Mavis Batey
Mavis Batey MBE |
|
---|---|
Born | Mavis Lilian Lever 5 May 1921 Dulwich, London, England |
Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. |
Nationality | English |
Citizenship | British |
Alma mater | University College, London |
Occupation | Garden historian |
Known for |
|
Spouse(s) | Keith Batey (m. 1942–2010)(deceased) |
Children | 3 |
Awards | Veitch Memorial Medal 1985 MBE 1987 |
Mavis Lilian Batey, MBE (née Lever; 5 May 1921 – 12 November 2013), was an English code-breaker at Bletchley Park during World War II. Her work was one of the keys to the success of D-Day.[1] She later became a garden historian, who campaigned to save historic parks and gardens, and an author.[2]
Contents
Life
Mavis Lilian Lever was born on 5 May 1921[2] in Dulwich to her seamstress mother and postal worker father. She was brought up in Norbury and went to Coloma Convent Girls' School in Croydon.[3] She was studying German at University College, London at the outbreak of World War II, concentrating on the German romantics in particular.
Initially employed by London Section to check the personal columns of The Times for coded spy messages,[4] in 1940 she was recruited to work as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park.[2] She worked as an assistant to Dilly Knox, and was closely involved in the decryption effort before the Battle of Matapan.[5][6][7] According to The Daily Telegraph, she became so familiar with the styles of individual enemy operators that she could determine that two of them had a girlfriend called Rosa and this insight allowed her to develop a successful technique.[8]
In December 1941 she broke a message between Belgrade and Berlin that enabled Dilly Knox's team to work out the wiring of the Abwehr Enigma, an Enigma machine previously thought to be unbreakable.[3] While at Bletchley Park she met Keith Batey, a mathematician and fellow codebreaker whom she married in 1942.[2][9]
Batey spent some time after 1945 in the Diplomatic Service, and then brought up three children.[10] She published a number of books on garden history, as well as some relating to Bletchley Park, and served as President of the Garden History Society, of which she became Secretary in 1971.[10][11]
She was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal in 1985, and made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1987, in both cases for her work on preservation and conservation of gardens.[12][13]
Death
Batey, aged 92 and a widow since 2010, died on 12 November 2013.[1][3]
Works
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Mavis Batey: from codebreaker to campaigner for historic parks and gardens, parksandgardens.org; accessed 16 May 2014.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Barwick, Sandra. A cracking time at Bletchley The Daily Telegraph, 16 January 1999
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Edward Fawcett, The Genius of the Scene, Garden History Vol. 24, No. 1 (Summer, 1996), pp. 1–2. Published by: The Garden History Society. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1587088
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ "Mrs Mavis Lilian Batey" summary, parksandgardens.org; accessed 16 May 2014.
- ↑ parksandgardens.org, "Mavis Batey: from codebreaker to campaigner for historic parks and gardens", p. 4
External links
- Mavis Batey at the Internet Movie Database
- 'The Independent' article
- New York Times obituary, nytimes.com, 23 November 2013; accessed 16 May 2014.
- EngvarB from September 2014
- Use dmy dates from September 2014
- Articles with hCards
- No local image but image on Wikidata
- 1921 births
- 2013 deaths
- English historians
- British women historians
- British cryptographers
- Members of the Order of the British Empire
- Veitch Memorial Medal recipients
- Alumni of University College London
- People associated with Bletchley Park
- Garden writers