Unlocking History with a Lock of Eileen O'Connor's Hair

Sometimes, you need to see something more than once to appreciate its story.

My recent visit to the Eileen O’Connor Centre in Coogee was memorable for many reasons. Not least because of a lock of Eileen’s hair.

A lock of Eileen's hair displayed at the Eileen O'Connor Centre

I had seen it before - blond and braided into a single plait several inches long. I had appreciated seeing it then: a relic of the inspirational Eileen whom I have come to love.  The hair, then on temporary display for her Feast Day in 2024, attracted me more deeply because I knew people had started to collect locks of Eileen’s hair during her lifetime, revering her as a saint and her hair as a holy relic. That image is so striking to me that a fictional lock of hair made its way into my novel.

But this time, as I stood before the cabinet and gazed at Eileen’s all-too-real, severed plait, I was pulled into a deeper perspective. This wasn’t just a little snipping as a souvenir. It wasn’t the short length you’d expect from a haircut. This was a substantial plait, cut on 20 January 1898, a month before Eileen’s sixth birthday, and kept by Eileen’s mother.

In a flash, I felt sure no mother would cut so much hair from her daughter’s head as a keepsake. Even when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a doctor and this got me into big trouble around age five, when two of my beautiful vintage dolls got scarlet fever and I cut their hair off, knowing somehow that was what you did when children got very sick. What if Annie O’Connor had cut Eileen’s hair off during a bout of terrible disease in childhood? That would explain why a perfect, substantial plait would have become a treasured keepsake. It’s not unusual for a child who is blond to grow up having darker hair as Eileen has in her portrait.

We know Eileen contracted tuberculosis in childhood and it infected the bones of her spine. We know she received medical attention at age five for problems with her back. We know she had repeated back surgery in childhood. There is a revered story of her being carried towards a hospital operating theatre and, turning to an image of Jesus crowned with thorns, saying, “This will be my consolation.”  

Eileen seated on her father's knee. Photo from https://eileenoconnor.com.au/eileens-story/

A photograph shows the young Eileen on her father’s knee, sporting a short haircut. Admittedly, her sister Mary has the same style, but we know Mary doted on Eileen and it’s easy to imagine a loving family where the healthy sister would have her hair cut in sympathy. Their younger siblings are in the photo, brothers Charles and Francis. Francis, born in December 1897, is an infant cradled on his mother’s lap, so the picture must have been taken around mid-1898. This would make Eileen about six and a half. Her sticking-up hair may well be regrowth. The little girls are both looking at the camera and smiling and, even though we know photographic subjects at the time often looked serious to keep their faces steady for longer exposure times, both parents are looking away and we might not be imagining the haunted look in her mother’s eyes.

Archivist Carlos Lopez says, unfortunately, the reason the hair was collected was not recorded. But we do know that after Eileen died, her mother passed it into the care of her staunch ally, Farther Edward Gell.

So, did Annie O’Connor cut this plait with shaking hands, not sure if her beloved five-year-old daughter would survive surgery on her infected spine in early 1898? We’ll probably never know for sure.