This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Marie Coleman. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Born: 16 November 1886, Ireland
Died: 18 February 1957
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: Elizabeth Mernin, ‘Little Gentleman’
Mernin, Elizabeth (‘Lily’; ‘Little Gentleman’) (1886–1957), intelligence agent, was born 16 November 1886 in Clanbrassil Street, Dublin, the daughter of John Mernin, confectioner of Dorset Street, Dublin, and his wife Marianne (Mary) Maguire. Her parents were from Waterford, and in 1901 she appears living with her grandmother and various uncles and aunts in Patrick Street, Waterford. Having worked in the 1910s as a typist in various Dublin firms, in 1914 she was employed as a short-hand typist at the garrison adjutants’s office in Dublin Castle. A member of the radical Keating branch of the Gaelic League, she was introduced to Michael Collins in 1918 by her cousin, Piaras Béaslaí, and began work as an intelligence agent for Collins in 1919, using her position to obtain important documents and (in 1920) information relating to the auxiliary police and intelligence officers. One of Collins’s most important contacts in Dublin Castle, known by the alias ‘Little Gentleman’ (believed by many to denote a British intelligence officer), her most important contribution was identifying the residences of British intelligence agents, later killed by Collins’s squad on Bloody Sunday (21 November 1920). She also helped two of Collins’s principal associates, Frank Saurin and Tom Cullen, to identify senior British agents in Dublin, and used a room in Clonliffe Road to type secret reports for Collins. She was discharged from British service in February 1922 and was employed as a typist in the Irish army from July 1922 until her retirement in February 1952, during which time she was based mainly in Clancy Barracks. Although unmarried, she gave birth (June 1922) to a son in London, and there is circumstantial evidence to suggest that his father was Piaras Béaslaí. She lived in Dublin at 167 Mangerton Road, Drimnagh, and died in Dublin 18 February 1957. She was awarded a military service pension for her work in the revolutionary period; her statement to the Bureau of Military History is in the Military Archives.