In 1870, at twenty-two, she diverted the telegraph wire into her bedroom and read the Prussian dispatches for seventeen days. Sentenced to death by a court martial, pardoned at the armistice, she became in 1878 the first woman to hold the Military Medal.
The story
Juliette Dodu was born at Saint-Denis on Réunion on 15 June 1848 and left the island at sixteen. Her mother ran the telegraph office at Pithiviers, south of Paris.
In 1870 the Prussians took over the office. The story — which appeared in “Le Figaro” of 26 May 1877, seven years after the event, and which no contemporary document confirms — has it that Juliette, twenty-two, tapped the telegraph wire and ran a branch line to her bedroom, where for seventeen days she read every dispatch the occupiers sent.
The intelligence is said to have saved the forty thousand men of General d'Aurelle de Paladines — whose own memoirs never name her. Discovered, she was court-martialled and sentenced to death.
Prince Friedrich Karl of Prussia pardoned her at the armistice — a gesture the French press made much of.
On 30 July 1878 she was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour — not the first woman to receive it, as was long written, since Marie-Angélique Brûlon had been decorated in 1851, but the first woman to receive the Military Medal. The companion of Baron Larrey, surgeon to Napoleon III, she died on 28 October 1909 at the house of her brother-in-law, the painter Odilon Redon.
The grave
The inscription comes down to two distinctions, and that is its whole interest: “Juliette Dodu, Knight of the Legion of Honour, holder of the Military Medal, 1848-1909”. No woman had held the Military Medal before her. Nothing of the telegraph, nothing of the seventeen days of interception, nothing of the death sentence — the stone keeps to the titles, which were enough to say the exception. A second inscription, that of Hélène de Valette, widow Goujeon, who died in 1873, precedes her in the vault.
On site, do not miss
Two titles engraved after the name: “Knight of the Legion of Honour, holder of the Military Medal” — no woman had held the second before her.
Visitors' questions
Where is Juliette Dodu's grave?
In Division 28, chemin Masséna, third row, in the old upper part of the cemetery — the Division of Beaumarchais, Richard Wallace and General Foy.
General FoyWhat did she do in 1870?
She ran a branch line from the Pithiviers telegraph wire into her bedroom and, for seventeen days, intercepted the Prussian dispatches. The intelligence she passed on is said to have saved forty thousand men.
Claude ChappeWhat was she the first woman to receive?
The Military Medal. She was also made a Knight of the Legion of Honour on 30 July 1878, but Marie-Angélique Brûlon had received that in 1851, and Rosa Bonheur in 1865 for her work as an artist.
Rosa BonheurWas she sentenced to death?
She was, by a Prussian court martial after her device was discovered. Prince Frederick Charles of Prussia pardoned her at the armistice, and the French press made much of the gesture.
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