Once he had to take over
the wheel in an emergency
on board a ship – in
a pink, see-through
nightgown! Luckily, the
12
crew knew his secret. The King of England, Edward VII, fell in love with ‘Edith’, and a young French officer proposed marriage. Another time, Herbert was chased
around a train by a German officer.
Eventually, Herbert was tired of having to live as a
girl and retired from spying. He returned to working
at sea, and sailed on an Australian expedition to the
Antarctic with famous Australian explorer Douglas
Mawson. He retired to Melbourne’s Mornington
Peninsula. There, he invited children to spend their
summer holidays with him and spent the evenings
telling them of his adventures.
FRENCH FRILLS AND
RUSSIAN ROYALTY
Herbert Dyce Murphy wasn’t the only male
cross-dressing spy. In 1755 a pretty young woman
left Paris, on her way to the court of Empress
Elizabeth of Russia. ‘She’ was the Chevalier d’Eon, an
excellent swordsman, who had played at dressing as
a woman at parties, to see if he could get away with
13
it. King Louis XV of France wanted to re-establish
contact with Russia without the British knowing, and
Chevalier d’Eon agreed to be his spy. A woman had a
better chance of surviving this mission, as she would
be less likely to be suspected of spying. Chevalier
d’Eon’s mission to have Empress Elizabeth sign a treaty
with France was successful, and he left for England. But in England he became a double agent, working both
for the British Secret Service and
the French. When he refused to
come home, he was paid off by
the French on the condition that
he wore women’s clothes for the
rest of his life. They thought he
couldn’t do them any harm
as a woman, but perhaps
Chevalier d’Eon was happier
wearing women’s clothes.
14
3
BELLE, BET
AND HARRIET:
WOMEN
UNDERCOVER
About 150 years ago, a terrible war was fought between
the Northern and Southern states of America. This was
the American Civil War (1861 to 1865).
One of the reasons for this war was slavery. The
South had slaves, the North didn’t. The slaves were the
descendants of African people kidnapped for the slave
trade. They wanted freedom, so many of them wanted
15
the Northern army to win. Slaves made good spies
because their masters didn’t think of them as people.
Secrets were discussed in front of them as if they
were invisible.
Women from both sides
also spied. Nobody paid much
attention to them either – a bad
mistake! Harriet Tubman was
Image rights
a very brave woman who had
unavailable
smuggled many slaves to freedom
before the war. She became a spy,
disguising herself as a field-hand
or farm wife while organising
16
spy networks for the Northern army. Harriet had been
a slave herself, before escaping to freedom, and if she
had been caught, she would have died horribly.
THE DOUBLE-CROSS-DRESSING SPY
Like other white women at this time, Sarah Emma
Edmonds disguised herself as a man to fight for the
Northern army, under the name ‘Frank Thompson’.
When a spy was needed for a mission in Virginia, she
disguised herself as a male slave. She wore a wig and coloured her skin, then joined a group of Southern
slaves who were building defence fortifications in
Yorktown. When the dye started to come off her skin,
she explained that she was turning white because her
mother was a white woman!
She then got herself the job of carrying water
around the Southern camp, so she could listen to
soldiers’ conversations and check out the fortifications.
One night, Sarah (still disguised as a man) was sent
to take supper to the guards, and was startled to be
handed a gun. Some of the guards had been shot and
the slaves had to replace them. Sarah took the gun
and slipped away to report the information about the
Southern fortifications to her own army.
Not many spies in the Civil War were trained.
Often a general only had to buy a newspaper from the
other side to find out the enemy’s plans! Cracking the
enemy code was sometimes as easy as reading
the washing.
Reading the washing . . . ?
SUDS AND SIGNALS
The Dabneys, a married black couple, escaped from
slavery and found their way to the Northern army’s
camp, on one side of the Rappahannock River in
Virginia. Mr Dabney was fascinated by the army’s flag
18
signalling system and asked many questions. He got the
hang of it, and then he and his wife made a plan.
Mrs Dabney went across the river and got a job as
a laundress, washing clothes at the headquarters of a
Southern general. Not long after, Mr Dabney began
to pass on accurate information to Northern officers
about the Southern army’s movements. The officers
were amazed. They asked, ‘How do you do it, without ever leaving the camp?’
Mr Dabney took them to the riverbank and showed
them. Across the river, Mrs Dabney was hanging
clothes on the line. The Dabneys had worked out
their own code. Each piece of clothing had a meaning.
Even the way it was hung told a story.
19
‘CRAZY BET’
One Southern woman, Elizabeth Van Lew, found a way
to help the Northern Union. She had been taught in
a Quaker school and the Quakers were firmly against
slavery. Elizabeth freed all her slaves and asked one
of them, Mary Bowser, to help her by working in the
home of the Southern President, Jeff Davis. Elizabeth
pretended to be insane, and became known in her
home town of Richmond, Virginia, as ‘Crazy Bet’.
Under this disguise, she set up a network of couriers to get information through to
the North.
While ‘Crazy Bet’ was
sending her reports on what
the Southern army was
doing, using secret code and
letters written in invisible
ink, her friend Mary Bowser
listened in to conversations
and memorised military
documents. She reported
20
to Crazy Bet by hiding documents in hollow eggs or in
the false bottoms of dinner trays.
After the war, Elizabeth Van Lew was shunned by
her neighbours as a traitor. Was she a traitor? Which is more important, being loyal to your country or acting
according to your beliefs?
Invisible letters
How do you make invisible ink? The simplest kind
is lemon juice. You dip a toothpick or a small stick in
the juice, write your message (in code, of cou
rse)
and let it dry. To read your secret message you need
to heat the paper. Use an iron to make your message
visible – the letters will appear brown.
BOYISH BELLE BOYD
There were also quite a few women doing their bit
for the Southern army. One of these was Belle Boyd.
She was captured a number of times, but was always
released. No one believed a woman could possibly be guilty of spying.
When Belle was sixteen, her town in West Virginia
was occupied by Northern troops. She gathered
information for the Southern army by mixing with
the Northerners. When soldiers tried to break into her
mother’s home, she shot one of
them. (This incident
later appeared in a
novel called Gone
With the Wind.)
She was tried in
court, but
was let off
because it was
in self-defence.
22
Belle moved to
another town, where
she could be of more use
collecting information
Image rights unavailable
about Northern troop
movements. Disguised as a
boy, she rode many miles
to deliver the information
to the Southern General,
‘Stonewall’ Jackson, then
continued with other
spy missions. When she became too well known to
continue spying, she got a job delivering important
secret documents from the Southern states to Europe.
On the way, the ship was captured, and Belle fell in
love with a man from the other side, a Northern naval
officer, Samuel Hardinge. He helped her escape to
England, and was dismissed from the navy for doing so.
They married and settled in England, but Samuel died
only a year later. After the war, Belle made a living as an actress and lecturer, telling people her story.
23
AERIAL SNOOPING
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4
SECRET SERVICE
IN THE TWO
WORLD WARS
In both World War I and World War II, many men
and women risked their lives to get urgent military
information through to their commanders. Some were
trained to be spies, others were asked to spy because of their special knowledge or skills. But some people took
up spying just for the money.
25
THE DANCING SPY
When we speak of a female
spy, we often call her
a ‘Mata Hari’. But
the real Mata Hari
wasn’t very good at spying
and no one is really sure who
she was working for. Her real
name was Margaretha Zelle
and she was famous as a dancer.
During World War I (1914–
1918), Mata Hari was asked to
spy for Germany. She decided
she could use the money.
Then she was offered a job spying for the French, who
were fighting the Germans. She agreed to do it, for
a million francs, but she was mistaken for another
German spy and was dragged off to England for
questioning. She said she was working for the French,
but the French spy agency denied it. Still, Mata Hari
It's True! Your Cat Could Be a Spy Page 2
