There is a film and book in preparation by an author in the USA and we hope to complete our understanding of her involvement in the wartime activities of the French Resistance. I have forwarded the story of the life of this remarkable lady to the English Heritage (proposal for Blue Plaque), Swaffham Museum (proposal for memorial) and to the Museum of French Resistance (for more information).
BACKSTORY:
Mrs Hamilton was born in 1906 as Alice Bayliss in London and was to become a famous long distance cyclist in England. In 1926 she married Jack Hamilton and they cycled around the country on a tandem. She was the film double of Gracie Fields in the 1934 musical Sing As we Go when the main character is depicted by Hamilton cycling from Manchester to Blackpool (50 miles). Between 1931 and 1938 her long distance cycling exploits were recorded in a number of epic feats including 1,000 miles in 7 days, 10,000 miles in 100 days, and London to John O'Groats (700 miles) in 4 days.
In 1938 Jack and Evelyn Hamilton opened a bicycle repair and build shop at 416A Streatham High Road, London.
There is some uncertainty of how Evelyn arrived in France but she has given an account of being in Paris, possibly as a part of a circus, just before the occupation of France by German troops. She worked as a waitress in a café frequented by Gestapo officers, lived with a Frenchman called Fernand Maurice Helsen and assumed the identity of a dead woman as she herself was on the wanted list. Becoming a courier for the Resistance she ferried allied personnel across Paris on a tandem until an informer led to her being captured. Wearing her hair in a bun to conceal a small pistol she pulled it out, shot her captor and escaped to England and safety.
The shop was a front for the Free French and the SOE and was run by three Frenchmen including one of the Pelissier brothers. It is known from the records of the Museum of the Resistance that Louis Pelissier, codename Carton, was the leader of the Franc Group of the Morhange network. The Morhange network had been commissioned by Marcel Taillandier as a direct action and counter-espionage group, and was in charge of cleaning up those traitors, collaborators and Nazis who destroyed the resistance networks in the southwest of France. They eliminated dozens of people hostile to free France and resistance. Morhange was also a counter-espionage organization combating the Abwehr and the Gestapo.
Henri Pelissier won the Tour of France in 1923 and was murdered in 1935. Louis Pelissier was killed in action in 1944. He was awarded the Knight of the Legion of Honour, Companion of the Liberation - decree of 20 November 1944, Cross of War 39/45, Medal of the Resistance with rosette. Alice Pelissier was a member of the Morhange Franc Group. Jack and Evelyn Hamilton divorced in 1944.
Fernand Maurice Helsen worked as a clerk in the French Embassy in London and died aged 50 from a heart attack in 1950.
Evelyn Hamilton was awarded the Médaille de la Résistance Française, (featuring the Cross of Lorraine), which had been authorised by Charles de Gaulle in 1943, for Voluntary Service in the Free French Forces. The award for ‘Actes remarquables de foi et de courage qui, en France, dans l'empire et à l'étranger, auront contribué à la résistance du peuple français’ (Remarkable acts of faith and courage which, in France, in the empire and abroad, have contributed to the resistance of the French people) was given to 64,000 recipients. Robert Paxton cites the figure of 300,000 cards of combatants issued: 130,000 to deportees, 170,000 to volunteer fighters of the Resistance. He adds the 100,000 resisters who died in combat to approach a total of "active resistance" of 2% of the French population.
After the war the Lorraine Cross was to become the motif on her bicycle frame badges together with the name ‘Lorraine Cycles’. In 1952 she rode 12,010 miles in 100 days on one of her machines fitted with British components just to prove that British machines could be as reliable as other makes from the Continent.
On the 29 May 2005 Hamilton was known as Evelyn Alice Helsen and, aged 99, she passed away and is buried at Swaffham, Norfolk.
