Louise de Bettignies
| Louise de Bettignies | |
|---|---|
Louise de Bettignies before the war
|
|
| Born |
15 July 1880 Saint-Amand-les-Eaux, France |
| Died | 27 September 1918 (aged 38) Cologne, Germany |
| Nationality | French |
| Known for | Espionage |
Louise Marie Jeanne Henriette de Bettignies (15 July 1880 - 27 September 1918) was a French secret agent who spied on the Germans for the British during World War I using the pseudonym of Alice Dubois.
Traces of the Bettignies family date back to 1228. The Lordship of Bettignies was located near the city of Mons in what is now Belgium. There are further traces of the family in 1507. The ancestors of Louise were involved in justice, the military and the church, and were also creators and artists.
Peterinck de La Gohelle, Louise's great-grandfather, originated in Lille. He settled in Tournai in 1752, where he founded a factory creating porcelain art on the quai des Salines. This factory was called the imperial and royal factory. In 1787 the Duke of Orleans ordered a magnificent service in blue decor from Tournai, of which some pieces are held in the .
In 1818 Maximilen Joseph de Bettignies, advocate to the council of Tournai, General Counsel and magistrate, opened a depot at rue du Wacq in Saint-Amand-les-Eaux, which he gave to his son Maximilian. On 31 July 1818 M.J. de Bettignies filed a patent No. 521 on the paste with which to make large vases of bone china (Brev. d'inv., volume XVI, p. 276). Tariffs were high, and the deposit became factory, after taken over supply of material for the porcelain maker Fauquez, which he improved. First installed in rue Marion, in 1837 the factory was established at a place called Le Moulin des Loups, on the road to Valenciennes. In 1831, Maximilian Joseph obtained French nationality. In 1833 he married, in Orchies, Adeline Armande Bocquet, who bore him four children, of whom Henri was the father of Louise.
In 1866 Henri de Bettignies married Julienne Mabille de Poncheville, from an old family of lawyers in the north of France. The Mabille family had its origins in the Pas-de-Calais at that time, and for several generations they were notaries in Valenciennes.
On 30 June 1880 Henry and Maximilian de Bettignies ceded their business to Gustave Dubois and Léandre Bouquiaux.
Despite her father's financial difficulties, Louise de Bettignies obtained a secondary education in Valenciennes with the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. According to her cousin, André Mabille de Poncheville,
She was six years older than me. I saw her most often at Valenciennes, at the house of our common grandmother, [...] Louise was blonde, frail in appearance, with a mobile face and piercing eyes that seemed to dart in all directions ... It is true that the days when I saw her, when she was about twelve, were her holidays. She was a boarder with her sister, Germaine, at the Convent of the Holy Union of the Sacred Hearts, where the good nuns fed that lively child opinions that were similar to those of her grandmother. However, she worked so as to give them satisfaction.
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