Maison Louise de Bettignies

Born into a family of steel industrialists on July 15, 1880 in Saint-Amand-les-Eaux, Louise de Bettignies grew up in the North of France and then left for England in 1898 to pursue brilliant higher education. Back in Lille after the death of her father in 1903, she completed her studies at the Faculty of Letters. She became a teacher in the most important families of Europe until the beginning of 1914.between February and October 1915, taking advantage of her knowledge of foreign languages (she spoke French, English, German and Italian), she integrated the Family Post Office and organized an intelligence network for the Allies by observing and transmitting the positions of German troops. She œuvres for the British intelligence services under the pseudonym of Alice Dubois. She was finally arrested on October 20, 1915 in Froyennes, Belgium, tried and sentenced to death. Her sentence was commuted to forced labor and she was imprisoned in Siegburg, but she refused to make ammunition. She was thrown into a dungeon, where she probably contracted pneumonia and died on September 27, 1918 in Cologne, a few weeks before the Armistice. A national funeral was held for her in 1920, before she was laid to rest in the central cemetery of Saint-Amand-les-Eaux.
After the war, the British army awarded Louise de Bettignies the highest honors. In France, she was promoted to Chevalier de la Légion déHonneur and awarded the Croix de Guerre with palm. Her birth house, built by the boat manufacturer Senelar, dates from the 1840s. Located near the Scarpe River, in the street that bears his name, it has been the subject of a complete rehabilitation.