Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Yeah, welcome to the show, 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
(00:33):
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 heist teams always have their specialists, right, Well,
I've always wanted to be the bagman. The bagman? Yeah, yeah,
(00:55):
what does that entail? It's it's the coolest title. Yeah,
it's up there. The bagman je generally, And someone right
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 back. You see, I'm
(01:15):
known for my grip, Is that true? Yeah? Yeah, they
say Noel Brown, that kid's got a good grip. They
usually refer to me Ben Boland in my past heist
as either the the inside man or the uh, the
shady government liaison. I would have called you the brain.
That's very kind. That's very kind. And I guess by
(01:37):
virtue of his position on the show, our super producer,
Casey Pegram would probably be And I don't want to
pigeonhole you. Hear Casey our computer expert. You gotta have
a hacker. 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 if you, if you take this as an insult,
and you know the character I'm talking about, please don't,
(01:59):
because I'm more talking to out his his very intelligent demeanor,
not not not his look. He was a little bit
of an odd looking fellow. But he's the guy that
ran the warehouse where they planned all the heist and
they had the big chalkboard and they you know, drew
the maps and they had the Remember that guy. Yeah, Um,
as long as you're not Trevor Phillips, Casey is he is?
He like the meth head guy, uh, Trevor Trevor Phillips
(02:22):
is the unhinged head guy. Yeah. He lived kind of
out in the salt and Sea type area of of
what's the name of the fake l a San Andreas. Uh. Yeah, well,
I want to say there's definitely a sant Andreas. It's
gotta be sant Andreas. I have a segue. It's actually
gonna work here bad, all right, go for it. We're
talking about video games. You ever heard of the Assassin's
Creed video games? Yes? I played them all. Actually, is
(02:44):
there is this one out? Yeah? I just saw this video.
It's called Assassin's Creed something legacy or something, but it's
agin or maybe it's about London gangs. Oh yeah, I
don't know if that one's out yet. Okay. Then then
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. They talked about
(03:05):
the forty Thieves, the Farty Thieves, the fart Elephants gang. Yeah. Yeah,
remember the Gangs of New York. Wasn't there a gang
called the Farty Thieves? Uh? And Irish gang Irish gang. Yeah,
And just to be clear, we're saying four zero with
an Irish acts and not not the flagelent Elephants or
the Flatulent for the flatulent thieves. Yeah, that's awesome. I
(03:25):
want to check that game out. I mean, have you
played a Susands Degree before? I have not. 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. Isn't
there a lot of like stock kind of like from
a distance, keep your distance and then moving for the
kill kind of stuff? But I mean, who hasn't done
(03:47):
that totally just in regular life. So so, there was
a real life gang of thieves, jewel thieves specifically that
we're known for their successful, very well planned out heist.
They were active for more than two hundred years. See
(04:07):
I thought that was a typo when I first saw
it was someone added an extra zero, right, No, two
hundred years. And this gang was made entirely of female criminals,
operating out of the Elephant and Castle area of London,
which I find to be a magnificently whimsical name for
an area London, and you know the UK in general.
(04:31):
They have they're 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, isn't
even that egregious, sounds like fun whatever it is. But
(04:53):
barley water, that just that sounds like a punishment, right,
I don't think it is not. I think it's It
sounds like it would be a good euphemism for beer.
But barley water is a um it's just boiled grain
in water that hasn't you know, it still doesn't have alcohol.
It seems like if there's no alcohol, why would you bother? Right,
(05:13):
why would you bother consuming barley? So when when did
the forty thieves really? When we're what were their glory days,
we talked about that they were also called the forty Elephants. Yes, yeah,
so that's 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
(05:35):
an all female band of um heisters. I don't know
what you want to call it, criminals, um, but they
were backed up by another gang of kind of really
rough and tumbled dudes who are the Elephant and Castle
Gang and kind of like we're almost like their muscle um.
But yeah, so they were active possibly as early as
(05:56):
the seventeen hundreds, based on police records. A lot of
this comes from a book called the Gangs of London
by a guy named Brian McDonald, and he says that
the forty Elephant gang um was probably the most active
between the eighteen seventies and the nineteen fifties, but again
go back as far as possibly the seventeen hundreds, right,
(06:19):
they 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 will
get to in a moment, but the book is called
Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants. I appreciate that you
mention the Elephant and Castle Mob. They were in a
(06:39):
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 the
(07:00):
Eaves or the forty elephants were much more calculated in
their crime. They would 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
(07:22):
led by someone called Alice Diamond, known variously as the
Queen of the forty Thieves or as Diamond Danny. 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
(07:42):
by a queen. This Annie Diamond was just kind of
the most notorious and influential one. 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
(08:07):
of the time. In one paper they were referred to
as amazons, who were handsome women about six ft tall.
We we can walk through maybe some of their methods
because I know we made them sound like, uh, they
only did disguise work, but that was that was just
one of their many strategies for bilking people out of
(08:27):
jewelry and valuables. They did a shoplifting method that is
actually still common and in practice and parts of the
world today, which is overpowering the 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
(08:47):
grab everything they can and then they would flee out
of the store, heading in multiple directions, knowing that not
all of them could be caught. 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 police. And this is a very
(09:09):
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, 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,
(09:33):
the Peaky Blinders in Birmingham, you've got the cock Road
Gang and other such amazingly absurd and beautiful names. Um.
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
(09:56):
in these cells and like you're saying, been the way
they were able to kind of scatter. 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 tents, so World
(10:21):
War one has already started. She and her lieutenant, baby
Faced Maggie, which I love these nicknames. Everybody's got a
great nickname. Uh. They're the ones who reputedly had the
idea of partnering with the Elephants and Castle Mob to
make sure that they had enforcers. There's an excellent article
(10:45):
about this gang written by Amelia Hill for The Guardian
called Girl Gangs Grip 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 this Glory Day era,
(11:07):
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 well. Yeah,
and I heard this somewhere, Ben and um, let me
know if you did, or if you think this is
complete lea bogus, But I heard that they sort of
(11:28):
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
paid as close attention to because of the fact, like
you're saying that they're wearing nice clothes and that they're
on their own, unaccompanied without a chaperone. You want to
(11:50):
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 there are some
other organizational things that they were very talented at. They
had their own territory like most gangs do, but they
(12:12):
demanded a percentage of all crimes committed in their territory.
So if there's another gang, will make up a gang.
Let's say the Devin rye On Sandwich gang steals uh something.
It doesn't matter what they steal, they still get winded,
they still hats yeah, and then the forty thieves or
the forty elephants find out about it, they will demand
(12:34):
a percentage from that haberdasher's robbery because it happened on
their turf. And then if someone refused to pay up
get a bit too big for their bridges 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 until their
(12:58):
percentage was paid. And that's 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 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
(13:21):
the law with violent methods. They'd carry blackjacks, straight razors,
and all kinds of concealed weapons. But for the big stuff,
like you said, the door to door, you know, give
give us our what do you call it? Are big
or whatever you know? Or like the what do they
call in the Sopranos when they getting collections right and
going to the door, they sent left that to the
(13:41):
big burly dudes. Yeah, there might also be the matter
of protection fees or something like that, exactly. They also
did something that may surprise people. They diversified their crime,
which makes it more ma FiOS and less just street
they were. They were very into blackmailing men, seducing married
(14:07):
men or men of note, and then forcing them to
pay either a huge lump sum or a continuing almost
the service fee not to reveal their carnal predilections. Yeah,
and we're kind of leaning on some of the most
well known members of this gang, like Diamond Annie In particularly,
Like you said, I mean that book um that McDonald
(14:28):
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
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
(14:50):
any of them were caught, they could be sentenced to
somewhere between three and twelve months hard labor or three
years in prison and hard labor. At the time, and
we've talked about this on previous episodes, was absolutely no joke.
You know, you're like, what is it. You're unraveling rope.
I think that's one of the things you had to do, uh,
you digging ditches. And despite these high risk and these
(15:14):
serious consequences, a lot of the gang members, maybe even
the majority, were long timers. Maggie Hughes or baby Face.
Maggie had shoplifting convictions that went back to the age
of fourteen. And when these as as I think we
said earlier, when these women or members of the gang
were caught, they did have their own independent support systems.
(15:38):
So your family members or your you know, your dependence
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,
(15:58):
Adah Wellman, who was convicted of shoplifting from army and
navy stores in Victorian ne and she was 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 arrest when she got jailed for
(16:19):
four months due to another crime. So these are career criminals.
It's not like a side job. It's it doesn't sound
like they were doing that thing so common in heist
movies where we'd say, you know, Casey Noel, let's get
the gang back together for one last score. No, this
is a premise score. This is a life. I mean,
this is a generational thing. If we're talking about two
(16:41):
hundred years of this, um, 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 this stuff, these tricks of the trade would be
passed down, you know, like I mean, it's it's really fascinating.
So they had one, I guess, great problem that any
(17:06):
shoplifting network will run into if they are successful, And
the problem was had abundance of stolen riches. What 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 translate
that into cold, hard cash. This meant they had to
(17:29):
create a distribution network so that they would you know,
because if they stole something and then just waited a
week and started 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 then
unaffiliated street market traders and of course pawn shops. So
(17:53):
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 Hertfordshire Blackfoot boost,
I'm just making Some were close though. I think one
of the big stories they robbed had a very similar
(18:14):
name to that. And just like the gang itself, this network,
while being fluid, also prospered for a long time. The
forty Thieves seem to have been at their glory days
in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, so that's why
we know uh so much about Alice Diamond or Diamond
(18:35):
Annie the woman with the punch to be aware of. Oh,
I guess we could talk a little bit about her
background if you want, just briefly. Oh, we absolutely should.
Ben By Dad 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 wasn't that far off, Ben, We've got
Debonham and Freebody. Oh what do they sell? You know,
(18:57):
Ladies Lingerie is more of a department store still at all,
you know, it's just sort of like a like a
serious type situation imag department department store kind of Herod's exactly. Okay,
So since we are lucky enough to know a little
bit about the notorious Alice Diamond, let's let's look into
(19:19):
her background. She was born in eighteen nine six in
June of eight in Lambeth Workhouse Hospital, and Diamond was
her real name. It wasn't just a cool moniker. Her
father was named Thomas Diamond. Her parents had applied for
a maternity birth under the name of Black before they
(19:39):
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
three criminal convictions, including one where he assaulted the son
(20:00):
the Lord Mayor of London by punching his head through
a pane of glass in 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 the
Elephant and Castle Gang. Ben, Can I just point out
(20:21):
really quick then 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 to saying the wrong name. That now I'm
looking back over our sources and it's definitely said. Both
are said. Like many criminals, she added Ann and Alice
to her name, or referred to herself as that multiple
(20:41):
makes perfect sense. It's like an alias, so she can
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. People
love Chris from Boston. He just, you know, the brightest
lights shine briefest. So here's to you. Chris's sad. It's good,
(21:02):
It's it's okay. We've got to move on, you know,
circle of life and all that, as far as aliases
and ak s go. Alice's or Anne's criminal career began
in nineteen twelve because she was caught stealing chocolate. In
nineteen fifteen, she was officially named the Queen of the
(21:23):
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 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
(21:47):
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, or possibly crushed under the
thumb of some man. And they did live it up.
(22:07):
They were well known for their parties. 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, because that wouldn't have been proper for
(22:29):
a group of women to have a big old, you know,
drunken to do right. And then 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 the club or something, that it's gonna be a
(22:50):
wild night. I mean you can part You might get
blackmailed later, but you could party right. I mean, they
were getting the equivalent, the equivalent of like bottle service.
You know, they were really really dropping some some cash.
And we do have to thank McDonald. We can't think
of it enough because Brian McDonald uncovered a lot of
(23:12):
this previously unknown information by hitting the bricks, scouring official
birth and death records, perusing marriage indexes. UH local newspaper
reports hunting down out of print books at the British
Library to read contemporary accounts, and everything he found was verified.
(23:34):
There's 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 poorhouse or workhouse or something and probably die
early of a disease that may well have been preventable.
(23:56):
Or I can break social norms. I cannot only become
a criminal, but I can do it well. According to McDonald,
they idolized glamorous movie stars and the decadent living of
the nineties flapper society. So they read about the the scandalous,
salacious behavior of people born into privilege or celebrity, and
(24:19):
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. You know. I mean,
Atlanta is full of strip club 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.
(24:43):
Did I ever tell you about that excellent freakonomics report
that broke down how much per hour drug dealers actually
make on average. You were saying it wasn't great. No,
it's the op unless you're like the distributor or whatever. Yeah,
the high level individual that's really pulling the strings. That's
where you know, make the big money. Right, it's a
(25:04):
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 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
(25:25):
finances of drug dealing. These folks are not living the
high life. It is much more. Um, what's the best
way to say it. No, it's just terrible. There's not
a good way to say it. It's 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. Well, how about performing a very organized cell
(25:47):
based gang and doing smashing grabs for a living. That
would be there's an interesting topic there too, Knel, 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
(26:07):
cameras CCTV cameras per capita, I believe, in the world.
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. Oh absolutely, I mean like that, it
(26:30):
was just rampant. I can't imagine who who would want
to go into business. Have you seen the ballot of
buster scrugs yet? Yeah, I've seen it, seen it several times.
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
(26:51):
quite foolish for at least a minute, you know, with
to to allow this kind of stuff to keep happening.
I don't know, I wonder it 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
(27:13):
until the robbery happens, 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? No? No,
(27:37):
they're not. And then 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 in this kind of chain of events
led to the dissolution of this crime dynasty. I'm gonna
call it, to go so far as to call it dynasty.
(27:59):
I think it's a dynasty. Um, so, yeah, she had
fallen for a dude who was not a part of
this CD underworld, 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, it was a little different. This person
(28:19):
was neither a shark nor a jet. This person was
outside of the world entirely. They were a square of
civilian exactly because Marie had fallen in love with uh,
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
(28:43):
and baby Face Maggie, and Marie was scared. 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 he's not one of us. It's not one of us.
(29:05):
He's not in our our crime sororities or affiliated crime
fraternity e's and Marie says, no, I'm not gonna do it,
at which point Maggie whips out her aforementioned straight razor
and attacks Marie's father and they escape. Marie and her
father managed to escape, but Alice is not gonna let
(29:26):
this go. Alice sounds like a real tough cookie. 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, she 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, uh and
(29:46):
then force entry into the home and search, um manically
for you. I'm I'm speaking of myself as though I
were Marie uh and and my father, and they're you know,
gonna ransack the play, um and in doing this attract
the attention of the police because they became a riot
(30:07):
basically not not stinging the police. They weren't on the
scene yet. So what what happens? What happens? 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 mel a,
you know, and um, the ringleader of the forty Elephants,
(30:33):
Alice Diamonds Diamond, Alice Annie Diamonds Diamond, Annie was it
was arrested 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 is
baby face Maggie, baby face Maggie, because they clearly did this.
(30:54):
But the prosecution, despite the fact 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
high places of society did not want the details of
(31:15):
the black mail 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 in business who said, look, you can convict the
two ringleaders, but Um Graytooth Desdemona can't go to court,
(31:37):
my wife can't find out. That's right. And you know, subsequently,
there was a vacuum left behind because Annie Diamond, Annie Diamond,
Alice whatever you wanna call her, the Diamonds, that um
was put away and sentenced to hard labor for how
many years? Well, let's see, she was imprisoned in nineteen
twenty five and the power vacuum has has a pretty
(32:03):
swift effect on the gang. By n 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.
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
(32:26):
central power in the London crime world. So when she
went away, it kind of reverted back to this more
petty fevery and they sort of lost their grip on
the underworld in general, right, right, And by the nineteen
fifties the gang had just lost too much power. Maggie
(32:48):
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 in Casino? Is it Joe Pesci? Who's
the wild card hys character? Okay, so Maggie Hill, by
(33:09):
way of comparison, is kind of the Joe Pesci of
this group, And there's not really Robert de Niro. If
there is, it's Alice. But she in court attempted to
attack members of the Court during the trial with a
pen who knows, who knows. She was like a like
a real life cartoon Tasmanian devil. But I also read
(33:32):
that she did not keep her composure when sentenced, that
she freaked out and like oh yeah, but like got
really upset. Was not stoic at all. It was very
like emotional 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, they're pious
(33:55):
wigs on. We know that Alice Diamond passed the A
in a place called Southwark, close to the eastle Market
in nineteen fifty two. So this gang pretty much pretty
much exposed. It's death Knell is the last imprisonment, and
then later the death of Diamond Dallas or Diamond. And
(34:19):
and that's not to say gangs don't continue in London today,
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
(34:41):
where it's more about like figuring stuff out and and
being 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, not 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
(35:03):
than gotten so they they're probably walking around with some blades,
a blade or two. That's what I'm saying, though, to
wheeld a knife, you gotta be a little more brave
and a little more clever, and I'll have a little
more training kind of you know, you gotta know what
to do with it. Well said, Well said, And for
the record, I agree. So I guess I'm saying, way
(35:23):
to go London crime world at a little less lazy.
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,
(35:46):
unless you want to say the banking cartels or gangs,
but they robbed people in a different way very much.
Do you like how I had to walk around the
block to throw that little piece of shade in it?
I'm telling you, man, the city of London and what
it's sketchy, the whole sketchy. But that is the story
of the forty Thieves, the forty Elephants, Alice Diamond Diamond,
(36:07):
Alice Annie Diamonds, Diamond Annie, the all female crime syndicate
or dynasty which we think is appropriate here, who ran
shoplifting and somehow got away with it for almost two centuries.
I want to see their like internal records, you know,
(36:29):
for that two years, Like I want to see the
turnover of like who who was in charge? If any
of that was on paper, it probably wasn't It was
probably all just like oral. 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 seventeen was developing a
(36:52):
series on the Forty Elephants for Forty Thieves for the BBC,
and it has the potential to be a Peaky Blind
Jers kind of thing. Did you ever see that show?
I started watching and I watched the first season and
I like it. Yeah, I saw I guess all the
first episode and I started wondering whether I should also
carry a razor around in my hat. Our boss Connall
(37:14):
really likes it a lot. I could see that. That's
classic Connal. Have you ever seen Peaky Blinder's casey No,
I don't think I've even heard of it. 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. Um,
I don't know that they were around for two years though?
So would you would you guys watch a show based
(37:37):
on this, uh this crime Syndicate? Yes? I would too.
I'm 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 baby face
Maggie in your book? You know how I could pictures
being baby face Maggie. Who's that? Um? Melissa McCarthy, like
(37:58):
she's got some acting shot Man. She does all these
kind of goofy comedy movies. But I I think she's
got the she got the range. I think she's got
it man. Yeah, yeah, I like that. I'm gonna 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. Wow,
(38:20):
we're gonna keep them keep going with this. Huh, well,
we said we would, we give it a shot. I
like it. Have you read Saga? Yes, by Brian Cavan.
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 Cavan. He Uh, it's sort
(38:41):
of a sci fi star crossed space adventure. Was that
in a good way of a frank Yeah, that's great. Yeah,
it breaks a lot of genre rules. I think you'll
really enjoy it. 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 male
population and this one dude still around everyone else's female.
(39:03):
That's a good recommendation for this episode. Actually, um, that
was actually my way. Oh no, my bad. I only
said it because this and I believe that's being adapted
into a big old series right right right, And for
people who have yet to read it, this won't spoil
in anything. There is a character in Why the Last
Man named Agent three fifty five, and that comes from
(39:28):
a real and mysterious part of early US history. So
if you want to learn more about the real life
Agent three, check out our other shows. Stuff. They don't
want you to know. That was just recent one. Yeah yeah, yeah,
And I don't want to ruin it, but check it
out please. Uh. And in the meantime, always always want
(39:49):
to thank Casey Pegram, our superproducer. I don't know where
we'd be without you. We would we would sound like fools,
that's for sure. Um, So thank you to Casey, Thank
you to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Yes, and
thank you to Christopher hasiotis our research associate for this episode.
Thanks also to our other research associates, Eaves and Gabe,
(40:09):
Thank you knowl and thank you for listening. Folks. Hope
this I don't know. I don't want to say. I
hope this inspires people because I don't want us to
get characterized as the inspiration behind a new gang of
jewel thieves. You know what you do, you people out there,
whatever you think me to be the change you want
to see in the world. So also let us know
(40:30):
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. You can find us
(40:51):
on Twitter. You can visit us on Facebook, where we'd
love to introduce you to your fellow Ridiculous historians on
our community page ridicul Hillis Historians