Historical Heroines Read online

  It was a massive shock for Ada to discover how desperately ill Lorne was and the realisation she would have to fend for them alone. She refused to give in and braving the elements taught herself how to trap properly (the men’s traps had always failed) and conquered her fear of guns. When Lorne died in June, she only had the feline Vic for company. She was so lonely that she would sit beside Knight’s corpse and talk to him. She was determined to stay alive and was finally rescued by a supply ship that came a few months later. She and the cat were the only survivors from the original party.

  It had been an expedition of madness.

  Agent 355

  Say it enough times and it’s just as catchy as 007. Except this renegade, a woman during the American Revolution, was effectively the USA’s first female spy.

  Agent 355 was the only woman in the six-member Culper Ring, a spy network created by US Major Benjamin Tallmadge on the orders of President Washington in 1778. This was during the British occupation of New York City and the Culper Ring would play a massive part in helping the Americans win their independence.

  We’re talking invisible ink and secret codes. In non-spy speak, the number 355 simply meant ‘female spy’. They weren’t called patriots in petticoats for nothing. If a female spy wore a black petticoat, it meant she had valuable information. White handkerchiefs referred to a safe rendezvous to exchange that info. And red petticoats meant a letter from Washington himself had arrived. FYI, ‘711’ referred to George Washington. (We’ll let you try and work out the rationale.)

  Agent 355, or ‘The Lady’, could have referred to any number of women working in New York City who were helping with information. Was she a specific person? Was she, as some suggest, Anna Smith Strong (also known as Nancy), whose husband Selah was captured and imprisoned on the notorious prison ship Jersey? Left to manage her family and New York farm alone, it’s highly possible she worked for the Revolutionary cause and used her laundry line to send out covert information. (In honour of the famous general one of her sons was even named George Washington.)

  Was she Elizabeth Burgin, known by many revolutionaries as a true heroine for delivering letters and helping an alleged 200 prisoners of war escape the clutches of the British? Although the majority of her actions are still shrouded in mystery, they were enough to ensure that Congress awarded her an annual pension.

  Was she Sarah Horton Townsend, a cousin of Quaker Robert Townsend (code name Culper Jr, and known as 723) who was in charge of the Culper network? Or Sally Townsend, one of Robert’s sisters? Their home, Raynham Hall in New York’s Oyster Bay, was taken over by British officers when they captured Long Island. Sally fell in love with Lieutenant Colonel John Graves Simcoe – but on discovering vital information, did she betray him for the Revolutionary cause? Then there’s Lydia Barrington Darragh, who managed to alert Washington to an impending attack on his troops.

  Underestimating women being the norm, men on both sides of the American Revolution, whether Loyalist or Revolutionary, would have found it hard to countenance that their gentle, home-making, matronly women were involved in espionage. A perfect cover, then. If they had been caught, they would have been executed, no questions asked.

  Whoever she was, she was damned good at her job and clearly had access to the upper echelons of British political and military society. In a massive coup for espionage, 355 helped expose Benedict Arnold and Major John Andre, the men in charge of England’s intelligence operations in the Big Apple, who were fully prepared to betray their American side for the British.

  Often referred to as the hidden daughter of the American Revolution, it is fair to say that General George Washington owed 355 a great deal.

  Agostina Domenech (4 March 1786–29 May 1857)

  Also known as Augustina, Maid of Saragossa and the Spanish Joan of Arc, she was an ordinary woman who became a guerrilla fighter, warrior and heroine, immortalised in art by Francisco de Goya in his etchings Disasters of War and included in Lord Byron’s poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.

  It’s thought Agostina was born in Reus, Tarragona, her family later moving to Madrid. She married young and had a son known only as Eugenio.

  The Spanish royal family were prisoners of Bonaparte, who had installed his brother Joseph as de facto leader. Furious, the Spanish rose up in revolt during the Peninsular War (1807–14). The Spanish army was led by General José de Palafox.

  Agostina was part of a larger women’s resistance unit led by young noblewoman Countess Burita. In the summer of 1808 the unit defended the previously peaceful northern Spanish city of Zaragoza, part of Aragon, when it was attacked by Napoleon’s army. Agostina helped the resistance by supplying the exhausted Spanish soldiers on the rampart walls with apples and water.

  Terrified of the overwhelming odds stacked against them, and completely unprepared for a battle with the more experienced French, the Spanish abandoned their posts. Agostina, however, in scenes likely reminiscent of an Expendables movie, was made of stronger stuff.

  Legend suggests that her lover was in charge of one of the cannon and was killed, leaving it unmanned. Hastily reloading the cannon and relighting the fuse from her dead paramour’s hand, she let rip with a ‘26-pounder’, literally in the faces of the group of oncoming French fighters. We’re talking about a cannon that would normally need a team of men to operate it. And she did it by herself. The French were obliterated. General Palafox is quoted as saying he witnessed the event himself.

  Blown away (not literally) by her outstanding bravery, the Spanish returned to their posts and together with Agostina carried on the fight for several weeks. The French were forced to temporarily lift their siege of the city. They came back later in the year, storming through the city, house by house, and resumed the devastating siege, where it’s estimated that between 40,000 and 50,000 people died. In the midst of the fighting, Agostina was captured, only to escape later (see Expendables II).

  As a female fighter, she may have been rare, but, in the words of John Lawrence Tone, ‘women’s resistance – through taking part in public demonstrations and revolts, stealing goods and weapons to supply the Spanish troops, and providing channels of communication and information to the guerilla groups – played a vital role in the Spanish defeat of Napoleon’. Later on she was made an actual officer in the Spanish army and is described as a guerrilla fighter, receiving a state pension and army medals for her efforts.

  Anne of Cleves (22 September 1515–16 July 1557)

  In case you can’t remember which of Henry VIII’s wives she was, you might have to count on your fingers, or use the old adage ‘divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived’. Here’s a clue: Anne was Number Four. There’s much more to the women in Henry’s life than a popular rhyme or having their lives purpose summed up by its inclusion in a list.

  The daughter of Duke Johann III (known as John the Peaceful) and Maria of Jülich-Berg, Anne was, like many noble women of her era, used on the marriage market for political expediency. Arguably Henry VIII’s most successful queen, Anne of Cleves was married to him for only six months. We’d argue that she got the better end of the deal by being relieved of her royal duty so early on.

  Interestingly, Anne has been widely dismissed by history as the ugly one who Harry got rid of; the one wife for whom the legendary lothario could not ‘get it up’ for; the conjugal failure. So repulsed by her was he that he furiously called for a divorce from the ‘Flanders mare’ (by the way, this phrase was only used to describe her decades after her death, by Bishop Gilbert Burnet).

  We’d like to put things into perspective. Whilst her physical reality may not have lived up to the image of her depicted in Hans Holbein’s famous portrait, we prefer to imagine Anne’s thoughts when she first caught sight of Henry. Popularly regarded as one of the world’s most handsome, virile men, by the time they met, Henry was a mess. He was obese with a supperating, oozing, smelly and ulcerated wound on his leg, inflicted while participating in a jousting event.


  ‘I like her not! I like her not!’ yelled poor, old, disappointed Henry on meeting her for the first time. Seen from a different perspective, his outburst could be viewed as that of a petulant child, whose attempts at surprising his bride-to-be with a kiss whilst dressed in disguise (as was the tradition) failed miserably; he gave Anne the shock of her life and she allegedly spouted off a slew of German curses at him before realising who he was. It seemed the Flanders way of doing things was not up to scratch and the 24-year-old was simply not sophisticated enough for the Tudor court.

  Their marriage was not consummated. Rather conveniently, Henry’s spin doctors would have it that Anne’s hideous features rendered him impotent. The real reason probably had more to do with the aforementioned huge girth and stinking, ulcerated leg. All this was moot as by 1540 Henry was head over heels (an unfortunate turn of phrase considering her eventual fate) with Anne’s lady-in-waiting Catherine Howard.

  Sophistication or not, Anne kept a level head on her shoulders (pun intended) and outlived not just her ex-husband, but all of Henry’s other wives. She was clever and knew how to survive. She didn’t put up a fight against the annulment and made everything easy for Henry, helping clear the way for his next marriage, a matter of weeks after the papers were signed.

  She also arguably did better in the divorce than Henry did, awarded extensive property (including Hever Castle, Anne Boleyn’s former home, showing Henry’s propensity for neatly recycling property as well as wives), a generous income for life, jewels and the good favour of the king, who would hereafter refer to her as ‘sister’. The divorce made her one of the wealthiest women in England (nice work if you can get it). Most importantly, she lived, which is more than can be said of Thomas Cromwell (who pushed for the marriage) and Catherine Howard, his fifth wife, who were both put to death.

  She is buried in Westminster Abbey, the only one of Henry’s wives to be afforded the honour.

  Aspasia of Miletus (c. 470–c. 400 BC)

  Information on individual Greek women is in short supply, making the fact that we do know something of Aspasia all the more remarkable. Described as one of the most famous women of Athens, her name, which may not have been her real one, variously means ‘welcome’, ’embrace’ or ‘desired one’. But she is still only remembered for being the mistress of Pericles, the great statesman and politician from Athens, and through the opinions (good, bad and downright ugly) of the many Greek writers and poets of the day who spoke of her.

  Born in Miletus (in modern-day Turkey), Aspasia’s family were wealthy enough for her to benefit from a fantastic education, better than the average Greek woman. Depending on whose viewpoint you take, on emigrating to Athens in around 450 BC, she was either a brothel keeper, hetaira (prostitute who offered companionship and educated conversation, similar to a courtesan) or ran an intellectual salon for the great and good men of Greece. A hetaira would be conversant in topics ranging from science, literature and art to history, politics and philosophy.

  A contemporary and friend of Socrates, she’s mentioned by Plato and also in the writings of Plutarch, Aristophanes and Xenophen, suggesting that she was well-known and respected. She’s also cited in the Encyclopaedia Britannica of the day, the tenth-century Byzantine Suda, and described as ‘clever with regards to words’, and was a philosophy and rhetoric teacher.

  She and Pericles, who divorced his wife for her, had a son together by 440 BC, also called Pericles. Whether they ever married is unclear, although it is doubtful because she was a ‘metic’, or immigrant, as opposed to a ‘real’ Athenian citizen, and the laws of the land would have prohibited their union. Ironically, because of her immigrant status, she wasn’t bound by the usual restrictions applied to Greek women; she had much more freedom.

  Regardless of the rules and in direct opposition to how Greek men were meant to treat their wives or partners, Pericles was open in his admiration and adoration of Aspasia. Apparently, people were appalled that he publicly kissed her goodbye before he went to work and on his return home. He received a lot of criticism for this from Greek writers and poets of the day, whilst she was viciously slandered (‘whore’ or ‘dog-eyed concubine’) because of her unseemly influence on him.

  Although satirist Lucian of Samosata called her a ‘model of wisdom’, Aspasia faced fierce disapproval from the women of Athens, who accused her of corrupting the women of their city to satisfy the sexual perversions of her partner Pericles. After he died she went on to have an affair with Pericles’s friend Lysicles; after his death, she disappears from history.

  Aud/Unn or Audunn the Deep-minded (AD 834–900)

  The ninth century was a busy time for Norwegians, with many deciding to emigrate and trade with their neighbours. With last names like Skull-Splitter and Blood-Axe, which leave little to the imagination, they also did a lot of raiding and had rather complicated lines of family, alliances and lineage. They are also credited with bestowing on us the traditional Icelandic Sagas, some of the world’s most incredible and significant poetry, and were legendary explorers, storytellers and artists.

  Aud was the daughter of Norwegian Viking chieftain Ketil Flatnose and his wife Ketil and the wife of Olaf the White, the Viking King of Dublin. Her gods were Odin, Thor and Freya. Thanks to her wealth (she’s also known as Aud the Deep-Wealthy) and high rank, as a woman Aud had considerable freedom (relative to her fellow women across the rest of the world).

  After being widowed, she helped her son Thorstein the Red conquer half of Scotland before he was killed in battle, after which Aud took a good look at her future prospects in Scotland and realised they were bleak. She had a huge Viking merchant ship, or knarr, made in secret from wood in nearby forests. Then she got the rest of her family together, threw in some Scottish and Irish slaves and ‘got the hell out of Dodge’, decamping to a largely unexplored Iceland. Upon arrival, she gave the slaves their freedom and land. Let’s not underestimate the enormity of what they faced on their journey in an open boat, crammed with people, livestock and the rest of their household. Consolidating her dynasty, she married off two of her granddaughters on the way, during stops at the Faroe Islands and the Orkneys.

  In spite of a frosty Icelandic welcome from her brother, she claimed vast amounts of land, settled down in Laxdale and was an early convert to Christianity. With the men in her life dead, she became a true Viking matriarch in Iceland; her exploits are famously recounted in the Laxdaela Saga.

  Upon her death, she was given a no-expenses send-off to Valhalla and is the only recorded Viking woman to be honoured with a full Viking ship funeral.

  Audrey Hepburn (4 May 1929–20 January 1993)

  In a world obsessed with image and celebrity, pictures of glamorous Audrey Hepburn from the Hollywood era still decorate our walls in boxed IKEA frames.

  Whilst it’s almost impossible to talk about her without referencing her iconic beauty, it was something she was not concerned with. It must have shocked Hollywood to the core that she cared not a jot about ageing. She could have been a personality reduced to mass-produced merchandise reminiscent of Hollywood’s Golden Age, but thankfully her humanitarian work with UNICEF has helped give us a more balanced, three-dimensional perspective on this amazing woman, member of the Dutch Resistance and human rights campaigner. This is one film icon who possessed even more star quality in her private life than on screen.

  Audrey lived under the terrifying Nazi occupation of Holland in the town of Arnhem, which witnessed excessive cruelty, battles between the Germans and the British, as well as starvation and deprivation. Her childhood story reads like one of La La Land’s better scripts, set against a dangerous background of Nazi occupation, involvement with the Dutch Resistance and secret ballet performances in blacked out rooms to silent applause.

  From the age of 12 she, like many Dutch children, delivered notes hidden in her shoes to the Dutch Resistance. On one occasion she was late home from her tutor’s house and in the precarious situation of being out beyond curfew. She must hav
e felt absolute terror when she was stopped by a German soldier who demanded to see inside her shoes. By sheer luck that day she was not carrying her contraband and the soldier let her go home. She also escaped the Nazis when she was rounded up one day with other women. Spotting a chance to flee, she ran to hide in the cellar of a city council building.

  This small Dutch town faced further trauma when the people suffered terrible starvation in the so-called ‘Hunger Winter‘ of 1944. When UNICEF’s forerunner the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration arrived to help, Audrey remembered clearly the first two things they gave her – cigarettes and condensed milk. This was the start of her lifelong journey with UNICEF helping the most impoverished children in the world.

  A survivor of the war’s atrocities, nightmares she carried to the end of her days, she channelled her energies into helping the most disadvantaged kids across the globe. She understood that as a famous actress she could draw much-needed publicity for terrible situations throughout the world. Travelling extensively for UNICEF, from Ethiopia to the Sudan to Bangladesh and many other distressed countries, she was a beacon of hope and comfort to the children she met.

  Azucena Villaflor (7 April 1924–10 December 1977)

  This woman had guts. She was an ordinary wife and mother, until political circumstances forced her down an entirely different road; one where she would found a human rights movement against a corrupt dictatorship. It was a path that would ultimately lead to her own death, together with the other founding members of the Madres of the Desaparecidos (Disappeared) movement, or the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.