Michael Collins: Lock of Irish leader’s hair sells for £18,000

A lock of hair belonging to Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins has sold at auction for twice the price of a gun he used during a jailbreak.

Collins was the leader of the new Irish government and also the head of its national army when he was assassinated during the Irish Civil War in 1922.

The lock of her hair, attached to a souvenir card, sold for £18,000 plus fees, according to Bloomfield Auctions.

A gun he used to break Éamon de Valera out of Lincoln prison sold for £9,000.

Collins was said to be in possession of the Smith and Wesson revolver when he helped fellow Republican leader De Valera escape from English prison in 1919.

Both lots were among a series of historical artefacts linked to Collins that were auctioned off in East Belfast on Wednesday, just a few months before the centenary of his death.

The sale attracted international interest, according to the auction firm’s managing director, Karl Bennett, who fielded inquiries from collectors in the United States and Australia, as well as the United Kingdom and Ireland.

“From an auctioneer’s point of view, who has a keen interest in history, it’s good that pieces of history like this are bought and appreciated, and hopefully put on display, so that stories can be told about our history and not forget.” about,” he said.

Although the identities of the buyers have not been disclosed, he told BBC News NI that both items were expected to return to the Republic of Ireland.

He understands that the weapon will go to a private collection and hopes to know in the next few days if the lock of hair will go to a museum or a private collection.

So what is the background of the lock of hair?

Michael Collins was 31 years old and engaged to be married to Kitty Kiernan when he was shot dead in an ambush in his native County Cork in August 1922.

A cut of her hair was reportedly taken as a souvenir after her death and passed into the possession of high-ranking Irish soldier Felix Cronin, the man who would eventually marry Kitty Kiernan.

According to the auctioneer, Cronin gave the lock of hair to an anonymous colleague who passed it on from his own family to the most recent owner, whose identity has not been released.

Collins was shot in the head near the Cork village of Béal na Bláth less than two months into the Irish Civil War.

He was ambushed by rival republicans who opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the peace agreement that Collins had signed with the British government the previous year.

A reluctant Collins had been sent to London in October 1921 to negotiate the deal by de Valera, the then president of the republican movement.

De Valera, a future taoiseach (Irish prime minister) and president, escaped from Lincoln prison using a replica key that had been baked into a cake and smuggled into the jail.

Collins was waiting outside Lincoln Prison for his then superior and the gun he was holding fetched £9,000 at auction.

Also for sale Wednesday was a collection of documents from Collins’ friend and comrade Emmet Dalton, who was with him when he was killed.

The documents, which include Dalton’s emotional eyewitness account of the Collins murder, sold for just under £10,000.

However, a cane believed to have been used by Collins did not sell after it fell short of its reserve price.

Born on a farm in rural County Cork in 1890, Collins grew up to be one of the leading figures in the Irish Revolution, which led to the partition of the island in 1921.

He moved from Cork to London as a teenager and worked for the British Civil Service as a postal clerk, but returned to Ireland nearly a decade later and took part in the 1916 Easter Rising.

That brief rebellion against British rule was crushed, but two years later Sinn Féin won a landslide election victory and established a new separatist government in Dublin.

Collins, at that stage an elected MP, became a minister in the caretaker government and director of intelligence for the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

After the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921), de Valera sent Collins to London to negotiate a peace settlement.

The controversial Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 created an independent Irish Free State but angered many republicans as it seemed to reinforce Britain’s recent partition of Ireland.

The treaty caused a bitter split in the republican movement, and within months tensions escalated into the Irish Civil War.

Collins became Commander-in-Chief of the new Free State National Army, as well as President (leader) of the Provisional Government.

His tenure in charge was short-lived, however, as he was assassinated by anti-treaty forces in his native County Cork on August 22, 1922.