Have a question? Need assistance? Use our online form to ask a librarian for help.
Chat with a librarian, Monday through Friday, 12-2 pm Eastern Time (except Federal Holidays).
Chronicling America is a searchable digital collection of historic newspaper pages through 1963 sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.
Follow ChronAm by subscribing to email alerts and RSS feeds.
Also, see the Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries, a searchable index to newspapers published in the United States since 1690, which helps researchers identify what titles exist for a specific place and time, and how to access them.
Whether for love, country or just a thrill, women from both sides rose up as spies during World War One. Seductive and cunning, they were instrumental in shaping the outcome of the war, provided that they weren’t caught before they could share their information. Read more about it!
The information in this guide focuses on primary source materials found in the digitized historic newspapers from the digital collection Chronicling America.
The timeline below highlights important dates related to this topic and a section of this guide provides some suggested search strategies for further research in the collection.
| October 31, 1915 | Edith Cavell’s death and resultant feminist argument. |
|---|---|
| June 4, 1916 | The broken plan of a broken-armed woman. |
| December 13, 1917 | Baroness Zollner arrested in Annapolis, sending area into uproar. |
| January 25, 1918 | Thrilling experiences of a Maude Muller who ran down German plotters. |
| February 13, 1918 | The love tricks of the woman spy. |
| April 7, 1918 | Queens of the spy world whose intrigues sway the fate of nations. |
| June 2, 1918 | “Mme. Storch - Vampire and German Spy” column begins. |
| June 11, 1918 | The Story of Felice Schmidt. |
| June 23, 1918 | Olga von Marx reveals her life as German spy in an on-going column. |
| May 16, 1919 | The two belated funerals of hero-spy Cavell; Cavell celebrated. |
| October 21, 1919 | Edith Cavell’s life made into an opera. |
| September 25, 1920 | Women spies are selfish. |
| April 20, 1920 | Cavell memorial unveiled. (While not a spy as we generally see them, newspapers and popular culture of the time often referred to her as a “spy-nurse,” or the “nurse who was executed by the Germans as a spy.” Controversy as to whether she was or was not a spy still exists.) |
| July 2, 1922 | Mistinguett's heroic sacrifice for love and France. |
