Robert Childers Barton (1881-1975)

Robert C. Barton was an Irish lawyer, statesman and farmer who participated in the negotiations leading up to the signature of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. He was a cousin of Robert Erskine Childers and related to the Barton family of the Waterfoot. He became an officer in the Dublin Fusiliers on the outbreak of the First World War. He was stationed in Dublin during the Easter Rising of 1916 and resigned his commission in protest at the heavy-handed British suppression of the revolt. He then joined the Republican movement. In 1918 he was elected to Parliament as the Sinn Féin member for West Wicklow.
Arrested in February 1919 for sedition, he escaped from Mountjoy Prison on St. Patrick’s Day (leaving a note explaining that, owing to the discomfort of his cell, the occupant felt compelled to leave, and requesting the governor to keep his luggage until he sent for it). He was Minister for Agriculture of the Irish Republic, then of Foreign Affairs. Barton was one of the Irish delegates to the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations. He reluctantly signed the Treaty in December 1921 and supported de Valera during the Civil War. After 1922 he left politics for the law, becoming a judge. He died on August 10, 1975, aged 94, the last surviving signatory of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.