Irish Conspiracies. Recollections of John Mallon (The Great Irish Detective) and Other Reminiscences. London: Everett and Co., 1910. First Edition. Pp viii, 275. [5]. Green cloth boards, cloth worn, light staining to preliminary leaves, otherwise good.

A primary source account of late 19th-century Irish revolutionary activity, told through the perspective of the policeman who spent decades suppressing it.

The book was compiled by the journalist Frederick Moir Bussy, who drew heavily on the direct reminiscences of John Mallon, the former head of the Dublin Metropolitan Police’s detective “G Division.” As head of G Division from 1874, he was the chief intelligence officer against Irish republican groups, running a network of informers and infiltrating organisations like the Fenians and the Irish National Invincibles.

Published in 1910, the book is considered one of the most important sources on late 19th-century Irish radicalism from the viewpoint of the state’s chief enforcer. The result is a vivid, insider’s portrait of the intelligence war that shaped Ireland in the decades before the Easter Rising.