The Forty Elephants: London's All-Female Crime Syndicate

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For more than a century, an all-female crime syndicate from London's Elephant and Castle district robbed the city's finest shops while hiding in plain sight. The Forty Elephants, also called the Forty Thieves, turned the heavy fashions of the Victorian era into tactical gear, sewing hidden compartments into cloaks, bloomers, hats, and muffs so that a woman who looked like a lady of leisure could walk out carrying a small fortune in silk and furs. Shop staff trained to give wealthy women privacy would not dare accuse one of theft.

This episode follows the gang's succession of queens. Mary Carr ran jewel thefts from a slum headquarters on Stamford Street while posing for a celebrated painting. Alice Diamond, known as Diamond Annie, took over in 1915 and answered the arrival of slimmer fashions with trains, empty suitcases, and fast getaway cars. Behind the glamour sat a brutal monopoly built on kidnapping rival shoplifters, forged references, and blackmail, all of it resting on the assumption that women were incapable of organized crime.

• Records from 1828 mention young women working with a male gang called the Forty Thieves, whose members tattooed their hands with dots of India ink.
• The gang called its method of hiding stolen goods under clothing clouding or hoisting, and fences paid tailors to snip labels and alter garments for resale.
• Mary Carr, born in Holborn in 1862, was the model for an 1895 painting called The Maid with the Yellow Hair even as she led the gang.
• Maggie Hill, sister of the gangster Billy Hill, succeeded Alice Diamond and in 1939 blinded a police officer with a hatpin, earning four years in Holloway Prison.
• Shirley Pitts, dubbed the queen of the shoplifters and an associate of the Kray twins, kept the tradition alive until her death in 1992.