Winifred Spink

Winifred Spink was a MI6 officer. She was the first female officer sent to Russia, serving from 1916 to 1917, and subsequently assigned to Italy until the end of the First World War.

Family and education Winifred 'Winnie' Verena Spink was born 6 December 1885 in Sevenoaks, UK. Her father, Samuel Spink, was from the wealthy family that owned Spink & Son and a member of the Plymouth Brethren. Her Swiss-born mother, Elise (née Höfer) died in 1899 and her father swiftly remarried the family's young nursemaid. He sent Winifred and her four siblings to live in Bromley, away from his second family. Winifred was later sent to a finishing school in Zurich, Switzerland, supervised by her mother's family. She refused to follow her father's idea of immediate marriage and adopted the views of the suffragette movement. She initially studied French at University of Lausanne and then from 1911 - 1913 at the Sorbonne University in France, where she met up with Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst who were there on holiday. She also met with :fr:Georges Pancol, a poet, and they became engaged. Spink returned to the UK in January 1913. She attended several suffragette events and also trained at the Pitman's Secretarial School in English, French and German. From August 1914 she worked as a secretary, as well as studying economics at the London School of Economics and training as a car mechanic.

Career in MI6 In June 1916, aged 31, Spink was recruited to MI6, recommended to its head Mansfield Smith-Cumming by Colonel Walter Bersey for whom she was working. At the time it was known as MI1(c), part of the War Office. They had a son together, before Ramplee-Smith died in 1935 while at sea, and Spink returned to work to support herself and their son as private secretary to Lady Hoare until 1939. Spink later moved to San Francisco in the USA. She died in Reading, UK in July 1973 aged 87.