Stella Lonsdale - Dorset 'Double Agent'

In 1966, Stella Lonsdale sold off almost the entire village of Okeford's Fitzpaine a part of the Pitt-Rivers Estate. Locally, Stella Lonsdale was a wealthy North Dorset lady but to Britain’s Security Services she had been a dangerous threat to national security. Furthermore, it seems that neither the British nor the German Security Services were entirely sure on which side she was on. She had various aliases including ‘Suzanne de la Roche’, ‘Simone de Valliere’ and ‘Solange de Leprevier’. Then, there was also ‘Mrs Warner’, ‘Princess Magaloff’ and ‘Mrs Carr-Glynn.’

Stella Lonsdale was born in Olton, Warwickshire on 9 January 1913, the daughter of confectionery salesman Ernest Clive and his wife Stella. Her late partner, George Pitt-Rivers had insisted that properties should be sold off in individual lots to place the existing tenants in a better position to purchase them. The estate had, at one time, been so large that it was said George could travel from coast to coast without leaving his land. Yet, neither George nor Stella was a typical Dorset landowner.

George Pitt-Rivers was an eminent scientist, had been injured during World War I, but between the wars had become increasingly seduced by right wing politics. He particularly admired Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and their doctrines. In 1937, he travelled to Germany and met Hitler and other leading Nazis. Despite being a relative of Winston Churchill’s wife, Clementine, George was locked up in Brixton Prison during World War II as a Nazi sympathiser. After the war, Stella Lonsdale became the partner of George Pitt-Rivers. Her life was arguably even more controversial and colourful than his. She may have been a double agent. For the British suspected that she worked for the Germans while the Germans thought she may have been working for the British. Neither side was entirely sure for whom she was working.

The private life of Stella Lonsdale was just as complicated as her other activities.  Prior to her involvement with George she had had two ‘husbands’.  Her first was a Russian fraudster and the other, John Christopher Mainwaring Lonsdale was an army deserter and jewel thief. When marrying Lonsdale, the Russian fraudster protested that Stella was already married to him. However, Stella would have evaded any bigamy charge as her first marriage had not complied with French law and was therefore void. In 1940, she went to France. According to Stella pretending to work for the Germans, she travelled to Marseille. Again according to her version of events the Germans discovered her real motives and to save her life she escaped to England. Back in London, she was interrogated at length but failed to convince the authorities of the veracity of her story. As a result, she was interned for the remainder of the war. In Holloway Prison she was placed in a cell with a prisoner who was encouraged to report on Stella’s conversations.

Later, Stella married secretly her last husband, Raul Maumen in the south of France. In 1970, Maumen was to come to an unfortunate end. He was discovered dead in a Cannes apartment having consumed a mixture of whisky and disinfectant. Whatever is the fact or fiction about Stella Edith Howson Lonsdale, what is a known fact is the existence of many security files dedicated to her in the National Archives at Kew. They were classified as secret until 2002. Stella Maumen/Pitt-Rivers/Lonsdale/Clive and the holder of many aliases died in January 1994.

(Illustration: Stella Lonsdale)

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