Young Alice, Wikicommons
Well it is the festive season and so I bring you a bit of glitz this month with our aptly named featured Herstory: Alice Diamond. Like her name, hers is a story of glitz and glamour. But it’s also a story of violence and crime. Because Alice Diamond was a notorious gangster from gritty South London. So if you like your Peaky Blinders, brace yourselves!
Alice Black, the angelic child pictured above, was born in Lambeth workhouse illegitimately to Mary Geary and Thomas Diamond in 1896. Her father Thomas was a violent criminal and had several convictions, including one for assaulting the Lord Mayor.
Being raised in poverty and surrounded by vice in Walworth, South London, she knew hardship, being the eldest of 7 children. It’s hardly any wonder then that she turned to crime. She was first cautioned aged 16 for stealing chocolate, and by 1915, at just 19, she had become the leader of a large organised all-female gang of shoplifters that became known as the ‘Forty Thieves’ or ‘Forty Elephants’ because they normally operated in the area of Elephant and Castle.
Elephant and Castle in the '40's.Picture Post/Bert Hardy
The Forty Thieves gang weren't set up by Alice, they’d existed since the 1870's. There was first a male gang, and the women’s gang had evolved from it. Wives and partners of male gang members often bandied together for protection and stole to survive when their husbands were in prison, so it didn’t take much for this activity to become organised. But it was very small scale until Alice took over.
Under Alice, The Forty Thieves’ modus operandi was to dress up as upper class socialites in specially designed elegant clothing and visit boutiques and malls where they would steal jewllery, hats, fur coats, and other expensive items, hiding them in the ingeniously designed outfits they had on, made especially for this purpose. Concealed compartments and pockets were sewn into skirts and bustles. Even false arms were used! Looking like well-dressed aristocrats, they were less suspicious and less likely to be caught. It clearly worked because they were in operation for 20 years! They sometimes made thousands of pounds a day.
They would also apply for jobs as housemaids in wealthy homes, then steal from them too, and exploit wealthy men by seducing them and then blackmailing them for hush money. They were experts at evading capture, and what probably helped them was that they had more than 70 members.
Shoplifting techniques. LondonDarkTourist.com
How did Alice become the ‘Queen’ of this syndicate at such a young age? Experienced in crime, she was a tall, well built and strong woman with a ruthless streak, yes, but she was also a clever organiser. It was her idea to start using fast motor ‘getaway’ cars and to spread the enterprise further afield to cities away from London.
The heists she organised were planned with an almost military precision. The ‘girls’ had specific areas that they operated in, with reinforcements in case of trouble and even an army of (dodgy) lawyers on hand to assist them out of tricky situations. Decoys were often used to befuddle police, and the stolen goods were sold efficiently and quickly to a network of buyers on a commission basis. Multiple heists all over London happened simultaneously so that police couldn't keep up. The women even sometimes cross-dressed as ‘couples’ to evade detection.
Alice’s trademark look was imposing: Furs, and diamond rings on her knuckles that she was not afraid to use if anyone messed with her. But it wasn’t only her that was violent. Her gang members used hatpins, razors and their fists if confronted or threatened and were known for being ‘surprisingly’ brutal in their operations.
But it wasn’t all violence and brutality. As with many crime ‘families’, Alice looked after her members and ensured money was put aside to look after their famililes should they go to prison. This was more than can be said for the male gangs, whose wives and families were often forced into destitution. They had lavish parties, and many of the women lived like celebrities almost, wearing designer clothes and living the high life.
Some of the gang members. Alice is top left. Wikicommons
They were also a constant source of fascination for the press, as they might be if they existed now. Newpspapers almost glorified in these attractive, young, well dressed ladies that managed to get away with such clever and deftly executed crimes.
But Alice was running a tight ship and the risks were high, so she very carefully controlled her members’ lives. Any relationships they had had to be vetted and approved by Alice first. Alice couldn’t have one of her girls marrying a snitch! When one member married a man in 1925 without getting Alice’s approval, Alice launched a retaliatory attack on the man in question: her members attacked him with bricks and bottles in his own home. This then led to a large gang fight with Police who arrived on the scene, later called the ‘Lambeth riot’. Alice received 18 months in Holloway for orchestrating the incident, and 9 members of her gang recieved prison sentences too.
By the time Alice got out of prison, someone else had taken the helm of the Forty Thieves, and soon, its influence started to wane. Part of the reason for this was higher tech security measures brought into shops. They were making less money, more of them were getting captured, and so the organisation gradually dissolved.
Ever the entreprener though, Alice opened up her own brothel in her ‘retirement’ and continued her life of vice and crime that way. She never married or had children, though she had a few long term partners who were also in the criminal underworld.
She died in South London in 1952 due to complications of MS.
Newspaper coverage of the Lambeth Riot
We are all taught to abhor criminals, and generally this is good and proper, but I can’t help secrtely admiring some of Alice’s story. The Forty Thieves was a gang formed by working class slum women out of necessity. These women had experienced first hand extreme poverty, violence and misery and were determined, by any means, to raise themselves and their families out of it. Alice was strong, brave and cunning. Even the Police were impressed with how well organised and clever the gang was. There appears to even be an element of social justice behind their actions beyond just improving their own lots in life, evident in Alice’s frustrated words to a magistrate in court:
‘Police forces are set up by governments to stop others getting a share of what they’ve got!’
I’m sure many of us are nodding away in agreement at that statement. Anyway, what was the alternative for these women? prostituion and starvation, or the workhouse, for most. Can we really condemn them for taking advantage of their ‘womanhood’ such as using seduction techniques (to blackmail and bribe), tailoring skills (to make costumes for stealing) among others, to imporve their lives? We should never condone brutality or violence, of course, but these women were surrounded by it, and felt they had no choice but to defend themselves and those they loved.
I understand that the rights to this story have been bought by a film company, and I'm looking forard to seeing the movie. It’s high time we had a film about women in gangster stories that arent just ‘molls’.
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