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Female Intelligence: Women and Espionage in the First World War
When the Germans invaded her small Belgian village in 1914, Marthe Cnockaert’s home was burned and her family separated. After getting a job at a German hospital, and winning the Iron Cross for her service to the Reich, she was approached by a neighbor and invited to become an intelligence agent for the British. Not without trepidation, Cnockaert embarked on a career as a spy, providing information and engaging in sabotage before her capture and imprisonment in 1916. After the war, she was paid and decorated by a grateful British government for her service.
Cnockaert’s is only one of the surprising and gripping stories that comprise Female Intelligence . This is the first history of the female spies who served Britain during World War I, focusing on both the powerful cultural images of these women and the realities, challenges, and contradictions of intelligence service. Between the founding of modern British intelligence organizations in 1909 and the demobilization of 1919, more than 6,000 women served the British government in either civil or military occupations as members of the intelligence community. These women performed a variety of services, and they represented an astonishing diversity of nationality, age, and class. From Aphra Behn, who spied for the British government in the seventeenth century, to the most well known example, Mata Hari, female spies have a long history, existing in juxtaposition to the folkloric notion of women as chatty, gossipy, and indiscreet.
Using personal accounts, letters, official documents and newspaper reports, Female Intelligence interrogates different, and apparently contradictory, constructions of gender in the competing spheres of espionage activity.
Cnockaert’s is only one of the surprising and gripping stories that comprise Female Intelligence . This is the first history of the female spies who served Britain during World War I, focusing on both the powerful cultural images of these women and the realities, challenges, and contradictions of intelligence service. Between the founding of modern British intelligence organizations in 1909 and the demobilization of 1919, more than 6,000 women served the British government in either civil or military occupations as members of the intelligence community. These women performed a variety of services, and they represented an astonishing diversity of nationality, age, and class. From Aphra Behn, who spied for the British government in the seventeenth century, to the most well known example, Mata Hari, female spies have a long history, existing in juxtaposition to the folkloric notion of women as chatty, gossipy, and indiscreet.
Using personal accounts, letters, official documents and newspaper reports, Female Intelligence interrogates different, and apparently contradictory, constructions of gender in the competing spheres of espionage activity.
205 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 3, 2024
Did you know who carried all the messages between departments in MI5 during the First World War? (This should be a question on QI.) The surprising answer is Girl Guides. They tried boy scouts at first, but it turned out they got bored too easily during periods of inactivity; so Guides it was, most aged between fourteen and sixteen, earning ten shillings a week, and pledging ‘on their honour not to read the papers they carried’. Their contracts had to be countersigned by their parents and by their local Brown Owl.
This is one of many pleasing anecdotes to be gleaned from Tammy Proctor's slim, academic study of women working in intelligence during the First World War. It was a time when male labour was, naturally, in short supply, and a host of underpaid women filled the gap, nowhere more so than in the intelligence community. In fact at MI9 (the slightly unexciting-sounding Postal Censorship Branch), they outnumbered the men almost three to one. A lot of the women in these jobs were well educated, spoke multiple languages, and/or had personal connections to serving officers.
Proctor is on most comfortable ground when dealing with these administrative environments, but she does look at fieldwork as well. In Belgium, the underground resistance movement known as La Dame Blanche – officially affiliated with the British – was comprised mostly of women, and there was also a ‘radical underground postal network’ (why is the post so interesting in this book?) called Le Mot du Soldat which made great use of local women. They worked as couriers, trainwatchers, letterboxes and in other functions.
Individual stories of the more famous female spies are considered in some detail – including Edith Cavell, Gabrielle Petit, and of course Mata Hari, whom Proctor sees as emblematic of the tendency, then and now, to downplay women's serious intelligence work in favour of a more lurid image of the temptress or spy-prostitute. (These qualms didn't stop her putting Mata Hari on the front cover of the book, however.)
The writing is workmanlike, as you'd expect from this kind of study, and I could have done with a few more details on what, precisely, some of this work involved; but overall this is a welcome look at a subject that has been insufficiently examined. Well worth donating to your local Girl Guide troop.
This is one of many pleasing anecdotes to be gleaned from Tammy Proctor's slim, academic study of women working in intelligence during the First World War. It was a time when male labour was, naturally, in short supply, and a host of underpaid women filled the gap, nowhere more so than in the intelligence community. In fact at MI9 (the slightly unexciting-sounding Postal Censorship Branch), they outnumbered the men almost three to one. A lot of the women in these jobs were well educated, spoke multiple languages, and/or had personal connections to serving officers.
Consider the situation of Olive Roddam, the daughter of a wealthy Northumberland landowner whose family found her an intelligence position to help her forget the death of her fiancé in 1914. She was hired at I. D. 25 [the cryptanalysis section of the Admiralty] to serve as secretary to cryptographer A. D. (Dilly) Knox. A brilliant recruit from Cambridge, Knox was known for the eccentric habit of breaking codes while sitting in a bathtub installed in the tiny room he used as an office. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the nature and hours of such work, Roddam and Knox married in July of 1920.
Proctor is on most comfortable ground when dealing with these administrative environments, but she does look at fieldwork as well. In Belgium, the underground resistance movement known as La Dame Blanche – officially affiliated with the British – was comprised mostly of women, and there was also a ‘radical underground postal network’ (why is the post so interesting in this book?) called Le Mot du Soldat which made great use of local women. They worked as couriers, trainwatchers, letterboxes and in other functions.
Individual stories of the more famous female spies are considered in some detail – including Edith Cavell, Gabrielle Petit, and of course Mata Hari, whom Proctor sees as emblematic of the tendency, then and now, to downplay women's serious intelligence work in favour of a more lurid image of the temptress or spy-prostitute. (These qualms didn't stop her putting Mata Hari on the front cover of the book, however.)
The writing is workmanlike, as you'd expect from this kind of study, and I could have done with a few more details on what, precisely, some of this work involved; but overall this is a welcome look at a subject that has been insufficiently examined. Well worth donating to your local Girl Guide troop.
June 4, 2023
I think this book would be a great read for both scholars and for those that just enjoy history.
Although the writing is very much academic, this book gives insight to why the myths and fantasies of female spies are so pervasive even into modern history and media. Women who don't fit into the paradoxical roles of women of their time are often shrugged off and feared for their blending of perceived male & female roles. This books uses war time accounts, uses memoirs from those who were active during the first world war in occupied Belgium, as well as spy "writers and historians" that helped shape these myths.
It took me a good minute to finish this read because it is very much a scholarly read but I really enjoyed learning about how most intelligence agencies and resistences were founded by the "invisible" women of the time that didn't see the fame like that of martyrs or seductresses of the state.
I do however want to point out that the author does tend to repeat herself a lot, which is very off putting even tho the subject matter is interesting. The only reason I'm still giving this a 5 star is simply because of the info gained from reading this.
Although the writing is very much academic, this book gives insight to why the myths and fantasies of female spies are so pervasive even into modern history and media. Women who don't fit into the paradoxical roles of women of their time are often shrugged off and feared for their blending of perceived male & female roles. This books uses war time accounts, uses memoirs from those who were active during the first world war in occupied Belgium, as well as spy "writers and historians" that helped shape these myths.
It took me a good minute to finish this read because it is very much a scholarly read but I really enjoyed learning about how most intelligence agencies and resistences were founded by the "invisible" women of the time that didn't see the fame like that of martyrs or seductresses of the state.
I do however want to point out that the author does tend to repeat herself a lot, which is very off putting even tho the subject matter is interesting. The only reason I'm still giving this a 5 star is simply because of the info gained from reading this.
Read
July 7, 2018Fascinating!! I knew not one thing about female spies.I learned a lot about not only what they did, heroines all of them, but also about how spies especially female one,s are perceived out in the world. The Anthropologist in me loved this one! Made me proud to be female.
September 22, 2022
i liked it, go women!! very interesting to see a perspective that I hadn't seen much of and it was interesting to learn how important they actually were.
August 7, 2022
This book exposes the heroics of ordinary women doing extraordinary feats when they were still thought of as 2nd class figures.
These women are an inspiration.
Despite the mispreceptions of women and the dangers they faced...
Summary
Reviewed by Sarah Janda (Department of History and Government, Cameron University) Published on H-Minerva (September, 2003)
"Virtuous Victim or Seductive Vamp?
Historians of both women and war have made remarkable progress in broadening our understanding of the multifaceted roles played by women in times of war. The notion that women have made substantial contributions to their countries during war no longer seems a remarkable assertion, as it is now widely accepted and explored by historians. That said, there remains too little attention to women's espionage, especially when it falls outside of the framework of expected female spy activity. In Tammy Proctor's thoughtful analysis of British female intelligence work during WW I, she aptly demonstrates the disconnect between women's actual contributions to espionage and the stereotypes of female spies which continue to capture both the popular imagination and--to a lesser extent--scholarship on the subject. As she points out, the scholarship that does exist tends to be biographical in nature, an unintended consequence of which is the perpetuation of exceptionalism in women's espionage history. Significantly, the book examines not only the actual role played by women but also the images of female spies that infuse popular culture. Women spies have generally been cast into two categories: either they are unscrupulous seductresses like the Mata Hari archetype or, like nurse Edith Cavell, they are eulogized as virtuous victims. Both stereotypes undermine the meaningful contributions made by women. The author makes good use of sources from a variety of countries, including Britain, the United States, France, and Belgium, to reconstruct the work done by female spies for the British in WWI.
Proctor, who is an associate professor of history at Wittenberg University, initially became interested in the subject of female spies though her research on British Girl Guides. Here she found female espionage turning up in the most unexpected places and thus began a project which ultimately revealed that over 6,000 women provided intelligence information for Britain between 1909 and 1919. Female Intelligence is divided into an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion. Each of the chapters explores a different aspect of women's espionage. The author begins with an examination of women's contribution to intelligence work in the formative years just prior to WWI before moving into an analysis of the restrictive impact of DORA (Defense of the Realm Acts) on women and the range of WWI intelligence services provided by women, which included office work, cryptology, hiding soldiers, and passing information, to name just a few. Women, argues Proctor, helped build the British Intelligence network from quite literally the ground up despite the prevalent belief that women lacked the capacity for true patriotism and service to country. For instance, married women's nationality was determined not by her country of origin but by her husband's nationality. This in turn made the notion of women's patriotism suspect at best. At a time when women could not vote or hold office and when popular assumptions about the inability of women to keep secrets characterized official discourse on women's roles, women nevertheless proved their usefulness as spies."
Pg 16 "Women could take on highly important roles in Intelligence in times of war. Women's freedom from military conscription and their ability to move about in occupied territories made them ideal--but rare--agents. Women took on these roles in the domestic and foreign secret service networks developed during the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. Women were particularly useful as international and domestic couriers--sometimes in disguise--because their intellectual abilities were often discounted by enemy forces. Female agents and couriers were drawn from a variety of national and class backgrounds, and their ages and marital status varied from young, unmarried women to middle-aged matrons to older widows."
Pg 43 "Although women in espionage were considered to have an advantage over men because of their seduction skills, they were also depicted as overly emothional and prone to romantic entanglements. Underlying these stereotypes was a fear of female sexual betrayal with the possible serious consequence of the instability of the nation In other words, women were alternately soft, pliable nurturers and hard, intractable, vixens, reflecting confusion about women's true calling in a militarized wartime state. In fiction and sensational "histories" of espionage during the war and interwar periods, women spies were depicted as piople on the margins of society: foreign governesses, actresses or dancers, prostitutes or drug addicts."
Pg 55 "A dramatic example of the relatively rapid expansion of jobs for women is M19 or the Postal Censorship Branch, which began using women in September 1914."
Pg 146 " What is truly remarkable about women's presence in Intelligence is not their excellent record in the secrets industry but the invisibility of their work"...
These women are an inspiration.
Despite the mispreceptions of women and the dangers they faced...
Summary
Reviewed by Sarah Janda (Department of History and Government, Cameron University) Published on H-Minerva (September, 2003)
"Virtuous Victim or Seductive Vamp?
Historians of both women and war have made remarkable progress in broadening our understanding of the multifaceted roles played by women in times of war. The notion that women have made substantial contributions to their countries during war no longer seems a remarkable assertion, as it is now widely accepted and explored by historians. That said, there remains too little attention to women's espionage, especially when it falls outside of the framework of expected female spy activity. In Tammy Proctor's thoughtful analysis of British female intelligence work during WW I, she aptly demonstrates the disconnect between women's actual contributions to espionage and the stereotypes of female spies which continue to capture both the popular imagination and--to a lesser extent--scholarship on the subject. As she points out, the scholarship that does exist tends to be biographical in nature, an unintended consequence of which is the perpetuation of exceptionalism in women's espionage history. Significantly, the book examines not only the actual role played by women but also the images of female spies that infuse popular culture. Women spies have generally been cast into two categories: either they are unscrupulous seductresses like the Mata Hari archetype or, like nurse Edith Cavell, they are eulogized as virtuous victims. Both stereotypes undermine the meaningful contributions made by women. The author makes good use of sources from a variety of countries, including Britain, the United States, France, and Belgium, to reconstruct the work done by female spies for the British in WWI.
Proctor, who is an associate professor of history at Wittenberg University, initially became interested in the subject of female spies though her research on British Girl Guides. Here she found female espionage turning up in the most unexpected places and thus began a project which ultimately revealed that over 6,000 women provided intelligence information for Britain between 1909 and 1919. Female Intelligence is divided into an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion. Each of the chapters explores a different aspect of women's espionage. The author begins with an examination of women's contribution to intelligence work in the formative years just prior to WWI before moving into an analysis of the restrictive impact of DORA (Defense of the Realm Acts) on women and the range of WWI intelligence services provided by women, which included office work, cryptology, hiding soldiers, and passing information, to name just a few. Women, argues Proctor, helped build the British Intelligence network from quite literally the ground up despite the prevalent belief that women lacked the capacity for true patriotism and service to country. For instance, married women's nationality was determined not by her country of origin but by her husband's nationality. This in turn made the notion of women's patriotism suspect at best. At a time when women could not vote or hold office and when popular assumptions about the inability of women to keep secrets characterized official discourse on women's roles, women nevertheless proved their usefulness as spies."
Pg 16 "Women could take on highly important roles in Intelligence in times of war. Women's freedom from military conscription and their ability to move about in occupied territories made them ideal--but rare--agents. Women took on these roles in the domestic and foreign secret service networks developed during the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. Women were particularly useful as international and domestic couriers--sometimes in disguise--because their intellectual abilities were often discounted by enemy forces. Female agents and couriers were drawn from a variety of national and class backgrounds, and their ages and marital status varied from young, unmarried women to middle-aged matrons to older widows."
Pg 43 "Although women in espionage were considered to have an advantage over men because of their seduction skills, they were also depicted as overly emothional and prone to romantic entanglements. Underlying these stereotypes was a fear of female sexual betrayal with the possible serious consequence of the instability of the nation In other words, women were alternately soft, pliable nurturers and hard, intractable, vixens, reflecting confusion about women's true calling in a militarized wartime state. In fiction and sensational "histories" of espionage during the war and interwar periods, women spies were depicted as piople on the margins of society: foreign governesses, actresses or dancers, prostitutes or drug addicts."
Pg 55 "A dramatic example of the relatively rapid expansion of jobs for women is M19 or the Postal Censorship Branch, which began using women in September 1914."
Pg 146 " What is truly remarkable about women's presence in Intelligence is not their excellent record in the secrets industry but the invisibility of their work"...
May 30, 2020
This is a challenging book - Proctor rightly sets out up front that the vital role women have played in intelligence is often whitewashed from history, and the historiography of the First World War is no different here. However, this book does not seriously move the history forward in addressing this gap. Key roles such as the development and maintenance of the MI5 registry are skipped over with little detail, and mainly covered as an example of the administrative nature of women's work in the intelligence community. Actually the registry is a vital tool, that is used pretty much until the computerisation of files - the complexity of its cross-referencing system should not be misunderstood.
The La Dame Blanche network in Belgium gets some attention - and there are whole books on this network, setting out the important role that women play in the network - but here it is contextualised as women not getting proper recognition "....perhaps because in many cases women outranked and supervised men." - possibly true, but nothing is presented to support this claim.
It may be that the title is the issue, the content and substance of Proctor's work is broadly valid, but the title is misleading. Much of this book focuses on identifying policy and the systemic nature of the way women are treated at the time of the First World War. However a lot of this is unsupported, and despite having a lot of end notes, and references, key parts of the argument are not. The suggestion that the Defence Of the Realm Act (DORA) was intentionally designed as anti-women does not stack up; changing the opening hours of pubs and bars was aimed at increasing productivity in the armaments industry, rather than specifically to make it more difficult for sex-workers to operate; though this may have also been a consequence. Proctor rightly sets out that the sexualisation of women in espionage fiction in particular means that women are often presented in a Mata Hari-esque image; neither an accurate representation nor helpful to modern intelligence agencies.
There is a real challenge contextualising the past through a lens of contemporary feminism; a balance can be achieved which recognises the contemporary institutionalised approach to women in the workplace, alongside recognising the repression of women from history. This book would have benefited from more detail on the key role women played, both in the formal intelligence community and in the field individually or as part of networks.
The La Dame Blanche network in Belgium gets some attention - and there are whole books on this network, setting out the important role that women play in the network - but here it is contextualised as women not getting proper recognition "....perhaps because in many cases women outranked and supervised men." - possibly true, but nothing is presented to support this claim.
It may be that the title is the issue, the content and substance of Proctor's work is broadly valid, but the title is misleading. Much of this book focuses on identifying policy and the systemic nature of the way women are treated at the time of the First World War. However a lot of this is unsupported, and despite having a lot of end notes, and references, key parts of the argument are not. The suggestion that the Defence Of the Realm Act (DORA) was intentionally designed as anti-women does not stack up; changing the opening hours of pubs and bars was aimed at increasing productivity in the armaments industry, rather than specifically to make it more difficult for sex-workers to operate; though this may have also been a consequence. Proctor rightly sets out that the sexualisation of women in espionage fiction in particular means that women are often presented in a Mata Hari-esque image; neither an accurate representation nor helpful to modern intelligence agencies.
There is a real challenge contextualising the past through a lens of contemporary feminism; a balance can be achieved which recognises the contemporary institutionalised approach to women in the workplace, alongside recognising the repression of women from history. This book would have benefited from more detail on the key role women played, both in the formal intelligence community and in the field individually or as part of networks.
June 17, 2025
The book centers on British Intelligence during the First World War of the 20th century the first chapter provides an introduction to the intelligence, or lack thereof, prior to the Great War. Sporadically throughout history there have been organized spy networks but it wasn't until WW I that such organizations became institutionalized to any extent. Because men were needed at the front women were hired, at lower pay course, and rarely in charge of men. The author's work points out the patriarchal attitudes of the hierarchy because many of the women were better educated and more dependable workers then men but were rarely recognized for their efforts. Women in La Dame Blanche did amazing work gathering intelligence and helping allied soldiers leave German held territory. However, the most common idea of the woman intelligence agent was as a spy/prostitute. Yet for the most part women did better intelligence gathering then men for reasons explained in the book. Perhaps the most telling idea exemplifying men's attitudes was Mata Hari. While allegedly executed for being a spy she was vilified because she was an independent woman asserting her freedom and self-definition which threatened the male idea of how a women should be.
April 27, 2021
Solid if limited overview of an under-researched topic; it focuses a lot on Britain and Belgium and doesn't go into much depth on what women actually did outside a few of the better-known case studies. Benefit of the doubt, that's probably a lack of documentation rather than a research failing. Anyway I was embarrassingly relieved to find a full length book on WWI woman spies so this gets big points for that
April 24, 2019
Good overview of women's role in Britain's secret service.
October 24, 2022
A strong, academic argument for a more nuanced - and feminist approach - to the study of women’s wartime activities.
February 5, 2023
3.5 stars
Brief exploration of women as spies in the Great War, from a feminist perspective.
Brief exploration of women as spies in the Great War, from a feminist perspective.
August 13, 2009
I guess that this book was technically ok, but I got sick of the author repeating the same point over and over. I felt that this was more of a feminist point to be made rather that a detailed history of female intelligence. Pages 151-197 were notes and bibliography. I felt like I would have gotten more of what I was looking for if I had read some of the books that were referred to. I would like to note that I have no problem with feminism in general, but I was looking for a more detailed history of the female intelligence community during WW1 with an emphasis on specific women.
"...sexy female spy-prostitutes...", "...mythical female "vamp"...", yeah, I get it. I have seen movies.
"...sexy female spy-prostitutes...", "...mythical female "vamp"...", yeah, I get it. I have seen movies.
October 16, 2012
Loved the book
March 1, 2014
A fascinating survey of a largely ignored topic of First World War history.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews