that it reported directly to the Dublin Castle administration while British forces (other than the London Metropolitan) were answerable to locally-elected 'Watch' committees.
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The great majority of DMP men came from rural, Catholic backgrounds, especially from the counties contiguous to Dublin – Kildare, Wicklow, Meath and the midlands. A solid, primary education and excellent physical fitness were necessary to pass the entry test for training at the Kevin Street depot. But promotion tended to favour Protestants and Freemasons. Dubliners rarely joined. The pay was poor and tradesmen or those with clerical skills could earn considerably more than a policeman. 'A bobby's job' was a dismissive or contemptuous term sometimes applied by Dubliners with an antipathy to the police.
It has been speculated that the pay issue helped to fuel the ferocity of the DMP in clashes with workers during the Dublin lockout of 1913 in which three people died. Policemen were raising families on lower wages than those they were facing in the streets and resented it. Alcohol and indiscipline undoubtedly played their part too.
Notwithstanding those events, the DMP retained a good relationship with most Dubliners. Apart from 'G' Division (five of whose members were shot by Michael Collins's agents) its members were non-combatant in 1916 and in the War of Independence. DMP tug-o-war and boxing teams were popular and were acclaimed by Dubliners who were generally well served by their police. Apart from dealing with crime, they kept the principal streets clear of vagrants, pickpockets, prostitutes and undesirables. They regulated cabs and traffic and enforced animal protection measures. They checked weights and measures in shops, enforced the licensing laws and the school attendance regulations. And they provided protection for important public buildings and personages.
But by 1924 the Government had come to believe that having two separate police forces was wasteful and inefficient. The Police Forces Amalgamation Act 1925 merged the DMP into the Garda Síochána, creating a new Dublin Metropolitan Garda division, under the charge of Chief Superintendent Eamon Broy. WRE Murphy became a Deputy Commissioner of the Garda Siochána, a loss of status which did not sit easily with him. The great majority of DMP men simply swapped badges and titles. The Garda 'sunburst' badge replaced the old DMP harp on helmets and buttons. Constables became guards and so on. Some opted for retirement or transferred elsewhere, in a few cases to the newly formed Palestine Police.
The Government also cleverly used the 1925 Act to extend the DMP's armed detective branch to the rest of the State. The unarmed Garda Siochána urgently needed support in places that remained unsettled and the first detachment of armed Special Branch men arrived in Leitrim in Spring 1925, swiftly effecting a wondrous pacification.
Gone but not forgotten, the DMP's linear descendants in the Garda Síochána have been marking the centenary with a series of lectures and commemorative events. Details at
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