Kitty Kiernan

[1] The Kiernan family owned the Greville Arms Hotel in the town, as well as a grocery shop, a hardware store, a timber and undertaking business and also a bar.

Several sources, for example, a 1996 piece from the Irish Times entitled ‘Life after Mick’,[8] state that Kitty Kiernan plus several of her siblings died of Bright's disease; what one would class today as chronic nephritis.

Kitty's worst fears were realized when Collins was killed in action at the age of 31 near Béal na Bláth, County Cork, on 22 August 1922.

Former Fine Gael minister Peter Barry donated his collection of historic letters to the Lord Mayor of Cork, on behalf of the municipal museum.

The collection, purchased from the Cronin family in 1995, was conserved at the Delmas bindery at Marsh's Library in Dublin: the letters were also catalogued and then returned to the Cork Public Museum.

The bulk of the letters between Collins and Kiernan were written between 1919 and 1922, and through their almost daily contact emerges a picture of the dreams and aspirations of the man often called Ireland's "lost leader" and the woman with whom he wanted to share a "normal" life.

"Their correspondence represents a unique and revealing portrait of a remarkable man and an ordinary woman made extraordinary by tragic circumstances," said a museum spokesperson.

In the 1996 film Michael Collins Kitty Kiernan was played by American actress Julia Roberts[10][11] though some reviewers were critical of the character's development.

[12] A number of pubs are named in memory of Kitty Kiernan, such as one in Donnycarney, Dublin,[13] Waterford,[14] in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn and New York, US.