Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast that slaps… I dunno, I work at a high school and this was some new slang I learned and am probably using incorrectly.

I’m your host this week, Shea, and with me is:

I’m Aaron, and this week I learned that the Descendants are a band. Apparently.

Round Table and Beer

The round table this week… is that we’re back in the studio and can finally have another beer together.

Soulcraft Brewing: Raspberry porter
Salida Colorado

• Aaron: 8


• Shea: 8

40 Elephants

I’m not sure what the impetus to do a story on female gangsters was but I found myself in an internet hole filled with awesome stories of female gangsters that made some pretty big waves in their day, I would be remiss if I didn’t bring them back into the light and entertain you all with some badass ladies.

We could start with some more contemporary women such as Griselda Blanco, recently played by Catherine Zeta-Jones in 2017’s Cocaine Grandma. Griselda has a terrifying and bloody story complete with torture and hired hits during the heyday of cocaine use in the 70/80’s. But I was feeling something a bit less bloody and a whole gang of women sounded cooler than just one angry bloodthirsty drug queen. I went back pretty far in history to find a notorious syndicate run exclusively by working-class women.

<figure class="aligncenter"></figure>

PICTURED -Top row, left to right, Alice Diamond, “Queen of Thieves”; Maggie Hughes, deputy; Laura Partrdige; bottom row, left to right, Bertha Tappenden; Madeline Partridge, Gertrude Scully.

One all-female gang ruled part of the gangland underworld for almost two centuries, the 40 Elephants. Definitive records show that the Elephants operated between 1873 and the 1950s, but there is some evidence to suggest that the gang’s origins can be placed as early as the end of the 18th century. The gang’s name is not as cryptic as it may sound: the number

is a rough estimate of its membership and the choice of animal is due to two factors: that they all lived around the Elephant and Castle pub in Southwark, and – more significantly – on leaving shops with their stolen goods under their clothes, the sheer volume of garb made them look like elephants. Only women were allowed to be members and they were almost all exclusively from a working-class background; they rejected the jobs that people like them were condemned to do and instead, similarly to the suffragette movement, they took matters into their own hands. However, instead of fighting for the right to vote, the Elephants wanted something more immediate: financial independence. They would steal clothes and jewelry, sell them on for far less than they were worth, and distribute the earnings amongst their community, providing their families with a lot more than they could otherwise hope to.

<figure class="aligncenter"><figcaption>Photographs from a 1916 article in Popular Mechanics show the garments shoplifters wear to make their work easier. Via/ Internet Archive</figcaption></figure>

Many a husband lounged at home while his missus was out at work, and many an old lag was propped up by a tireless shoplifting spouse. Some of these terrors were as tough as the men they worked for and protected,”

Brian McDonald

Said Brian McDonald, who uncovered details of the criminals when researching for his new book, Gangs of London. Cool aside, Brian found the 40 Elephants so cool that he wrote an entire second book on them alone, Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants.

The all-female Forty Elephants – or Forty Thieves – worked alongside the notorious Elephant and Castle gang, a sprawling, powerful army of all-male smash-and-grab artists, burglars, receivers, hard men, and crafty villains operating across south London. The Forty Elephants, in contrast, was a tightly run, neatly organized collection of cells, whose operations extended across London and into other cities. The gang was first mentioned in newspapers in 1873, but police records suggest it had existed since the late 1700s. Dressed in specially tailored coats, cummerbunds, muffs, skirts, bloomers, and hats sewn with hidden pockets, they mounted raids on London’s West End shops, where they plundered goods worth thousands of pounds.

<figure class="aligncenter"></figure>

The girls benefited from prudish attitudes of the time by taking shelter behind the privacy afforded to women in large stores”.

McDonald

They became so well known in London that panic erupted when they were seen near high-class shops. The gang’s response was to branch out, expanding their enterprise to country and seaside towns.

In the 20th century, they used high-powered cars to outrun the police. If they were stopped, they were found to be clean: the goods were spirited away to cars driven by male members of the team. When working in other towns, they would use trains, depositing empty suitcases at railway stations which they filled with booty for the return trip.

The Forty Elephants also used blackmail to turn a profit, seducing upper-crust men only to extort them afterward, sometimes using this method to call in favors and avoid convictions. Many were said to be as tough as any man when threatened. On the other hand, the ladies were also known to throw the best parties, spending opulently in bars in pursuit of the flapper lifestyle of the 1920s, as well as the glamorous elegance and champagne cocktails depicted in the 1930s movies.

It was said that a group of them could strip a store in just an hour, secreting away valuables in their many pockets. However, the group was also extremely fond of fur coats, the wearing of which became their particular penchant. It has been said that the girls didn’t wear their plunder, instead preferring to wear high fashion bought outright with the profits of their stolen goods. Wearing the stolen goods was actually against the rules, known as the “Hoister’s Code.” This included not drinking the night before a job, not wearing the clothes you had stolen, and never helping the police. Loyalty was of paramount importance as members were frequently arrested and police would try and turn tricksters into lifetime informers. Fictional alibis would be supplied by fellow gang members and money put aside for families when members were sent to prison.

The way the Elephants operated is they were broken down into cells of four or five and allocated a patch where they would operate for a time. Members would observe their target clothes and jewelry shops, paying attention to when staff went on breaks and when inexperienced attendants were on duty.

Trainee hoisters were used as decoys – distracting shop assistants and store detectives by acting suspiciously, like taking items close to the doorways as if they might steal them, insisting they just wanted to examine them in the light when challenged.

Well-known veteran thieves were also used for this purpose as they would be followed around by security while their lesser-known accomplices were stowing jewels and silks in hidden pockets secreted in their dresses.

The alternative for nearly all of the members of the Forty Thieves would have been extreme poverty and/or a life of prostitution. This would have been particularly true for the 19th-century members of the gang as class divisions in London during the 1800s meant there was almost no chance of rising from poverty without considerable help.

<figure class="aligncenter"><figcaption>Alice Diamond</figcaption></figure>

The most notorious leader of the Forty Elephants was Alice Diamond, who was also known as Diamond Annie for her sparkly rings which helped her punches pack a mighty wallop. Diamond Annie’s leadership began in 1916 and under her the group flourished, often evading the police with supreme efficiency. Many of the girls were caught and tried for small acts of theft -often without being linked to any larger gang activity- with many of the girls returning to the gang after their sentences were served.

In the period between the World Wars, Diamond Annie served as the Queen of the Forty Elephants. But, Annie’s reign came to an end when she was sentenced to prison time after having turned on a former member. Diamond Annie would go on to die relatively young at the age of 55 from multiple sclerosis, has been the madame of her own brothel after leaving the gang.

The gang was taken over by Lillian Rose Kendall, a flapper doll if ever there was one! The Forty Elephants were active into the 1950s when increased store security and sleeker clothing made shoplifting much more difficult. However, the gang left behind a legacy of violence and tricke