Lydia Darragh was a Quaker pacifist, mother and Philadelphia midwife, and according to family accounts she was also a spy for the Continental Army. This episode explores how her eldest son Charles’s enlistment divided her loyalties, and how a chance meeting with her cousin Captain William Barrington let her keep her home when British officers used it during the occupation of Philadelphia.

We follow the night of December 2, 1777, when she reportedly overheard General William Howe’s plan for a surprise attack on Washington’s army at Whitemarsh, and the flour-buying trip that carried the warning out of the city. We compare the Colonel Thomas Craig story with Elias Boudinot’s journal account of an old woman and a needle book, and look at why historians still debate the details.

• How British assumptions about Quakers and women gave Darragh perfect cover
• The coded messages hidden inside fabric-covered buttons
• How she survived questioning after the British marched back to Philadelphia
• The cost of her involvement, including loss of membership in the Society of Friends
• Why her story was first published in 1827 and what that means for the evidence