Marte Richer – ‘The Lark’
Although she started life as a tailor’s apprentice, clearly the sewing and mending business was slow because Marte Richer was a prostitute by the age of eighteen. But this didn’t stop her from rising up, slowly, thorugh the ranks until she married a rich industrialist who taught her how to fly planes. In 1916, following the death of her husband, she was recruited by the French under Cptn Georges Ladoux and was tasked with becoming the lover of a high ranking German attaché. Thorugh this connection she discovered that her boss was a double-agent and she had him arrested. Ladoux later wrote a best-selling book detailing her (greatly embellished) adventures as a woman spy and she became famous.
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