Mansfield Smith-Cumming C
Mansfield Smith-Cumming C is a blue-plaque site in the City of Westminster, marking a house linked with British intelligence. Sir Mansfield Cumming lived and worked here from 1911 to 1922. He became the first chief of the Secret Service Bureau, which later developed into MI5 and MI6.
Cumming joined the Royal Navy at twelve before entering intelligence work in 1909. From 1911, he led the bureau’s foreign section and developed methods involving disguises, secret writing and technical devices. During the First World War, his La Dame Blanche network gathered reports on enemy troop movements across occupied Belgium and northern France. He also maintained a laboratory for testing inventions used in espionage.
His colleagues knew him as “C” because he initialled documents with that letter. Green ink became another personal trademark, while a wooden artificial leg brought an unusual detail to his public life. He sometimes travelled through Whitehall on a scooter and stuck compass dividers into the wooden limb.
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