Violet Gibson: Company agrees to honour Irish woman who shot Mussolini

A bullet fired by Violet Gibson grazed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's nose in April 1926

A company has agreed to the erection of a plaque in Dublin commemorating an Irish woman who came within inches of killing Benito Mussolini.

One of the bullets fired by Violet Gibson grazed the Italian leader's nose.

Property investor Westhill said it will work with Dublin Council to facilitate the plaque at 12 Merrion Square, the site of her childhood home.

The decision to erect the plaque was approved by a committee in March.

The offer was made to the company in a letter from independent councillor Mannix Flynn, who had proposed the council motion.

• The Irish woman who shot Benito Mussolini

• Plaque to Irish woman who shot Mussolini approved

The original council motion said the "committed anti-fascist" should be brought into "the public's eye and given her rightful place in the history of Irish women and in the rich history of the Irish nation and its people".

"It suited both the British authorities and her family to have her seen as 'insane' rather than as political," the motion added.

Violet Gibson's assassination attempt was made on 7 April 1926, when she was 50 years old.

She came from a privileged Anglo-Irish background, and had been a debutante in the court of Queen Victoria.

Following the attempted shooting, she was returned to England, and spent the rest of her life in St Andrew's Hospital, a mental asylum in Northampton, until her death in 1956.

She is buried in England.

While her story had fallen into obscurity, a recent book, film, and radio documentary have seen it brought to greater prominence.

Violet Gibson came from a wealthy Anglo-Irish family in Dublin

Who was Benito Mussolini?

Mussolini's National Fascist Party came to power in Italy in the aftermath of World War One, backed by armed groups known as blackshirts who intimidated opponents.

The Fascists seized power in the early 1920s, dismantling democratic institutions, and Mussolini became Italy's dictator in 1925.

He supported Gen Francisco Franco in Spain's civil war and backed Adolf Hitler in World War Two.

Mussolini adopted some of Hitler's policies - notably the anti-Jewish laws of 1938 that stripped Italy's Jews of their civil rights. More than 7,500 Italian Jews died in the Holocaust.

Mussolini was executed after his capture by Italian partisans in 1945, while attempting to flee the Allied advance.