Kissing the Blarney Stone, 1897
Michael O’Sullivan was born at Grenagh, co Cork, not far from Blarney Castle. In the early 1880s, he left Ireland for Australia in an attempt to stay out of trouble for smearing the famous Blarney Stone with rotten apples. A group of American tourists there to kiss the relic were accidental victims of O’Sullivan’s practical joke. In Queensland, O’Sullivan found himself working odd jobs until one day in the Old Dunmore Arms Hotel in George Street he met Peter McDonagh, a Sergeant of police on holiday. O’Sullivan mentioned that he wished to become a policeman but was three years short of the set entry age; the sergeant promptly told him to go back and say he was twenty years of age instead of his actual seventeen. This O’Sullivan dutifully did. In August, 1883 after three months’ training, Constable Michael O’Sullivan embarked on his distinguished career in the Queensland Police Force.
In 1904, Sergeant O’Sullivan was transferred back to Brisbane and charged with re-organising the Detective Department. He was an outsider, and his promotion caused a minor strike at the branch. O’Sullivan took on the task of re-structuring the Criminal Investigation Branch with great enthusiasm; he found that men there ‘were utterly unsuited for detective work’. Major Cahill (the future third Commissioner of the Force), his direct superior at the time, advised O’Sullivan to try out men whom he thought possessed talent for Detective work: “It was on those lines that the staff was built up; but even then there were disappointments, as some men who were brought up in on six months trial failed to live up to the required standard, and had to go back into uniform.” These handpicked CIB detectives finally delivered the long awaited success. The Queensland Detective Service went from being the most inefficient organisation of its kind in Australia (Royal Commission, 1899) to the most effective. O’Sullivan believed that teamwork and free exchange of information between the Detectives and the ‘uniforms’ were critical to the success. ‘We did not lay claim to any special genius in elucidating crime, but we were a body of men, usually numbered twenty-five, combined and working as a team, determined to keep the criminal element under, we found we could do it.’
CIB Staff, Brisbane. Patrick Short in group, Michael O’Sullivan (shown front row, 3rd from right) was OIC of CIB, c1910. Image PM0109 courtesy the Queensland Police Museum
O’Sullivan was a master and a strong proponent of dissemination of jiujitsu training in the force. He felt that policemen never knew when they might be up against the class of man who takes special delight in giving members of the force a rough time. He had known men in their quarrels with one another to fight it out in a perfectly fair way, but when it came to a policeman, two or three men would attack him and feel no shame in doing so. Consequently, O’Sullivan advocated the policeman should study defensive methods so that skill and resourcefulness might give him a chance to protect himself against odds and brutal ill-treatment.
Chief Inspector Michael O’Sullivan just before he retired from the police force. His is the author of the book “Cameos of Crime”. Image courtesy The Daily Mail, Brisbane, 12th August 1932
In one such case O’Sullivan’s martial arts skills enabled him to neutralise an armed man in a crowded South Brisbane street without any assistance. Around 7:30 o’clock one Saturday evening, he was coming to his office when, approaching the south side of the Victoria Bridge, he heard two shots. He soon witnessed people in a wild state of excitement, rushing in various directions and some women and children screaming. Two men ran to a policeman who was on duty on the south end of the bridge. The policeman at first came towards the gunman flourishing the weapon and using some violent language, but then turned and walked into a fruit shop on Stanley Street, about a hundred yards away.
In the meantime, the armed man rushed across the road and into the hotel, scattering the people in the bar. O’Sullivan followed his heels and by executing his special hold, disarmed him in a few seconds. Almost immediately, he was joined by the policeman on duty in that area. In response to O’Sullivan’s questioning as to why he left a man that threatened to shoot people, the constable explained that he went into the fruit shop to telephone the South Brisbane Police Station for advice and assistance, as he did not know what to do in such a situation.
After three decades in the Service and many an ‘heroic act’, Michael O’Sullivan retired in 1923 at the rank of Acting Deputy Commissioner.
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This information has been supplied by the Queensland Police Museum from the best resources available at the time of writing.
The Police Museum is open 9am to 4pm Monday to Friday and 10am to 3pm on the last Sunday of the month (Feb-Nov) and is located on the Ground Floor of Police Headquarters at 200 Roma Street, Brisbane. Contact: E: museum@police.qld.gov.au
“The Luck of the Irish” by Museum Volunteer and Researcher Dr Anastasia Dukova is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (BY) 2.5 Australia Licence. Permissions may be available beyond the scope of this licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/au/legalcode