Secret Servants of the Crown – The Women Who Worked in British Intelligence

The fictional character of Miss Moneypenny was created by Ian Fleming in his thrillers featuring the secret agent, 007, James Bond. In the films, Moneypenny was played by six different actresses, the most memorable is the first, Lois Maxwell. Sean Connery and Roger Moore famously flirted with Maxwell’s Moneypenny, who guarded the inner sanctum of M, the head of MI6, UK’s secret foreign intelligence service. While fans of the films may have regarded Moneypenny as just a secretary, she was inspired by Kathleen Pettigrew, who worked in Britain’s secret service for more than four decades. She was involved in two high profile cases, the apprehension of World War II spy, Mata Hari, and the unmasking of MI6 officer Kim Philby, who was a spy for the Soviet Union.

After more than a hundred years of being relegated to history’s dust bin, women who risked their lives, in Britain and the U.S., working behind the scenes for their governments, whether as scientists, researchers, mathematicians or spies, are having their moment. While many of these books and films featuring these women are fictional, others are based on historical facts. The Bletchley Circle, highlighted the women who were code breakers during World War II, while Hidden Figures focused on Black women mathematicians who worked at NASA. Dr. Claire Hubbard-Hall’s non-fiction Secret Servants of the Crown: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence, is a valuable addition to this growing historical genre. 

Claire Hubbard-Hall

Hubbard-Hall’s book is well-researched but not a dry narrative. Instead, she brings the reader inside the lives of these women, who may have risked everything to serve the Crown. Women have long been seen as detail-oriented and praised for their ability to focus on minutiae that others might overlook but often get to the heart of the matter. They often began in positions that were considered “women’s work,” like typing, shorthand, filing, and answering the phone. Another advantage: women, especially during the time period covered in this book, are often “hiding in plain sight,” but able to use their sixth sense to gather information that often proved to be invaluable. Once they proved their reliability, they were handed other assignments that slowly transformed them into spies.

One incident highlights one woman’s attention to detail. A German-American who was visiting England insisted he was just a tourist. But one of the women in the registry office noticed that his name was the same as a sea captain who MI5 had on its watch list. Her cancer was disregarded as too “far-fetched,” but later proved to be true. The spy was apprehended.

Women looked out for each other in this male-dominated environment. One such women was Edith Lomax who made sure that sanitary pads were available so that women having their periods could be accommodated. (It wasn’t until the 1920s that Cellucotton Company introduced Kotex pads so that women who longer had to rely on sanitary towels.) Lomax also made sure that the ladies rest rooms were cleaned regularly and the sanitary bins emptied. 

One chapter, “Station X,” covers the work of the women who worked at Bletchley Park, that served as the code-breaking heart of British intelligence during WW2. “Successful code breaking did to rest solely on the inspiration of geniuses but rather on the mundane act of processing and managing vast amounts of information,” Hubbard-Hall writes. Women took on the roles of administrators, card-index compilers, machine operators and messengers. The women came from all socio-economic backgrounds, debutantes working alongside women from much more humble backgrounds.

That’s not to say that these women spent all their time in save research facilities. Many of them actually worked as spies, placing themselves in danger. Rita Winsor and Ana Molesworth (their names have never been officially disclosed) operated as secretaries at various embassies and consulates across Europe. They had several hair-raising moments helping Jews escape the Nazis, until they were safely back in Britain.

While many women are mentioned in the book, the one who gets the most space and emerges as a central character is Kathleen Pettigrew. In the chapter, “Tinker, Tailor, Spy, Secretary,” Hubbard-Hall delves into Pettigrew’s role in outing Soviet spy Philby. It’s a fascinating chapter, more so since it happened in 1946 after the war and during the birth of the cold war between Russia and the West. In the book’s epilogue, Hubbard-Hall notes that Kathleen lived out her life in the Geldside Nursing Home in Devon. People knew her as “Churchill’s secretary.” She was 92 when she died and no one from MI6 came to her funeral. But she lives on in every James Bond film.

Secret Servants of the Crown: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence
Claire Hubbard-Hall

Top photo: Bigstock

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