Marguerite Harrison
| Marguerite Harrison | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | Marguerite Elton Baker October 1879 Baltimore, Maryland |
| Died | July 16, 1967 (aged 88) |
| Occupation | Journalist, spy |
| Nationality | American |
| Spouse | Thomas B. Harrison (1901–1914), Arthur Blake |
Marguerite Elton Harrison (1879–1967) was a reporter, spy, film maker, and translator who was one of the four founding members of the Society of Woman Geographers.
Born Marguerite Elton Baker, one of two daughters of wealthy Maryland shipping magnate, Bernard N. Baker and his wife Elizabeth Elton Livezey. Born into inherited wealth, she and her sisters were raised as society princesses amidst opulence. She adored her father, who built and would later lose his lucrative Atlantic Transport Line, but her relationship with her overprotective and all-controlling mother would be distant and cold. In 1907, her sister Elizabeth Baker married Albert C. Ritchie who would later become the 49th Governor of Maryland. When Harrison's first and only semester at Radcliffe College was punctuated by an affair with her landlady's son, her mother abruptly shipped her to Italy to forget this lower-class individual. In June 1901, despite her mother's vehement protestations, she succeeded in marrying a young man without money, Thomas B. Harrison. Their son Thomas B Harrison II, was born March 1902.
In 1915 her husband died of a brain tumor, leaving Harrison and her thirteen-year-old son deeply in debt from loans taken out by the father. In an effort to repay this debt, she turned her large home into a boarding house, which did not make ends meet. In 1915, despite having only one semester of college and no appropriate training, she used her brother-in-law's influence to get hired as an assistant society editor for The Baltimore Sun. This brought in an additional twenty - and later thirty - dollars a week. Coming from a society background and having a great facility with languages learned from European jaunts with her family, she proved to be well-qualified for this job and advanced quickly within the newspaper. By 1917 she was writing features about women's wartime labor and exposing the true fact that women work as well or better than their male counterparts.
In 1918, with the U.S. still involved in the war and Europe virtually one large battlefield, she became overwhelmed with the desire to report on the conditions in Germany. As women were not recognized as war correspondents she decided to become a spy. With an introduction to chief of Military Intelligence Division of the U.S. Army General Marlborough Churchill, she offered her services. On her application, she described herself as five feet six inches tall, weighing 125 pounds; using no stimulants, tobacco or drugs; and without physical defects. Answering the question "With what foreign countries and localities are you familiar?" she replied:
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