In this new series of Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley, we switch our attention to swindlers, con-women and hustlers. This is where true crime meets history – with a twist.
Join Lucy Worsley and a team of all female detectives as they travel back in time to revisit the audacious – and surprising – crimes of women who were trying to make it in a world made for men. Women who stepped outside their ordinary lives to do extraordinary things. What do their crimes and the times they lived in teach us about women’s lives today?
We meet queens of the underworld, hoaxers, thieves, scammers and even a fake heiress as we travel back in time and geography – across England, Wales, Scotland, the US and Australia.
This is Lady Swindlers with Lucy Worsley, listen on BBC Sounds, and broadcast weekly on Radio 4 from 30 September.
Interview with Lucy Worsley
What is Lady Swindlers all about?
In Lady Swindlers we have identified various interesting female criminals from the last 200 years. We tell their stories, we work out how they got away with it (if they got away with it!) and we use that to ask ourselves, what were the circumstances? Were they breaking the rules because they lived in a world made by men?
Why the switch from killers to swindlers?
We’ve done three whole seasons full of lady killers, right? So, how many murderesses is that? It’s twenty four. And we love our murderesses, but they do get you down a bit. There’s a lot of violence, there’s a lot of death, there’s a lot of dark deeds. So we thought we’d do a different kind of show that’s a bit more light hearted and where things happen like, um, people get their trousers stolen… So we had a lot more fun, shall we say, because some of our con women do the most audacious and kind of semi-glamorous things.
What would be your swindle?
Well, I’m carrying it out at this moment, because what I really like to do with my life is to learn about history and to tell people about it. And my swindle is that that’s my living. I am pulling a very long con, which is that my whole career is in fact just fun and messing around.
What do you want people to know about Lady Swindlers? And why should they listen?
I hope that people will listen to Lady Swindlers for the fun of it. We’ve got crime capers here, we’ve got some extraordinary stories about some extraordinary women. But I think that you will also, just by osmosis, learn loads of really interesting social history. You’ll learn about the birth of modern feminism, you’ll learn about how female consumerism was a thing in the early 20th century. You’ll learn quite a lot about Victorian beauty techniques that you’ll wish that you didn’t know, because they sound absolutely horrific!
What does the series tell us about women?
Well, I like the way it makes you ask questions about how they got away with it. Did they get away with it because they were women? Were they acting according to, or subverting, the way people around them at the time thought that they ought to act? It makes you ask questions about what society actually expected of women at the time, and that makes you ask what does society expect of women today?
Who is your favourite Swindler?
All of them. But Alice and her all-girl gang of professional shoplifters who wore a special item of clothing called grafter’s bloomers – these are pants, basically, with really big pockets.
And Madam Rachel who kept appearing in court for beauty scams, telling people she would make them beautiful forever. Every time she did, she put out a new publicity pamphlet, which would get her more clients. It was incredible how shameless she was. And my favourite of her tricks was that she would tell people that she was 80 years old, even though she was actually 40.
Meet the Swindlers
Alice Diamond “Queen of 40 Thieves”
Lucy investigates the career of Alice Diamond, the queen of the UK’s most famous all-female crime syndicate in the early 20th century. By the age of 18 Alice is leading a gang of incredibly successful professional shoplifters from South East London, known as the Forty Thieves, whose audacious and carefully planned raids on London’s new department stores make them notorious. Lucy wants to know: is Alice Diamond a beacon of female liberation or is she just a serial criminal?
Experts:
- Professor Lorraine Gamman, Founder of the Design Against Crime Research Initiative at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London
- Professor Rosalind Crone, Lady Swindlers in-house historian
Notable Locations:
- Southwark, South East London
- Marlborough Street Magistrates Court, London
Princess Caraboo “Fake Princes
Lucy meets Princess Caraboo, a woman abducted from palace gardens in Indonesia, traded by pirates and carried away to South West England in 1817. Or so she said…
The team follow Caraboo’s journey from wandering vagrant to star attraction. They ask how a woman with no money, no papers and not a word of English could walk into a rural community in Regency England and wind up living in a grand manor house as an honoured guest. They consider her very ‘unladylike’ behaviour: climbing trees, swimming naked in the lake, shooting arrows and gutting pigeons.
Experts:
- Salma El-Wardany, writer, broadcaster and presenter of BBC Radio London’s Breakfast Show
- Professor Rosalind Crone, Lady Swindlers in-house historian
Notable Locations:
- Bristol
Tilly Devine “Underworld Quee
Tilly Devine is one of Sydney’s most notorious gangsters. Draped in jewels, she’s the madam of one of the most lucrative brothel networks the city’s ever seen.
What brings Tilly from south London to Sydney, and how does she rise to the top of the city’s ruthless, gritty 1920s gangster crime scene?
Experts:
- Leigh Straw, Historian
- Christine Nixon, Guest Detective, and the first female chief commissioner in an Australian state police force
Notable Locations:
- Sydney
Violet Charlesworth “Fake Heiress
Violet Charlesworth is an heiress with a taste for the high life. From her family home in North Wales, Violet drives the length and breadth of the country in her expensive motorcars, accompanied by pedigree pooches and dripping with diamonds.
The whole country is shocked when, late one night in January 1909, Violet loses control of her car on her way home from Bangor. It looks like she’s hit the wall that lines the coast road and shot through the windscreen and down the cliff face, but there is no sign of her body, and her family are apparently unconcerned…
Experts:
- Denise Mina, Crime Writer, author of the Garnethill Trilogy and Three Fires
- Elin Tomos, Welsh Historian
- Professor Rosalind Crone, Lady Swindler’s in-house historian
Notable Locations:
- Violet’s Leap, Penmaenmawr, Wales
- The Charlesworths’ house, Bôd Erw in the village of Llanelwy/St Asaph
Thematic Episode: Women Who Dare
Lucy and her guests imagine what our Lady Swindlers lives would look like now. Would they have become internet famous and built personal brands? Or would their audacity have resulted in being cancelled? They also discuss how our swindlers manipulate perceptions and navigate their world to live their lives they dreamed of, unapologetically.
Sophie Lyons “Crime Doesn’t Pay”
Sophie Lyons is a pickpocket, blackmailer and conwoman extraordinaire, known as the infamous ‘Queen of the Underworld’. Born in Germany in the late 1840s, Sophie moves to New York, USA, age eight. She is taught from an early age to steal and pick pocket, and is in jail from the young age of 12.
She becomes a career criminal, constantly crafting new schemes and disguises to make money. But in her later years, Sophie has a change of heart and encourages others to stay away from a life of crime such as hers. She even writes a book: ‘Why Crime Does Not Pay”. Can a career criminal ever truly give up?
Experts:
- Evy Poumpouras, former NYPD officer, criminal investigator, interrogator, and ex special agent with the US Secret Service
- Barbara Gray, the former director of news research at The New York Times and is now a professor at The City University of New York. She is also a biographer who is writing a book on Sophie.
Notable Locations:
- Sophie’s childhood home, New York
Madame Rachel “Beauty Scammer”
Lucy is in London telling the story of Madame Rachel, an utterly ruthless Victorian beauty scammer and blackmailer who promises her clients she will make them ‘beautiful forever’. Madame Rachel’s exotic salon in Bond Street attracts the rich and the posh, and – so she claims – the royal family. Her beauty products sell for outlandish prices.
But when she turns to extortion and blackmail the full extent of her swindles are revealed…
Experts:
- Anita Bhagwandas, journalist and beauty editor
- Professor Rosalind Crone, Lady Swindler’s in-house historian
Notable Locations:
- Bond Street, London
- London’s Central Criminal Court: The Old Bailey
Fanny Davies “Uncommon Thief”
Lucy is investigating the life of Fanny Davies, a thief who will take everything you have, including your trousers. A pickpocket and prostitute, at the age of 20 in 1785 she pulled off the daring theft of a huge sum of money in an Essex pub which turned her into a national celebrity. Condemned to death for her crime, Fanny’s story was taken up by pamphleteers determined to profit from her story, and they embellished her life with tales of highway robbery and aristocratic seduction.
Experts:
- Alexandra Wilson, an Essex-born barrister author of In Black and White: A Young Barrister’s Story of Race and Class in a Broken Justice System
- Professor Rosalind Crone, Lady Swindler’s in-house historian
Notable Locations:
- Essex
Ann Mary Provis “Art Hoaxer”
Ann Mary Provis is an obscure young painter from humble beginnings who beguiled some of the most renowned artists of the late 18th century. Provis’ scheme unfolds as she entices Benjamin West, the President of the Royal Academy, with promises of unlocking the mysteries of Venetian painting techniques. As artists pay for access to Provis’ secrets, anticipation builds for the unveiling of their paintings at the summer exhibition. However, the artworks painted using Provis’ technique are met with harsh criticism and ridicule, exposing the hoax, and embarrassing the esteemed artists who fell for it.
Experts:
- Dr Jacqueline Riding, author, and 18th century art history specialist
- Rebecca Salter, the first female president of the Royal Academy in its 250 year history and noted artist
Notable Locations:
- The Royal Academy, London
Thematic Episode: By Hook or by Crook
Lucy Worsley digs into the lives of bold women who choose, by hook or by crook, to escape a life of poverty, misfortune, and hardship. We see them as mothers, as business women, and simply as humans with faults, desires and dreams and we ask, does crime pay?