de Bettignies, Louise (d. 1918)

French spy during World War I Name variations: Alice Dubois. Born Louise de Bettignies in Lille, France; died in prison on September 27, 1918.

In 1914, at the onset of World War I, Louise de Bettignies, an attractive, intelligent French woman, fled the German invasion of her country along with many other French refugees. Crossing the Channel into England, she brought with her military information from French officials as well as from her own observations. She was enlisted by the British as a spy and returned to France under the name of Alice Dubois. The system of espionage that she organized and operated was in place until shortly before the war ended.

Posing as a lace peddler, de Bettignies worked out of her hometown of Lille and enlisted some 40 agents to work with her. Among them was Paul Bernard, who at one time wrote in coded shorthand a 1,600-word spy report that fit beneath a stamp on a postcard, and Marie-Leonie Vanhoutte , who, posing as a cheese peddler named Charlotte, worked with de Bettignies gathering information. De Bettignies made trips to Holland once a week carrying hidden information. Said to be ingenious at devising ways to hide her messages—using toys, bars of chocolate, umbrellas, and even the frame of a pair of glasses—she once carried a message written in invisible ink on transparent paper placed beneath the glossy surface of a photograph. De Bettignies and her partner Vanhoutte were eventually arrested by German secret agents. Although convicted and sentenced to die, both women were spared from execution at the last minute. De Bettignies died in prison on September 27, 1918, a few weeks before the end of the war.