Dorothy Lawrence (4 October 1896 – 4 October 1964) was an English journalist who posed as a male soldier to report from the front line during World War I. In 1915, she went to France, where she managed to obtain a military uniform and a false identity. Upon her arrival in Albert, Somme, she found a soldier who took her to the front lines. However, trench life affected her health, and after ten days, she revealed her sex, afraid that if she needed medical attention her true identity would be discovered and those who helped her would be punished. She was arrested and interrogated, suspected of being a spy or a prostitute. She was then sent home under a strict agreement not to write about her experiences. After the war, Lawrence published a memoir, but it was highly censored and not very successful. Her health began to fail, and she was committed to a mental institution, where she died 40 years later. In 2003, her story was rediscovered. Her book was reprinted and the Imperial War Museum included her experiences in an exhibition on women at war. Since 2015, several plays and films have been produced based on her story. Early life Lawrence was born in Hendon, Middlesex, of parents unknown. Probably illegitimate, she was adopted as a baby by a guardian of the Church of England. There is some discrepancy in her parentage. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (which at time of publication in 2004 did not mention details of her life after 1919) reports that Lawrence was born on 4 October 1896 in Polesworth, Warwickshire and was the second daughter of Thomas Hartshorn Lawrence and Mary Jane Beddall. Other sources confirm this information and specify that Dorothy's parents were not married. Because she was therefore illegitimate, when her mother died in 1909, the teenage girl was adopted by wealthy and respected church guardians Mrs Josephine Fitzgerald and her husband in Salisbury. War correspondent Wanting to be a journalist, she managed to have some articles published in The Times and in Nash's Pall Mall Magazine. When the war started, she wrote to a number of the Fleet Street newspapers offering her services as a war correspondent. She believed that this would be the best way to gain recognition for her talents, but no paper would send a woman to the front lines. In fact, they couldn't get access