State urged to buy Michael Collins’s 1922 revolver
“It is a part of our national history and should be on display in an Irish museum,” said Damien Cassidy of the National Conservation and Heritage Group.
Collins’s 1922 Webley Revolver, which was taken from his touring car the morning after he was killed, will be auctioned along with its holster in Dublin on Saturday. It is expected to fetch between e50,000 and e70,000.
General Michael Collins was shot and fatally wounded during an ambush at Beal na mBláth, outside Cork, on August 22, 1922.
After the shooting, he was placed lying down in the back of a Leyland touring car and rushed in convoy back to Cork.
However, bridges destroyed during the Civil War forced the convoy, which included armoured cars, to use back roads and cross fields.
Then in a field behind a pub in Killumney, the vehicles became bogged down and were abandoned before a Crossley tender, which arrived from Cork, finally took Collins’s body to Shanakiel Hospital, arriving at 3am, where he was pronounced dead.
Ciss Forde lived with her brother Danjo Walsh, over the pub they ran in Killumney.
In her accounts of the events of August 22, 1922, she said Free State soldiers came to the pub in the middle of the night and at gunpoint demanded the use of a telephone, having abandoned their vehicles.
The next day, Ms Forde found the gun in its holster on the floor of the car’s back compartment, where Collins had been lying. It was loaded but the bullets have since been disposed.
Ms Forde hid the gun in her attic where it remained until a James Walsh sold the premises in 1976.
Mr Cassidy, who successfully lobbied the state to buy Pádraig Pearse’s surrender letters at auction last year, said it should step in again to buy this remarkable piece of history.
“To get a private person at such short notice to put up e50,000 or e60,000 is not an easy task,” he said.
He has been in contact with the Department of Defence and it is understood it is checking the authenticity of the revolver before making a decision.
Whyte’s Irish Art Auctioneers and Valuers said the weapon is an extraordinary military relic of one of Ireland’s most popular patriotic heroes and must qualify as one of the great collectibles of this period of Irish history.
It is one of several items associated with Collins which will be auctioned in the Royal Dublin Society, Clyde Room, Ballsbridge, at 2pm on Saturday.
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