Queens of the Underworld

‘What a brilliant piece of research; pieced together with compassion, heart and understanding. Caitlin gives voice to women who have been forgotten or have only been seen through a male prism. She wrestles back their stories,’ Maxine Peake.

 

Available to buy here

PAPERBACK OUT APRIL 20TH, 2023

 

The idea behind the book

Popular culture is littered with famous criminal men – from Robin Hood and Dick Turpin, to Ruby Spark, Billy Hill, Ronnie Biggs and the Kray brothers, they’ve become folk heroes, glamorized and romanticized, even when they killed. They’ve inspired books, films and TV, been the focus of academic research and study.

But what about all the criminal women?

Where are the highwaywomen and jewel thieves, the bank robbers and gold smugglers, the motor bandits and burglars? Did they never exist, or have they just been forgotten?

I’ve been fascinated by the portrayal of women criminals ever since I wrote The Ghost of Lily Painter based on the true story of two Edwardian baby farmers who were executed at Holloway Prison. But until I started writing Bad Girls: a History of Rebels and Renegades I had heard of very few famous female criminals, aside from those charged with murder. Then I was given exclusive access to the archives of Holloway Prison and began to discover members of a forgotten criminal aristocracy.

Emily Lawrence, for example, was an elegantly dressed diamond thief of the 1860s, while Elsie Carey was an Eton-cropped gang girl of the 1920s. Noreen Harbord was the postwar Queen of the Contraband Coast, while Zoe Progl was Britain’s No. 1 Woman Burglar of the 1960s.

I had never heard of any of these women. They may have been infamous at the time, but since then their careers have been ignored, twisted, dismissed, and buried.

 

Queens of the Underworld reveals the tales of female criminals from the 17th century to the present, including Moll Cutpurse who ruled the Jacobean underworld, Ann Duck and the 18th century Black Boy Alley Gang, and Mary Carr who led the Forty Thieves in Victorian times. These women, like their successors, were professionals who were respected, revered and often feared. They were outlaws in both a legal and social sense – defying laws made by men and flouting the rules of feminine behaviour.

The Queens of the Underworld broke down barriers in their pursuit of crime, whether wearing trousers, driving racing cars, skippering yachts or running illegal empires. But crime has traditionally been regarded as a male pursuit, and so female criminals have been dismissed as either not ‘real women’ or not real criminals, and in the process their stories have been lost.

If you were asked to write a list of Britain’s most famous female criminals how many could you name?

The women chosen for the book are not murderers – the very few women who kill have been endlessly covered – and they are not victims. Instead they were professional criminals who were at the top of their game, the women who were once Public Enemy No.1.

 

‘A rollicking account of all kinds of crime committed by women…who have not only been forgotten or ignored, but who put their male criminal counterparts to shame.’

– Julie Bindel, The Spectator

Meet some of the Queens

Mary Frith (Moll Cutpurse)

‘Why crouch over the fire with a pack of gossips, when the highway invites you to romance?’ Mary Frith, alias Moll Cutpurse (below), pickpocket and fence, who ran an Insurance Office on Fleet Street. She turned her home into a warehouse for stolen property, which she sold back to robbery victims for a finder’s fee. She died a wealthy woman in 1659. (Image: Wiki Commons)

Ann Duck
‘My Dear, it is a very cold Night, suppose you, this young Woman and I, were to go to a House, I know you will be so good to give us a Dram this cold Evening.’ Ann Duck, notorious street robber and member of the Black Boy Alley Gang, based around Chick Lane in Holborn, London. She worked with other women in the gang, pretending to be prostitutes in order to commit crime, and was arrested and acquitted 19 times for theft, assault and highway robbery. (Image: Wiki Commons)

Emily Lawrence
‘A famous, real tiptop, high-flying dona; she was in all the big things a-goin’, Emily Lawrence, diamond thief who committed robberies in Paris and London, described by a fellow Millbank prisoner. A former domestic servant, Emily knew how to ‘come the lady’ and in January 1860, at the age of 21, she stole a diamond locket from a Mayfair shop worth the equivalent of a quarter of a million pounds today.

Mary Carr
‘She was noted for her good looks and engaging manners and managed to get round her a gang of young women who gave her complete obedience as their leader,’ Mary Carr (below), as described by Lloyd’s Weekly. Mary was born in Holborn in 1862 and by time she reached her twenties, she was the Queen of the Forty Thieves, working as a blackmailer, thief and fence. She fitted the profile of the ‘born criminal’, as identified by Victorian criminologists, apparently intent on pursuing a life of vice and crime.

Alice Diamond & Maggie Hughes
Their past records, too long to quote here, make one gasp for breath,’ The Illustrated News on the activities of the Queen of the Forty Elephants Alice Diamond (below) and her lieutenant ‘baby-faced’ Maggie Hughes in the 1920s.

The women masterminded military style raids on department stores, from London’s West End to Newcastle, from the city centre of Manchester to the shopping districts of Derby and Bristol. The press and police portrayed Alice Diamond as an ‘Amazon’, and the ‘tallest woman criminal in London.’ (Image: Wiki Commons)

Lilian Goldstein
‘This nimble-brained young woman is organising county robberies by motor-car on a large scale’, Lilian Goldstein, the Bobbed-haired Bandit (allegedly pictured below in the Sunday Pictorial), started her career as a getaway driver for smash and grab raiders in the early 1920s. The police tried – and failed – to convict her over a 15 year period, but Lilian was a ‘female Jekyll and Hyde’ and able to change her appearance at a moment’s notice. Detectives described her as ‘a very spunky girl.’

Blonde Alice Smith
‘She openly taunted that in crime she was the equal of any man,’ Blonde Alice Smith, jewel thief, hailed as the Queen of Crooks in 1923. She was a mistress in the art of make-up, a Chameleon Countess (illustrated by the American press below) who eluded the British bobbies. In 1913, she reportedly took part in the Great Pearl Robbery, earning her the new nickname of Diamond Dolly.

Elsie Florence Carey
‘A cunning and dangerous thief and a menace to the community,’ Elsie Carey (allegedly pictured below in the Mirror), the 1930s Eton-cropped leader of a bandit gang. After her arrest in Oxford in 1937, Elsie appeared in court wearing a squarely-cut blue reefer coat and a white silk men’s muffler – and from then on she was known as ‘Lady Jack.’

Queenie Day
‘A coffee coloured beauty’ and ‘the worst woman in London,’ Queenie Day, arrested at Margate’s Dreamland in 1937. Queenie was a thief, housebreaker and burglar – as well as chorus girl, dance partner and dance hostess. She was known to some as ‘Coloured Queenie’.

Noreen Harbord
‘If there was going to be any monkey business, I decided we would fight it out,’ Noreen Harbord, The Queen of the Contraband Coast, describing her escape from a pirate attack on the French Riviera in the summer of 1949. Noreen was a former debutante, who swapped her seat at Ascot’s Royal Enclosure for a life smuggling gold on the high seas.

Shirley Pitts
‘Of course crime pays – it’s getting caught that’s the fucking problem,’ Shirley Pitts, co leader of the 1950s The Happy Hoisters Gang, who became known as the Queen of the Shoplifters. Born in Lambeth, London, in 1934, she started stealing food for her family as a child, received shoplifter training from Alice Diamond, and went on to enjoy a 40 year career as a professional hoister.

Zoe Progl
‘Playing the part of the happy little domesticated wife was a big bore,’ Zoe Progl (pictured below in her autobiography), Britain’s No.1 Woman Burglar and Holloway Prison escapee. Zoe pursued a varied career, robbing Post Offices, kiting with stolen chequebooks, stealing lorries and selling their contents, and burglary. At the age of 32, she made criminal history by climbing over the wall of Holloway Prison and going on the run for 40 days.

Chris Tchaikovsky
‘My criminality was the result of rational choice, nobody had coerced or cajoled me into it,’ Chris Tchaikovsky, (below) leader of the 1960s & 70s The Happy Firm, an international fraud gang. Chris was born in Newquay, Cornwall, in 1944, and described herself as an outlaw, outsider and rebel from an early age. After her third imprisonment in Holloway, she co formed Women in Prison and became a leading penal reform campaigner. (Image: PRA)

Joyti De-Laurey
‘I wanted to find out if I could simply get away with taking money,’ Joyti De-Laurey who in 2004 was convicted of stealing £4.3 million from her bosses at Goldman Sachs, in one of the biggest frauds in UK history.

 

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Criminal Theories

Criminal theories on female crooks have been repeated over and over again. Women have been portrayed as too weak, vain and stupid to commit crime. On the other hand, they have been depicted as dangerous, natural born liars.

‘The born female criminal is ‘doubly exceptional, first as a woman and then as a criminal. This is because criminals are exceptions among civilised people and women are exceptions among criminals…As a double exception, then, the criminal woman is a true monster,’ Cesare Lombroso, the ‘father’ of criminology, 1890s

‘The principal parts assigned to women by criminal associations are those of spy, decoy, and watcher…burglary, requiring skilled labour, is beyond her,’ Harry Ashton-Wolfe, Investigator, the Marseilles Scientific Police Laboratories, 1920s

‘The menopause seems to bring about a distinct increase in crime, especially in offenses resulting from irritability, such as arson and breaches of the peace,’ Otto Pollak, The Criminality of Women, 1950

‘The phenomenon of female criminality is but one wave in this rising tide of female assertiveness…technology and the women’s liberation movement have equalized the capacity for male crimes, including violence,’ Freda Adler, Sisters in Crime, 1975

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Delving into the Archives

 

It’s always hard to trace women, and it’s even harder with criminal women because they did their best not to be found – frequently changing their names, dates of birth, address and next of kin.Their biographies often have to be built from scratch, by searching birth certificates, baptism records, marriage certificates, census records, wills, deed polls, electoral rolls, death certificates and probate records.

Here’s Alice Diamond in the 1911 Census of England and Wales, along with her parents and siblings. They were living in Southwark, South London. Alice was 14 years old and working as a servant. The following year she was arrested for stealing chocolate, and by 1920 she was Queen of the Forty Thieves.

 

Many of the Queens can be found in institutional records, such as workhouses, Houses of Mercy, industrial schools, reformatories, remand homes, approved schools, borstals and prisons.

Here’s Emily Lawrence, the Victorian jewel thief, in Millbank Prison records for 1868.  She’d been convicted of stealing a gold and diamond necklace in Brighton. Her conduct inside the prison was reported to be ‘atrocious’, and she was repeatedly locked in the punishment cells.

 

Criminal records can provide important clues. Here is Mary Carr‘s entry in The Central Criminal Court’s Calendar of Prisoners for 1896. She was convicted for kidnapping, and the record shows she was previously jailed for stealing a watch and chain, under the name Eva Jackson. (Images from Ancestry & Find My Past).

The Queens can also be found in media reports, with the press painting a vivid image of female crooks. But their stories were frequently misreported, the truth was twisted and quotes fabricated. ‘I guess when the newspapers don’t know anything,’ said American Bobbed Haired Bandit Celia Cooney, ‘they just make things up.’

 

Some Queens can be found briefly mentioned in crime history books or memoirs written by former detectives, which often repeat inaccurate stories that were first published a century earlier. The basic facts are often wrong – including nationality and marital status.

A few queens wrote their own stories, especially in modern times, but as with all criminal memoirs there tend to be a lot of gaps and omissions. Names are changed, events embellished, scores are settled.

The best source, and the hardest to find, is modern day relatives and contemporaries who are willing to share what they know about a Queen of the Underworld. I’m grateful to the descendants who agreed to speak with me.

*****

Queens of the Underworld is a ‘season highlight’ in the Bookseller Non-Fiction Buyer’s Guide.

 

‘Most women in prison are there for minor offences and have themselves been victims of abuse and sexual offences. But here we are dealing with a very different cohort of female offenders – the women who broke all the rules.

This is a riveting dive into the criminal underworld and the women who queened it there. A fascinating read.

Helena Kennedy QC

 

Talks & Events:

2023:

March 4th, Woman Up Justice conference, hosted by University of Cumbria School of Justice, Carlisle.

2022:

October 26th, Age UK Camden Book Club, the British Library, London.

September 18th, Conway Hall, London.

June 3rd, Wild Words Festival, Hertfordshire.

May 22nd, Derby Book Festival, Derby College.

March 24th, Mudlarking, Criminal Queens, and the deep City: a collection of London stories. Amersham Arms, SE14.

December 9th, Highgate Library, London, online event

December 6th, ‘400 Years of Female Rebellion’, online event

2021:

November 23rd, London Metropolitan Archives, online event

October 17th, Broadstairs Literary Festival

October 3rd, Borderlines Book Festival, Carlisle

August 26th, West Hampstead, London, online event

 

 

‘From smuggling supremos to daring getaway drivers, female crooks have ruled London for hundreds of years. So why does the British public not know more about them?’ Daily Mirror

Queens of the Underworld sheds light on 24 women who fell foul of the law, from swashbuckling pickpocket Moll Cutpurse to a West End mobster who led shop-breaking gangs’, Daily Mail

 

‘I cannot stop reading Queens of the Underworld, it’s phenomenal.’

Salma El-Wardany, BBC Radio London

 

Thanks to the Society of Authors for a grant to research this book (information about grant applications here) and to Susan Leggett, a researcher with Bob O’Hara Public Record Searches.