The Cahill Passports and an Unlikely Churchill Connection
A guest article from Andy Fitzsimmonds, England
Discovering the Cahill Passports
It was nearly a year ago that I managed to secure a pair of vintage British passports once issued to Sir Robert Cahill (as he preferred to be known) and his wife, Lady Alice Cahill. Sir Robert served as Commercial Counselor at the British Embassy in Paris over 18 years (Feb 1921 to July 1939) and was born in Dublin. His wife (née Bradley) was born in Bordeaux.
We don’t know what they’re arguing about, but those are their passport pictures 😉
Diplomatic Service in Paris Sir Robert Cahill
What particularly interested me about Cahill, however, was that, following the outbreak of World War II, he was detained by the Germans and held, like many other civilian internees – initially at ‘La Grande Caserne’ in Paris and later at the Vittel internment camp established in 1941 in the Vosges mountains of occupied France near the German border. Sir Robert Cahill
Internment at Vittel During World War II Sir Robert Cahill
As a passport collector over several years, I have tended to focus on passports themselves, and more recently on individual histories of their erstwhile holders. I try to avoid amassing too many extra documents as there is only so much one can sensibly store in an organized way. In the case of Cahill, however, there were some additional papers up for auction that I was able to obtain: these I found irresistible since they threw light on his internment at Vittel.
A document from the Red Cross in Geneva in March 1943 informed Lady Cahill (still in Paris) that her husband’s physical health was satisfactory, but his psychological state was unstable. His times of agitation were now less marked than previously, however, so there was some improvement in his condition. Another document, issued on 10 July 1944 by the German authorities at Vittel, certified that Cahill had been interned there since 12 August 1942 and was now being sent to England in an exchange. An online copy of the Belfast News-Letter from August 1944 also announced that Cahill would shortly be amongst a group of Vittel internees returning to a British port aboard the Swedish ‘exchange’ ship Drottningholm.
Documents that Tell a Personal Story Sir Robert Cahill
By coincidence, I spotted one other connected item from a different seller. It was an original ‘carte de visite’ bearing Cahill’s name, signature and Paris address, though it was marked ‘Vevey [Switzerland] 21 August 1945’. Beautifully written by Cahill in French, the card carries a very friendly note to a certain ‘monsieur’ and mentions that Sir Robert and Lady Cahill planned to be in England during the first few days of September. They obviously achieved their plan, for amongst the various endorsements in Lady Cahill’s passport (issued in Paris on 15 December 1944) is a Newhaven immigration officer’s stamp showing her arrival in the UK on 7 September 1945. Bingo!
Return to England After the War
The one passport for Sir Robert in my possession was issued in Paris on 1 June 1950 so bears no record of travel earlier than that. It does, however, show that he previously travelled on a passport issued in Lisbon on 28 May 1940 – prior to his detention at Vittel. If any reader happens to have that passport in their collection, I would of course be delighted to hear from them! Sir Cahill died in 1953, only three years after his last passport was issued.
A Surprising Link to Winston Churchill Sir Robert Cahill
In closing this summary of my research into the Cahill’s, I will mention perhaps the most intriguing discovery I have made. Sir Robert and Lady Cahill married in London on 12 September 1908 in the parish of St Margaret Westminster and I have a copy of the marriage certificate. Cahill was working for the Board of Trade at that time, and it may be remembered that Winston Churchill served as President of the Board of Trade and occupied that post from 1908 to 1910. The interesting thing is not just that Cahill and Churchill must have known each other and collaborated through work: I discovered that Churchill got married to Clementine at the same church and on the same day as the Cahill’s married!
This only came to my attention by chance when, looking at Cahill’s marriage certificate on the Ancestry website, I noticed that the two weddings were listed consecutively. Although different clergy were involved in the two ceremonies, it appears that Cahill married in the morning and Churchill in the afternoon of the same day in the same church. It is of course highly unlikely that the juxtaposition of the two weddings was mere coincidence. I would be intrigued to know if any of Churchill’s various biographers over the years have explored the connection between the two bridegrooms.
Passport-collector.com, founded in 2010 by passport historian Tom Topol, is a leading resource on passport history. The site features over 1,000 researched articles on the origins, evolution, and cultural significance of passports. It serves collectors, historians, and anyone interested in how travel documents reflect national identity and global events. Passport history, passport collector, collecting passports, passport fees, vintage passport collector, collectible documents, passport collection, diplomatic passport, passport office, celebrity passports, travel document, vintage passports for sale, old passports for sale, Reisepass, passport fees, most expensive passport in the world, passport colors, passport prices around the world, passport cost by country, cost of passports around the world, passport fees by country, Third Reich passport
