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

A lock of Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins’ hair has sold for double the price of a gun he used during a prison break.

Collins was the leader of the new Irish government and also the chief of their national army when he was killed in 1922 during the Irish Civil War.

His lock of hair, attached to a commemorative card, was sold for £18,000 plus fees, according to Bloomfield Auctions.

A gun he used to free Éamon de Valera from Lincoln Prison raised £9,000.

Collins is said to have been in possession of the Smith and Wesson revolver when he helped fellow Republican de Valera escape from English prison in 1919.

Both lots were among a series of historical artifacts linked to Collins that went under the hammer in East Belfast on Wednesday, just months before the centenary of his death.

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

“From the point of view of an auctioneer who is very interested in history, it’s good that historical pieces like this are being bought and appreciated and hopefully put on display as well so that stories about our history can be told and not forgotten about,” he said.

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

He believes the gun will go to a private collection and hopes to hear in the next few days if the lock of hair is going to a museum or a private collection.

So what is the background of the lock of hair?

Michael Collins was 31 and engaged to Kitty Kiernan when he was shot dead in an ambush in his hometown of County Cork in August 1922.

A section of his hair was reportedly taken as a souvenir after his death and became the property of senior Irish soldier Felix Cronin, the man who would eventually marry Kitty Kiernan.

According to the auctioneer, Mr. Cronin gave the lock of hair to an unnamed colleague who passed it through his own family to the final owner, whose identity has not been released.

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

He was ambushed by rival Republicans who opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty – the peace agreement Collins had signed with the British government the year before.

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

De Valera, a future Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) and President, broke out of Lincoln Prison using a duplicate key that had been baked into a cake and smuggled into the prison.

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

Also sold on Wednesday was a collection of documents belonging to Collins’ friend and comrade Emmet Dalton, who was present at his death.

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

However, a walking stick believed to have been used by Collins was not sold after failing to meet its reserve price.

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

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

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

Collins, by this time an elected MP, became both Minister in the Provisional Government and Director of Intelligence for the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

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

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

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

Collins became commander-in-chief of the new Free State National Army and chairman (leader) of the provisional government.

His tenure was short-lived, however, as he was assassinated in his hometown of County Cork by anti-Treaty forces on 22 August 1922.