Remembering Betty Webb: Bletchley Park & Pentagon Code Breaker
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Summary
On 31 March of this year we bid farewell to Charlotte Elizabeth “Betty” Webb (née Vine-Stevens) at the age of 101.
She was one of the cryptanalysts who worked at Bletchley Park during World War 2, as well as being one of the few women who worked at Bletchley Park in this role.
At the time existing societal biases held that women were not interested in ‘intellectual work’, but as manpower was short due to wartime mobilization, more and more women found themselves working at places like Bletchley Park in a wide variety of roles, shattering these preconceived notions.
Betty Webb had originally signed up with the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), with her reasoning per a 2012 interview being that she and a couple of like-minded students felt that they ought to be serving their country, ‘rather than just making sausage rolls’.
