Britain’s First Chief of the Secret Service – ‘C’

In October 1909, Britain’s Secret Service was formed and headed by Commander Mansfield Cumming. Cumming was born on 1 April 1859 and joined the Royal Navy in 1871. In 1889, he changed his surname to Smith-Cumming following his marriage to a wealthy heiress. Unfortunately, his career in the RN was cut short on account of his recurring sea sickness and he settled in Bursledon the River Hamble in Hampshire as a retired officer specialising in boom defence. However, he was recalled to the active list as a commander to become joint head of the new Secret Service Bureau (SSB) with Captain Vernon Kell of the South Staffordshire regiment.

The SSB was established in response to the Anglo-German naval arms race and several scare stories that a nest of German spies was operating in Britain. The Daily Mail ran an article suggesting that Swiss waiters might actually be German spies and the same newspaper, in 1906, commissioned William Le Queux to write an alarming serial on what might happen were Germany to invade England. The later book, The Invasion of London 1910, caused widespread Germanophobia.

Prior to the outbreak of WW1, the War Office (ie the army) had its own intelligence service and saw little value in the new SSB carrying out any overseas intelligence tasking. Instead, Kell focused on what was then called contre espionage, ie the unmasking of German spies. The Admiralty, also, had its own intelligence department, but saw value in an organisation that could recruit agents in Germany to report on the country’s naval armaments programme. As a result, Kell and Cumming agreed between them that Kell would focus on ‘home’ matters, ie counter espionage, and Cumming would set up a foreign section of the SSB. After various iterations of names, Kell’s service eventually became known as the Security Service (MI5) and Cumming’s the Secret Service (now the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6).

Kell was fortunate to be given active support by the Home Secretary of the day, one Winston Churchill. He had close links with the chief constables and Special Branch. Until the formation of the SSB, counter intelligence had been the responsibility of Special Branch and one of its former heads, Superintendent William Melville. Melville then began to work under Kell. Although the spy scare stories turned out to be based on fiction, Kell’s department did, indeed, unearth a Germany spy ring tasked to spy on the Royal Navy, working for Gustav Steinhauer, the head of the British section of the German Naval Intelligence Service. The spy ring was allowed to stay at large and its communications intercepted until the outbreak of WW1 when it was rolled up. I have fictionalised these early days of the SSB in my second WW1 novel, Now the Darkness Gathers.

Unlike Kell, Cumming had no infrastructure to work off and had to set up his organisation from scratch. He was frequently dismayed to discover that the Admiralty’s Naval Intelligence Division duplicated his efforts. However, the organisation came into its own during WW1 and several famous writers worked for it, including John Buchan, Somerset Maughan and Compton Mackenzie. Sidney Reilly, the subject of the TV series, Ace of Spies, was also one of his key agents. Some of Cumming’s agents were seconded to SIS from the RN or army and returned to their parent service afterwards. An example was Augustus Agar VC, whose exploits will be the subject of the final novel in my WW1 For Those in Peril series. Cumming used to sign papers in green ink as ‘C’, a tradition that has been adopted by his successors as head of the SIS ever since, but whereas the ‘C’ previously stood for ‘Cumming’, it now stands for ‘Chief’. The last naval officer to be Chief of SIS was Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair who, like Cumming, died in office.