A simple question, but

tac foley

one to which I'd appreciate an answer - if there is one.

What happened to Michael Collin's hat?

tac

Cardinal Richelieu

tac foley wrote: »

one to which I'd appreciate an answer - if there is one.

What happened to Michael Collin's hat?

tac

Which one?

tac foley

Ah, thank you, Sir - I meant his military hat - the one that seemed to have been temporarily spirited away after his assassination at Béal na mBláth.

tac

Cardinal Richelieu

Does seem to be some confusion about where the cap ended up.

An officer's cap, presumably Collins', was taken from the site the following morning and brought to Jim Murray's house at Raheen. A local person, the now Secretary of Kilmurry Historical Society, remembers Brigade Commandant Tom Hales sitting on the settle-seat where the cap was thrown into the kitchen. Hales showed strong displeasure. The young chaps from the locality who brought the cap were ordered to take it out. They then threw it into a bunch of briars near a pool of water. It was retrieved with a hayfork the next day. Fr. Jeremiah Coakley, at the Newcestown parish station in October at Murrays, asked for the cap, so that he could give it to a sister of Michael Collins. The cap (which did not have a badge) was given to Fr. Coakley.
http://www.generalmichaelcollins.com/Michael_Collins_Life_and_Times/12.THE_AMBUSH.html

Further mention of the cap.

Meda Ryan’s The Day Michael Collins Was Shot

Dalton also thought that the cap on display in the National Museum in Dublin was the one he used to cradle Michael’s head. But he did not know how the hole in the cap got there. Collins’s head was large and the cap in the Museum is too small to be the one that fit his head. Another cap was buried by Tom Hales, Jim Kearney, and Timmy Sullivan on the morning of August 23. Kearney said the cap they buried “contained almost a basin full of human matter.” (At some point before this, Sonny O’Neill and Dinny Brien talked to Jim Kearney and Timmy Sullivan. O’Neill said, “I dropped one man anyway.”) The owner of the field, Jim Murray, dug the cap up because he was scared an animal might root it out of the ground. He washed it and left it to dry for several days in the hot sun. His wife stuffed it with paper to get it back into shape. Murray did not want to keep the cap so he gave it to a priest, Father Coakley. Coakley then gave it to Nell O’Sullivan to take to the Free State Army Headquarters. Seán Hales saw it and allegedly muttered, “Mick’s cap.” Seán gave it to the authorities in Dublin who also had Collins’s coat. The cap was sent to the National Museum by the early part of 1923. Father Coakley said the tear in the cap looked like the jagged mark of a bullet. Ryan makes this statement regarding the situation: “It is now certain that the cap in the National Museum is the cap which was worn by Michael Collins on the day he was shot.”
http://sarasmichaelcollinssite.com/a_grisly_business

But the National Museum doesn't appear too confident that it is his cap/hat that they don't have it listed with his Great Coat that he wore on the day of the Ambush.

Judging by this recent letter in The Irish Examiner his other famous hat appears to be missing too.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/letters/michael-collins-missing-hat-of-far-more-importance-than-a-lock-of-his-hair-191525.html

tac foley

Thank you, Sir - for that link [saras etc]. There IS rather of lot of total BS on it about the various arms and types of ammunition that may or may not have been used that is just not worth making any further comment about, but the rest of it is very interesting nonetheless.

You have answered my question and I'll not pursue it any further.

Best

tac

R.Dub.Fusilier

the cap used to be displayed with the the great coat in Kildare St. but the coat is displayed minus the cap.