Meeting the Mystery Man

Frank Carney was in London in January 1920 on a mission. His aim was to meet a gunrunner, a man who would supply Frank with the arms that he so desperately needed for his IRA units in Fermanagh. Frank was meeting the gunrunner in an extraordinary venue, in a setting where Commandant Frank Carney of the IRA would be badly out of place. On the other hand, the sophisticated gunrunner was comfortable here, for these were the circles in which he moved.

The building where the meeting was to take place was very near to the Houses of Parliament, in an elegant part of London. Frank was accompanied by Robert Brennan, the friend that he had met by chance the previous day. Robert Brennan was in the inner circle of both Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and so obviously Frank believed that it was safe to entrust Brennan with the name of his contact.¹ 

John Smith Chartres

Robert Brennan recognised the name, John Smith Chartres. He had met John Chartres several times some years before, in the offices of Arthur Griffith in Dublin. So in order to point Chartres out, Brennan had offered to accompany his young friend to the meeting.

On entering the building, they found themselves in  a ‘very select and conservative club' filled with Members of Parliament from the nearby Government Buildings. Their contact, John Smith Chartres, sat comfortably amongst them, looking very much the part:

“Sporting a monocle on a black ribbon, and blessed with the enunciation of the English upper middle class, this middle-aged, lame gentleman was in appearance initially above suspicion.” ²  

John Chartres escorted them into a lounge area and offered them coffee. They sat in the leather chairs of this upper class English domain while John Chartres, ‘quietly amused’, pointed out several important members of the Conservative Party.

The Conservatives were at that time in power with the Liberals in Lloyd George’s  coalition government, so it is quite likely that some of those in that room were actually Government Ministers. John Chartres was familar with them all, for he was at that time a higher civil servant, a Principal Officer in the Secretariat of the Department of Labour.

At one point, Frank Carney remarked,

"A bomb dropped in this place would dispose of a goodly number of enemies."

The monocled Englishman was quick to reply,

"Make sure and give me warning. I spend quite a lot of my time here."

All of this jolly banter took place after they had carried out the business of the day. John Chartres had earlier taken them into a small cloakroom, and here he had opened a bag. In it was what Robert Brennan describes as, “a very serviceable looking machine gun”. Frank took one glance at it and said,

“That’ll do.”

Frank was reluctant to part with the precious machine gun, and he wanted to take it with him, but Chartres objected,

“They might take it off you. You were merely to vet it. They’re to go by the ordinary channels.”

You can be sure that Frank Carney went carefully through these ‘ordinary channels’ before he lost sight of this precious machine gun.

This fascinating little story is important for us in that it confirms that Frank Carney was definitely very close to Michael Collins, and that he was fully trusted by him. John Smith Chartres was Collins’ protegee, his spy in the heart of the British Civil Service, and his contact for co-ordinating gun supplies to Ireland. From the time that Michael Collins began to use Chartres as a spy in early 1918, Chartres' connection to Ireland was kept secret and Collins was his only contact. It had to have been Michael Collins in person who had sent Commandant Frank Carney to that bizarre meeting in London.

Michael Collins continued to keep John Smith Chartres very close to his chest until October 1921, when he launched him on to a very public stage as a Secretary to the Irish Delegation in the Treaty negotiations. No-one knew who this strange, monocled Englishman was, or why, indeed, he could be trusted in such critical negotiations. Nonetheless, Michael Collins insisted that John Smith Chartres should be at his side.³ 

As the history books were written about Michael Collins and the Treaty, little emerged about John Chartres and his activities as a spy. This mystery man who features in our Frank Carney story, John Smith Chartres, continues to be known to this day as, 'The Mystery Man of the Treaty".

At the Treaty Negotiations in 1921 Front [L-R] 

Arthur Griffith, Éamonn Duggan, Michael Collins, Robert Barton

Back [L-R]

Robert Erskine Childers, George Gavan Duffy, John Smith Chartres

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References and Notes:

¹ This story is from Robert Brennan’s book "Allegiance"  which is reprinted in the Bureau of Military History, WS Ref #: 125 , Witness: Robert Brennan, Publicity Department, Dáil Éireann, 1921

²  In "Chartres, John Smith" by Pauric J. Dempsey and Richard Hawkins, in the Treaty Records of the National Archives

³ John Smith Chartres was born in 1862 in Seacome, Cheshire, England, the son of a doctor, a staff surgeon in the British army. His mother and father were both from Ireland and John spent some of his early childhood here while his father was based in the Curragh and Dundalk.  He lived mostly in England and was educated there, though he also came to Dublin to attend the Kings Inn. Chartres was a barrister, but he did not practice. He worked at the The Times newspaper's intelligence department, doing research, indexing and reference, for ten years from 1904 to 1914.

When the war broke out there was a shortage of supplies of bullets and weapons. The Ministry of Munitions was set up in June 1915, and Chartres was appointed to its intelligence and record branch, eventually becoming a section Director. After the war, he joined the Ministry of Labour as a Principal Officer in the Secretariat.

Chartres came to Ireland when he was in the Munitions Department in 1917. He had become deeply affected by the 1916 rising and apparently in 1917 he went to Arthur Griffith and offered his help. He wrote articles for Griffith's Newspaper Nationality under the pseudonym ‘HI’ (haud immemor, ‘let them not be forgotten’). At some stage during 1918, Chartres was introduced to Michael Collins. From 1918 until mid-1921, Chartres was working for Michael Collins as a spy and gunrunner.

In mid 1920 Chartres arranged a transfer to Ireland, to work in the Irish branch of the Ministry of Labour where he was a Section Chief. However, in the following year he came under suspicion, and he retired from the British Civil Service. He was sent to Berlin by the Provisional Government in June 1921 as an envoy, but shortly after this he was recalled to take up his position as Secretary to the Treaty Delegation.

There was great consternation in Ireland about this appointment at the time as Chartres was English, had been working in 'intelligence' related roles for the British Government, and was now to be at the crucial negotiating table on the Irish side. Equally, Chartres' role was supposed to be that of a Constitutional Law expert, but everyone knew that he had no experience in Constitutional Law at all.

However, Michael Collins insisted that Chartres was to be a Secretary, and there were very good reasons why Collins would want him there. Firstly, Collins could trust him. He had worked with him for years in top secret situations. Chartres was totally reliable.

Secondly, Chartres brought with him an in-depth knowledge of the British Civil Service mindset but more importantly, he had personal intelligence on two of the key British delegates. Both David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill had been Ministers in the Ministry of Munitions when John Smith Chartres had been a Section Director there. He may or may not have interacted with them personally, but every high Civil Servant has to have thorough knowledge of his Minister in order to work effectively with them. Chartres brought this personal knowledge of Churchill and Lloyd George to the table.

John Smith Chartris died on 14th May 1927 at his home in Liseaux, Dartry Road, Rathgar, Dublin.

See "Chartres, John Smith" by Pauric J. Dempsey and Richard Hawkins, in the Treaty Records of the National Archives, and also "John Chartres, The Mystery Man of the Treaty", by Brian P. Murphy, Irish Academic Press, 1995.

In the London Music Hall

“I was walking in Tottenham Court Road one day when I ran into Frank Carney, who was over on a mission for the I.R.A.”

So writes Robert Brennan in his book "Allegiance". He then goes on to give us two precious stories about my grandfather, Frank Carney. The first is an anecdote about their evening out together in January 1920 following that casual meeting in Tottenham Court Road. The second is an account of the following day, when Robert Brennan accompanied Frank Carney on his top secret mission in London.¹

Robert Brennan 1916

The storyteller, 39 year old Robert Brennan, was a Wexford man who had been Sinn Féin’s National Director of Elections in 1918.²  Now Director of Publicity for the Provisional Government,  he had set up a daily propaganda paper, the ‘Irish Bulletin’ in November 1919. The Bulletin had a been very effective, much to the displeasure of the British and they were very anxious to shut it down. Robert Brennan had been sent over to London by Arthur Griffith in January 1920, to find an alternative method of publishing the Irish Bulletin, should the British prove successful.³

It was at this time that Brennan met Frank Carney on the Tottenham Court Road and he recognised Frank immediately. The two men shared that common bond, for Robert Brennan was high up in the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He had been sworn in by Sean T. O’Kelly in about 1908, and he was a long-time Head Centre for Wexford.¹ Brennan would certainly have met Frank Carney at monthly Brotherhood Centre meetings in Dublin.⁴

In his account of that day in 1920, Brennan gives us a brief description:

“Frank was a small, slight man from Fermanagh who had been in the British Army. He had been gassed in France and had been invalided home. On his recovery he had joined the Volunteers, subsequently becoming Brigade Officer Commanding of County Fermanagh.”⁵ 

Having met, the two friends then agreed to go out to a music hall that evening to see George Robey, a famous comedian of the day. They did not take their seats for the early part of the show but ‘adjourned to the bar’. Eventually, Brennan heard a lot of applause and he assumed that Robey must have arrived on stage. Brennan went to take his seat, but he was alone, for apparently Frank Carney was still ‘adjourning’ in the bar!

Brennan then saw a sketch on the stage which provoked him into action:

"It was not Robey but a sketch in which two men in British uniforms were reminiscing about the war. A caricature of an American swaggered on to the stage, spitting right and left. One of the British soldiers said:

"You know where that fellow comes from?"

"No, where?" said the other.

"It's a place called America.... It was discovered by Christopher Columbus."

"Why?"

This provoked loud laughter. The American said:

"Did I hear youse guys discussin' the war? You know, we won that war for you."

One of the British soldiers said to the other:

"This fellow must be very hard of hearing!"

"How come?" asked the American.

"Well that war was  going on for two years before you heard of it!"

This was too much for Robert Brennan, who believed that the British would have lost the war, but for the Americans.  He stood up and said so in a voice loud enough to get the attention of the entire music hall! Some of the audience laughed, thinking this was part of the show. When they realised that it was not, they turned on Brennen shouting;
"Shut Up!" "Sit Down!" "Throw him out" .

It was at this point that Frank came to take his seat beside him.  Frank asked what was going on. Brennan replied:

“I'm objecting to this show, because …”

Brennan got no further, for Frank jumped in and yelled loudly:

"All right, I'm objecting to it too, who's going to throw us out?"

Ushers promptly arrived, dragged them out and dumped them unceremoniously in the street. The two Irishmen went from there to a local pub. Robert Brennan finishes the story:

"After some time, Frank said,

"What was all that about?"
"They were sneering about the Americans' claim that they won the war, and I protested."
Frank laid down his glass and looked at me in astonishment.
"Do you mean to say that that's what we were thrown out for?"
"Sure," I said.
"Well, by God," he said, "you are a mug."
"And what about yourself!"
"Never mind about me. I did not know what it was all about. I've a good mind to go back and apologise to these people for interrupting their innocent pleasures."
"They would only throw you out again."
"I suppose so," Frank said sadly, "people are very unreasonable."

It is nice to see that my grandfather had such good manners, even when under the influence!

We leave the story there with the two friends drinking in that London pub. The following day they were up early, for there was more serious work to be done.

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References and Notes:

¹ Robert Brennan’s book ‘Allegiance’ is reprinted in the Bureau of Military History, WS Ref #: 125 , Witness: Robert Brennan, Publicity Department, Dail Eireann, 1921

² Robert Brennan (1881 – 1964) fought in 1916 in Wexford Town, he surrendered  and was sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted and he was sent to Dartmoor prison in England where he became a close friend of Éamon De Valera . He was released in the General Amnesty of June 1917. In 1926 he was asked by De Valera to manage the establishment of the Irish Press and he went on to be General Manager from 1931 to 1934. He was then sent to America by the Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, as Secretary of the Free State's Irish Legation in Washington.  In August 1938 he was promoted to Minister Plenipotentiary, Ambassador, to the United States, a post he held until 1947.

³  The move to England was never needed, as the British never did manage to shut down the Irish Bulletin completely. Five issues of the Bulletin were issued each week from 1919 until the Truce in July 1921. The Irish Bulletin was circulated largely outside Ireland, bringing news of the War of Independence to overseas readers. The British were so threatened by this that Dublin Castle organised the circulation of counterfeit issues of the Bulletin for about a month following a raid on Bulletin offices in March 1921, at which all the plant was captured. The attempt to deceive public opinion failed completely and was abandoned. See "Dáil Éireann Department of Publicity: History and Progress", Royal Irish Academy, Documents on Irish Foreign Policy No. 102 NAI DE 4/4/2

⁴  The Brotherhood was organised in ‘Circles’ to guarantee secrecy. Each man was in a cell or ‘circle’ where he knew the man above, to each side and below him. He did not know any others. This ensured that if the man was captured, he had information about very few people. The Leader of each area in Ireland was the centre of that area's circle and was known as the ‘Centre’ or ‘Head Centre’. Centres met regularly in Dublin with the General Secretary, who until mid-1919 was Michael Collins. See ‘Michael Collins and the Brotherhood’, Vincent MacDowell, 1997, Ashfield Press.

⁵  Frank was not, in fact, in France at all. This was a commonly held belief at the time. See The Carney Brothers in World War 1