Gabrielle Alina Eugenia Maria Petit (20 February 1893, Tournai, Belgium − 1 April 1916, Brussels) was a Belgium woman who spied for the British Secret Service during World War I. Executed in 1916, she became a Belgian national heroine after the war's end.
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Gabrielle Petit was born to working class parents and was raised in a Catholic boarding school in Brugelette following her mother's early death. At the outbreak of the First World War, she was living and working in Brussels as a saleswoman. She immediately enrolled in the medical service of the Belgian Red Cross.[1]
Petit's espionage activities began in 1914, when she helped her wounded soldier fiancé, Maurice Gobert, cross the border into the Netherlands to be reunited with his regiment.[2] She passed along to British Intelligence information about the German army acquired during the trip. They soon hired her, gave her brief training, and sent her to spy on the Imperial German Army. She proceeded to collect information about enemy troop movements using a number of false identities.[2] She was also an active distributor of the clandestine newspaper La libre Belgique and assisted the underground mail service "Mot du Soldat". She helped several young men across the Dutch border.[1]
Petit was denounced and arrested by German military prosecutors in February 1916.
During her trial, Petit refused to reveal the identities of her fellow agents, despite offers of full amnesty. She was imprisoned at St. Gilles Prison in Brussels. Gabrielle Petit was executed by firing squad on April 1, 1916. Her body was buried at the execution field in Schaarbeek.[1]
Unlike Edith Cavell, who was also convicted of espionage and executed in occupied Belgium, Petit's story remained unknown until after the war. Then, she began to be regarded as a martyr of Belgian nationalism. In May 1919, after a funeral in the presence of the Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, Cardinal Mercier and the Prime Minister Léon Delacroix, Petit's remains (and those of fellow agents A. Bodson and A. Smekens) were buried with full military honors at the city cemetery of Schaarbeek.[1]
A statue of Gebrielle Petit was erected in Brussels.[2] In her native Tournai, a square was named after her.[1] Several books were written and films were made about her life after the war.[1]