Career
After the outbreak of the French revolution, she was recruited as a spy and agent for the counterrevolutionary royalists by Louis de Frotté. Between 1791 and 1794, she was active as a spy in Paris. In 1793, she made repeated attempts to try to help former queen Marie Antoinette on one occasion by visiting her in prison dressed as a national guard with the plan of changing clothes with her.
She also tried to free the former royal children from Temple.
Her activities had no success despite her spending considerable sums of her fortune on her missions. By historians, Atkyns had often been described as an eccentric who was not taken seriously.