Queer Places:
New Southgate Cemetery and Crematorium
New Southgate, London Borough of Enfield, Greater London, England
Dorothy
Lawrence (4 October 1896 – 4 October 1964) was an English journalist who
posed as a male soldier in order to report from the front line during World
War I. She managed to obtain a Khaki soldier uniform from a friend, as well
as getting a false identity. However trench life affected her health, and
she later revealed her gender, afraid that if she needed medical attention
her true identity would be discovered and those who helped her would be
punished. After revealing herself she was suspected of being a spy and was
held under arrest until after the battle. She was then sent home under a
strict agreement not to publish her experiences. Lawrence slowly began to
lose her sanity and in the end eventually ended up dying in an insane
asylum.
Lawrence was born in Hendon,
Middlesex,[1][3]
of parents unknown. Probably illegitimate, she was adopted as a baby by a
guardian of the
Church of England.[2]
There is some discrepancy in her parentage. The
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (which at time of
publication in 2004 did not mention details of her life after 1919) reports
that Lawrence was born on 4 October 1896 in
Polesworth,
Warwickshire and was the second daughter of Thomas Hartshorn Lawrence
and Mary Jane Beddall.
Wanting to be a journalist, she had success in having some articles
published in
The
Times.[2]
At the outbreak of war she wrote to a number of the
Fleet Street newspapers in the hope of reporting the war.
Travelling to France in 1915,[1][2]
she volunteered as a civilian employee of the
Voluntary Aid Detachment but was rejected.[1]
Deciding to enter the war zone via the French sector as a freelance war
correspondent, she was arrested by
French Police in Senlis, 2 miles (3.2 km) short of the front line, and
ordered to leave.[1][4]
Spending the night sleeping on a haystack in a forest,[1]
she returned to Paris where she concluded that only in disguise could she
get the story that she wanted to write:[5]
I'll see what an ordinary English girl, without credentials or money
can accomplish.
She befriended two British Army soldiers in a Parisian café, and
persuaded them to smuggle her a khaki uniform, piece by piece, within their
washing; ten men eventually shared in this exploit, later referred to in her
book as the "Khaki accomplices".[1][6]
She then began practising transforming herself into a male soldier, by
flattening her figure with a home-made corset; using sacking and cotton-wool
to bulk out her shoulders; and persuaded two Scottish military policemen to
cut her long, brown hair in a short military style. She darkened her
complexion with Condy’s Fluid, a disinfectant made from
potassium permanganate; razored the pale skin of her cheeks in the hope
of giving herself a shaving rash; and finally added a shoe-polish tan.
Finally she asked her soldier friends to teach her how to drill and march.[2][6]
Wearing a blanket coat and no underwear, lest soldiers discover her
abandoned petticoats, she obtained forged identity papers as
Private Denis Smith of the 1st Bn,
Leicestershire Regiment, and headed for the front lines.[1][2][7]
Targeting the British sector of the
Somme, she set out by bicycle.[2][6]
On her way towards
Albert, Somme, she met
Lancashire
coalminer turned
British Expeditionary Force (BEF) tunnel-digging
sapper Tom
Dunn, who offered to assist her.[2]
Fearing for the safety of a lone woman amongst female-companionship starved
soldiers, Dunn found Lawrence an abandoned cottage in
Senlis Forest to sleep in. During her time on the frontline, she
returned there each night to sleep on a damp mattress, fed by any rations
that Dunne and his colleagues could spare.[2][6]
In her later book, Lawrence writes that Dunn found her work as a sapper
with the
179 Tunnelling Company, 51st Division,
Royal Engineers,[2]
a specialist mine-laying company that operated within 400 yards (370 m) of
the front line.[2][6]
Lawrence writes that she was involved in the digging of tunnels.[6]
But later evidence and correspondence from the time after her discovery by
British Army authorities, including from the files of
Sir Walter Kirke of the BEF's secret service, suggest that she did not
undertake this highly skilled digging work, but was at liberty and working
within the trenches.[2]
The toll of the job, and of hiding her true identity, soon gave her
constant chills and
rheumatism, and latterly fainting fits.[2]
Concerned that if she needed medical attention her true gender would be
discovered and the men who had befriended her would be in danger, after 10
days of service she presented herself to the commanding sergeant, who
promptly placed her under military arrest.[2]
Taken to the BEF headquarters and interrogated as a spy by a colonel, she
was declared a
prisoner of war. From there she was taken cross country by horse to
Third Army headquarters in
Calais,[2]
where she was interrogated by six generals and approximately twenty other
officers. She was ignorant of the term
camp follower (one meaning of which is "prostitute") and she later
recalled "We talked steadily at cross purposes. On my side I had not been
informed what the term meant, and on their side they continued unaware that
I remained ignorant! So I often appeared to be telling lies."[8]
From Calais she was taken to
Saint-Omer and further interrogated. The Army was embarrassed that a
woman had breached security and was fearful of more women taking on male
roles during the war if her story got out. On the orders of a suspicious
judge, fearing she could release sensitive intelligence, he ordered that she
remain in France until after the
Battle of Loos.[1]
Held within the
Convent de Bon Pasteur, she was also made to swear not to write about
her experiences, and signed an
affidavit to that effect, or she would be sent to jail.[1]
Sent back to London, she travelled across the
English Channel on the same ferry as
Emmeline Pankhurst, who asked her to speak at a suffragette meeting.[2][6]
Once in London, she tried to write about her experiences for
The Wide World Magazine, a London-based illustrated monthly, but had
to scrap her first book on the instructions of the War Office, which invoked
the
1914 Defence of the Realm Act to silence her.[2]
She later commented:[9]
In making that promise I sacrificed the chance of earning by
newspaper articles written on this escapade, as a girl compelled to earn
her livelihood.
In 1919, she moved to Canonbury,
Islington, and published an account of her experiences: Sapper
Dorothy Lawrence: The Only English Woman Soldier.[4][10]
Although well received in England, America and Australia,[2]
it was heavily censored by the
War
Office, and with a world wishing to move forward it did not become the
commercial success that she wanted.[2][6]
With no income and no credibility as a journalist, by 1925 her
increasingly erratic behaviour was brought to the attention of the
authorities. After confiding to a doctor that she had been raped in her
teenage years by her church guardian, and with no family to look after her,
she was taken into care and later deemed insane. Committed first to the
London County Mental Hospital at Hanwell in March 1925, she was later
institutionalised at the
Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum in
Friern Barnet, north London.[2][6]
She died at what was by then known as Friern Hospital in 1964.[1][6]
She was buried in a pauper's grave in
New Southgate Cemetery, where today the site of her plot is no longer
clear.[2]
In 2003, Richard Bennett, the grandson of Richard Samson Bennett who was
one of the soldiers who had helped Lawrence in France, found note of her
within the correspondence files of
Royal Engineers Museum in
Chatham, Kent.[1]
On further investigation, East Sussex historian Raphael Stipic found a
letter written by Sir Walter Kirke about Lawrence.[1]
Military historian Simon Jones then found a copy of Lawrence's book at the
REM and started collecting notes to write a biography.[2]
Her story later became part of an exhibition at the
Imperial War Museum on women at war. Jones later found that Lawrence's
rape allegations were sufficiently compelling to be included in her medical
records, held in the
London Metropolitan Archives but not available for general access.[2][11]
My published books:
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