For decades, their work has been hidden from view, their names missing from the history books.
Now, a new book is seeking to shine a light on the secret and unacknowledged contributions of female spies who worked for MI6 in the early 20th century, and establish their place in history using previously classified evidence and newly unearthed documents.
One of the women, Kathleen Pettigrew, was the most senior secretary in MI6, serving under five MI6 chiefs. There she met Ian Fleming, who – in his first draft of Casino Royale – named Miss Moneypenny “Miss ‘Petty’ Pettaval”.
Yet little is known about the work she did and the role she played in some of the biggest spy operations in British history.
Dr Claire Hubbard-Hall, author of the forthcoming book, Her Secret Service: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence, has discovered previously classified evidence that suggests Pettigrew was involved in the transfer of messages to and from Hut 3 at Bletchley Park, including the messages Alan Turing and his team were decoding using the Enigma machine.
She also oversaw radio communications between Bletchley Park and MI6 field agents operating overseas in the second world war, accompanying Stewart Menzies, the chief of MI6, to top-secret wartime meetings with Winston Churchill.
Pettigrew – who received an MBE in 1946 and an OBE when she retired in 1958 – wielded far more power and authority in her role than the fictional Miss Moneypenny, Hubbard-Hall said.
“Being deemed an unassuming woman – a secretary – was the perfect camouflage. She did a lot more,” said Hubbard-Hall, who is giving a talk about her discoveries at the Chelsea history festival on Wednesday. “She was perhaps the only person in Whitehall who knew every single secret. In terms of the secret state, everything would have passed her desk.”
Hubbard-Hall was able to trace Pettigrew’s 37-year career in MI6 by figuring out that, for security purposes, Pettigrew typed her initials on the top left corner of the secret documents she wrote, some of which have been declassified and released into the National Archives.
These documents reveal she began her career in special branch during the first world war, sitting in on police interrogations of undercover German spies, including Mata Hari, an infamous “femme fatale who took men to bed to get their secrets and was eventually caught and executed by firing squad”, said Hubbard-Hall.
Until now, little had been known about Pettigrew, a shopkeeper’s daughter who was born in Bermondsey, in south-east London, in 1898. She never married or had children.
After she retired, a younger male relative jokingly asked her if she had been like Miss Moneypenny. He told Hubbard-Hall that without hesitation, Pettigrew responded: “I was Miss Moneypenny. But with more power.”
Other women whose historic contributions to British intelligence are revealed in the book include Agnes Blake, who joined MI6 as its first female agent in 1909, and Winifred “Winnie” Spink, the first female agent sent to Russia, who witnessed the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.
Blake spoke fluent German and travelled frequently to Germany. She was hired two months after the Secret Service Bureau was set up, in the run-up to the first world war. Her brother-in-law was a German aristocrat with links to the Kaiser and she was asked to supply the bureau with detailed assessments of German military officers she met and “to pass on some early information, like an early warning system, if Germany was thinking of invading Britain or declaring war”.
At the time, fiction writers were “whipping up a spy fever frenzy by writing stories about German spies running amok all over Britain, committing sabotage,” Hubbard-Hall said. “That was part of the reason the Secret Service Bureau was set up.”
Blake’s living relatives had no idea she was the first woman to spy for MI6, until Hubbard-Hall got in touch. “They found it quite surreal – and remarkable.”
Spink, a suffragette who was fluent in French, German and Russian, was sent to Russia in 1916 on the same pay as her male colleagues: £360 a year.
Hubbard-Hall contacted Spink’s surviving family and discovered a diary she kept about her time at the British Intelligence Mission station in Petrograd.
“She made several notes about Grigori Rasputin, especially cafes he used to frequent and his home address. Then there is one mention – really out of character – that on the night he was murdered, she took a joyride through the city in the Mission car.”
Rasputin was a promiscuous mystic and faith healer who was adored by the imperial Russian family. He had powerful aristocratic enemies in the Russian court, and there is evidence in the National Archives that the British ambassador George Buchanan had heard about a plot to kill Rasputin a week before the assassination took place.
Hubbard-Hall thinks Spink’s joyride provided British intelligence officers with an alibi, should the tsar later suspect British agents were somehow involved. “It’s very convenient, timing-wise, to have someone driving around Petrograd in the British Intelligence Mission car on the exact night Rasputin was murdered,” Hubbard-Hall said.
Her Secret Service by Claire Hubbard-Hall (Orion Publishing Co, £25). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
