Louise de Bettignies

Born in Saint-Amand-les-Eaux on 15 July 1880 into a family of six children, she studied at Valenciennes, then in England and finally at the University of Lille. She first worked as a tutor in Italy, Austria and Germany. Upon her return to Lille, she was taken on as a Red Cross nurse at the outbreak of the War. She assisted the soldiers who defended the town in October 1914. Very soon, she was smuggling correspondence from the occupied zone into the free zone. She chose the pseudonym Alice Dubois, setting up the Alice Network. From January 1915, she transmitted essential information until September of that year, when she was arrested. She was sentenced to death in Brussels by a military court. Her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment but she died of pleurisy in Cologne in September 1915. Nicknamed the "Joan of Arc of the North" by Bishop Charost, her body was repatriated to Lille for a great official ceremony on 16 March 1920 and she was then buried in Saint-Amand-les-Eaux.