Mavis Batey - obituary

14 Nov 2013

Mavis Batey - obituary
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Mavis Batey was Bletchley Park codebreaker whose Enigma breakthrough 
proved crucial to the success of D-Day

Mavis Batey, who has died aged 92, was one of the leading female 
codebreakers at Bletchley Park, cracking the Enigma ciphers that led to 
the Royal Navy's victory at Matapan in 1941.

She was the last of the great Bletchley "break-in" experts, those 
codebreakers who found their way into new codes and ciphers that had never 
been broken before.

Mavis Batey also played a leading role in the cracking of the 
extraordinarily complex German secret service, or Abwehr, Enigma. Without 
that break, the Double Cross deception plan which ensured the success of 
the D-Day landings could never have gone ahead. 

 Mavis Lilian Lever was born in Dulwich, south London, on May 5 1921, the 
daughter of a postal worker and a seamstress. The family always went on 
holiday to Bournemouth, but after passing her German O Level, Mavis 
persuaded her parents to take her to the Rhineland.

It was this that encouraged her interest in the German Romantic poets. She 
was reading German at University College, London, when war broke out, and 
decided to break off her studies and become a nurse; but she was told that 
the country could make more use of her as a German linguist.

"So I thought, great," she recalled. "This is going to be an 
interesting job, Mata Hari, seducing Prussian officers. But I don't 
think either my legs or my German were good enough because they sent me to 
the Government Code & Cipher School."

She initially worked in London, checking commercial codes and perusing the 
personal columns of The Times for coded spy messages. After showing 
promise, she was plucked out and sent to Bletchley to work in the research 
unit run by Dilly Knox.

Knox had led the way for the British on the breaking of the Enigma 
ciphers, but was now working in a cottage next to the mansion on new codes 
and ciphers that had not been broken by Hut 6, where the German Army and 
Air Force ciphers were cracked.../snip/


....In 1977 Mavis Batey lobbied successfully for the National Land Fund, 
which became the National Heritage Memorial Fund, to grant-aid historic 
landscapes. She also led the Garden History Society's campaign on the 
plight of urban parks .

She was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal of the Royal Horticultural 
Society in 1985, and in 1987 was appointed MBE for services to the 
preservation and conservation of historic gardens.

Her books included 'Jane Austen and the English Landscape' ( 1996 ); 
Alexander 'Pope : Poetry and Landscape' ( 1999 ); and an affectionate 
biography of Knox, 'Dilly : The Man Who Broke Enigmas' ( 2011 ).

Keith Batey, with whom she had two daughters and a son, died in 2010.

Mavis Batey, born May 5 1921, died November 12 2013


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/special-forces-obituaries/10447712/Mavis-Batey-obituary.html

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gfwVtpa0nS4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=faRfab9Yyk8