TO MARK the centenary of the assassination of Michael Collins on 22 August 1922, Kilmainham Gaol Museum is displaying a number of very significant artefacts connected with Collins and his death at Béal na Blá.
Several of the items once belonged to Lady Hazel Lavery, including a note Collins wrote but never sent on the day he was killed which reads:
"Hazel, my Dear Dear Hazel', I too wish it were tomorrow, With all my love, Your M".
It was subsequently pasted into an edition of Rossetti’s poems along with other notes he sent her.
This note was among a number of personal items sent to Lavery by Collins’s sister Johanna after his death. They included the scapular Collins was wearing when he died, a lock of his hair, and a letter from Sir Shane Leslie to Sir John Lavery, which was found on Collins’s person after his death.
The letter was written in June 1922 and in it, Leslie praised paintings of Lavery’s which were on display in the Grosvenor Gallery in London and included portraits of Hazel and Michael Collins. Apparently, when Hazel Lavery showed the letter to Collins he asked if he might keep it.
In addition to these intimate items connected with his death, the display also features a number of other very significant items connected with Collins such as the military stick which formed part of his uniform as a general in the new Irish army; he can be seen holding the stick in several photographic portraits from that time.
The Museum also holds a silver-backed hairbrush inscribed with his signature, which he was gifted by his fiancée Kitty Kiernan.
