October 4, 2025 • 42 mins
For at least 200 years, part of London’s criminal underground was ruled by a gang of brilliant, all-female jewel thieves. In this week's classic episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore the rise and fall of the notorious Forty Elephants.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know how you sit around some days and you're
thinking I should be a jewel thief. But I can't
be a jewel thief on my own I need it.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
But yeah, man, you know I think about that all
the time. Yes, yeah, about when I'm sitting around. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
as long as I could be the bag man, that's
all I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
We've got a weird group chat for sure. This classic
episode is from twenty eighteen where we got super into
one of the coolest crime stories out there in London
and the coolest crime cruise out there in London that
would not have had us as members because they were
(00:36):
no boys loud right, the forty Elephants, all female jewel thieves.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Let's jump right into.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
(01:17):
Ridiculous Historians. Let's start today's episode off with a question,
a favorite topic of conversation for those of us here
at how stuff works when we're just hanging out off
the air. Have you ever wanted to perpetrate a heist
like Ocean's eleven style? And if so, did you ever
envision yourself having a specialty? You know, how all the
(01:38):
heist teams always have their specialists, right.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, I've always wanted to be the bag man.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
The bagman? Yeah yeah, what does that entail? It's the
coolest title. Yeah, it's up there. The bag man generally,
And someone write in and correct us if I'm off
base here, but the bagman generally is a term describing
the person who, actually, when you're physically stealing currency or
jewelry or precious metals, the person who physically holds the bag.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
You see, I'm known for my grip? Is that true?
Oh yeah? Oh yeah, they say Noel Brown, that kid's
got a good grip.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
They usually refer to me Ben Bollen in my past
heist as either the inside man or the shady government liaison.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I would have called you the brain.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
That's very kind. That's very kind, And I guess, by
virtue of his position on the show, our super producer,
Casey Pegram would probably be and I don't want a pigeonhole,
you hear, Casey, our computer expert. You got to have
a hacker.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, you know, it's actually funny. There was a character
in one of the Grand Theft Auto games that reminded
me a lot of Casey and Casey if you take
this as an insult, and you know the character I'm
talking about, please don't, because I'm more talking about his
his very intelligent demeanor, not his look. He was a
little bit of an odd looking fellow. But he's the
guy that ran the warehouse or they planned all the
heist and had the big chalkboard and they you know,
(03:01):
drew the maps and they had the table. I remember
that guy.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yeah, yeah, as long as you're not Trevor Phillips Casey.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
And Grove Street forever. Man, is he like the meth
head guy? Uh yeah, Trevor.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Trevor Phillips is the unhinged method guy.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah. He lived kind of out in the Salt and
Sea type area of what's the name of the fake
La san Andreas?
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Uh yeah, Well, I want to say there's definitely a
San Andres. It's got to be San Andreas.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I have a segue. It's actually gonna work here. Back
all right, go for it. We're talking about video games.
You ever heard of the Assassin's Creed video games?
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yes, I've played them all.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Actually, is there is this one out yet? I just
saw this video. It's called like Assassin's Creed something Legacy
or something. But it's Abogin or maybe it's about London gangs.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Oh yeah, I don't know if that one's out yet.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Okay, I saw a preview of this game, and it's
about London gangs. And in this game, the topic of
today's episode was paid homage to Oh Wonderfully.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
They talked about the forty Thieves, the Farty Thieves, the
fire to Elephants gang.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah. Yeah, remember the Gangs of New York. Wasn't there
a gang called the Farty Thieves.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
An Irish gang, Irish gang? Yeah yeah, And just to
be clear, we're saying four zero with an Irish accent,
not not the flatulent Elephants or the flatulent for the
flatulent Thieves.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
That's awesome. I want to check that game out. I mean,
have you played as thousands agree before?
Speaker 2 (04:21):
I have not.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Oh, it's it's funny, it can be repetitive at times.
It's a mixture of some really cool fighting and then
some at times incredibly frustrating jump around solve the puzzle sequences.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Isn't there a lot of like stock kind of like
from a distance, keep your distance and then move in
for the kill kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
But I mean, who hasn't done that totally, just in
regular life.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
There was a real life gang of thieves, jewel thieves specifically,
that were known for their successful, very well planned out heist.
They were active for more than two hundred years.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
See, I thought that was typo when I first saw it.
Well someone added an extra zero.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Right, No, two hundred years. And this gang was made
entirely of female criminals, operating out of the Elephant and
Castle area of London.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Which I find to be a magnificently whimsical name for
an area.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
London, and you know, the UK in general, they have
the very they have wonderful names for places in streets
and neighborhoods. But I gotta say I'm not a fan
of British names for food, probably just because I didn't
grow up there. But like barley water, spotted dick, bubble
and squeak bubble and squeak bubble and squeak it isn't
(05:40):
even that egregious, sounds like fun whatever it is. But
barley water, that just that sounds like a punishment.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
That's beer, right.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
I don't think it is noile, I think it's it
sounds like it would be a good euphemism for beer.
But barley water is a it's just boiled grain in
water that hasn't you know, it still doesn't have alcohol.
Well it seems like there's no alcohol. Why would you bother? Right,
why would you bother consuming barley? So when did the
(06:11):
forty Thieves really? What were their glory days?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
No, we talked about that. They were also called the
forty Elephants. Yes, yeah, so that's what I'm going to
refer to them as because they lived in this Elephant
and Castle district. They were also they were self contained
and they were an all female band of heisters. I
don't know what you want to call it, criminals, but
they were backed up by another gang of kind of
(06:36):
really rough and tumble dudes who were the Elephant and
Castle Gang and kind of like were almost like their muscle.
But yeah, so they were active possibly as early as
the seventeen hundreds based on police records, and a lot
of this comes from a book called the Gangs of
London by a guy named Brian McDonald, and he says
(06:58):
that the forty Elephant Gang was probably the most active
between the eighteen seventies and the nineteen fifties. But again,
go back as far as possibly the seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Right, it may have been operating without being recognized. Brian also,
Brian McDonald also has a book specifically about the forty
Elephants and one of their most notable leaders, who we'll
get to in a moment, but the book is called
Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants. I appreciate that you
mentioned the Elephant and Castle Mob. They were, in a
(07:31):
way the muscle. They were headed by these guys called
the McDonald brothers, and while they were allied together, they
differed widely in their methods. So the Elephant Castle Mob
they were more kind of bruisers, but the forty Thieves
(07:52):
or the forty Elephants were much more calculated in their crime.
They would play the long game. At times, they would
masquerade as housemaids for wealthy families. They would use false
references and back up the references as well. And during
the early twentieth century they were led by someone called
(08:16):
Alice Diamond, known variously as the Queen of the Forty
Thieves or as Diamond Danny.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
That's the thing. Then they were a very very militaristically
run organization. From their inception, they operated in a series
of like cells, almost like a terrorist group, and they
always were led by a queen. This Anni Diamond was
just kind of the most notorious and influential one.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Yeah, that's correct. There were many, because again, this gang
was active for around two hundred years, far surpassing the
lifespan of the average person at the time and in
their heyday. It's strange because they were romanticized a bit
by papers of the time. In one paper they were
referred to as Amazons, who were handsome women about six
(09:04):
feet tall. We can walk through maybe some of their methods,
because I know we made them sound like they only
did disguise work, but that was just one of their
many strategies for bilking people out of jewelry and valuables.
They did a shoplifting method that is actually still common
(09:24):
and in practice in parts of the world today, which
is overpowering a store through the sheer volume of people participating.
All of the gang members would rush into a store
from various entrances, and then since there were too many
people to apprehend, they would just grab everything they can
and then they would flee out of the store, heading
in multiple directions, knowing that not all of them could
(09:46):
be caught.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Not only that, they had like reserve funds for when
they had to bail out the one or two stragglers
that did get caught. And they basically were considered like
untouchable because they had deals running with the p Lease.
And this is a very corrupt period in English history.
You have to remember. This is like on the tail
end of the Industrial Revolution. Things were changing really really quickly,
(10:10):
and it was kind of like just a free for
all as far as these street gangs, of which there
were many, and I just wanted to rattle off a
few other ones in there. You know, in this part
of the country is huge. You've got gangs like the Scuttlers,
the High Rip Gang, the Peaky Blinders. In Birmingham, you've
got the cock Road Gang and other such amazingly absurd
(10:32):
and beautiful names. But the forty Elephants had an incredible
reputation for being ruthless and being cunning and being like
I said before, practically untouchable because of the way they
ran their operation in these cells and like you're saying,
been the way they were able to kind of scatter, you.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Know, yeah, kind of a hydra organization cut off one
head and two will rise in its place. I don't
think we mentioned that Diamond Annie was ruling during the
interwar period, so she's around nineteen ten or the late
nineteen tens, so World War One has already started. She
(11:16):
and her lieutenant Babyfaced Maggie, which I love these nicknames.
Everybody's got a great nickname. They're the ones who reputedly
had the idea of partnering with the Elephant and Castle
Mob to make sure that they had enforcers. There's an
(11:36):
excellent article about this gang written by Amelia Hill for
The Guardian called Girl Gangscript on London Underworld Revealed, and
it dives into some of the work of Brian McDonald.
But it also gives us a good context for the
time in which this gang existed, or this Glory Day era,
(11:59):
because they were taking advantage of the misogynistic chauvinistic attitudes
of the time. You know, people thought, oh, a woman
couldn't possibly be a criminal if she's dressed.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Well, yeah, and I heard this somewhere, Ben, and let
me know if you did, or if you think this
is completely bogus, But I heard that they sort of
had an advantage because women weren't allowed to do very
much on their own in this time. But one thing
they were allowed to do was shop right on their own.
And it may have even been that they were not
(12:34):
paid as close attention to because of the fact that
you're saying that they're wearing nice clothes and that they're
on their own, unaccompanied without a chaperone.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
You want to respect their privacy. You don't want to
be forward in this very repressed age. So there were
some upsides here, which we can explore later. But there
are some other organizational things that they were very talented at.
They had their own territory like most gangs do, but
(13:03):
they demanded a percentage of all crimes committed in their territory.
So if there's another gang, we'll make up a gang.
Let's say the Devin rye on Sandwich gang steals something.
It doesn't matter what they steal, they still get wind
of it. They still hats yeah, and then the forty
thieves or the forty elephants find out about it. They
(13:25):
will demand a percentage from that haberdasher's robbery because it
happened on their turf. And then if someone refused to
pay up got a bit too big for their breeches
or perhaps their trousers. Then the gang would send their
elephant and castle mob to beat the snot out of
them or kidnap their notable members or their family members
(13:49):
until their percentage was paid.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
And that's not to say that the female members of
this gang weren't bruisers in and of themselves. Diamond Annie,
for example, got her name because she had a fistful
of diamond rings that if she clocked you in the
face with, you'd probably lose an eye or you know,
you would not be doing very well. And they were
known for wriggling out of tight situations with the law
(14:14):
with violent methods. They'd carry blackjacks and straight razors and
all kinds of concealed weapons. But for the big stuff,
like you said, the door to door, you know, give
us our what do you call, like our vig or
whatever you know, or like the what do they call
in the Sopranos when they get in collections, right going
door to door? They sent left that to the big
burly dudes.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah, there might also be the matter of protection fees
or something like that. Common mind, Yeah, exactly exactly. They
also did something that may surprise people. They they diversified
their crime, which makes it more mafioso and less just
street gang. They were. They were very into blackmailing men,
(14:57):
seducing married men or men of and then forcing them
to pay either a huge lump sum or a continuing
almost the service fee not to reveal their carnal predilections.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah, and we're kind of leaning on some of the
most well known members of this gang, like Diamond Anny
in particular. Like you said, I mean that book that
McDonald wrote focuses a lot on her. But there's a
lot of periods in this gang history that we don't
know a whole lot about other than that they did exist.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Right right, because they were also successful at functioning away
from the spotlight. It's weird because for almost two hundred years,
you know, they were playing a very dangerous game. If
any of them were caught, they could be sentenced to
somewhere between three and twelve months hard labor or three
(15:49):
years in prison and hard labor at the time. We've
talked about this in previous episodes was absolutely no joke.
You know, you're like, un what is it you're unraveling rope?
I think that's that's one of the things you had
to do you dig in ditches. And despite these high
risk and these serious consequences, a lot of the gang members,
(16:09):
maybe even the majority, were longtimers. Maggie Hughes or Babyface.
Maggie had shoplifting convictions that went back to the age
of fourteen. And when these as I think we said earlier,
when these women or members of the gang were caught,
they did have their own independent support systems. So your
(16:31):
family members or you know, your dependents would be taken
care of, or they would help you fight the system
get out of jail. But another I like that you
mentioned the fact that there were many other people who
were lost to history that were members of this gang.
We know a few. There's for example, Ada Wellman, who
(16:52):
was convicted of shoplifting from Army and Navy stores in
Victoria in nineteen twenty one, and she we know she
was still an active member of the gang almost twenty
years later because she shows up in police reports eighteen
years after her nineteen twenty one arrest when she got
jailed for four months due to another crime. So these
(17:14):
are career criminals. It's not like a side job. It
doesn't sound like they were doing that thing. So common
in heist movies where we'd say, you know, Casey nol,
let's get the gang back together for one last score.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Now this is a perma score. This is a life.
I mean, this is a generational thing. If we're talking
about two hundred years of this, I'm going to call
it an organization because that's clearly what it was, and
it was maintained that way for quite a long time.
You know, this stuff, these tricks of the trade would
be passed down, you know, like I mean, it's really fascinating.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
So they had one, I guess, great problem that any
shoplifting network will run in who if they are successful,
And the problem was they had abundance of stolen riches.
How do they get rid of this? How do they
take something that they have stolen, for instance, a unique
piece of jewelry right, or very high quality clothing and
(18:16):
translate that into cold, hard cash. This meant they had
to create a distribution network so that they wouldn't you know,
because if they stole something and then just waited a
week and start of wearing those clothes or selling diamonds
on the street, boom, They're back to hard labor again.
So they instead relied on a network of fences and
(18:39):
then unaffiliated street market traders and of course pawn shops.
So part of the clothing they stole would be just
sold to a clothing store. In the clothing store just
to make some scratch, all they would do is replace
the labels, so you would say, oh, that's not a Hardford,
sure Blackfoot Boustier. I'm just making so.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
You were close though. I think one of the big
stories they robbed had a very similar name to that,
And just.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Like the gang itself, this network, while being fluid, also
prospered for a long time. The forty Thieves seemed to
have been at their glory days in the nineteen twenties
and nineteen thirties. So that's why we know so much
about Alice Diamond or Diamond Annie, the woman with a
(19:28):
punch to beware of. Oh, I guess we could talk
a little bit about her background if you want, just briefly.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Oh, we absolutely should have been. But I dude, just
want to point out the names of some of the
biggest retail stores in London on the high Street that
they hit. It was because you made up a beautiful
one and it made me think of it. It wasn't
that far off, ben We've got Debenham and Freebody.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Oh what do they sell.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
You know, ladies Lingerie? It is more of a department
store they sold, you say, still at all? You know,
It's just sort of like a Sears type situation. I
mentionin like departments, the department Herod's exactly. Okay.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
So since we are lucky enough to know a little
bit about the notorious Alice Diamond, let's let's look into
her background. She was born in eighteen ninety six in
June of eighteen ninety six in Lambeth Workhouse Hospital, and
Diamond was her real name. It wasn't just a cool moniker.
(20:23):
Her father was named Thomas Diamond. Her parents had applied
for a maternity birth under the name of Black before
they married, because at the time Alice would have been
an illegitimate child because she had been born out of wedlock. However,
since they decided instead to marry shortly before Alice was
born to avoid the problem. Her father had at least
(20:47):
three criminal convictions, including one where he assaulted the son
of the Lord Mayor of London by punching his head
through a pane of glass and a door, and Alice
turned out to be the eldest of seven children. One
of her younger sisters also joined the Forty Thieves gang,
and one of her brothers, Tommy, became a member of
(21:09):
the Elephant and Castle Gang.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Bid. Can I just point out really quick that I
have seen it as Alice and also Annie. Yes, yeah,
just real quick, because I was confused for a second.
I was about to cop to uh do saying the
wrong names. Now I'm looking back over our sources. It's
definitely both are said.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Like many criminals, she added Anne and Alice to her
name or referred to herself as that multiple.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
That makes perfect sense. It's like an alias, so she
can't get pinned down.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
There you go, just like sometimes I'll be Max Powers
astronaut with a secret or Chris from Boston, who again
is retired. We mentioned him on a previous episode.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
People love Chris from Boston.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
He just you know, the brightest lights shine briefest. So
here's to you, Chris. That's sad, it's good, it's it's okay.
We've got to move on, you know, circle of life
and all that. As far as alias is, nike aasg
Alice's or Anne's criminal career began in nineteen twelve because
(22:07):
she was caught stealing chocolate. In nineteen fifteen, she was
officially named the Queen of the Forty Thieves. The previous
queen was someone named Mary Carr, also known as Polly car.
But we don't know a ton of stuff about Mary.
We mostly know when it goes to who was the
(22:30):
Queen of the forty Thieves, we mostly know about Alice
or Anne. And when you think about it, it sounds
like a swashbuckling life, or it sounds like a maybe
a romanticized thing. But it was a brutal life and
they believed that the only alternative to this would be
a crushing existence in poverty, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Or possibly crushed under the thumb of some man.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
And they did live it up. They were well known
for their parties, that's right. They would really throw down
at pubs and social clubs. And I think the fact
that they also because of their reputation, I would imagine
they were allowed and permitted to do things that you know,
other women would not be because people were scared of
them and they didn't want to like raise up right, yeah,
(23:19):
because that wouldn't have been proper for a group of
women to have a big old, you know, drunken to
do right, and that also gives them some support. That
kind of lifestyle gives them some support in parts of
the population, right because you know, if the forty thieves
or the forty elephants are coming to the restaurant or
(23:40):
the club or something, that it's going to be a
wild night, right. I mean you can part. You might
get blackmailed later, but you could party.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
That's right. I mean they were getting the equivalent, the
late eighteen hundreds equivalent of like bottle service. You know,
they were like really really dropping some cash.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
And we do have to thank McDonald's. We can't think
of it enough because Brian McDonald uncovered a lot of
this previously unknown information by hitting the bricks, scouring official
birth and death records, perusing marriage indixes. A local newspaper
reports hunting down out of print books at the British
(24:19):
Library to read contemporary accounts, and everything he found was verified.
There's a thing where, like imagine you grow up in
a very impoverished situation and you say, well, I can
slave away at a minimum wage job until I get ill,
at which point I have to be consigned to the
(24:41):
poorhouse or workhouse or something and probably die early of
a disease that may well have been preventable. Or I
can break social norms. I can not only become a criminal,
but I can do it well. According to McDonald, they
idolized glamorous movie star and the decadent living of the
(25:01):
nineteen twenties flapper society. So they read about the scandalous,
saalacious behavior of people born into privilege or celebrity, and
they wanted to emulate them in a way. It's in
a way it is very similar to the stories we
hear now about modern drug dealers, right, you know, I
(25:22):
mean Atlanta is full of strip club.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
They want the chains, they want the grills, they want
all this stuff, the status symbols or whatever. But ultimately
they're living a very risky and potentially short existence in
order to have those things.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Did I ever tell you about that excellent freakonomics report
that broke down how much per hour drug dealers actually
make on average?
Speaker 2 (25:45):
You were saying it wasn't great. No, it's the option
unless you're like the distributor or whatever. Yeah, the high
level individual that's really pulling the strings that's where you
make the big money.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Right, It's a very unfairly distributed hierarchy typically, So if
you want to learn more about that, and it is
tangentially related to this episode, but it's fascinating information. Nonetheless,
I'd like to recommend a TED talk by the author
Stephen Levitt, who presents the data he found on the
(26:17):
finances of drug dealing. These folks are not living the
high life. It is much more what's the best way
to say it, No, it's just terrible. There's not a
good way to say it. It's a terrible, terrible life.
Don't sell drugs. I mean, if you're looking to make
a lot of money off of it, don't expect to.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Well, how about forming a very organized cell based gang
and doing smash and grabs for a living.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
That would be there's an interesting topic there too, nol,
because that would be much more difficult, at least here
in the US in the modern day, and definitely in
the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom for a few years
running now has had the largest amount of closed circuit
television cameras CCTV cameras per capita, I believe in the world.
(27:05):
So you're much more likely to get caught on film. Right,
You're also much more easy to track if you have
a cell phone, since we all have those GPS locators
on our phones. It was easier to get away with
crime back then.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Oh absolutely, I mean like it was just rampant. I
can't imagine who would want to go into business. Have
you seen the ballad of buster scrugs?
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Yeah? Yeah, I've seen it several times.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
It makes me think of the bank teller kind of
situation where you're just constantly on the ready with like
guns loaded and pointed at every potential person that's going
to walk on that door and rob you. I would
just think that some of these shopkeepers must have been
quite foolish for at least a minute, you know, with
to allow this kind of stuff to keep happening. I
don't know, I wonder.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Well, And also, what can you do if you have
if you have a small shop, are you supposed to
continually employ five people just for security on the off
chance that something happens one day? I mean you're throwing
money in a hole until the robbery happens, it's right,
(28:12):
And maybe wondering well, Ben, well, no, well, casey, this
sounds like quite an adventure and it would make for
a great film, Like you guys are doing a history show.
Are the forty Elephants still around today?
Speaker 2 (28:28):
No? No, they're not. And again you don't even really
hear much about them at all until this book came out.
But in the mid twenties, there was a member of
the gang named Marie Britton who kind of on her
own through her actions, and this kind of chain of
events led to the dissolution of this crime dynasty. I'm
going to combon to go so far as to call
(28:49):
it that two hundred years Is that a dynasty. I
think that's a dynasty. So yeah, she had fallen for
a dude who was not a part of this CD
under world, and you know, it's a network, and it's
sort of like West Side Story, you know, where it's
like the Jets and the Sharks or whatever. You fall
in love with a shark. It's not okay with the Jets, right,
(29:10):
It's a little different. This person was neither a Shark
nor a Jet. This person was outside of the world entirely.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
They were a square of civilians exactly because Marie had
fallen in love with someone outside of London's underworld. She
had also broken one of the gang's many internal rules
thou shalt not date a square. So she was called
up to see Alice and babyface Maggie, and Marie was scared.
(29:39):
She brought along her father to protect her as her
own muscle, essentially, and they, you know, we can speculate
on the the essence of their conversation. Alice and Maggie say, Hey,
you've got to drop this guy. He's lame. He's not
in the.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
He's not one of us.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
He's not one of us. He's not in our crime
sororities or ffiliated crime fraternities. And Marie says, no, I'm
not going to do it, at which point Maggie whips
out her aforementioned straight razor and attacks Marie's father, Slice
and they escape. Marie and her father managed to escape,
but Alice is not gonna let this go.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Alice sounds like a real tough cookie. Oh yeah, she's
not not for the for the better necessarily. I mean,
I guess if she's she's the kind of person you
probably want in your corner. But if you make an
enemy of her, of her, she's gonna come at you
with a straight razor, right, And she's gonna come to
your house and start hurling rocks through the windows and
then force entry into the home and search manically for you.
(30:45):
I'm speaking of myself as though I were Marie and
my father and they're you know, going to ransack the place,
and in doing this attract the attention of the police
because they became a riot.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Basically not sting in the police. They weren't on the
scene yet. No, so what happens. What happens?
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Well, I mean, they slashed their way through this house
looking for Marie and her father and ended up injuring
some of the other folks that were around, and the
cops came. The fuzz showed out because this is a
whole mele, you know, and the ring leader of the
forty Elephants, Alice Diamonds Diamond, Alice Annie Diamonds Diamond, Annie,
(31:30):
was arrested.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Yeah, and it didn't go well for her, No, it didn't.
They went to trial. They were easily convicted Alice and Maggie.
That is because you know, this.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Is baby face Maggie.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yeah, baby face Maggie, because they clearly did this. But
the prosecution, despite the fact that there were multiple members
of the gang attacking Marie's house. The prosecution only convicted
or only even charged Alice and Maggie because you see,
according to the rumors in the speculation, certain gentlemen in
(32:03):
high places of society did not want the details of
the blackmail activities to come to light. So maybe we
can conjecture with a fair amount of certitude, maybe there
were a couple of people in the government or high
end business who said, look, you can convict the two
ring leaders, but gray Tooth Desdemona can't go to court.
(32:29):
That's right, my wife can't find out. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
And you know, subsequently, there was a vacuum left behind
because Annie, Diamond, Annie, Diamond, Alice whatever you want to
call her, the Diamonds call that was put away and
sentenced to hard labor for how many years?
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Well, let's see, she was imprisoned in nineteen twenty five,
and the power vacuum has a pretty swift effect on
the gang. By nineteen thirty, they're falling out of power,
but people are still claiming membership of the gang, and
they're still shoplifting up into the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
But it sure seems like Diamond Annie is the one
who kind of had that iron fisted control over the
organization to the point where they existed almost as a
central power in the London crime world. So when she
went away, it kind of reverted back to this more
petty thievery and they sort of lost their grip on
(33:28):
the underworld in general, right.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Right, And by the nineteen fifties the gang had just
lost too much power. Maggie Hill ended up dying in
nineteen forty nine. Don't know where she was buried, but
her best friend was Alice Diamond, obviously, And who's the
(33:53):
in Casino? Is it Joe Peshy? Who's the wild card? Oh?
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Yeah? His character?
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Okay, So Maggie Hill, by way of comparison, is kind
of the Joe Peshi of this group. And there's not
really a Robert de Niro. If there is, it's Alice.
But she in court attempted to attack members of the
court during the.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Trial it with a pen.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Who knows. She was like a like a real life
cartoon Tasmanian devil.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
But I also read that she did not keep her
composure when sentenced, that she's freaked out, and yeah, but
like got really upset, was not stoic at all, was
very like emotional.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
And railed against the court. Yes, probably because she saw
more than a few people associated with their crime ring
in court on the other side.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
With their pious wigs on.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
We know that Alice Diamond passed away in a place
called Southwark, close to the East Lane market in nineteen
fifty two. So this gang pretty much pretty much expire.
It's death Knell is the last imprisonment, and then later
the death of Diamond Dallas or Diamond Ann. And that's
(35:12):
not to say gangs don't continue in London today.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Oh no, for sure, but it's you know what the
thing about London too is you always hear about how
gangs there don't use there's not as much gun violence
because they're a lot harder to get. So you gotta
wonder if like the gang culture has kind of like
been influenced by this more kind of crafty gang culture
where it's more about like figuring stuff out and being
(35:36):
sharp on your feet, you know what I mean, as
opposed to just like running in and blasting up the place.
Because you just don't hear about a lot of gun
violence in London.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Not near as much as there is in the US
or some other countries, but knives. We have to keep
in mind. One of my old instructors used to always
try to hammer this into our heads that knives up
close are more dangerous than guns, oh for sure. So
they they're probably walking around with some blaze a blade
or two.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
That's what I'm saying, though, two wheeled a knife. You
gotta be a little more brave and a little more
clever and have a little more training kind of you know,
you got to know what to do with it.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Well said, Well said, And for the record, I agree.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
So I guess I'm saying, way to go London crime
world for being a little less lazy.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
I don't know if I if I agree with that,
of man, It's it's true, though, while gangs still exist
and even thrive in some parts of London, there's not
really at this moment in time, something like the forty Elephants,
unless you want to say the banking cartels are gangs,
(36:41):
but they rob people in a different way very much.
So do you like how I had to walk around
the block to throw that little piece of shade in?
Speaker 2 (36:47):
I loved it.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
I'm telling you, man, the city of London, it's it's sketchy.
The whole thing's sketchy, but that is the story of
the Forty Thieves, the forty Elephants.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Alice Diamond Diamond, Alice Annie Diamonds, Diamond Anny, the all.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Female crime syndicate or dynasty, which we think is appropriate here,
who ran shoplifting and somehow got away with it for
almost two centuries.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
I want to see their like internal records, you know,
for that two hundred years, Like I want to see
the turnover of like who who is in charge? If
any of that was on paper, it probably wasn't. It
was probably all just like oral.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
I wonder, yeah, because it's it's a huge liability to
have that laund but it's prestigious and it would be
It would also really help out Marnie Dickens, who as
of twenty seventeen was developing a series on the Forty
Elephants for Forty Thieves for the BBC, and it has
the potential to be a Peaky Blinders kind of thing.
(37:52):
Did you ever see that show?
Speaker 2 (37:53):
I started watching. I watched the first season and I
like it.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Yeah, I saw I think I saw the first episode.
I started wondering whether I should also carry a razor
around in my hat.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Yeah, our boss Connall really likes it a lot.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
I could see that. That's classic Connell. Have you ever
seen Peaky Blind jers Casey.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
No, I don't think I've even heard of it. Yeah, It'scott,
Silly and Murphy in it. It's about a gang in Ireland.
I want to say, though, right, wasn't an Irish gang
like around the same time in the early twenties. I
don't know they were around for two hundred years though. No.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Would you guys watch a show based on this crime Syndica? Yes,
I would too. Am wondering who they would cast. Let
us know who you think would play an excellent Alice
or Annie Diamond? And who is unhinged enough to be
a babyface Maggie in your book?
Speaker 2 (38:44):
You know who I could pictures being baby face Maggie.
Who's that Melissa McCarthy. I like she's got some acting chops, man,
she knows all these kind of goofy comedy movies. Yeah.
I think she's got the got the range. I think
she's got it man.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna think about this and come back.
It is the end of the episode, which means that
if we are still carrying on this tradition. My friend,
it is time for us to give a comic book
recommendation or two.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Wow, we're gonna keep keep going with this?
Speaker 1 (39:13):
Huh, well, we said we would give it a shot.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
I like it. Have you read Saga? Yes, by Brian Cavon.
I've only read a little bit of it, And again,
I'm not as much of a comic head as you are,
but I have enough of an idea of what's out
there to give a recommendation for a couple episodes. But yeah,
check out Saga by Brian Cavon. It's sort of a
sci fi star crossed space adventure. Was that a good
(39:38):
way of a Franks?
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Yeah? That's great. Yeah, it breaks a lot of genre rules.
I think you'll really enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
He also wrote Why the Last Man, which I did
read every moment of about the last man on Earth
after a disease kind of wipes out the male population
and this one dude still around. Everyone else's female. That's
a good recommendation for this episode. Actually, yeah, that was
actually mine. No way, Oh no, my bad. I only
said it because this is Brian, great writer, and I
(40:04):
believe that's being adapted into a big old series.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Right right, right, and for people who have yet to
read it, this won't spoil anything. There is a character
in Why the Last Man named Agent three point fifty five,
and that comes from a real and mysterious part of
early US history. So if you want to learn more
about the real life Agent three fifty five, check out
(40:28):
our other show stuff. They don't want you to.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Know that was just recent, wasn't it.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Yeah yeah, yeah, And I don't want to ruin it,
but check it.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Out, dude, please, And in the meantime, always always want
to thank Casey Pegrim, our super producer. I don't know
where we'd be without you. We would we would sound
like fools, that's for sure. So thank you to Casey.
Thank you to Alex Williams, who composed our theme.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Yes, and thank you to Christopher hasiotis our research associate
for this episode. Thanks also to our other research associates
eves And and Gabe. Thank you, Nol, and thank you
for listening. Folks. Hope this I don't know, I don't
want to say. I hope this inspires people because they
don't want us to get characterized as the inspiration behind
(41:13):
a new gang of jewel thieves.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
You know what, you do you people out there, whatever
you think be the change you want to see in
the world.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
So also let us know if you have found a
story of another crime ring this successful, because regardless of
your opinions about the internal workings or the consequences or
their own strategies, there's no arguing with it. They were very,
very successful. You can tell us about this on Instagram.
(41:43):
You can find us on Twitter. You can visit us
on Facebook, where we'd love to introduce you to your
fellow Ridiculous Historians on our community page Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
You know how you sit around some days and you're
thinking I should be a jewel thief. But I can't
be a jewel thief on my own I need it.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
But yeah, man, you know I think about that all
the time. Yes, yeah, about when I'm sitting around. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
as long as I could be the bag man, that's
all I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
We've got a weird group chat for sure. This classic
episode is from twenty eighteen where we got super into
one of the coolest crime stories out there in London
and the coolest crime cruise out there in London that
would not have had us as members because they were
(00:36):
no boys loud right, the forty Elephants, all female jewel thieves.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Let's jump right into.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
(01:17):
Ridiculous Historians. Let's start today's episode off with a question,
a favorite topic of conversation for those of us here
at how stuff works when we're just hanging out off
the air. Have you ever wanted to perpetrate a heist
like Ocean's eleven style? And if so, did you ever
envision yourself having a specialty? You know, how all the
(01:38):
heist teams always have their specialists, right.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, I've always wanted to be the bag man.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
The bagman? Yeah yeah, what does that entail? It's the
coolest title. Yeah, it's up there. The bag man generally,
And someone write in and correct us if I'm off
base here, but the bagman generally is a term describing
the person who, actually, when you're physically stealing currency or
jewelry or precious metals, the person who physically holds the bag.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
You see, I'm known for my grip? Is that true?
Oh yeah? Oh yeah, they say Noel Brown, that kid's
got a good grip.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
They usually refer to me Ben Bollen in my past
heist as either the inside man or the shady government liaison.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I would have called you the brain.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
That's very kind. That's very kind, And I guess, by
virtue of his position on the show, our super producer,
Casey Pegram would probably be and I don't want a pigeonhole,
you hear, Casey, our computer expert. You got to have
a hacker.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, you know, it's actually funny. There was a character
in one of the Grand Theft Auto games that reminded
me a lot of Casey and Casey if you take
this as an insult, and you know the character I'm
talking about, please don't, because I'm more talking about his
his very intelligent demeanor, not his look. He was a
little bit of an odd looking fellow. But he's the
guy that ran the warehouse or they planned all the
heist and had the big chalkboard and they you know,
(03:01):
drew the maps and they had the table. I remember
that guy.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yeah, yeah, as long as you're not Trevor Phillips Casey.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
And Grove Street forever. Man, is he like the meth
head guy? Uh yeah, Trevor.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Trevor Phillips is the unhinged method guy.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah. He lived kind of out in the Salt and
Sea type area of what's the name of the fake
La san Andreas?
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Uh yeah, Well, I want to say there's definitely a
San Andres. It's got to be San Andreas.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I have a segue. It's actually gonna work here. Back
all right, go for it. We're talking about video games.
You ever heard of the Assassin's Creed video games?
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yes, I've played them all.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Actually, is there is this one out yet? I just
saw this video. It's called like Assassin's Creed something Legacy
or something. But it's Abogin or maybe it's about London gangs.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Oh yeah, I don't know if that one's out yet.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Okay, I saw a preview of this game, and it's
about London gangs. And in this game, the topic of
today's episode was paid homage to Oh Wonderfully.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
They talked about the forty Thieves, the Farty Thieves, the
fire to Elephants gang.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah. Yeah, remember the Gangs of New York. Wasn't there
a gang called the Farty Thieves.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
An Irish gang, Irish gang? Yeah yeah, And just to
be clear, we're saying four zero with an Irish accent,
not not the flatulent Elephants or the flatulent for the
flatulent Thieves.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
That's awesome. I want to check that game out. I mean,
have you played as thousands agree before?
Speaker 2 (04:21):
I have not.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Oh, it's it's funny, it can be repetitive at times.
It's a mixture of some really cool fighting and then
some at times incredibly frustrating jump around solve the puzzle sequences.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Isn't there a lot of like stock kind of like
from a distance, keep your distance and then move in
for the kill kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
But I mean, who hasn't done that totally, just in
regular life.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
There was a real life gang of thieves, jewel thieves specifically,
that were known for their successful, very well planned out heist.
They were active for more than two hundred years.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
See, I thought that was typo when I first saw it.
Well someone added an extra zero.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Right, No, two hundred years. And this gang was made
entirely of female criminals, operating out of the Elephant and
Castle area of London.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Which I find to be a magnificently whimsical name for
an area.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
London, and you know, the UK in general, they have
the very they have wonderful names for places in streets
and neighborhoods. But I gotta say I'm not a fan
of British names for food, probably just because I didn't
grow up there. But like barley water, spotted dick, bubble
and squeak bubble and squeak bubble and squeak it isn't
(05:40):
even that egregious, sounds like fun whatever it is. But
barley water, that just that sounds like a punishment.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
That's beer, right.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
I don't think it is noile, I think it's it
sounds like it would be a good euphemism for beer.
But barley water is a it's just boiled grain in
water that hasn't you know, it still doesn't have alcohol.
Well it seems like there's no alcohol. Why would you bother? Right,
why would you bother consuming barley? So when did the
(06:11):
forty Thieves really? What were their glory days?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
No, we talked about that. They were also called the
forty Elephants. Yes, yeah, so that's what I'm going to
refer to them as because they lived in this Elephant
and Castle district. They were also they were self contained
and they were an all female band of heisters. I
don't know what you want to call it, criminals, but
they were backed up by another gang of kind of
(06:36):
really rough and tumble dudes who were the Elephant and
Castle Gang and kind of like were almost like their muscle.
But yeah, so they were active possibly as early as
the seventeen hundreds based on police records, and a lot
of this comes from a book called the Gangs of
London by a guy named Brian McDonald, and he says
(06:58):
that the forty Elephant Gang was probably the most active
between the eighteen seventies and the nineteen fifties. But again,
go back as far as possibly the seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Right, it may have been operating without being recognized. Brian also,
Brian McDonald also has a book specifically about the forty
Elephants and one of their most notable leaders, who we'll
get to in a moment, but the book is called
Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants. I appreciate that you
mentioned the Elephant and Castle Mob. They were, in a
(07:31):
way the muscle. They were headed by these guys called
the McDonald brothers, and while they were allied together, they
differed widely in their methods. So the Elephant Castle Mob
they were more kind of bruisers, but the forty Thieves
(07:52):
or the forty Elephants were much more calculated in their crime.
They would play the long game. At times, they would
masquerade as housemaids for wealthy families. They would use false
references and back up the references as well. And during
the early twentieth century they were led by someone called
(08:16):
Alice Diamond, known variously as the Queen of the Forty
Thieves or as Diamond Danny.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
That's the thing. Then they were a very very militaristically
run organization. From their inception, they operated in a series
of like cells, almost like a terrorist group, and they
always were led by a queen. This Anni Diamond was
just kind of the most notorious and influential one.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Yeah, that's correct. There were many, because again, this gang
was active for around two hundred years, far surpassing the
lifespan of the average person at the time and in
their heyday. It's strange because they were romanticized a bit
by papers of the time. In one paper they were
referred to as Amazons, who were handsome women about six
(09:04):
feet tall. We can walk through maybe some of their methods,
because I know we made them sound like they only
did disguise work, but that was just one of their
many strategies for bilking people out of jewelry and valuables.
They did a shoplifting method that is actually still common
(09:24):
and in practice in parts of the world today, which
is overpowering a store through the sheer volume of people participating.
All of the gang members would rush into a store
from various entrances, and then since there were too many
people to apprehend, they would just grab everything they can
and then they would flee out of the store, heading
in multiple directions, knowing that not all of them could
(09:46):
be caught.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Not only that, they had like reserve funds for when
they had to bail out the one or two stragglers
that did get caught. And they basically were considered like
untouchable because they had deals running with the p Lease.
And this is a very corrupt period in English history.
You have to remember. This is like on the tail
end of the Industrial Revolution. Things were changing really really quickly,
(10:10):
and it was kind of like just a free for
all as far as these street gangs, of which there
were many, and I just wanted to rattle off a
few other ones in there. You know, in this part
of the country is huge. You've got gangs like the Scuttlers,
the High Rip Gang, the Peaky Blinders. In Birmingham, you've
got the cock Road Gang and other such amazingly absurd
(10:32):
and beautiful names. But the forty Elephants had an incredible
reputation for being ruthless and being cunning and being like
I said before, practically untouchable because of the way they
ran their operation in these cells and like you're saying,
been the way they were able to kind of scatter, you.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Know, yeah, kind of a hydra organization cut off one
head and two will rise in its place. I don't
think we mentioned that Diamond Annie was ruling during the
interwar period, so she's around nineteen ten or the late
nineteen tens, so World War One has already started. She
(11:16):
and her lieutenant Babyfaced Maggie, which I love these nicknames.
Everybody's got a great nickname. They're the ones who reputedly
had the idea of partnering with the Elephant and Castle
Mob to make sure that they had enforcers. There's an
(11:36):
excellent article about this gang written by Amelia Hill for
The Guardian called Girl Gangscript on London Underworld Revealed, and
it dives into some of the work of Brian McDonald.
But it also gives us a good context for the
time in which this gang existed, or this Glory Day era,
(11:59):
because they were taking advantage of the misogynistic chauvinistic attitudes
of the time. You know, people thought, oh, a woman
couldn't possibly be a criminal if she's dressed.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Well, yeah, and I heard this somewhere, Ben, and let
me know if you did, or if you think this
is completely bogus, But I heard that they sort of
had an advantage because women weren't allowed to do very
much on their own in this time. But one thing
they were allowed to do was shop right on their own.
And it may have even been that they were not
(12:34):
paid as close attention to because of the fact that
you're saying that they're wearing nice clothes and that they're
on their own, unaccompanied without a chaperone.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
You want to respect their privacy. You don't want to
be forward in this very repressed age. So there were
some upsides here, which we can explore later. But there
are some other organizational things that they were very talented at.
They had their own territory like most gangs do, but
(13:03):
they demanded a percentage of all crimes committed in their territory.
So if there's another gang, we'll make up a gang.
Let's say the Devin rye on Sandwich gang steals something.
It doesn't matter what they steal, they still get wind
of it. They still hats yeah, and then the forty
thieves or the forty elephants find out about it. They
(13:25):
will demand a percentage from that haberdasher's robbery because it
happened on their turf. And then if someone refused to
pay up got a bit too big for their breeches
or perhaps their trousers. Then the gang would send their
elephant and castle mob to beat the snot out of
them or kidnap their notable members or their family members
(13:49):
until their percentage was paid.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
And that's not to say that the female members of
this gang weren't bruisers in and of themselves. Diamond Annie,
for example, got her name because she had a fistful
of diamond rings that if she clocked you in the
face with, you'd probably lose an eye or you know,
you would not be doing very well. And they were
known for wriggling out of tight situations with the law
(14:14):
with violent methods. They'd carry blackjacks and straight razors and
all kinds of concealed weapons. But for the big stuff,
like you said, the door to door, you know, give
us our what do you call, like our vig or
whatever you know, or like the what do they call
in the Sopranos when they get in collections, right going
door to door? They sent left that to the big
burly dudes.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah, there might also be the matter of protection fees
or something like that. Common mind, Yeah, exactly exactly. They
also did something that may surprise people. They they diversified
their crime, which makes it more mafioso and less just
street gang. They were. They were very into blackmailing men,
(14:57):
seducing married men or men of and then forcing them
to pay either a huge lump sum or a continuing
almost the service fee not to reveal their carnal predilections.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah, and we're kind of leaning on some of the
most well known members of this gang, like Diamond Anny
in particular. Like you said, I mean that book that
McDonald wrote focuses a lot on her. But there's a
lot of periods in this gang history that we don't
know a whole lot about other than that they did exist.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Right right, because they were also successful at functioning away
from the spotlight. It's weird because for almost two hundred years,
you know, they were playing a very dangerous game. If
any of them were caught, they could be sentenced to
somewhere between three and twelve months hard labor or three
(15:49):
years in prison and hard labor at the time. We've
talked about this in previous episodes was absolutely no joke.
You know, you're like, un what is it you're unraveling rope?
I think that's that's one of the things you had
to do you dig in ditches. And despite these high
risk and these serious consequences, a lot of the gang members,
(16:09):
maybe even the majority, were longtimers. Maggie Hughes or Babyface.
Maggie had shoplifting convictions that went back to the age
of fourteen. And when these as I think we said earlier,
when these women or members of the gang were caught,
they did have their own independent support systems. So your
(16:31):
family members or you know, your dependents would be taken
care of, or they would help you fight the system
get out of jail. But another I like that you
mentioned the fact that there were many other people who
were lost to history that were members of this gang.
We know a few. There's for example, Ada Wellman, who
(16:52):
was convicted of shoplifting from Army and Navy stores in
Victoria in nineteen twenty one, and she we know she
was still an active member of the gang almost twenty
years later because she shows up in police reports eighteen
years after her nineteen twenty one arrest when she got
jailed for four months due to another crime. So these
(17:14):
are career criminals. It's not like a side job. It
doesn't sound like they were doing that thing. So common
in heist movies where we'd say, you know, Casey nol,
let's get the gang back together for one last score.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Now this is a perma score. This is a life.
I mean, this is a generational thing. If we're talking
about two hundred years of this, I'm going to call
it an organization because that's clearly what it was, and
it was maintained that way for quite a long time.
You know, this stuff, these tricks of the trade would
be passed down, you know, like I mean, it's really fascinating.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
So they had one, I guess, great problem that any
shoplifting network will run in who if they are successful,
And the problem was they had abundance of stolen riches.
How do they get rid of this? How do they
take something that they have stolen, for instance, a unique
piece of jewelry right, or very high quality clothing and
(18:16):
translate that into cold, hard cash. This meant they had
to create a distribution network so that they wouldn't you know,
because if they stole something and then just waited a
week and start of wearing those clothes or selling diamonds
on the street, boom, They're back to hard labor again.
So they instead relied on a network of fences and
(18:39):
then unaffiliated street market traders and of course pawn shops.
So part of the clothing they stole would be just
sold to a clothing store. In the clothing store just
to make some scratch, all they would do is replace
the labels, so you would say, oh, that's not a Hardford,
sure Blackfoot Boustier. I'm just making so.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
You were close though. I think one of the big
stories they robbed had a very similar name to that,
And just.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Like the gang itself, this network, while being fluid, also
prospered for a long time. The forty Thieves seemed to
have been at their glory days in the nineteen twenties
and nineteen thirties. So that's why we know so much
about Alice Diamond or Diamond Annie, the woman with a
(19:28):
punch to beware of. Oh, I guess we could talk
a little bit about her background if you want, just briefly.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Oh, we absolutely should have been. But I dude, just
want to point out the names of some of the
biggest retail stores in London on the high Street that
they hit. It was because you made up a beautiful
one and it made me think of it. It wasn't
that far off, ben We've got Debenham and Freebody.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Oh what do they sell.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
You know, ladies Lingerie? It is more of a department
store they sold, you say, still at all? You know,
It's just sort of like a Sears type situation. I
mentionin like departments, the department Herod's exactly. Okay.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
So since we are lucky enough to know a little
bit about the notorious Alice Diamond, let's let's look into
her background. She was born in eighteen ninety six in
June of eighteen ninety six in Lambeth Workhouse Hospital, and
Diamond was her real name. It wasn't just a cool moniker.
(20:23):
Her father was named Thomas Diamond. Her parents had applied
for a maternity birth under the name of Black before
they married, because at the time Alice would have been
an illegitimate child because she had been born out of wedlock. However,
since they decided instead to marry shortly before Alice was
born to avoid the problem. Her father had at least
(20:47):
three criminal convictions, including one where he assaulted the son
of the Lord Mayor of London by punching his head
through a pane of glass and a door, and Alice
turned out to be the eldest of seven children. One
of her younger sisters also joined the Forty Thieves gang,
and one of her brothers, Tommy, became a member of
(21:09):
the Elephant and Castle Gang.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Bid. Can I just point out really quick that I
have seen it as Alice and also Annie. Yes, yeah,
just real quick, because I was confused for a second.
I was about to cop to uh do saying the
wrong names. Now I'm looking back over our sources. It's
definitely both are said.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Like many criminals, she added Anne and Alice to her
name or referred to herself as that multiple.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
That makes perfect sense. It's like an alias, so she
can't get pinned down.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
There you go, just like sometimes I'll be Max Powers
astronaut with a secret or Chris from Boston, who again
is retired. We mentioned him on a previous episode.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
People love Chris from Boston.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
He just you know, the brightest lights shine briefest. So
here's to you, Chris. That's sad, it's good, it's it's okay.
We've got to move on, you know, circle of life
and all that. As far as alias is, nike aasg
Alice's or Anne's criminal career began in nineteen twelve because
(22:07):
she was caught stealing chocolate. In nineteen fifteen, she was
officially named the Queen of the Forty Thieves. The previous
queen was someone named Mary Carr, also known as Polly car.
But we don't know a ton of stuff about Mary.
We mostly know when it goes to who was the
(22:30):
Queen of the forty Thieves, we mostly know about Alice
or Anne. And when you think about it, it sounds
like a swashbuckling life, or it sounds like a maybe
a romanticized thing. But it was a brutal life and
they believed that the only alternative to this would be
a crushing existence in poverty, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Or possibly crushed under the thumb of some man.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
And they did live it up. They were well known
for their parties, that's right. They would really throw down
at pubs and social clubs. And I think the fact
that they also because of their reputation, I would imagine
they were allowed and permitted to do things that you know,
other women would not be because people were scared of
them and they didn't want to like raise up right, yeah,
(23:19):
because that wouldn't have been proper for a group of
women to have a big old, you know, drunken to
do right, and that also gives them some support. That
kind of lifestyle gives them some support in parts of
the population, right because you know, if the forty thieves
or the forty elephants are coming to the restaurant or
(23:40):
the club or something, that it's going to be a
wild night, right. I mean you can part. You might
get blackmailed later, but you could party.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
That's right. I mean they were getting the equivalent, the
late eighteen hundreds equivalent of like bottle service. You know,
they were like really really dropping some cash.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
And we do have to thank McDonald's. We can't think
of it enough because Brian McDonald uncovered a lot of
this previously unknown information by hitting the bricks, scouring official
birth and death records, perusing marriage indixes. A local newspaper
reports hunting down out of print books at the British
(24:19):
Library to read contemporary accounts, and everything he found was verified.
There's a thing where, like imagine you grow up in
a very impoverished situation and you say, well, I can
slave away at a minimum wage job until I get ill,
at which point I have to be consigned to the
(24:41):
poorhouse or workhouse or something and probably die early of
a disease that may well have been preventable. Or I
can break social norms. I can not only become a criminal,
but I can do it well. According to McDonald, they
idolized glamorous movie star and the decadent living of the
(25:01):
nineteen twenties flapper society. So they read about the scandalous,
saalacious behavior of people born into privilege or celebrity, and
they wanted to emulate them in a way. It's in
a way it is very similar to the stories we
hear now about modern drug dealers, right, you know, I
(25:22):
mean Atlanta is full of strip club.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
They want the chains, they want the grills, they want
all this stuff, the status symbols or whatever. But ultimately
they're living a very risky and potentially short existence in
order to have those things.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Did I ever tell you about that excellent freakonomics report
that broke down how much per hour drug dealers actually
make on average?
Speaker 2 (25:45):
You were saying it wasn't great. No, it's the option
unless you're like the distributor or whatever. Yeah, the high
level individual that's really pulling the strings that's where you
make the big money.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Right, It's a very unfairly distributed hierarchy typically, So if
you want to learn more about that, and it is
tangentially related to this episode, but it's fascinating information. Nonetheless,
I'd like to recommend a TED talk by the author
Stephen Levitt, who presents the data he found on the
(26:17):
finances of drug dealing. These folks are not living the
high life. It is much more what's the best way
to say it, No, it's just terrible. There's not a
good way to say it. It's a terrible, terrible life.
Don't sell drugs. I mean, if you're looking to make
a lot of money off of it, don't expect to.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Well, how about forming a very organized cell based gang
and doing smash and grabs for a living.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
That would be there's an interesting topic there too, nol,
because that would be much more difficult, at least here
in the US in the modern day, and definitely in
the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom for a few years
running now has had the largest amount of closed circuit
television cameras CCTV cameras per capita, I believe in the world.
(27:05):
So you're much more likely to get caught on film. Right,
You're also much more easy to track if you have
a cell phone, since we all have those GPS locators
on our phones. It was easier to get away with
crime back then.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Oh absolutely, I mean like it was just rampant. I
can't imagine who would want to go into business. Have
you seen the ballad of buster scrugs?
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Yeah? Yeah, I've seen it several times.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
It makes me think of the bank teller kind of
situation where you're just constantly on the ready with like
guns loaded and pointed at every potential person that's going
to walk on that door and rob you. I would
just think that some of these shopkeepers must have been
quite foolish for at least a minute, you know, with
to allow this kind of stuff to keep happening. I
don't know, I wonder.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Well, And also, what can you do if you have
if you have a small shop, are you supposed to
continually employ five people just for security on the off
chance that something happens one day? I mean you're throwing
money in a hole until the robbery happens, it's right,
(28:12):
And maybe wondering well, Ben, well, no, well, casey, this
sounds like quite an adventure and it would make for
a great film, Like you guys are doing a history show.
Are the forty Elephants still around today?
Speaker 2 (28:28):
No? No, they're not. And again you don't even really
hear much about them at all until this book came out.
But in the mid twenties, there was a member of
the gang named Marie Britton who kind of on her
own through her actions, and this kind of chain of
events led to the dissolution of this crime dynasty. I'm
going to combon to go so far as to call
(28:49):
it that two hundred years Is that a dynasty. I
think that's a dynasty. So yeah, she had fallen for
a dude who was not a part of this CD
under world, and you know, it's a network, and it's
sort of like West Side Story, you know, where it's
like the Jets and the Sharks or whatever. You fall
in love with a shark. It's not okay with the Jets, right,
(29:10):
It's a little different. This person was neither a Shark
nor a Jet. This person was outside of the world entirely.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
They were a square of civilians exactly because Marie had
fallen in love with someone outside of London's underworld. She
had also broken one of the gang's many internal rules
thou shalt not date a square. So she was called
up to see Alice and babyface Maggie, and Marie was scared.
(29:39):
She brought along her father to protect her as her
own muscle, essentially, and they, you know, we can speculate
on the the essence of their conversation. Alice and Maggie say, Hey,
you've got to drop this guy. He's lame. He's not
in the.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
He's not one of us.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
He's not one of us. He's not in our crime
sororities or ffiliated crime fraternities. And Marie says, no, I'm
not going to do it, at which point Maggie whips
out her aforementioned straight razor and attacks Marie's father, Slice
and they escape. Marie and her father managed to escape,
but Alice is not gonna let this go.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Alice sounds like a real tough cookie. Oh yeah, she's
not not for the for the better necessarily. I mean,
I guess if she's she's the kind of person you
probably want in your corner. But if you make an
enemy of her, of her, she's gonna come at you
with a straight razor, right, And she's gonna come to
your house and start hurling rocks through the windows and
then force entry into the home and search manically for you.
(30:45):
I'm speaking of myself as though I were Marie and
my father and they're you know, going to ransack the place,
and in doing this attract the attention of the police
because they became a riot.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Basically not sting in the police. They weren't on the
scene yet. No, so what happens. What happens?
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Well, I mean, they slashed their way through this house
looking for Marie and her father and ended up injuring
some of the other folks that were around, and the
cops came. The fuzz showed out because this is a
whole mele, you know, and the ring leader of the
forty Elephants, Alice Diamonds Diamond, Alice Annie Diamonds Diamond, Annie,
(31:30):
was arrested.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Yeah, and it didn't go well for her, No, it didn't.
They went to trial. They were easily convicted Alice and Maggie.
That is because you know, this.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Is baby face Maggie.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yeah, baby face Maggie, because they clearly did this. But
the prosecution, despite the fact that there were multiple members
of the gang attacking Marie's house. The prosecution only convicted
or only even charged Alice and Maggie because you see,
according to the rumors in the speculation, certain gentlemen in
(32:03):
high places of society did not want the details of
the blackmail activities to come to light. So maybe we
can conjecture with a fair amount of certitude, maybe there
were a couple of people in the government or high
end business who said, look, you can convict the two
ring leaders, but gray Tooth Desdemona can't go to court.
(32:29):
That's right, my wife can't find out. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
And you know, subsequently, there was a vacuum left behind
because Annie, Diamond, Annie, Diamond, Alice whatever you want to
call her, the Diamonds call that was put away and
sentenced to hard labor for how many years?
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Well, let's see, she was imprisoned in nineteen twenty five,
and the power vacuum has a pretty swift effect on
the gang. By nineteen thirty, they're falling out of power,
but people are still claiming membership of the gang, and
they're still shoplifting up into the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
But it sure seems like Diamond Annie is the one
who kind of had that iron fisted control over the
organization to the point where they existed almost as a
central power in the London crime world. So when she
went away, it kind of reverted back to this more
petty thievery and they sort of lost their grip on
(33:28):
the underworld in general, right.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Right, And by the nineteen fifties the gang had just
lost too much power. Maggie Hill ended up dying in
nineteen forty nine. Don't know where she was buried, but
her best friend was Alice Diamond, obviously, And who's the
(33:53):
in Casino? Is it Joe Peshy? Who's the wild card? Oh?
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Yeah? His character?
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Okay, So Maggie Hill, by way of comparison, is kind
of the Joe Peshi of this group. And there's not
really a Robert de Niro. If there is, it's Alice.
But she in court attempted to attack members of the
court during the.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Trial it with a pen.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Who knows. She was like a like a real life
cartoon Tasmanian devil.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
But I also read that she did not keep her
composure when sentenced, that she's freaked out, and yeah, but
like got really upset, was not stoic at all, was
very like emotional.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
And railed against the court. Yes, probably because she saw
more than a few people associated with their crime ring
in court on the other side.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
With their pious wigs on.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
We know that Alice Diamond passed away in a place
called Southwark, close to the East Lane market in nineteen
fifty two. So this gang pretty much pretty much expire.
It's death Knell is the last imprisonment, and then later
the death of Diamond Dallas or Diamond Ann. And that's
(35:12):
not to say gangs don't continue in London today.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Oh no, for sure, but it's you know what the
thing about London too is you always hear about how
gangs there don't use there's not as much gun violence
because they're a lot harder to get. So you gotta
wonder if like the gang culture has kind of like
been influenced by this more kind of crafty gang culture
where it's more about like figuring stuff out and being
(35:36):
sharp on your feet, you know what I mean, as
opposed to just like running in and blasting up the place.
Because you just don't hear about a lot of gun
violence in London.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Not near as much as there is in the US
or some other countries, but knives. We have to keep
in mind. One of my old instructors used to always
try to hammer this into our heads that knives up
close are more dangerous than guns, oh for sure. So
they they're probably walking around with some blaze a blade
or two.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
That's what I'm saying, though, two wheeled a knife. You
gotta be a little more brave and a little more
clever and have a little more training kind of you know,
you got to know what to do with it.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Well said, Well said, And for the record, I agree.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
So I guess I'm saying, way to go London crime
world for being a little less lazy.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
I don't know if I if I agree with that,
of man, It's it's true, though, while gangs still exist
and even thrive in some parts of London, there's not
really at this moment in time, something like the forty Elephants,
unless you want to say the banking cartels are gangs,
(36:41):
but they rob people in a different way very much.
So do you like how I had to walk around
the block to throw that little piece of shade in?
Speaker 2 (36:47):
I loved it.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
I'm telling you, man, the city of London, it's it's sketchy.
The whole thing's sketchy, but that is the story of
the Forty Thieves, the forty Elephants.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Alice Diamond Diamond, Alice Annie Diamonds, Diamond Anny, the all.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Female crime syndicate or dynasty, which we think is appropriate here,
who ran shoplifting and somehow got away with it for
almost two centuries.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
I want to see their like internal records, you know,
for that two hundred years, Like I want to see
the turnover of like who who is in charge? If
any of that was on paper, it probably wasn't. It
was probably all just like oral.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
I wonder, yeah, because it's it's a huge liability to
have that laund but it's prestigious and it would be
It would also really help out Marnie Dickens, who as
of twenty seventeen was developing a series on the Forty
Elephants for Forty Thieves for the BBC, and it has
the potential to be a Peaky Blinders kind of thing.
(37:52):
Did you ever see that show?
Speaker 2 (37:53):
I started watching. I watched the first season and I
like it.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Yeah, I saw I think I saw the first episode.
I started wondering whether I should also carry a razor
around in my hat.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Yeah, our boss Connall really likes it a lot.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
I could see that. That's classic Connell. Have you ever
seen Peaky Blind jers Casey.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
No, I don't think I've even heard of it. Yeah, It'scott,
Silly and Murphy in it. It's about a gang in Ireland.
I want to say, though, right, wasn't an Irish gang
like around the same time in the early twenties. I
don't know they were around for two hundred years though. No.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Would you guys watch a show based on this crime Syndica? Yes,
I would too. Am wondering who they would cast. Let
us know who you think would play an excellent Alice
or Annie Diamond? And who is unhinged enough to be
a babyface Maggie in your book?
Speaker 2 (38:44):
You know who I could pictures being baby face Maggie.
Who's that Melissa McCarthy. I like she's got some acting chops, man,
she knows all these kind of goofy comedy movies. Yeah.
I think she's got the got the range. I think
she's got it man.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna think about this and come back.
It is the end of the episode, which means that
if we are still carrying on this tradition. My friend,
it is time for us to give a comic book
recommendation or two.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Wow, we're gonna keep keep going with this?
Speaker 1 (39:13):
Huh, well, we said we would give it a shot.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
I like it. Have you read Saga? Yes, by Brian Cavon.
I've only read a little bit of it, And again,
I'm not as much of a comic head as you are,
but I have enough of an idea of what's out
there to give a recommendation for a couple episodes. But yeah,
check out Saga by Brian Cavon. It's sort of a
sci fi star crossed space adventure. Was that a good
(39:38):
way of a Franks?
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Yeah? That's great. Yeah, it breaks a lot of genre rules.
I think you'll really enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
He also wrote Why the Last Man, which I did
read every moment of about the last man on Earth
after a disease kind of wipes out the male population
and this one dude still around. Everyone else's female. That's
a good recommendation for this episode. Actually, yeah, that was
actually mine. No way, Oh no, my bad. I only
said it because this is Brian, great writer, and I
(40:04):
believe that's being adapted into a big old series.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Right right, right, and for people who have yet to
read it, this won't spoil anything. There is a character
in Why the Last Man named Agent three point fifty five,
and that comes from a real and mysterious part of
early US history. So if you want to learn more
about the real life Agent three fifty five, check out
(40:28):
our other show stuff. They don't want you to.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Know that was just recent, wasn't it.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Yeah yeah, yeah, And I don't want to ruin it,
but check it.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Out, dude, please, And in the meantime, always always want
to thank Casey Pegrim, our super producer. I don't know
where we'd be without you. We would we would sound
like fools, that's for sure. So thank you to Casey.
Thank you to Alex Williams, who composed our theme.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Yes, and thank you to Christopher hasiotis our research associate
for this episode. Thanks also to our other research associates
eves And and Gabe. Thank you, Nol, and thank you
for listening. Folks. Hope this I don't know, I don't
want to say. I hope this inspires people because they
don't want us to get characterized as the inspiration behind
(41:13):
a new gang of jewel thieves.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
You know what, you do you people out there, whatever
you think be the change you want to see in
the world.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
So also let us know if you have found a
story of another crime ring this successful, because regardless of
your opinions about the internal workings or the consequences or
their own strategies, there's no arguing with it. They were very,
very successful. You can tell us about this on Instagram.
(41:43):
You can find us on Twitter. You can visit us
on Facebook, where we'd love to introduce you to your
fellow Ridiculous Historians on our community page Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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