Walter L. Cole

Walter Leonard Cole (15 May 1866 – 26 April 1943) was an Irish merchant and politician in the early twentieth century. Prior to the foundation of the Irish Free State, he was an alderman for a period. An active republican, he was a founding director of the Sinn Féin Printing & Publishing Company. He also led the Sinn Féin grouping in Dublin Corporation in the early 1900s.

Personal life Cole was born in Liverpool on 15 May 1866 to an Irish father, George Cole, a railway accountant, and an English mother, Arabella Hughes. He was educated at the St Francis Xavier's College, Liverpool and the University of London. He married Anna Harrison in 1894, who had been born in the USA. The couple moved to Dublin and had three sons. Harrison died in 1921, and Cole married Mary Redden in 1928, with whom he had two daughters. All of whom were signatories to the Proclamation of the Irish Republic and all of whom were executed the following May, as leaders of the Easter Rising.

Cole is also documented as having hosted provisional Dáil meetings at his home, the assembly having been driven underground in September 1919. He was arrested by the military at his home at No. 3 Mountjoy Square in 1920. He was elected alongside party colleagues Seán Milroy and Arthur Griffith. Cole was defeated at the 1923 general election when standing as a Cumann na nGaedheal candidate.

Cole unsuccessfully contested the 1925 Seanad election. He was later a commissioner for Mountjoy Square.