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.