View source for Mansfield Smith-Cumming

{{Short description|British secret service director (1859–1923)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=November 2020}}
{{Infobox officeholder
| honorific_prefix    = [[Captain (Royal Navy)|Captain]]
| name                = Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming
| honorific_suffix    = {{post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|KCMG|CB}}
| image               = Mansfield Smith-Cumming.jpg
| caption             = 
| allegiance          = United Kingdom
| branch              = {{ubl
|[[Royal Navy]]
|[[Secret Intelligence Service]]
}}
| serviceyears        = 1878–1909; 1909–1923
| rank                = [[Captain (Royal Navy)|Captain]]
| battles             = {{tree list/start}}
*Anti-Piracy Campaign
**[[Larut Wars]]
**[[Perak War]]
*[[Anglo-Egyptian War]]
*[[World War I]]
*[[Russian Civil War]]
*[[Irish War of Independence]]
*[[Irish Civil War]]
{{tree list/end}}
| awards              = [[Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George]]<br />[[Companion of the Order of the Bath]]<br />[[Order of Saint Stanislaus (Imperial House of Romanov)|Order of St Stanislas (Russia)]]<br />[[India General Service Medal (1854)|India General Service Medal]] (with Perak clasp)<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.kaiserscross.com/304501/471964.html |title=The Perak War 1875–1876 |website=Kaiserscross.com |access-date=23 December 2016}}</ref><br />[[Egypt Medal]]<br />[[British War Medal]]<br />[[Officer of the Legion of Honour (France)]]<br />[[Khedive's Star]]<br />[[Order of Saint Vladimir|Order of St Vladimir (Russia)]]
| codename            = 
| birth_name          = Mansfield George Smith
| birth_date          = {{Birth date|1859|4|1|df=yes}}
| birth_place         = [[Lee, London|Lee]], [[Kent]], England
| death_date          = {{Death date and age|1923|6|14|1859|4|01|df=yes}}
| death_place         = London, England<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=3wGSBYSqUgDugiFLPJRwqg&scan=1|title=Index entry|access-date=9 July 2020|work=FreeBMD|publisher=ONS}}</ref>
| spouse              = Dora Cloete (died)<br/>{{marriage|Leslie Valiant-Cumming|1889}}
| office              = Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service
| order               = 1st
| term_start          = 7 October 1909
| term_end            = 14 June 1923 †
| predecessor         = {{small|Position established}}
| successor           = [[Hugh Sinclair]]
| 1blankname          = Counterpart
| 1namedata           = [[Vernon Kell]]
}}

[[Captain (Royal Navy)|Captain]] '''Sir Mansfield George Smith-Cumming''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|KCMG|CB}} (1 April 1859<ref>{{Cite book|last=Judd|first=Alan|title=The quest for C : Sir Mansfield Cumming and the founding of the British Secret Service|date=1999|publisher=HarperCollins|isbn=0-00-255901-3|location=London|pages=3|oclc=42215120}}</ref> – 14 June 1923) was a British naval officer who served as the first [[Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service|chief]] of the [[Secret Intelligence Service]] (SIS).

==Origins==
He was a great-great-grandson of the prominent merchant John Smith, a director of both the [[South Sea Company]] and the [[East India Company]], the second son of [[Abel Smith (1717–1788)|Abel Smith]] (d. 1756), the Nottingham banker who founded a banking dynasty and whose business much later became [[National Westminster Bank]], now one of the largest banks in the United Kingdom.<ref name="Boyce">J. Leighton Boyce, ''Smith's the Bankers 1658–1958'' (1958).</ref> His father was Colonel John Thomas Smith of the Madras Royal Engineers who became Master of the Madras and [[India Government Mint, Kolkata|Calcutta Mints]] and designed a machine for minting coins that was displayed at the Great Exhibition in 1851.<ref name="Judd">A. Judd, ''The Quest for C'' (1999).</ref>

==Early naval career==
Smith joined the [[Royal Navy]] and underwent training at [[Britannia Royal Naval College|Dartmouth]] from the age of twelve and was appointed [[acting sub-lieutenant]] in 1878. He was posted to [[HMS Bellerophon (1865)|HMS ''Bellerophon'']] in 1877, and for the next seven years served in operations against [[Malaysia|Malay]] pirates (during 1875–6) and in [[Egypt]] in 1883. However, he increasingly suffered from [[seasickness]], and in 1885 was placed on the retired list as "unfit for service". In early 1903 he was posted (as a retired lieutenant) to [[HMS Venus (1895)|HMS ''Venus'']] as it became coastguard ship at [[Southampton]].<ref>{{Cite newspaper The Times |title=Naval & Military intelligence |date=24 January 1903 |page=9 |issue=36986}}</ref> Prior to being appointed to run the Secret Service Bureau (SSB), he was working on [[Boom (navigational barrier)|boom defences]] in [[Bursledon]] on the [[River Hamble]].<ref>West 2006, p. 312</ref>

His first wife, Dora Cloete from South Africa, died after they had been married for four years.<ref name="Hubbard-Hall2024">{{cite book |last1=Hubbard-Hall |first1=Claire |title=Her Secret Service: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence |date=2024 |publisher=W&N |isbn=1399603434 |pages=352}}</ref>{{rp|19}}  He added the surname Cumming after his second marriage in 1889 to Leslie Marian 'May' Valiant-Cumming, heiress of Logie near [[Forres]] in the [[County of Moray]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thepeerage.com/p52954.htm|title=Dictionary of National Biography |location=Oxford, U.K.|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1995|access-date=17 June 2018}}</ref>

== Head of the SIS ==

===Pre-1914===
In 1909, Major (later Colonel Sir) [[Vernon Kell]] became director of the new Secret Service Bureau and created as a response to growing public opinion that all Germans living in England were spies. In 1911, the various security organizations were re-organised under the Bureau, Kell's division becoming the Home Section, and Cumming's becoming the new Foreign Section, responsible for all operations outside Britain. Over the next few years he became known as 'C', after his habit of sometimes signing himself with a C eventually written in green ink. That habit became a custom for later directors, although the C now stands for "Chief". [[Ian Fleming]] took these aspects for his "[[M (James Bond)|M]]" from the [[James Bond (literary character)|James Bond]] novels.<ref name="spymaster" />

In 1914, he was involved in a serious road accident in France in which his son was killed. Legend has it that to escape the car wreck he was forced to amputate his own leg using a pen knife. Hospital records have shown, however, that while both his legs were broken, his left foot was amputated only the day after the accident. Later he often told all sorts of fantastic stories as to how he lost his leg and would shock people by interrupting meetings in his office by suddenly stabbing his artificial leg with a knife, letter opener or fountain pen.<ref name="QI">''[[QI]]'', [[BBC One]], Season 3, episode 10</ref>

Budgets were severely limited prior to [[World War I]], and Cumming came to rely heavily on [[Sidney Reilly]] (aka the ''Ace of Spies''), a [[secret agent]] of dubious veracity based in [[Saint Petersburg]].<ref>Spence 2002, pp. 172–173, 185–186.</ref>

===World War I===
At the outbreak of war he was able to work with Vernon Kell and Sir [[Basil Thomson]] of the [[Special Branch (Metropolitan Police)|Special Branch]] to arrest twenty-two German spies in England. Eleven were executed, as was Sir [[Roger Casement]], found guilty of [[treason]] in 1916. During the war, the offices were renamed. The Home Section became [[MI5]] or Security Service, while Cumming's Foreign Section became [[MI6]] or the Secret Intelligence Service. Agents who worked for MI6 during the war included [[Augustus Agar]], [[Sir Paul Dukes|Paul Dukes]], [[John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir|John Buchan]], [[Compton Mackenzie]] and [[W. Somerset Maugham]].<ref>Popplewell 1995, p. 230.</ref>

When the SSB discovered that [[semen]] made a good [[invisible ink]], his agents adopted the motto "Every man his own [[fountain pen|stylo]]". However, the use of semen as invisible ink was ceased because of the smell it produced for the eventual receiver. It also raised questions over the masturbatory habits of the agents.<ref name="spymaster">{{cite news|author=Piers Brendon |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html |title=The spymaster who was stranger than fiction |newspaper=[[The Independent]] |access-date=2017-05-23}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Kristie Macrakis|title=Prisoners, Lovers, and Spies: The Story of Invisible Ink from Herodotus to Al-Qaeda|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sxzqAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA152|year=2014|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-17925-5|page=152}}</ref>

===Ireland===
{{see also|Irish War of Independence}}
The Government Committee on Intelligence decided to slash Kell's budget and staff and to subordinate MI5 under a new Home Office Civil Intelligence Directorate led by Special Branch's Sir [[Basil Thomson]] in January 1919. The powerful partnership of MI5 and Special Branch had managed counterintelligence and subversives during the war, but that was suddenly thrown into disarray. These bureaucratic intrigues happened at the very moment when the Irish abstentionist party [[Sinn Féin]] and the [[Irish Republican Army]] (IRA) were launching their own independence campaign.<ref>Cottrell, p. 28.</ref>

Cumming and SIS (then MI1(c)) organized a new espionage unit in Ireland in mid-1920 called the Dublin District Special Branch. It consisted of some 20 line officers drawn from the regular army and trained by Cumming's department in London. Cumming also began importing some of his own veteran case officers into Ireland from Egypt, Palestine, and India, while Basil Thomson organized a special unit consisting of 60 Irish street agents managed by communications from [[Scotland Yard]] in London.<ref>McMahon, p. 39</ref>

On Sunday, 21 November 1920, the Headquarters Intelligence Staff of the IRA and its special Counterintelligence Branch under the leadership of [[Michael Collins (Irish leader)|Michael Collins]] [[Bloody Sunday (1920)|assassinated 14]] of Cumming's case officers. Many agents appear to have escaped the IRA execution squads that morning, but Whitehall feared that more of its professional agents would be identified and suffer the same fate; this prompted the hasty withdrawal of most of the remaining SIS agents from Ireland in the days that followed.<ref>Dolan, pp. 798–802</ref> 

===Commemoration===
A blue plaque was unveiled on 30 March 2015 in Cumming's name at the SIS headquarters at 2 [[Whitehall Court]].<ref name=Guardian>{{cite news|last1=Norton-Taylor|first1=Richard|title=Sir Mansfield Cumming, first MI6 chief, commemorated with blue plaque|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/30/sir-mansfield-cumming-first-chief-of-mi6-commemorated-with-a-blue-plaque|access-date=31 March 2015|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]|date=31 March 2015}}</ref>

[[File:Sir Mansfield Cumming 1859-1923 First Chief of the Secret Service lived and worked here 1911-1922.jpg|thumb|English Heritage Blue Plaque at 2 Whitehall Court, London SW1A 2EJ]]

==Portrayal in popular culture==
*Cumming was the basis for the fictional head of the SIS, named Control, in the [[John le Carré]] [[Spy fiction|espionage novel]] ''[[The Spy Who Came in from the Cold]]'' and other novels. In the movie version of le Carré's ''[[Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy]]'' Control signs his name as 'C' using green ink, as Cumming did in real life.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14846154|title=Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: John Le Carre and reality|publisher=BBC|date=11 September 2011|access-date=17 June 2018}}</ref>
*Cumming was also the basis for the fictional head of SIS in the original [[James Bond]] novels by [[Ian Fleming]]. Fleming chose to name his chief [[M (James Bond)|M]] from Cumming's first name, Mansfield; this naming convention was extended to characters such as [[Q (James Bond)|Q]] and R.<ref name="spymaster" />
*In the television series ''[[Reilly, Ace of Spies]]'', he was portrayed by [[Norman Rodway]].<ref>{{IMDb title|qid=Q3932217|id=tt0085077|title = Reilly: Ace of Spies}}</ref>
*He was portrayed by [[Joss Ackland]] in the [[BBC1]] TV series ''[[Ashenden (TV series)|Ashenden]]'' in 1991.<ref>{{IMDb title|qid=Q28154224|id=tt0101040|title=Ashenden}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[R. H. Bruce Lockhart|Robert Bruce Lockhart]]
* [[Sidney Reilly]]
* [[Boris Savinkov]]
* [[William Melville]]
* [[Hugh Sinclair]]
* [[Grigori Rasputin]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Bibliography==
* Andrew, C: ''Secret service: the making of the British intelligence community''; 1985 {{ISBN|978-0434021109}}
* Cottrell, Peter, ''The Anglo-Irish War The Troubles of 1913–1922'', London: Osprey, 2006 {{ISBN|978-1846030239}}
* Dolan, Anne: "Killing and Bloody Sunday, 1920", ''The Historical Journal'', September 2006, Volume 49, Issue 3.
* Ferguson, Harry : Operation Kronstadt: The True Story of Honor, Espionage, and the Rescue of Britain's Greatest Spy, the Man with a Hundred Faces; 2010 {{ISBN|978-1590202296}}
* {{cite book|last=Hiley|first=Nicholas|title=The failure of British espionage against Germany, 1907–1914|publisher=Historical Journal|volume=26|year=1983|pages=867–89|jstor=2639324 |url= https://www.jstor.org/stable/2639324}}
* [[Keith Jeffery|Jeffery, Keith]]: ''The Secret History of MI6'', Penguin Press, 2010 {{ISBN|978-1594202742}}
* Judd, Alan: ''The Quest For C – Mansfield Cumming and the Founding of the Secret Service'', HarperCollins Publishers, 1999, {{ISBN|0-00-255901-3}}
* {{cite book|last= McMahon|first=Paul|title=British Spies and Irish Rebels: British Intelligence and Ireland, 1916–1945|publisher=Boydell Press|year=2011|isbn=978-1843836568}}
* [[Giles Milton|Milton, Giles]]: ''Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Global Plot'', Sceptre, 2013. {{ISBN|978-1444737028}}
* {{Cite book| surname1 = Popplewell| given1 = Richard J.| year = 1995| title = Intelligence and Imperial Defence: British Intelligence and the Defence of the Indian Empire 1904–1924| url = http://www.routledge.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?sku=&isbn=071464580X&parent_id=&pc=| publisher = Routledge| isbn = 0-7146-4580-X| archive-date = 26 March 2009| access-date = 17 June 2018| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090326193437/http://www.routledge.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?sku=&isbn=071464580X&parent_id=&pc=| url-status = dead}}
* [[Michael Smith (newspaper reporter)|Smith, Michael]]: ''SIX: The Real James Bonds, 1909–1939'', Biteback, 2011. {{ISBN|978-1-84954-097-1}}
* {{cite book|last=Spence|first=Richard B.|title=Trust No One: The Secret World of Sidney Reilly|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IJpnAAAAMAAJ|year=2002|publisher=Feral House|isbn=978-0-922915-79-8}}
* West, N: ''Circus Mi5 Operations 1945'' UNKNO, 1972. {{ISBN|978-0812829198}}
* West, N: ''Historical Dictionary of International Intelligence'', Scarecrow, 2006, {{ISBN|978-0810855786}}

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{{s-bef|before=[[William Melville]]}} 
{{s-ttl|title=[[Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service|Chief of the SIS]]|years=1909–1923}} 
{{s-aft|after=[[Hugh Sinclair]]}}
{{s-end}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith-Cumming, Mansfield}}
[[Category:World War I spies for the United Kingdom]]
[[Category:20th-century spies]]
[[Category:1859 births]]
[[Category:1923 deaths]]
[[Category:Royal Navy captains]]
[[Category:Chiefs of the Secret Intelligence Service]]
[[Category:British amputees]]
[[Category:People of the Irish War of Independence]]
[[Category:Knights Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George]]
[[Category:Companions of the Order of the Bath]]
[[Category:Royal Navy personnel of the Anglo-Egyptian War]]
[[Category:People from Lee, London]]
[[Category:Military personnel from London]]