The mystery of Michael Collins’ signature

The signature page of the Anglo-Irish Treaty 1921, featuring Michael Collins’ sign (fourth on the right). The treaty was a first for the British Empire and it influenced many of its future colonial negotiations. (Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons )

On 6 December 1921, Michael Collins, the Irish revolutionary leader, put his signature to the historic Anglo-Irish Treaty. Later, he wrote to his fiancée Kitty Kiernan that he had signed his death warrant. Within eight months that prediction had come true. Collins was assassinated on 22 August 1922, during the bitter civil war that engulfed Ireland following the signing of the treaty.

When I discovered that the museum owned a visitors book of the famous Fitzrovia Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel on Percy Street containing a signature of Michael Collins, I was intrigued. Interestingly, it was signed during the period Collins was in London negotiating the peace treaty.

The years 1916–1922 were traumatic for Anglo-Irish relations. Following an initially unsuccessful rebellion, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) fought a deadly guerrilla war against the British security forces. Eventually, British public opinion forced the government to enter into peace talks with the rebels. Between October and December 1921, a high-powered government team led by David Lloyd George, and including Winston Churchill, faced an Irish team led by Arthur Griffith and Collins.

Upon arrival in London in October 1921, the Irish delegation became the focus of media attention. Crowds gathered to see them and they were invited to social events, house parties and public performances. Collins was particularly in demand because the media portrayed him as a dangerous gunman.

Names of Michael Collins, Daniel Breen and Oliver St. John Gogarty signed one after the other on the visitors book of the visitors book of the famous Fitzrovia Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel. (ID no.: 2002.12)

We know from contemporary accounts that members of the delegation went out in the evenings. And they might have visited the trendy Tour Eiffel during that time. The restaurant’s visitors book, now in the museum’s collection, contains signatures of celebrities of the day such as actor Charlie Chaplin, writers Aldous Huxley, Nancy Cunard and playwright Noel Coward. The restaurant was particularly associated with a school of painters called the Vorticists. An undated signature, which seems to have been written towards the end of 1921 proclaims “Michael Collins IRA (chief)”.

Did Collins take time out from the stressful treaty negotiations to eat in one of the most artistic venues in the capital? After all, he was known to have an interest in the arts and he was no stranger to London.

Michael Collins in London in 1921. (Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons )

Collins and London

Collins was 16 upon arrival in London in 1906. His job was that of a ‘boy clerk’ in the Post Office Savings Bank in West Kensington. London represented a place of opportunity and freedom for the young migrant, who had little chance for advancement in rural Ireland. He spent the formative years of his life here. London was the place where he learnt about theatre, the world of finance and where he met a wide range of people, both Irish and non-Irish. London also radicalised the young Collins.

There was a vibrant Irish cultural and sporting scene in Edwardian London. Collins played Hurling for the Geraldine Club in Notting Hill, and regularly attended Irish cultural events and social gatherings. In November 1909, he was sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in Barnsbury Hall Islington. The IRB was a revolutionary organisation, which aimed to overthrow the British presence in Ireland.

Collins working the crowd during a gathering in Dublin in 1922. (Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons)

He left his employers, the Guaranty Trust Company in January, telling his colleagues that he was going to “join up”. They assumed that he was joining the army and paid him an extra week’s wages as bonus. In reality, he was going to Dublin to participate in the Easter Rebellion.

The rebellion of 1916 left hundreds of people dead and Dublin in ruins. The leaders were executed and scores of activists, including Collins, were imprisoned across the UK. Collins spent many months in Frongoch camp in Wales. When the young revolutionaries were eventually released in a general amnesty they emerged even more determined to lead a successful revolution. By the time of the treaty negotiations in 1921, these men were hardened guerrilla fighters.

Oliver Gogarty as painted in 1911 by William Orpen. (Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons)

While I could not find any reference to Breen in London at this time another theory was developing: could Gogarty have been in London and hosted a meal at the restaurant for his friend Collins?

But then I discovered that while Gogarty’s signature appears to be genuine, the same can’t be said for Collins. The Irish nationalist always signed himself as ‘Mícheál Ó Coileáin’. Indeed, that is how he signed the Anglo-Irish treaty document. Looking at this English version of the name and closely comparing it to authentic examples of his signature convinced me that this signature is a forgery.

Who might have forged it and why?

The signature was clearly known to other diners during the subsequent history of the restaurant. In August 1933, the famous American filmmaker Robert Flaherty dined there with the crew from his Irish fictional documentary Man of Aran (1934). While Flaherty’s companions signed their names in the appropriate page, he returned to the page from a decade earlier that contained the Collins signature and other famous Irish people like Gogarty and Irish writer Liam O’Flaherty.