Betty Webb

Charlotte Elizabeth Webb ( Vine-Stevens; 13 May 1923 – 31 March 2025) was an English code breaker who worked at Bletchley Park during World War II from the age of 18. In 1941 she joined the British Auxiliary Territorial Service. She said, of joining the top-secret mission at Bletchley, "I wanted to do something more for the war effort than bake sausage rolls." She was named after her mother, Charlotte, but was commonly referred to as "Betty". She described her childhood as 'idyllic' and was home-schooled for a significant portion of her youth. Her mother gave her and her brother home-school lessons. She signed up to join the Auxiliary Territorial Service as soon as she turned 18 in May 1941, and did basic training at the Royal Welch Fusiliers' Hightown Barracks in Wrexham. From there she was taken to an interview in London at Devonshire House and then sent immediately to Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire. In Major Tester's department, some tasks performed include registering messages on little cards, which Webb believes totalled 10,000 a day in the whole park, and organizing the cards into shoeboxes according to a strict order so they could be retrieved efficiently when called for. In 2021 Webb's work at Bletchley Park was recognized by the Government of France, with her appointment as Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour).

From 2020, she was an ambassador of Operation Bletchley, a series of walking and codebreaking challenges, raising money for the Army Benevolent Fund. In 2023, she was invited to King Charles's coronation on 6 May and sat in the front row. She turned 100 in May 2023 and celebrated her birthday with a party at Bletchley Park, which involved a flypast by an Avro Lancaster bomber.

Webb died on 31 March 2025, aged 101.

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