Hannie Collins
Hannie Collins was born on 26 November 1879 some eleven years before her illustrious brother, Michael. She shared in the same happy home later described by her sisters Mary and Ellen to various Collins biographers. [1] She participated in Collins’ care and was central to a well known story where she and her sister briefly neglected the child only to have him fall through the trap door of a loft, but emerge unscathed on the floor beneath.[2]
Hannie Collins joined the Post Office on 19 April 1899. She was nineteen when she joined the service, and unlike the fifteen-year-old Michael, she started in the established grade of ‘Second Class Clerk’ on a wage of £55 per annum. [3] One of her former colleagues later described her as ‘an exceptionally clever girl’ and regarded her success in passing the exam for a lady clerkship as ‘a great achievement for an Irish girl in her teens.’ [4] In the decades immediately prior to her joining, women had been making an increasing mark on the ranks of the public service. They had first been granted admission to the competitive process for Post Office Clerks in 1881.[5] Women had worked in the Telegraph Service and the Post Office’s Returned Letter Office since the early 1870s, but this foray into administrative clerkships was considered somewhat experimental. The Times concluded that the experiment had had mixed results and cited the views of George Chetwynd the Accountant General of the Post Office, as follows:
There can no longer be the slightest doubt of the capacity of women to perform simple, straight forward, clerk work; but when we approach work involving any degree of administrative ability, tact, judgement, or discretion, the evidence on the point is so conflicting as to render it exceedingly difficult to form a fair opinion. It is stated on the one side by those who are supposed to have had experience in the matter that whenever judgement or discrimination is required girl clerks are quite at a loss, and so timid are they that when anything out of the ordinary happens they will not act without applying to some one else. Mr Chetwynd, on the other hand, who, as we have seen has had long and considerable experience of this kind of labour, records in evidence that he has never found any want in tact or discretion on the part of female clerks under his control, nor has he ever found any fear of responsibility or want of judgement. [6]
By August of 1882, 350 women were employed in the Central Post Office in London, and they were also appearing at Post Office counters throughout Britain. [7] A public letter, from the following year is useful in understanding the kind of working environment into which Hannie Collins stepped, just 16 years later. Where the above extract makes it clear that women were sometimes criticised for their reluctance to take responsibility, the letter below makes it clear that they could also meet with criticism when fulfilling the responsibilities of their jobs:
I would earnestly urge the necessity for more supervision and control. I say it advisedly, as a busy man who has much to do with the post that I enter an office where girls are employed with reluctance and leave it with disgust. I know no other public counters in London, not those of tobacconists or taverns, where one meets with what is downright insolent and immodest. Supreme contempt for the public, loud conversation about their bonnets and male friends, whispered confidences with a favoured youth, are the rules of more than one office that I know. The stare with which these chits will survey my portly frame when I ask for an order would rouse the envy of the prettiest clerk in the Foreign Office. There is a feminine point about the scorn with which they correct men old enough to be their grandfathers on a matter of office form. [8]
While the correspondent quoted above was supportive of the employment of women in clerical roles, he clearly found their correcting of male customers (presumably in the course of their duty) distasteful. Of course the letter was just one opinion in a tide that was certainly turning in favour of the clerical employment of women, and it was an opinion that probably became less representative of society in the decade that followed. Nonetheless by 1890 there were still those who felt they had to air their grievances in the newspapers. When one complained of the ‘attitude of superiority’ adopted by female Post Office clerks the Ludlow Advertiser opined that: ‘there are, however, few people who have not at some time or other been subjected to insolence from a female post office clerk.’ [9] Over the decade that followed ever increasing numbers of young women took up employment in the Post Office. All of them were probably aware that their gender’s transition from domesticity was an ongoing process which still met with opposition in some quarters. By 1903 almost half of the Post Office Savings Bank’s Clerical staff were women, which meant that Hannie joined the service at a time when women competed vigorously for the limited number of places available for their gender.[10] It was reported that the number of female applicants and examination candidates often exceeded the number of places by a factor of fifteen or more.[11]
When Hannie Collins arrived in London in 1899 the Post Office Savings Bank was based on and around Queen Victoria Street not far from St Paul’s Cathedral. It had been there since a purpose-built premises was opened in 1880. Hannie lived on St John’s Street Islington, a little to the north of her workplace. There, she boarded with a 23-year-old colleague, May Fitzgerald. Four years into her career the ever-expanding Savings Bank outgrew the premises on Queen Victoria Street and moved its Headquarters into a new building on Blythe Road in Kensington. The bank’s staff had grown from 20 in the 1860s, to the 3000 staff that moved to Kensington in 1903. As further expansion was anticipated the new building could accommodate up to 4000. This enormous staff dealt with the 15 million deposits and 6 million withdrawals made through the bank’s 14,000 branches, annually. [12] The move from Queen Victoria Street some six miles west to Kensington was a mammoth undertaking and attracted considerable interest in the newspapers, one of which commented:
The new Savings Bank department of the Post Office was formally opened this week, and certainly represents the biggest move ever known since London was a town of any note. No fewer than 30,000 ledgers have had to be transported from Queen Victoria Street to Kensington, the new hive of thrift. It took the vans engaged 700 journeys to accomplish the Brobdingnagian flitting and on Tuesday morning the vast Passover was accomplished by the 3,000 employees, male and female, who represent the working staff. This is truly a colossal act of decentralisation. [13]
The new building was one of the largest in London and was capable of being further extended should more capacity be required. It had the novelty of having five electric lifts and three staff canteens, two of which were reserved for the female staff. Hannie Collins was one of 900 female clerks who was involved in one of early twentieth century London’s extraordinary logistical feats.[14] It was into this hive of activity that Michael Collins moved, in July 1906.
Hannie worked at Blythe House for seven years before Michael joined her there. Writing of the siblings time together in London their sister Mary later recalled that their mother’s failing health when Michael departed for London, and how she had committed him to Hannie’s care:
Her health was failing and she had the greatest confidence in my sister Hannie who was in the Civil Service in London. Michael became a Boy Clerk at 15/- per week at the age of 15 and my sister had, of course, to supplement this princely sum as he was a growing boy with a good appetite. She saw to his general health and encouraged his taste for literature, poetry, music and drama. Mother died in March, 1907 – aged about 52 – and my sister Hannie was after this Michael’s mother, sister and friend. As time went on he became more and more involved in Irish Societies and when she found Ireland was the interest and passion of his life she warned him that Irishmen would let him down and betray him – he refused to believe her.[15]
Collins lodged with Hannie at a Boarding House on Minford Gardens. Indeed it would seem that Hannie found a room for Michael with her landlord, a Mr A. Lawrence. Lawrence and the Collins siblings got along so well that when he moved to Cohlherne Terrace, they moved with him. By August of 1909 however Hannie and Michael had settled in a residence at 5 Netherwood Road.[16] Hannie had a strong influence on her brother and one of their colleagues was later ‘convinced that Michael Collins owed his success in London to the influence and cheerful companionship of his sister Hannah who was also known as Johanna Collins.’ [17]
Those days during which she had lived with her younger brother in London were later recorded by Hannie in a letter to Piaras Béaslaí who was then working on his biography of Collins. The letter is an invaluable source for all students of Collins, has been extensively cited by multiple biographers and is available to read as part of the National Library’s Béaslaí collection. In it she recalls the sibling’s shared interest in literature and theatre, as well as many of Michael’s nationalist activities in which she herself does not record any participation. She does however recall him discussing his departure from London with her, prior to 1916. [18] An acquaintance of the Collins siblings from that time remembered them as ‘the closest of chums.’[19] Geraldine Dillon (sister of Joseph Mary Plunkett) who later worked with Collins in Dublin recalled him telling her that he ‘had lived with his sister, Hannah, in London. She was also a P.O. clerk and he told me that Hannah was the only one of his family for whom he had any respect.’[20] Collins was certainly close to some of his siblings (particularly Mary and Johnny) in later life and so his confiding of a lack of respect in them may have been a temporary, misremembered, or invented detail of Dillon’s account. However his particular closeness to Hannie is consistent with other accounts, including that of his sister Mary.[21]
Throughout the revolutionary period Collins continued correspondence with his closest sibling. His letters to Hannie were held be the Collins family before they were eventually sold to a private collector in 2011.[22] Extracts published at the time reveal their close bond and that Hannie often functioned as a confidant for Collins’ inner most thoughts. After the rising he wrote to her from Stafford Gaol informing his sister that ‘we have only just been given permission to write & naturally I chose you as the victim of my production.’[23] Many productions followed. They came from Frongoch, Woodfield and Dublin and shared the rebel leader’s most intimate thoughts with his closest confidant. He wrote of his disappointment with the lack of rebel sentiment in their birthplace, he hoped that his sister would avoid the Spanish flu (‘this strange malady’), he sent her news of their Aunt Hannah (resident in Dublin) and their cousin Jack O’Brien (an American soldier who visited Ireland after the First World War), he imparted his concerns at the decline of their sister Mary’s health, but always with an eye to business, he also tried to sell her Dáil bonds! Collins was developing into a militant politician and bore some of the hallmarks of extremism. Although his sister lived in wartime London, in August of 1916 he expressed his regret that two German Zepplins had been shot down, hoped that the damage was considerable, but that his sister would not come to any grief in the carnage. Two months later he commented that seeing his British enemy vanquished would be ‘well worth doing an eternity in hell.’ A measure of the bond between Collins and his sister might be provided by his willingness to share his complaints about other relatives with her. He complained that their sister Katie had been loose lipped about his movements, and he hinted at tensions between him and some of their aunts who may have opposed his militancy. As the years went by Collins’ letters revealed increasing stress. He lived on the run, he was convinced that the British would catch up to him, and some of what he wrote was written in a familial code that only Hannie would understand.[24]
Her brother’s involvement in Irish revolutionary politics was bound to have drawn some attention to Hannie. In March 1922, the Leeds Mercury reported that someone had ‘just discovered that Mr Michael Collins has a sister in a London Post Office.’ The paper went on to describe Hannie as ‘a quiet, unassuming postal assistant, who seems more interested in postal stamps than polemics.’[25] Collins himself had always been aware of his sister’s disinterest in politics. When writing to her after the rising he informed her that his correspondence would be censored and that political opinions should not be committed to paper, but opined that; ‘You, at any rate, won’t have any difficulty in avoiding that pitfall.’[26]
Hannie Collins embraced the Treaty as a reasonable settlement of a long running dispute between two neighbouring and partnered nations. When General Sir Hubert Gough toasted the ‘auspicious’ ending of the Irish Conference at a dinner held by the National Liberal Club Society of St Patrick in December 1921, Hannie Collins was present. Gough, a British war hero who considered himself Irish, went on to declare that nationalism could lead to extremes and that those who loved Ireland should not allow that love to detract from the love of their neighbours. England was Ireland’s closest neighbour and Gough declared that Ireland should:
…take the hand of friendship and fellowship and live at peace with her. I do not believe that any Irish man or woman would hesitate for half a minute in recording allegiance, for half the British Empire is peopled by Irish people and Irish men have done great things to build up the Empire. This Empire belongs to us quite as much as it belongs to them. (Laughter and cheers.) I therefor think that to deny our part and to deny allegiance to the Empire would be a great mistake.
When called upon to reply to Gough, Hannie Collins ‘expressed entire agreement with what General Gough had said. She was afforded musical honours. Cheers were also heartily given for Mr. Michael Collins.’[27] As the sister of a famous Irish rebel, who herself lived and worked in Britain, Hannie Collins was in a unique position. It is possible that she agreed with Gough simply for the sake of diplomacy and not because his sentiments represented her thinking. However the very fact that she attended this dinner in the first place, and continued to live and work in Britain for almost four decades, is probably indicative of a more complex intellectual relationship with her adopted homeland. Like Gough, Hannie Collins was certainly Irish, but unlike her brother, she may have always considered herself a citizen of the United Kingdom.
Hannie was in London when her brother died at Béal na Bláth on 22 August 1922. It was reported that she heard of his death upon arriving at work on the morning of 23 August. If that is true, she probably heard the news before most of her siblings still living in Ireland. It was reported that she made her way to the home of Sir John and Lady Lavery who were by then well acquainted with her brother. Unfortunately for her, they were not home and she left their residence in tears. The description of an emotional Hannie leaving the Lavery home implies that her visit there was witnessed by somebody who informed the press. They do not appear to have known that her next stop was the Colonial Office where she informed staff of her brother’s next of kin (Johnny) and they arranged for her transportation to Ireland. She left Euston Station bound for Ireland that evening.[28]
At some point in or around August 1922 Hannie Collins was reported to have granted an interview to a journalist at her London home. A report of the interview was published in the Southern Star newspaper on Saturday 2 September. Hannie was reported to have given the interview in her London home, after her brother’s death, on what was to have been the first day of her holidays. She claimed that she had intended spending that day in Dublin with her brother. We have seen that she left London on 23 August. Given that that was a Wednesday and that Hannie was reported as turning up for work, it is unlikely that she had scheduled it as the first day of her holidays. Collins was buried on 28 August so the earliest that Hannie could have returned to London was Tuesday 29 August. There is no day between Tuesday 29 August and Saturday 2 September when it seems likely that Hannie would have planned to be in Dublin for the first day of her holidays. Yet, given that the Southern Star was a west Cork title and that the Collins family had a shareholding in it, it is likely that the interview is at least partly genuine and Hannie may indeed have intended beginning her holiday in Dublin at some point between Tuesday 29 August and Friday 1 September. Regardless of how or when it was obtained the content of the interview is useful in assessing the profound impact that her brother’s death had had upon the grieving Hannie:
And he is really gone! I can hardly credit it. This morning I was looking forward to seeing him in Dublin, this being the first day of my holidays, and now – But there, it was probably the death he would have liked in the cause of his beloved Ireland. If only the movement had been more in progress. For fifteen years he and I have been more than brother and sister, we have been chums. I have always looked upon him as mine, and the rest of our family, have, I think, always recognised the fact. It was here (Miss Collins’ London home) that, after the day’s work was done, we would chat far into the night, generally of his aspirations and hopes for Ireland’s future… I knew – who better? – that his heart was with Ireland all the time… I have not seen him since June, and was so looking forward to meeting him again. He knew of late that his life had been threatened. I knew it too, but always kept my feelings and fears in the background as far as possible. Last year he had a dream which impressed itself on him. He told me all about it. I laughed it off, but inwardly I felt to myself “It spells the end soon for you brother. What now can we say? Perhaps just this, that if his death brings a brighter Ireland into being it will not have been in vain. But there are lonely years ahead of me.[29]
As a mother figure, in whom Collins confided his dreams, Hannie’s loss was indeed severe. She remained in England and continued to work at the Post Office. Her brother’s profile allowed her to move in circles that few, if any, other Irish ledger clerks moved in. In an oft quoted letter George Bernard Shaw expressed his sympathy upon her brother’s death and urged her to ‘hang up your brightest colours’ in celebration of his life. In March 1924 she spoke at the St Patrick’s Day Banquet of the Union of the Four Provinces in London. Although her name was omitted from initial reports of the event, substantial parts of her speech were subsequently published. She spoke eloquently of the sense of loss created by the Civil War, her attributing its root causes to vanity, jealousy and ignorance, and her hopes for a peaceful and united future for all four of Ireland’s provinces.
She often returned to Ireland and featured in newspaper reports of multiple memorial and commemorative services through the decades that followed. Yet she continued to make her home in London. By the beginning of World War II, Hannie had moved just a few streets away to a house on Edith Road which she shared with three other tenants.[30] She retired a few months later after 40 years of service to the Post Office. Three years previously she had been appointed a ‘Higher Clerical Officer.’ This was a substantial promotion for a woman in 1930s Britain. It more than tripled her annual wage and put her in charge of some 39 subordinates many or most of whom were men.[31]
Hannie co-operated closely with Piaras Béaslaí during the preparation of his Collins biography and her communication with Béaslaí remains among the most important primary source material for those studying Collins’ early life. Her collection of Collins’ correspondence was used to assist several other biographers until it was sold in 2011. She was not a fan of Frank O’Connor’s biography considering it ‘a half joke,’ but formed a close friendship with Margery Forester during the latter’s research of her biography and the two were correspondents for a brief period.[32] She even assisted Forester in launching and promoting the book and appeared as an audience member on the Late Late Show, during which she endured a graphic debate centred on her brother’s death and autopsy.[33]
Hannie Collins lived most of her post retirement life in Monkstown Co. Cork. There, she indulged her twin passions of gardening and literature – the latter of which she had shared with her brother. A fluent French speaker, she was said to have had a keen intellect and retained it right into her final years. In the months before her death she relocated to Greystones Co Wicklow, where she lived with her nephew, Lieutenant General Seán Collins Powell for some nine months before her death. She died in Our Lady’s Manor Nursing Home in Dalkey, Dublin on 28 December 1971 having attained the age of 92. She was buried with her mother in Rosscarbery’s Abbey cemetery.
[1] Michael Collins House (MCH), Johnny Collins Papers, Sister Celestine Memoir, 4 September 1970. National Library of Ireland (NLI), Michael Collins (b.1925) Papers, MS 40429/5.
[2] NLI, Michael Collins (b.1925) Papers, MS 40429/5.
[3] Royal Mail Archive, POST 1/214/15523/40.
[4] Irish Independent, 21 April 1965.
[5] Hansard, HC Deb 14 February 1887 vol 310 c1396.
[6] The Times in Woodbridge Reporter, 12 January 1882.
[7] Hansard, HC Deb 10 August 1882 vol 273 c1374.
[8] Letter from “A Heavy Father” to Pall Mall Gazette in Edinburgh Evening News, 27 September 1883.
[9] Ludlow Advertiser, 10 May 1890.
[10] The Graphic, 15 August 1903.
[11] Aberdeen Evening Press, 12 October 1894.
[12] The Graphic, 15 August 1903.
[13] Huntly Express, 17 April 1903.
[14] The Queen, 25 April 1903.
[15] NLI, Michael Collins (b.1925) Papers, MS 40429/5.
[16] Peter Hart, Mick: The Real Michael Collins, Penguin Books, London, 2007, pp 32-33.
[17] Irish Independent, 21 April 1965.
[18] NLI, Piaras Béaslaí Papers, MS 33,929(19).
[19] Westminster Gazette, 25 August 1922.
[20] BMH, Geraldine Dillon Witness Statement, WS358.
[21] NLI, Michael Collins (1925-2000) Papers, A History of Events which occurred during my Grandmother’s time – Mary Collins Powell related for the benefit of her grandchildren. Re-typed and distributed by her granddaughter Deirdre Collins Powell, May 1984, MS 40429/5.
[22] Irish Independent, 20 April 2011.
[23] Adams Auctioneers, Independence Catalogue, 19 April 2011.
[24] Adams Auctioneers, Independence Catalogue, 19 April 2011.
[25] Leeds Mercury, 30 march 1922.
[26] Adams Auctioneers, Independence Catalogue, 19 April 2011.
[27] Nottingham Journal, 20 December 1921.
[28] TNA, Colonial Office, CO906/21. Leeds Mercury, 24 August 1922. Middlesex County Times, 26 August 1922.
[29] Southern Star, 2 September 1922.
[30] NA, 1939 Register, RG101/0138D/010/22.
[31] Royal Mail Archive, POST 1/214 (15523/40), POST 75/34.
[32] Irish Press, 29 December 1921. Michael Collins House (MCH), Letter from Forester to Hannie Collins, 1971.
[33] UCD Archives (UCDA), Máire Comerford Papers, LA18/46.