Recommended: Messy Nessy On Mata Hari's Missing Head

One of our favorite bloggers, Messy Nessy, who specializes in "Chic Curiosities" has published some fascinating research on the Great War's most remembered spy, Mata Hari.  Nessy's article opens, thus:

Her Severed Head Was Kept in a Paris Museum

Then It Disappeared!

The essay proceeds:

There are many reasons to tell the story of Mata Hari—an extravagant icon of femininity, famous burlesque performer, World War I spy, and “collector” of high-standing lovers – her life reads like a harlequin novel. Arguably one of the most curious (and morbid) anecdotes of her life occurred after her death (by execution, no less). As if her missing severed head wasn’t enough to lead with, it has also come to light that the rest of her body, which was entrusted to the Museum of Anatomy in Paris, also disappeared from the archives. So what happened to Mata Hari?

She was born as Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in 1876 in a town called Leeuwarden in the Dutch province of Friesland. The daughter of a successful hat merchant, Margaretha lived a very comfortable life until her father’s business went bankrupt and he left his family in the lurch. Two years later, her mother passed away, and Margraretha and her siblings then went to live with an uncle and aunt.

Margaretha’s uncle envisioned a very decent life for the 14-year-old and sent her off to the Dutch city of Leiden, to be trained as a kindergarten teacher. The young Margaretha had other things on her mind. She began flirting with the school principal—and was ultimately caught topless on his lap. Her career as a kindergarten teacher was nipped in the bud there and then, and she was sent away (again) to live with another uncle in The Hague.

At the age of 18, Margaretha came across an advertisement by a Dutch Colonial Army captain who was looking for a “girl of sweet character with the intention of marriage.” She responded to the ad, sending along a very enticing picture of herself. Despite a 21-year age difference, she married Army Captain Rudolf MacLeod on 17 July 1895. . .

The Jolly Couple

Read on HERE to enjoy M.N. editor Inge Oosterhoff's account of Margaretha's dud of a marriage, the couple's travels to Java, their inevitable divorce, her imaginative self-recreation as Mata Hari  (Eye of the Dawn) and international celebrity, her firing squad, and the postmortem detaching of her head, its preservation, and mysterious disappearance.

Credits: Article discovered by my better-half, Donna.  Thanks, Dear.