Helena Collins
Born in 1883, Helena Collins was seven years older than Michael. In 1970 she committed her memories of her youth to paper in a letter to her grandnephew John Pierse. Her letter became an invaluable primary source for anybody studying Michael Collins’ youth and is retained in both the collections of the Michael Collins House Museum (among the Liam Collins Papers) and the National Library of Ireland (among the Michael Collins [b. 1925] Papers).[1] Helena’s letter emphasises the nationalist nature of the Collins family, something which had been common since the publication of Piaras Béaslaí’s Michael Collins biography in 1926. But she was also keen to emphasise the family’s educational achievements along with her own:
‘Helena, the scribe, was the fifth child of Marianne O’Brien of Sams Cross and Michael John Collins of Woodfield. … She was able to read when she went to school thanks to the three elder sisters and her brother Sean. We were a very happy family even though we lived under very primitive conditions in the old house, where we all were born….
We all attended Lisavaird N.S. of course; the boys was on one side, and the girls on the other side of a semi detached building. Both heads were strict disciplinarians, Miss Ellen Collins, a cousin of ours, was Head of the Girls School and Mr Denis Lyons of the Boys. We had no intercourse with each other; we might have been miles apart. Mr Lyons was great patriot, and I feel sure he put Irish patriotism in the forefront of his teaching and Michael would have been an avid pupil. Opposite the school was the forge, the proprietor being James Santry who forged his share of the pikes of 98. We spent some time each evening watching the sparks go up with each fall of the huge hammer on the anvil, and we all loved and admired the blacksmith, who was so nice. So the days passed, but one incident, needless to say, must not be missed – It was the visit of O’Donovan Rossa to the school. Little did I then know of the great old Fenian, but we learnt lots of ballads in connection with his visit.'[2]
It was little wonder that Helena Collins placed heavy emphasis on education. By 1970 she wrote as an 83 year old nun who had given a lifetime of service in that capacity. She had received her vocation in 1901 and left Ireland for a convent in Britain shortly afterwards. In the same 1970s letter, she described that process as follows:
In June 1901 there was a Mission in Clonakilty given by the Vincentian Fathers from Sunday’s Well, Cork. I attended the Mission and stayed in Clonakilty for the week. After confession I mentioned my vocation to Father Walsh, and my desire for the Foreign Missions. So that was how I came to the Sisters of Mercy in Hull, where I knew nobody. Margaret came along with me and stayed in Hull for two days. I had never travelled further than Cork City. [3]
Helena suffered from very serious burns as an infant and believed that these burns were responsible for her not walking until she was more than five years old. She spent much of those five years sitting in a timber chair especially constructed by her father. Her mother made a yearly pilgrimage to a local well on the Feast of St Fachtna (the eve of the assumption). Upon her return from one of those pilgrimages, Helena was walking. In her late eighties she recalled her mother’s tears of joy at her first steps. The occasion was still engrained on her mind and seems to have had a profound affect upon her. It may well have been partly responsible for the deep Christian faith of her later life. Her late development may also have made her closer to her youngest sibling, Michael. She certainly remembered her departure from her little brother in very affectionate terms:
I left home on Aug 22nd 1901 and only Mother came with us. Michael would like to come but Mamma thought it would upset me too much – so he just watched till the pony trap was out of sight.[4]
Helena left home on 22 August 1901, 21 years to the day before the little brother who watched her go, was shot dead at Beal na Bláth. Arriving in Hull, Helena entered her ‘postulancy’ – a trial period where she and the Mercy order assessed whether she had a vocation for religious life. Helena completed this period on 14 March 1902 when she was received into the order as Sister Mary Celestine. She professed her final vows at the convent in Hull on 4 January 1906.[5]
Sr. Mary Celestine may well have suffered some lingering effects of her childhood accident for most of her life. She became one of the first patients of the convent’s new convalescent home in Whitby in 1910. She recovered her health sufficiently to return to the community however, and by 1911 she was the head of an elementary school in North Ormesby, Middlesbrough. In 1919 Sr Mary Celestine and her sisters in Christ moved into Crossbeck House in nearby Normanby. The house was set on seven acres which provided grazing for Maureen the cow – a gift from the local community to the new arrivals. She remained at Crossbeck Convent until at least 1921.[6]
By 1922 she was resident at the Endsleigh convent in Hull. The Endsleigh community was established by the Mercy Order in 1905 and became their mother house for the Middlesbrough diocese. It was testament to the growing strength of a community which had been established in Hull only four decades previously. The Mercy Nuns had initially been received with suspicion and ‘hooted in the streets.’[7] Some of that suspicion may have arisen from an 1869 court case which exposed Hull’s Mercy Convent to intensive media scrutiny. A young nun had accused the order of excessive cruelty in depriving her of food and imprisoning her for petty breaches of their rules. She also sought damages for her expulsion from the Mercy Order based on false witness borne against her. She proved some of her allegations and was awarded £500 in damages having sought £5,000. Legal costs were reported at some £8,000, with each party being responsible for their own.[8] There were no winners but the whole affair caused a sensation in the British media. The Times used the verdict to cast its judgement upon the way of life of the Mercy Order – a way of life which they concluded was at odds with human nature:
The ideal picture which many imaginations have drawn for themselves of a community devoted abroad to works of charity, and going home to compare experiences of the kindly labours of the day, and prepare themselves for those of the morrow by an interchange of all gentle womanly offices among themselves has been rudely rubbed out. The real picture of a conventual interior now presented is sometimes of a number of housemaids scrubbing floors, which they occasionally have to kiss, with a Lady Superior standing over them as a task mistress – sometimes of a reformatory school with discipline to match … What has come as a disagreeable surprise on its theoretical partisans is the discovery that educated and devout ladies, together with the voluntary acceptance of the duties of menials, and of the submissiveness of school children, betray an involuntary propensity to assume at the same time the habits and some of the principles of the same classes … but for a dozen grown-up women, pent up in a Convent, with only the pettiest domestic incidents to employ their minds upon, and with whom the ideal state is an impossible annihilation of freedom of will and judgement, to remain truthful and natural and just is above or below humanity, Irish or English humanity.[9]
The whole case was a sordid tale which cast Hull’s Mercy community in an extremely poor light. Sr Mary Celestine became a part of that community almost four decades later, but some of the nuns who had witnessed the case still survived and lived with her for a time.[10] Nonetheless, any impediment which the case had produced had been overcome and the intervening decades had seen the Hull community go from strength to strength. Sr Mary Celestine would later recall that the ‘bigotry and anti-Catholic feeling’ which may have once prevailed ‘was on the wane when she went to Hull’ in 1901.[11]
Extracting lemonade from lemons, in the aftermath of the case, the nuns had launched a fundraising campaign to cover their legal costs. The Duke of Norfolk became one of the main subscribers.[12] Hull and its hinterland still had a large Roman Catholic population and the demand for education was ever-increasing. The Whitby Convent was established in 1893, and a second Hull convent was centred around the Teacher training college at Endsleigh in 1905. By 1907 the Training College had an intake of 45 students annually and a Grammer School was added to the original mother house on nearby Anlaby Road. It was there that Sr Mary Celestine took up a teaching position and spent much of her life and career in that locality.[13]
Remarkably, Michael lost track of his sister for more than a decade. Although she endeavoured to make contact with him in the wake of the 1916 rising, prison authorities limited the number of letters he could write and he did not chose to include her among his correspondents. Still interned in Frongoch, he wrote to his closest sibling Hannie (with whom he had lived in London) and explained his lack of correspondence with Mary Celestine:
Had a long letter from Celestine a while ago but of course I can’t reply but I’d like to though. God help her it was full of prayers about love your enemies which “as you may understand” I don’t a little bit. It would be well worth doing an eternity in hell to know they were down & out that we had contributed towards that happy result.[14]
The letter is evidence of two siblings who were equally and absolutely committed to very different philosophies. Collins was the militant separatist committed to violent action, where Sr Mary Celestine was a devout Christian committed to forgiveness and charity.
Collins eventually renewed his acquaintance with his sister in February 1918 when he admitted that ‘as far as I remember this is the first letter I ever wrote you.’[15] He sought to excuse his lack of communication by assuring her that ‘even to people who are not nuns I am a very bad correspondent … However as I have broken the ice, I may do something in the future.’[16] It seems that his communication of 1918 enhanced the siblings’ relationship as they remained in partial communication throughout the Anglo-Irish conflict. His letters to his sister show some concern for her welfare after British raiding directed at the Collins family but are more generally focused on family news and happenings. Their communication and relationship were characterised by the distance imposed by their lifestyles, and they would never know one another as well as he knew his other siblings. Writing to his Fiancée Kitty Kiernan, Collins implied that Sr Mary Celestine approved of their courtship:
What did you think of Sister Mary Celestine’s letter and her note on the photograph? Wasn’t it rather good of her to give you the benefit of the doubt? I haven’t seen her since she left home 20 or 21 years ago. People tell me she’s rather nice. A convent is a queer place for one of my family – do you agree?[17]
Yet as distant as they may have been they certainly maintained affection for each other. In the midst of the treaty negotiations Collins wrote to Kiernan and remarked that his ‘sister – the nun’ was the only one who had remembered his birthday.[18] For her part, Sr Mary Celestine recalled:
I followed my darling brother’s work for the freedom of the dear old land, and, like other great Patriots, he gave his life for Ireland – but not before he had done – under God – his very best to set his country free from the sufferings of 750 years of persecution.[19]
It seemed that her love for her brother had allowed her to forgive his not loving his enemies, and even to claim that his actions were undertaken ‘under God.’ She was not entirely removed from the Irish conflict either and was probably present when recently released members of the Irish Self Determination League of Great Britain, were entertained in her convent in January 1922.[20]
Sr Mary Celestine was not resident at Endsleigh when her sister Hannie arranged for the Colonial Office to telegram the news of her brother’s death to the Convent.[21] She was on her return journey having taken a brief holiday with some other sisters of Mercy. Most of the sisters in Hull were Irish, or of Irish parentage and whilst enroute back to Hull they succeeded in shielding her from the newspaper posters that proclaimed her brother’s death. After the morning mass of the following day Sr Mary Celestine’s Mother Superior broke the news more tactfully. As an older woman, Mary Celestine remembered it to a newspaper reporter:
She tells of how her Mother Superior took her aside after Mass, to tell her of her brother’s end.
“I knew by her that there was something wrong … and I asked her: ‘Has he been killed?’ She replied ‘Yes’ and the news was so terrible that I collapsed. It was dreadful. I thought the end of the world had come.[22]
When she initially heard of her brother’s death, Sr Mary Celestine dispatched a touching and Christian missive to her siblings in Ireland. It was later published by the Irish Weekly and Ulster Examiner. It isn’t clear how the newspapers attained it, but the note seems genuine as it refers to a prophecy that Sr Mary Celestine claimed their father had once made about their brother’s greatness. She would later write that prophecy down and it became a staple of Collins biography, but it was not widely known in 1922. Equally her 1965 recollection of how she was told the news of her brother’s death agrees with this 1922 account:
My beloved ones, what can I say to comfort you all in our mutual sorrow and loss, which, alas, is not only personal but universal. May God help us to echo Michael’s dying words, which were our Saviour’s very own – ‘Forgive them.’ Yes, my darlings we must pray for this spirit, for soon we shall follow our beloved brother to ‘the land that knows no sigh, where the tear from every eye is wiped away for ever more.’ Oh! We have much to be grateful for. For our own ‘baby’ has fulfilled papa’s prophecy – (R.I.P.). For down the ages the name of Michael Collins will be blessed for his fearlessness, nobility, spirit of forgiveness, and dauntless patriotism. Please God, it is the turning point in Ireland’s history, and we (his brothers and sisters) must, even in this bitter hour of sorrow, be worthy of our brave brother (R.I.P.). Now, my dearly loved sisters and brother, cheer up and say: ‘Thy will be done’ and ‘Father forgive them, from your very hearts, and soon (D.V.) we shall all be united to ‘Part or sorrow no more.’ With heart felt love, and praying God to pour down on you and Ireland His holy consolation and grace, I am, my darling sisters and brother, your ever devoted “Lena” in Jesus Christ.
Sister M.J. Celestine.[23]
It is likely that Mary Celestine had herself released the text of her letter to the newspapers. She certainly released a similar letter in which the Bishop of Middlesbro wrote to her to sympathise on her loss. [24] The letter which she addressed to her siblings displayed a certain innocence regarding the nature of her brother’s death. It was an innocence which was almost certainly dispelled in the days after its writing.
Many years later the Evening Herald would claim that she had written to her siblings as she was unsure whether she would be permitted to attend her brother’s funeral. However she was subsequently granted special leave and, in the company of her convent’s Mother Superior, Sr Mary Celestine returned to Ireland for the funeral.[25] When she saw Collins lying in State in Dublin’s City Hall, it was the first time she had seen her brother since, as a little boy, he had watched her trap depart Woodfield 21 years previously. [26]
Sr Mary Celestine received the flag which draped Collins’s coffin and was photographed leaving Glasnevin cemetery with it. She sent it to the Chapel of Apparitions in Paray Le Monial in 1923. She intended that it be hung among ‘the banners and flags of all the nations’ in that church.[27] Unfortunately attempts to trace the whereabouts of the flag she sent to France have proven fruitless. [28] A flag, or flags claimed to have draped Collins’ coffin turned up in Dublin in 1952, 1966, and at an An Tostal festival between 1953 and 1958.[29] The flag which appeared at an ‘An Tostal’ event was donated to the Irish Community in Manchester and left Ireland shortly after that time. It has since returned and is now displayed in the Michael Collins House Museum in Clonakilty. It does not appear to be the same flag presented to Piaras Béaslaí at a ceremony in 1952. That had draped the coffin of Gearóid O’Sullivan in 1948 and was widely reported to have been the same flag that had accompanied Collins to his final resting place. [30] The flag hung at Béaslaí’s residence on Dublin’s Parnell Square until it was removed from there after part of the building collapsed in 1984.[31]
Upon her return to the Endsleigh Convent Sr Mary Celestine continued her life in religious service. Like many nuns of her generation, she saw the Roman Catholic Church reach the peak of its contribution to, and influence upon, British society, before she also witnessed the beginning of its decline. In 1925 she celebrated the Golden Jubilee of two of her sisters by attending the Mass which opened their new convent chapel.[32] Such ceremonies were probably huge events in the life of a Mercy nun. Like all of her sisters Mary Celestine’s day to day life consisted of work, prayer, and charity. She doubtlessly participated in the annual Corpus Christie Processions which were held on the grounds of Endsleigh convent for many years.[33] She was also surely a part of other services associated with Easter, Christmas, and other religious occasions. One of the more novel occasions she probably witnessed occurred when more than 400 Roman Catholics carried hundred weight wooden crosses in various processions across England in 1948. Their routes mimicked those thought to have been utilised by English Kings and Cardinals in the past and terminated at the Ancient Shrine of Our Lady in Walsingham Norfolk. The Middlesborough group came through Hull and spent a night at Endsleigh Convent.[34] Another exciting day occurred in October 1937 when the nuns of Endsleigh were among those who greeted the King and Queen on a visit to Hull.[35]
The tragedy of war touched Sr Mary Celstine’s life again in 1941 when German bombers destroyed much of the school and convent and she and her colleagues were relocated to prefabricated buildings in the grounds of nearby Endsleigh Training College. It was September of 1960 before the school was rebuilt on Inglemire Lane.[36] The Mercy Sisters of Hull seem to have had some pride in having Collins’ sister among their number, as evidenced by one of them attending the Béal na BLáth commemoration in 1951. [37] By 1963 however their influence on the city of Hull might have started to wane as the primary school at Endsleigh had a lay principal.[38]
Sr Mary Celestine lived out her days in Hull. As a sister of the Mercy Order she couldn’t travel to Ireland at will and only returned three times. Her first homecoming was for her brother’s funeral, her second for her Golden Jubilee in 1956, and her final trip home came in 1965 a few months after her brother Seán’s death. By then she had relocated to another Hull convent on Southcoates Lane where she served as Mother Superior. She used her trip to visit relatives in Dublin, her last surviving sibling Hannie in Cork, and to seek out girls who may have had a vocation. She also returned to her homeplace and visited the newly erected monument to her brother at Sam’s Cross. [39] Whilst at the monument she wrote in the visitor’s book:
From my heart of hearts I pray: May God bless and reward all who were responsible for this beautiful memorial to my beloved brother now amongst the ranks of those who lived and died for “the dear old land” which we love so well.[40]
Having returned to her community in Hull, Mother Mary Celestine suffered an accident which left her dependent upon a wheelchair. This probably prompted her retirement to the convent in Whitby after four years as Superior on Southcoates Lane. It was said that she remained cheerful throughout her period of declining health and continued to correspond regularly with a number of her nephews and nieces. Her religious life ended where it had begun almost seven decades previously when she died in Whitby on 3 April 1972.[41] The last survivor of Michael Collins’ immediate family was buried with the Mercy Sisters in Whitby.
[1.] NLI, Michael Collins (b. 1925) Papers, MS 40,426/2.
[2.] MCH, Liam Collins Papers, Sr Mary Celestine to John Pierse, 4 September 1970.
[3.] MCH, Liam Collins Papers, Sr Mary Celestine to John Pierse, 4 September 1970.
[4.] MCH, Liam Collins Papers, Sr Mary Celestine to John Pierse, 4 September 1970.
[5.] Research at the Institute of Our Lady of Mercy Archives in Bermondsey, courtesy of Sr Barbara Jeffery Institute of Our Lady of Mercy, Leeds.
[6.] Research at the Institute of Our Lady of Mercy Archives in Bermondsey, courtesy of Sr Barbara Jeffery Institute of Our Lady of Mercy, Leeds.
[7.] Nottingham and Midland Catholic News, 13 June 1925.
[8.] Leeds Evening Express, 17 January 1870.
[9.] The Times in Royal Cornwall Gazette, 4 March 1869. See also; Gloucester Journal, 13 February 1869.
[10.] Sister Mary Collingwood joined the order in 1865 and was one its pioneers in Hull. She died in Endsleigh convent in 1928 (Nottingham and Midland Catholic News, 7 April 1928). Mother Mary Stanislaus joined the order in 1861 and died in Endsleigh in 1930 (Hull Daily Mail, 5 May 1930).
[11.] Irish Press, 12 June 1965.
[12.] The Tablet, 23 March 1872. Chichester Express and West Sussex Journal, 2 April 1872
[13.] York Herald, 3 August 1893. For a brief history of the Endsleigh Community see Hull Daily Mail, 13 February 1999.
[14.] Adams Auctioneers, Independence Catalogue, 19 April 2011.
[15.] NLI, Michael Collins Letters, MS 35,960.
[16.] NLI, Michael Collins Letters, MS 35,960.
[17.] Leon O’Broin, In Great Haste, St Martins Press, New York, 1996, p143. Sr Mary Celestine would later enter into correspondence with Kiernan (Ibid, p 189).
[18.] Ibid.
[19.] MCH, Liam Collins Papers, Sr Mary Celestine to John Pierse, 4 September 1970.
[20.] Nottingham and Midlands Catholic News, 14 January 1922.
[21.] TNA, Colonial Office, PRO 906/21.
[22.] Irish Independent, 14 June 1965. Southern Star, 26 June 1965.
[23.] Irish Weekly and Ulster Examiner, 2 September 1922.
[24.] Freeman’s Journal, 14 September 1922.
[25.] Evening Herald, 9 March 1972.
[26.] Irish Press, 12 June 1965.
[27.] MCH, Liam Collins Papers, Sr Mary Celestine to John Pierse, 4 September 1970.
[28.] Email correspondence with Siobhán Doyle of the National Museum of Ireland confirmed that her research has failed to locate the flag that Sr Celestine sent to France.
[29.] MCH, Notes with Flag donated by Salford Irish Centre. Southern Star, 23 August 1952. Evening Herald, 24 March 1966.
[30.] Cork Examiner, 30 March 1948. Irish Press, 30 March 1948. Southern Star 23 August 1952. Cork Examiner, 18 August 1952.
[31.] Irish Independent, 28 January 1984.
[32.] Nottingham and Midland Catholic News, 13 June 1925.
[33.] Hull Daily Mail, 6 June 1933.
[34.] Hull Daily Mail, 3 July 1948.
[35.] Hull Daily Mail, 19 October 1937.
[36.] Hull Daily Mail, 1 March 1961.
[37.] Evening Echo, 27 August 1951.
[38.] Hull Daily Mail, 24 June 1964.
[39.] Irish Press, 12 June 1965. Southern Star, 26 June 1965.
[40.] Sam’s Cross Memorial Committee, Michael Collins Memorial Visitor’s Book, Sam’s Cross Easter Sunday 1965.
[41.] Irish Press, 5 April 1972. Irish Independent, 5 April 1972. Although newspaper reports are contradictory and her headstone refers to Mary Celstine as “Sister,” Daniel Flint Archivist at the Institute of Our lady of Mercy GB, kindly confirmed that Mother Mary Celestine (who still signed herself Sister M. Celestine) served as Mother Superior at Southcoates Lane for four years.