20 Historical Figures Who Led Contradictory Double Lives

William Brodie led a double life: by day, he was a highly respected Scottish cabinetmaker; by night, he became a thief who targeted his wealthy clients. He would wait until they fell asleep to sneak into their homes, make copies of their keys, and steal their valuables. He managed to evade the law for years before being arrested following a burglary that went wrong.

In his youth, Eugène François Vidocq was a career criminal who escaped from prison more often than anyone else in French history. Later, he founded both the first private detective agency and the French national police force. What an irony!

J. Edgar Hoover was horrified at the thought that the FBI might be associated with criminals. The whole point was to show the nation that law enforcement always caught the bad guys. Yet Hoover was secretly blackmailing government officials using evidence obtained illegally. What a hypocrite.

While she was still just a young socialite, Belle Boyd managed to extract secrets from Union officers. She would work her way into military dinner parties using her charm and seductive skills, then gallop off into the night to deliver intelligence. Her greatest asset was her ability to convincingly play the role of a damsel in distress.

In the eyes of investors, Charles Ponzi appeared to be a kind of mathematical genius capable of turning modest investments into fortunes. In reality, he was stealing their money and repaying earlier investors with funds from new investors, as part of one of the very first Ponzi schemes. This type of scam is still referred to today as a “Ponzi scheme.”

Working as a slave for a British general provided James Armistead with the perfect cover to act as a spy for the American revolutionaries. He managed to feed false information to the British while passing on the real plans to the Marquis de Lafayette, thereby contributing directly to the victory at Yorktown. This is the incredible story of a man who knew how to navigate two worlds.

Chevalier d’Éon lived most of his life as a man, but came to be generally regarded as a woman. This French diplomat held numerous high-ranking political positions for years before “changing his gender” and living as a woman. No one really knows what his true gender was.

The writer Eric Blair once served in the British Imperial Police in Burma. Enforcing the king’s law made him unhappy, which led him to leave law enforcement and become Orwell, one of history’s most outspoken authors against authoritarianism. The contradiction between these two sides of him is fascinating.

Do you think everyone already knows the story of Mata Hari? Born Margaretha Zelle, she won the hearts of nearly all European soldiers during World War I thanks to her dancing skills. Having apparently accepted funds from both the French and the Germans, she sold information to both sides.

Anyone who worked at the FBI between 1970 and 2001 may have worked alongside a mole. For more than twenty years, Robert Hanssen sold American secrets to Russia even as the FBI was tasked with tracking him down. He was literally trying to track himself down.

Benedict Arnold began the War of Independence as one of the highest-ranking officers in the American army. However, feeling that Congress did not give him enough recognition, he betrayed his country and went directly to King George. Even today, Americans use his name as a synonym for “traitor.”

Benjamin Thompson made significant advances in the field of thermodynamics, but he also spied for the British during the American Revolution. Using coded messages written in invisible ink, he passed intelligence to the Crown throughout the war. He eventually settled in Europe and was knighted.

While writing some of the most influential plays of the Elizabethan era, Christopher Marlowe was likely working for Queen Elizabeth I’s secret service. Experts believe that his frequent travels and run-ins with the law were actually a cover for intelligence missions targeting Catholic conspirators. His mysterious death during a tavern brawl may well have been a political assassination.

Thomas Jefferson drafted the document that made this world a single nation, but he owned hundreds of slaves on his own land. He managed, somehow, to maintain a public image as a champion of freedom while compromising his moral integrity in private.

Kim Philby rose through the ranks to become head of MI6, the British intelligence service. Yet he was a staunch communist who, throughout his career, passed on as much confidential information as he could to the KGB. When he defected, the truth came to light, and it shook the world of politics.

Alice Roosevelt was the darling of the American public, but her father, Teddy Roosevelt, had famously declared that he could either run the country or control Alice—but not both at the same time. She defied all the social conventions imposed on women. Her public role as a diplomat’s wife often served merely as a façade for her private maneuvers, which were marked by wit, rebellion, and a keen political sense.

Harry Houdini was an escape artist and magician, but he secretly pursued another activity: exposing spiritualists. During the height of the spiritualist movement, he attended séances to uncover the mediums’ tricks and expose them to the general public. A skeptic.

Long before she taught the world how to cook French cuisine on television, Julia Child worked for the OSS during World War II. She helped develop a shark repellent that saved the lives of many sailors and participated in covert communications operations across Asia. It’s hard to imagine that this cheerful television personality also played a vital role in the American war effort.

Richard Nixon had promised to heal the wounds of a divided nation, following decades of conservative administrations and the upheavals of the 1960s. Instead, he secretly compiled a list of his political enemies and devised a plan to spy on them. This scandal ruined his presidency.

Elmyr de Hory worked as a painter for years, but he was best known for his copies of works by famous artists. He forged paintings by Matisse, Picasso, and several other artists in order to sell them to unsuspecting museums and collectors. This scam was made possible by the relationships he had fabricated with artists—until the deception was uncovered.