11/11/2025
England’s only Woman Soldier in the WW1 trenches.
Today being 107 years since Armistice Day, I turned on the news and heard an incredible story: there was a woman who had cycled to the Somme, and joined the 179th Tunnelling Company, working underneath no-man’s-land yards towards the enemy.
This year, a gravestone has been put in place by the Royal Engineers Association at her last resting place of New Southgate Cemetery, and the new grave marker ceremony took place on 5 November.
I could not believe it – surely this had to be Dorothy Lawrence, and I knew all about her!
Way back in 2018, Dorothy was one of five women I focused on at the Who Do You Think You Are? Show in Birmingham in my talk ‘World War One Women in War’. At the time, there was no gravestone for her, and very few people attending the talk had even heard of her.
I was so staggered to hear the news this morning on the BBC news that she finally has a gravestone befitting her story. I was delighted to see Dorothy appear on national television. But what was her life story?
Dorothy’s story
Dorothy was born in 1888 in London to a professional musician who used the name Lawrence and Elliott.
After her mother’s death, she was sent to live with wealthy but problematic guardians, the Fitzgeralds, at The Close in the shadow of Salisbury Cathedral. In the 1911 census, she was living as a journalist as ‘Dorothy Lawrence’ just around the corner from West Kensington tube station.
She wanted to give a female perspective of the men on the front lines, from within their own ranks. Having been rejected as a war correspondent by several outlets, Dorothy was determined to prove the editors wrong. She cycled through France and was able to obtain a second-hand uniform, creating a new identity for herself as ‘Private Denis Smith’. She asked her soldier friends to teach her how to drill and march.
Dorothy toiled for almost two weeks in the sniper-infested trenches of the Somme in the month of August 1915. Weakened by exhaustion, contaminated water, and the conditions in the trenches – Dorothy fell so ill that she knew she could not continue. Rather than incriminate those who had helped her, at this point she revealed her identity.
After the Armistice, she published her experiences as ‘Sapper Dorothy: the Only English Woman Soldier in the Royal Engineers…’ but the world was weary of war, and it did not sell well. Dorothy suffered significant psychological consequences from her relationship with her guardians and from her experiences. She struggled to find work in the 1920s and was admitted to a mental hospital in challenging circumstances. In her words she wrote: ‘In this big London city I do not think that anyone felt lonelier than I’.
On her mother’s side, Dorothy does have first cousins (twice removed) and several were able to attend the new graver marker ceremony earlier this month.
For decades her story was completely forgotten. I am pleased that we were able to give her some space in the NEC Arena back at the Who Do You Think You Are? event, and I leave you with a photograph of Dorothy’s gravestone now in situ, at New Southgate Cemetery.
Incidentally: Dorothy’s father may have been a man named ‘Brown’. It may be impossible at this distance in time to establish his identity.
Written by: Kirsty Gray, Managing Director
