Wallace sisters

Nora Wallace (1893– 17 September 1970) and Sheila Wallace (1887 – 14 April 1944) were business women who owned a newsagents on Brunswick Street, now known as St Augustine Street in Cork, who were also Intelligence officers for the IRA during the Irish War of Independence and used their premises as a meeting place and brigade headquarters.

[4] The women ran a newsagents selling cigarettes, magazines and newspapers, as well as political pamphlets and periodicals which promoted Irish.

[5][6][4][3] Their shop was a central IRA Communications and organisational hub for the network from 1916 when the women carried dispatches during the Easter Rising until it was closed by British forces in May 1921.

Spies were handled by the Wallace sisters where they coordinated them, ran their communications and gave them instructions and they also decoded British Army codes.

[4] Their activities have been covered in a number of documentaries including Ordinary Women in Extraordinary Times and The Little Shop of Secrets.