Speaker 1: Yeah, welcome to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Let's start today's
Speaker 1: episode off with a question, a favorite topic of conversation
Speaker 1: for those of us here at how stuff works when
Speaker 1: we're just hanging out off the air. Have you ever
Speaker 1: wanted to perpetrate a heist like Ocean's eleven style? And
Speaker 1: if so, did you ever envision yourself having a specialty?
Speaker 1: You know how all the heist teams always have their specialists, right, Well,
Speaker 1: I've always wanted to be the bagman. The bagman? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what does that entail? It's it's the coolest title. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's up there. The bagman je generally, And someone right
Speaker 1: in and correct us if I'm off base here, but
Speaker 1: the bagman generally is a term describing the person who, actually,
Speaker 1: when you're physically stealing currency or jewelry or precious metals,
Speaker 1: the person who physically holds the back. You see, I'm
Speaker 1: known for my grip, Is that true? Yeah? Yeah, they
Speaker 1: say Noel Brown, that kid's got a good grip. They
Speaker 1: usually refer to me Ben Boland in my past heist
Speaker 1: as either the the inside man or the uh, the
Speaker 1: shady government liaison. I would have called you the brain.
Speaker 1: That's very kind. That's very kind. And I guess by
Speaker 1: virtue of his position on the show, our super producer,
Speaker 1: Casey Pegram would probably be And I don't want to
Speaker 1: pigeonhole you. Hear Casey our computer expert. You gotta have
Speaker 1: a hacker. Yeah, you know, it's actually funny. There was
Speaker 1: a character in one of the Grand Theft Auto games
Speaker 1: that reminded me a lot of Casey and Casey if
Speaker 1: you if you, if you take this as an insult,
Speaker 1: and you know the character I'm talking about, please don't,
Speaker 1: because I'm more talking to out his his very intelligent demeanor,
Speaker 1: not not not his look. He was a little bit
Speaker 1: of an odd looking fellow. But he's the guy that
Speaker 1: ran the warehouse where they planned all the heist and
Speaker 1: they had the big chalkboard and they you know, drew
Speaker 1: the maps and they had the Remember that guy. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: as long as you're not Trevor Phillips, Casey is he is?
Speaker 1: He like the meth head guy, uh, Trevor Trevor Phillips
Speaker 1: is the unhinged head guy. Yeah. He lived kind of
Speaker 1: out in the salt and Sea type area of of
Speaker 1: what's the name of the fake l a San Andreas. Uh. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I want to say there's definitely a sant Andreas. It's
Speaker 1: gotta be sant Andreas. I have a segue. It's actually
Speaker 1: gonna work here bad, all right, go for it. We're
Speaker 1: talking about video games. You ever heard of the Assassin's
Speaker 1: Creed video games? Yes? I played them all. Actually, is
Speaker 1: there is this one out? Yeah? I just saw this video.
Speaker 1: It's called Assassin's Creed something legacy or something, but it's
Speaker 1: agin or maybe it's about London gangs. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know if that one's out yet. Okay. Then then
Speaker 1: I saw a preview of this game and it's about
Speaker 1: London gangs. And in this game, the topic of today's
Speaker 1: episode was paid homage to Oh Wonderfully. They talked about
Speaker 1: the forty Thieves, the Farty Thieves, the fart Elephants gang. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: remember the Gangs of New York. Wasn't there a gang
Speaker 1: called the Farty Thieves? Uh? And Irish gang Irish gang. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And just to be clear, we're saying four zero with
Speaker 1: an Irish acts and not not the flagelent Elephants or
Speaker 1: the Flatulent for the flatulent thieves. Yeah, that's awesome. I
Speaker 1: want to check that game out. I mean, have you
Speaker 1: played a Susands Degree before? I have not. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: it's funny, it can be repetitive at times. It's a
Speaker 1: mixture of some really cool fighting and then some at
Speaker 1: times incredibly frustrating jump around solve the puzzle sequences. Isn't
Speaker 1: there a lot of like stock kind of like from
Speaker 1: a distance, keep your distance and then moving for the
Speaker 1: kill kind of stuff? But I mean, who hasn't done
Speaker 1: that totally just in regular life. So so, there was
Speaker 1: a real life gang of thieves, jewel thieves specifically that
Speaker 1: we're known for their successful, very well planned out heist.
Speaker 1: They were active for more than two hundred years. See
Speaker 1: I thought that was a typo when I first saw
Speaker 1: it was someone added an extra zero, right, No, two
Speaker 1: hundred years. And this gang was made entirely of female criminals,
Speaker 1: operating out of the Elephant and Castle area of London,
Speaker 1: which I find to be a magnificently whimsical name for
Speaker 1: an area London, and you know the UK in general.
Speaker 1: They have they're very they have wonderful names for places
Speaker 1: in streets and neighborhoods. But I gotta say I'm not
Speaker 1: a fan of British names for food, probably just because
Speaker 1: I didn't grow up there, But like barley water, spotted dick,
Speaker 1: bubble and squeak bubble and squeak, bubble and squeak, isn't
Speaker 1: even that egregious, sounds like fun whatever it is. But
Speaker 1: barley water, that just that sounds like a punishment, right,
Speaker 1: I don't think it is not. I think it's It
Speaker 1: sounds like it would be a good euphemism for beer.
Speaker 1: But barley water is a um it's just boiled grain
Speaker 1: in water that hasn't you know, it still doesn't have alcohol.
Speaker 1: It seems like if there's no alcohol, why would you bother? Right,
Speaker 1: why would you bother consuming barley? So when when did
Speaker 1: the forty thieves really? When we're what were their glory days,
Speaker 1: we talked about that they were also called the forty Elephants. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's that's what I'm going to refer to them
Speaker 1: as because they lived in this Elephant and Castle district.
Speaker 1: They were also they were self contained and they were
Speaker 1: an all female band of um heisters. I don't know
Speaker 1: what you want to call it, criminals, um, but they
Speaker 1: were backed up by another gang of kind of really
Speaker 1: rough and tumbled dudes who are the Elephant and Castle
Speaker 1: Gang and kind of like we're almost like their muscle um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so they were active possibly as early as
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds, based on police records. A lot of
Speaker 1: this comes from a book called the Gangs of London
Speaker 1: by a guy named Brian McDonald, and he says that
Speaker 1: the forty Elephant gang um was probably the most active
Speaker 1: between the eighteen seventies and the nineteen fifties, but again
Speaker 1: go back as far as possibly the seventeen hundreds, right,
Speaker 1: they may have been operating without being recognized. Brian also,
Speaker 1: Brian McDonald also has a book specifically about the forty
Speaker 1: Elephants and one of their most notable leaders, who will
Speaker 1: get to in a moment, but the book is called
Speaker 1: Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants. I appreciate that you
Speaker 1: mention the Elephant and Castle Mob. They were in a
Speaker 1: way the muscle. They were headed by these guys called
Speaker 1: the McDonald brothers, and while they were allied together, they
Speaker 1: differed widely in their methods. So the Elephant Castle Mob
Speaker 1: they were more kind of bruisers. But the forty the
Speaker 1: Eaves or the forty elephants were much more calculated in
Speaker 1: their crime. They would they would play the long game.
Speaker 1: At times, they would masquerade as housemaids for wealthy families.
Speaker 1: They would use false references and back up the references
Speaker 1: as well. And during the early twentieth century they were
Speaker 1: led by someone called Alice Diamond, known variously as the
Speaker 1: Queen of the forty Thieves or as Diamond Danny. That's
Speaker 1: the thing. Then. They were a very very militaristically run organization.
Speaker 1: From their inception, they operated in a series of like cells,
Speaker 1: almost like a terrorist group, and they always were led
Speaker 1: by a queen. This Annie Diamond was just kind of
Speaker 1: the most notorious and influential one. Yeah, that's correct. There
Speaker 1: were many because again this gang was active for around
Speaker 1: two hundred years, far surpassing the lifespan of the average
Speaker 1: person at the time. And in their heyday. It's strange
Speaker 1: because they were romanticized a bit by papers of the
Speaker 1: of the time. In one paper they were referred to
Speaker 1: as amazons, who were handsome women about six ft tall.
Speaker 1: We we can walk through maybe some of their methods
Speaker 1: because I know we made them sound like, uh, they
Speaker 1: only did disguise work, but that was that was just
Speaker 1: one of their many strategies for bilking people out of
Speaker 1: jewelry and valuables. They did a shoplifting method that is
Speaker 1: actually still common and in practice and parts of the
Speaker 1: world today, which is overpowering the store through the sheer
Speaker 1: volume of people participating. All of the gang members would
Speaker 1: rush into a store from various entrances, and then since
Speaker 1: there were too many people to apprehend, they would just
Speaker 1: grab everything they can and then they would flee out
Speaker 1: of the store, heading in multiple directions, knowing that not
Speaker 1: all of them could be caught. Not only that they
Speaker 1: had like reserve funds for when they had to bail
Speaker 1: out the one or two stragglers that did get caught,
Speaker 1: and they basically were considered like untouchable because they had
Speaker 1: deals running with the police. And this is a very
Speaker 1: corrupt period in English history. You have to remember. This
Speaker 1: is like on the tail end of the Industrial Revolution.
Speaker 1: Things were changing really really quickly, and it was kind
Speaker 1: of like just a free for all as far as
Speaker 1: these street gangs, of which there were many, and I
Speaker 1: just wanted to rattle off a few other ones in there.
Speaker 1: You know, in this part of the country is huge,
Speaker 1: You've got gangs like the Scuttlers, the High Rip Gang,
Speaker 1: the Peaky Blinders in Birmingham, you've got the cock Road
Speaker 1: Gang and other such amazingly absurd and beautiful names. Um.
Speaker 1: But the forty Elephants had an incredible reputation for being
Speaker 1: ruthless and being cunning and being, like I said before,
Speaker 1: practically untouchable because of the way they ran their operation
Speaker 1: in these cells and like you're saying, been the way
Speaker 1: they were able to kind of scatter. Yeah, kind of
Speaker 1: a hydra organization. Cut off one head and two will
Speaker 1: rise in its place. I don't think we mentioned that
Speaker 1: Diamond Annie was ruling during the interwar period, so she's
Speaker 1: around nineteen ten or the late nineteen tents, so World
Speaker 1: War one has already started. She and her lieutenant, baby
Speaker 1: Faced Maggie, which I love these nicknames. Everybody's got a
Speaker 1: great nickname. Uh. They're the ones who reputedly had the
Speaker 1: idea of partnering with the Elephants and Castle Mob to
Speaker 1: make sure that they had enforcers. There's an excellent article
Speaker 1: about this gang written by Amelia Hill for The Guardian
Speaker 1: called Girl Gangs Grip on London Underworld Revealed, and it
Speaker 1: dives into some of the work of Brian McDonald. But
Speaker 1: it also gives us a good context for the time
Speaker 1: in which this gang existed, or this this Glory Day era,
Speaker 1: because they were taking advantage of the misogynistic chauvinistic attitudes
Speaker 1: of the time. You know, people thought, oh, a woman
Speaker 1: couldn't possibly be a criminal if she's dressed well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I heard this somewhere, Ben and um, let me
Speaker 1: know if you did, or if you think this is
Speaker 1: complete lea bogus, But I heard that they sort of
Speaker 1: had an advantage because women weren't allowed to do very
Speaker 1: much on their own in this time. But one thing
Speaker 1: they were allowed to do was shop right on their own.
Speaker 1: And it may have even been that they were not
Speaker 1: paid as close attention to because of the fact, like
Speaker 1: you're saying that they're wearing nice clothes and that they're
Speaker 1: on their own, unaccompanied without a chaperone. You want to
Speaker 1: respect their privacy. You don't want to be forward in
Speaker 1: this very repressed age. So there were some upsides here
Speaker 1: which we can explore later. But there there are some
Speaker 1: other organizational things that they were very talented at. They
Speaker 1: had their own territory like most gangs do, but they
Speaker 1: demanded a percentage of all crimes committed in their territory.
Speaker 1: So if there's another gang, will make up a gang.
Speaker 1: Let's say the Devin rye On Sandwich gang steals uh something.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what they steal, they still get winded,
Speaker 1: they still hats yeah, and then the forty thieves or
Speaker 1: the forty elephants find out about it, they will demand
Speaker 1: a percentage from that haberdasher's robbery because it happened on
Speaker 1: their turf. And then if someone refused to pay up
Speaker 1: get a bit too big for their bridges or perhaps
Speaker 1: their trousers, then the gang would send their elephant and
Speaker 1: castle mob to beat the snot out of them or
Speaker 1: kidnap their notable members or their family members until their
Speaker 1: percentage was paid. And that's to say that the female
Speaker 1: members of this gang weren't bruisers in and of themselves.
Speaker 1: Diamond Annie, for example, got her name because she had
Speaker 1: a fistful of diamond rings that if she clocked you
Speaker 1: in the face with you probably lose an eye or
Speaker 1: you know, you would not be doing very well. And
Speaker 1: they were known for wriggling out of tight situations with
Speaker 1: the law with violent methods. They'd carry blackjacks, straight razors,
Speaker 1: and all kinds of concealed weapons. But for the big stuff,
Speaker 1: like you said, the door to door, you know, give
Speaker 1: give us our what do you call it? Are big
Speaker 1: or whatever you know? Or like the what do they
Speaker 1: call in the Sopranos when they getting collections right and
Speaker 1: going to the door, they sent left that to the
Speaker 1: big burly dudes. Yeah, there might also be the matter
Speaker 1: of protection fees or something like that, exactly. They also
Speaker 1: did something that may surprise people. They diversified their crime,
Speaker 1: which makes it more ma FiOS and less just street
Speaker 1: they were. They were very into blackmailing men, seducing married
Speaker 1: men or men of note, and then forcing them to
Speaker 1: pay either a huge lump sum or a continuing almost
Speaker 1: the service fee not to reveal their carnal predilections. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're kind of leaning on some of the most
Speaker 1: well known members of this gang, like Diamond Annie In particularly,
Speaker 1: Like you said, I mean that book um that McDonald
Speaker 1: wrote focuses a lot on her. But there's a lot
Speaker 1: of periods in this gang history that we don't know
Speaker 1: a whole lot about other than that they did exist
Speaker 1: right right, because they were also successful at functioning away
Speaker 1: from the spotlight. It's weird because for almost two hundred years,
Speaker 1: you know, they were playing a very dangerous game. If
Speaker 1: any of them were caught, they could be sentenced to
Speaker 1: somewhere between three and twelve months hard labor or three
Speaker 1: years in prison and hard labor. At the time, and
Speaker 1: we've talked about this on previous episodes, was absolutely no joke.
Speaker 1: You know, you're like, what is it. You're unraveling rope.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the things you had to do, uh,
Speaker 1: you digging ditches. And despite these high risk and these
Speaker 1: serious consequences, a lot of the gang members, maybe even
Speaker 1: the majority, were long timers. Maggie Hughes or baby Face.
Speaker 1: Maggie had shoplifting convictions that went back to the age
Speaker 1: of fourteen. And when these as as I think we
Speaker 1: said earlier, when these women or members of the gang
Speaker 1: were caught, they did have their own independent support systems.
Speaker 1: So your family members or your you know, your dependence
Speaker 1: would be taken care of, or they would help you
Speaker 1: fight the system get out of jail. But another I
Speaker 1: like that you mentioned the fact that there were many
Speaker 1: other people who were lost to history that were members
Speaker 1: of this gang. We know a few. There's for example,
Speaker 1: Adah Wellman, who was convicted of shoplifting from army and
Speaker 1: navy stores in Victorian ne and she was we know
Speaker 1: she was still an active member of the gang almost
Speaker 1: twenty years later because she shows up in police reports
Speaker 1: eighteen years after her arrest when she got jailed for
Speaker 1: four months due to another crime. So these are career criminals.
Speaker 1: It's not like a side job. It's it doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like they were doing that thing so common in heist
Speaker 1: movies where we'd say, you know, Casey Noel, let's get
Speaker 1: the gang back together for one last score. No, this
Speaker 1: is a premise score. This is a life. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a generational thing. If we're talking about two
Speaker 1: hundred years of this, um, I'm going to call it
Speaker 1: an organization because that's clearly what it was, and it
Speaker 1: was maintained that way for quite a long time. You know,
Speaker 1: this this stuff, these tricks of the trade would be
Speaker 1: passed down, you know, like I mean, it's it's really fascinating.
Speaker 1: So they had one, I guess, great problem that any
Speaker 1: shoplifting network will run into if they are successful, And
Speaker 1: the problem was had abundance of stolen riches. What how
Speaker 1: do they get rid of this? How do they take
Speaker 1: something that they have stolen, for instance, a unique piece
Speaker 1: of jewelry right, or very high quality clothing and translate
Speaker 1: that into cold, hard cash. This meant they had to
Speaker 1: create a distribution network so that they would you know,
Speaker 1: because if they stole something and then just waited a
Speaker 1: week and started wearing those clothes or selling diamonds on
Speaker 1: the street, boom, They're back to hard labor again. So
Speaker 1: they instead relied on a network of fences and then
Speaker 1: unaffiliated street market traders and of course pawn shops. So
Speaker 1: part of the clothing they stole would be just sold
Speaker 1: to a clothing store. In the clothing store just to
Speaker 1: make some scratch, all they would do is replace the labels,
Speaker 1: so you would say, oh, that's not a Hertfordshire Blackfoot boost,
Speaker 1: I'm just making Some were close though. I think one
Speaker 1: of the big stories they robbed had a very similar
Speaker 1: name to that. And just like the gang itself, this network,
Speaker 1: while being fluid, also prospered for a long time. The
Speaker 1: forty Thieves seem to have been at their glory days
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, so that's why
Speaker 1: we know uh so much about Alice Diamond or Diamond
Speaker 1: Annie the woman with the punch to be aware of. Oh,
Speaker 1: I guess we could talk a little bit about her
Speaker 1: background if you want, just briefly. Oh, we absolutely should.
Speaker 1: Ben By Dad dude, just want to point out the
Speaker 1: names of some of the biggest retail stores in London
Speaker 1: on the high Street that they hit. It was because
Speaker 1: you made up a beautiful one and it made me
Speaker 1: think of it wasn't that far off, Ben, We've got
Speaker 1: Debonham and Freebody. Oh what do they sell? You know,
Speaker 1: Ladies Lingerie is more of a department store still at all,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just sort of like a like a
Speaker 1: serious type situation imag department department store kind of Herod's exactly. Okay,
Speaker 1: So since we are lucky enough to know a little
Speaker 1: bit about the notorious Alice Diamond, let's let's look into
Speaker 1: her background. She was born in eighteen nine six in
Speaker 1: June of eight in Lambeth Workhouse Hospital, and Diamond was
Speaker 1: her real name. It wasn't just a cool moniker. Her
Speaker 1: father was named Thomas Diamond. Her parents had applied for
Speaker 1: a maternity birth under the name of Black before they
Speaker 1: married because at the time, Alice would have been an
Speaker 1: illegitimate child because she had been born out of wedlock. However,
Speaker 1: since they decided instead to marry shortly before Alice was
Speaker 1: born to avoid the problem. Her father had at least
Speaker 1: three criminal convictions, including one where he assaulted the son
Speaker 1: the Lord Mayor of London by punching his head through
Speaker 1: a pane of glass in a door, and Alice turned
Speaker 1: out to be the eldest of seven children. One of
Speaker 1: her younger sisters also joined the Forty Thieves gang, and
Speaker 1: one of her brothers, Tommy, became a member of the
Speaker 1: Elephant and Castle Gang. Ben, Can I just point out
Speaker 1: really quick then that I have seen it as Alice
Speaker 1: and also Annie. Yes, yeah, just real quick, because I
Speaker 1: was confused for a second. I was about to cop
Speaker 1: to uh to saying the wrong name. That now I'm
Speaker 1: looking back over our sources and it's definitely said. Both
Speaker 1: are said. Like many criminals, she added Ann and Alice
Speaker 1: to her name, or referred to herself as that multiple
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense. It's like an alias, so she can
Speaker 1: there you go, just like sometimes I'll be Max Powers
Speaker 1: astronaut with a secret or Chris from Boston, who again
Speaker 1: is retired. We mentioned him on a previous episode. People
Speaker 1: love Chris from Boston. He just, you know, the brightest
Speaker 1: lights shine briefest. So here's to you. Chris's sad. It's good,
Speaker 1: It's it's okay. We've got to move on, you know,
Speaker 1: circle of life and all that, as far as aliases
Speaker 1: and ak s go. Alice's or Anne's criminal career began
Speaker 1: in nineteen twelve because she was caught stealing chocolate. In
Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen, she was officially named the Queen of the
Speaker 1: Forty Thieves. The previous queen was someone named Mary Carr,
Speaker 1: also known as Polly car. But we don't know a
Speaker 1: ton of stuff about Mary. We mostly know when it
Speaker 1: goes to who was the Queen of the forty Thieves,
Speaker 1: we mostly know about Alice or Anne. And when you
Speaker 1: think about it, it sounds like a swashbuckling life, or
Speaker 1: it sounds like a maybe a romanticized thing. But it
Speaker 1: was a brutal life. And they believed that the only
Speaker 1: alternative to this would be a crushing existence in poverty,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, or possibly crushed under the
Speaker 1: thumb of some man. And they did live it up.
Speaker 1: They were well known for their parties. They would really
Speaker 1: throw down at pubs and social clubs. And I think
Speaker 1: the fact that they also because of their reputation, I
Speaker 1: would imagine they were allowed and permitted to do things
Speaker 1: that you know, other women would not be because people
Speaker 1: were scared of them and they didn't want to like
Speaker 1: raise up right, because that wouldn't have been proper for
Speaker 1: a group of women to have a big old, you know,
Speaker 1: drunken to do right. And then also gives them some support.
Speaker 1: That kind of lifestyle gives them some support in parts
Speaker 1: of the population, right because you know, if the forty
Speaker 1: thieves or the forty elephants are coming to the restaurant
Speaker 1: or the club or something, that it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: wild night. I mean you can part You might get
Speaker 1: blackmailed later, but you could party right. I mean, they
Speaker 1: were getting the equivalent, the equivalent of like bottle service.
Speaker 1: You know, they were really really dropping some some cash.
Speaker 1: And we do have to thank McDonald. We can't think
Speaker 1: of it enough because Brian McDonald uncovered a lot of
Speaker 1: this previously unknown information by hitting the bricks, scouring official
Speaker 1: birth and death records, perusing marriage indexes. UH local newspaper
Speaker 1: reports hunting down out of print books at the British
Speaker 1: Library to read contemporary accounts, and everything he found was verified.
Speaker 1: There's there's a thing where like imagine you grow up
Speaker 1: in a very impoverished situation and you say, well, I
Speaker 1: can slave away at a minimum wage job until I
Speaker 1: get ill, at which point I have to be consigned
Speaker 1: to the poorhouse or workhouse or something and probably die
Speaker 1: early of a disease that may well have been preventable.
Speaker 1: Or I can break social norms. I cannot only become
Speaker 1: a criminal, but I can do it well. According to McDonald,
Speaker 1: they idolized glamorous movie stars and the decadent living of
Speaker 1: the nineties flapper society. So they read about the the scandalous,
Speaker 1: salacious behavior of people born into privilege or celebrity, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to emulate them in a way. It's in
Speaker 1: a way it is very similar to the stories we
Speaker 1: hear now about modern drug dealers. You know. I mean,
Speaker 1: Atlanta is full of strip club They want the chains,
Speaker 1: they want the grills, they want all this stuff, the
Speaker 1: status symbols or whatever. But ultimately they're living a very
Speaker 1: risky and potentially short existence in order to have those things.
Speaker 1: Did I ever tell you about that excellent freakonomics report
Speaker 1: that broke down how much per hour drug dealers actually
Speaker 1: make on average. You were saying it wasn't great. No,
Speaker 1: it's the op unless you're like the distributor or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the high level individual that's really pulling the strings. That's
Speaker 1: where you know, make the big money. Right, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a very unfairly distributed hierarchy typically, So if you
Speaker 1: want to learn more about that, and it is tangentially
Speaker 1: related to this episode, but it's it's fascinating information. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: I'd like to recommend a TED talk by the author
Speaker 1: Stephen Levitt, who presents the data he found on the
Speaker 1: finances of drug dealing. These folks are not living the
Speaker 1: high life. It is much more. Um, what's the best
Speaker 1: way to say it. No, it's just terrible. There's not
Speaker 1: a good way to say it. It's it's a terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible life. Don't sell drugs. I mean, if you're looking
Speaker 1: to make a lot of money off of it, don't
Speaker 1: expect to. Well, how about performing a very organized cell
Speaker 1: based gang and doing smashing grabs for a living. That
Speaker 1: would be there's an interesting topic there too, Knel, because
Speaker 1: that would be much more difficult, at least here in
Speaker 1: the US in the modern day, and definitely in the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom. The United Kingdom for a few years running
Speaker 1: now has had the largest amount of closed circuit television
Speaker 1: cameras CCTV cameras per capita, I believe, in the world.
Speaker 1: So you're much more likely to get caught on film, right.
Speaker 1: You're also much more easy to track if you have
Speaker 1: a cell phone, since we all have those GPS locators
Speaker 1: on our phones. It was easier to get away with
Speaker 1: crime back then. Oh absolutely, I mean like that, it
Speaker 1: was just rampant. I can't imagine who who would want
Speaker 1: to go into business. Have you seen the ballot of
Speaker 1: buster scrugs yet? Yeah, I've seen it, seen it several times.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of the bank teller kind of
Speaker 1: situation where you're just constantly on the ready with like
Speaker 1: guns loaded and pointed at every potential person that's going
Speaker 1: to walk on that door and rob you. I would
Speaker 1: just think that some of these shopkeepers must have been
Speaker 1: quite foolish for at least a minute, you know, with
Speaker 1: to to allow this kind of stuff to keep happening.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I wonder it well. And also what
Speaker 1: can you do if you have if you have a
Speaker 1: small shop, are you supposed to continually employ five people
Speaker 1: just for security on the off chance that something happens
Speaker 1: one day? I mean, you're throwing money in a hole
Speaker 1: until the robbery happens, and maybe wondering, well, Ben, well, no, well, casey,
Speaker 1: this sounds like quite an adventure and it would make
Speaker 1: for a great film, Like you guys are doing a
Speaker 1: history show. Are the forty elephants still around today? No? No,
Speaker 1: they're not. And then again, you don't even really hear
Speaker 1: much about them at all until this book came out.
Speaker 1: But in the mid twenties, there was a member of
Speaker 1: the gang named Marie Britton who kind of on her own.
Speaker 1: Through her actions in this kind of chain of events
Speaker 1: led to the dissolution of this crime dynasty. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call it, to go so far as to call it dynasty.
Speaker 1: I think it's a dynasty. Um, so, yeah, she had
Speaker 1: fallen for a dude who was not a part of
Speaker 1: this CD underworld, and you know, it's a network and
Speaker 1: it's sort of like West Side Story, you know, where
Speaker 1: it's like the Jets and the Sharks or whatever. You
Speaker 1: fall in love with a shark. It's not okay with
Speaker 1: the Jets, right, it was a little different. This person
Speaker 1: was neither a shark nor a jet. This person was
Speaker 1: outside of the world entirely. They were a square of
Speaker 1: civilian exactly because Marie had fallen in love with uh,
Speaker 1: someone outside of London's underworld. She had also broken one
Speaker 1: of the gang's many internal rules thou shalt not date
Speaker 1: a square. So she was called up to see Alice
Speaker 1: and baby Face Maggie, and Marie was scared. She brought
Speaker 1: along her father to protect her as her own muscle essentially,
Speaker 1: and they, you know, we can speculate on the the
Speaker 1: essence of their conversation. Alice and Maggie say, hey, you've
Speaker 1: got to drop this guy. He's lame. He's not in
Speaker 1: the he's not one of us. It's not one of us.
Speaker 1: He's not in our our crime sororities or affiliated crime
Speaker 1: fraternity e's and Marie says, no, I'm not gonna do it,
Speaker 1: at which point Maggie whips out her aforementioned straight razor
Speaker 1: and attacks Marie's father and they escape. Marie and her
Speaker 1: father managed to escape, but Alice is not gonna let
Speaker 1: this go. Alice sounds like a real tough cookie. She's
Speaker 1: not not for the for the better necessarily. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess if she's she's the kind of person you
Speaker 1: probably want in your corner. But if you make an
Speaker 1: enemy of her, she she's gonna come at you with
Speaker 1: a straight razor, right, and she's gonna come to your
Speaker 1: house and start hurling rocks through the windows, uh and
Speaker 1: then force entry into the home and search, um manically
Speaker 1: for you. I'm I'm speaking of myself as though I
Speaker 1: were Marie uh and and my father, and they're you know,
Speaker 1: gonna ransack the play, um and in doing this attract
Speaker 1: the attention of the police because they became a riot
Speaker 1: basically not not stinging the police. They weren't on the
Speaker 1: scene yet. So what what happens? What happens? Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: they slashed their way through this house looking for Marie
Speaker 1: and her father and ended up injuring some of the
Speaker 1: other folks that were around, and the cops came. The
Speaker 1: fuzz showed out because this is a whole mel a,
Speaker 1: you know, and um, the ringleader of the forty Elephants,
Speaker 1: Alice Diamonds Diamond, Alice Annie Diamonds Diamond, Annie was it
Speaker 1: was arrested and it didn't go well for her, No,
Speaker 1: it didn't. They went to trial. They were easily convicted
Speaker 1: Alice and Maggie. That is because you know, this is
Speaker 1: baby face Maggie, baby face Maggie, because they clearly did this.
Speaker 1: But the prosecution, despite the fact there were multiple members
Speaker 1: of the gang attacking Marie's house, the prosecution only convicted
Speaker 1: or only even charged Alice and Maggie because you see,
Speaker 1: according to the rumors in the speculation, certain gentlemen in
Speaker 1: high places of society did not want the details of
Speaker 1: the black mail activities to come to light. So maybe
Speaker 1: we can conjecture with a fair amount of certitude, maybe
Speaker 1: there were a couple of people in the government or
Speaker 1: high in business who said, look, you can convict the
Speaker 1: two ringleaders, but Um Graytooth Desdemona can't go to court,
Speaker 1: my wife can't find out. That's right. And you know, subsequently,
Speaker 1: there was a vacuum left behind because Annie Diamond, Annie Diamond,
Speaker 1: Alice whatever you wanna call her, the Diamonds, that um
Speaker 1: was put away and sentenced to hard labor for how
Speaker 1: many years? Well, let's see, she was imprisoned in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty five and the power vacuum has has a pretty
Speaker 1: swift effect on the gang. By n thirty, they're falling
Speaker 1: out of power, but people are still claiming membership of
Speaker 1: the gang, and they're still shoplifting up into the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: But it sure seems like Diamond Annie is the one
Speaker 1: who kind of had that iron fisted control over the
Speaker 1: organization to the point where they existed almost as a
Speaker 1: central power in the London crime world. So when she
Speaker 1: went away, it kind of reverted back to this more
Speaker 1: petty fevery and they sort of lost their grip on
Speaker 1: the underworld in general, right, right, And by the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties the gang had just lost too much power. Maggie
Speaker 1: Hill ended up dying in nineteen forty nine. Don't know
Speaker 1: where she was buried, but her best friend was Alice Diamond, obviously,
Speaker 1: And who's the in Casino? Is it Joe Pesci? Who's
Speaker 1: the wild card hys character? Okay, so Maggie Hill, by
Speaker 1: way of comparison, is kind of the Joe Pesci of
Speaker 1: this group, And there's not really Robert de Niro. If
Speaker 1: there is, it's Alice. But she in court attempted to
Speaker 1: attack members of the Court during the trial with a
Speaker 1: pen who knows, who knows. She was like a like
Speaker 1: a real life cartoon Tasmanian devil. But I also read
Speaker 1: that she did not keep her composure when sentenced, that
Speaker 1: she freaked out and like oh yeah, but like got
Speaker 1: really upset. Was not stoic at all. It was very
Speaker 1: like emotional and railed against the court. Yes, probably because
Speaker 1: she saw more than a few people associated with their
Speaker 1: crime ring in court. On the other side, they're pious
Speaker 1: wigs on. We know that Alice Diamond passed the A
Speaker 1: in a place called Southwark, close to the eastle Market
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty two. So this gang pretty much pretty
Speaker 1: much exposed. It's death Knell is the last imprisonment, and
Speaker 1: then later the death of Diamond Dallas or Diamond. And
Speaker 1: and that's not to say gangs don't continue in London today,
Speaker 1: Oh no, for sure, but it's you know what the
Speaker 1: thing about London too is you always hear about how
Speaker 1: gangs there don't use there's not as much gun violence
Speaker 1: because they're a lot harder to get. So you gotta
Speaker 1: wonder if like the gang culture has kind of like
Speaker 1: been influenced by this more kind of crafty gang culture
Speaker 1: where it's more about like figuring stuff out and and
Speaker 1: being sharp on your feet, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just like running in and blasting up
Speaker 1: the place. Because you just don't hear about a lot
Speaker 1: of gun violence in London, not not near as much
Speaker 1: as there is in the US or some other countries.
Speaker 1: But knives we have to keep in mind. One of
Speaker 1: my old instructors used to always try to hammer this
Speaker 1: into our heads that knives up close are more dangerous
Speaker 1: than gotten so they they're probably walking around with some blades,
Speaker 1: a blade or two. That's what I'm saying, though, to
Speaker 1: wheeld a knife, you gotta be a little more brave
Speaker 1: and a little more clever, and I'll have a little
Speaker 1: more training kind of you know, you gotta know what
Speaker 1: to do with it. Well said, Well said, And for
Speaker 1: the record, I agree. So I guess I'm saying, way
Speaker 1: to go London crime world at a little less lazy.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I if I agree with that,
Speaker 1: of man, It's it's true though, while gangs still exist
Speaker 1: and even thrive in some parts of London, there's not
Speaker 1: really at this moment in time, something like the forty Elephants,
Speaker 1: unless you want to say the banking cartels or gangs,
Speaker 1: but they robbed people in a different way very much.
Speaker 1: Do you like how I had to walk around the
Speaker 1: block to throw that little piece of shade in it?
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, man, the city of London and what
Speaker 1: it's sketchy, the whole sketchy. But that is the story
Speaker 1: of the forty Thieves, the forty Elephants, Alice Diamond Diamond,
Speaker 1: Alice Annie Diamonds, Diamond Annie, the all female crime syndicate
Speaker 1: or dynasty which we think is appropriate here, who ran
Speaker 1: shoplifting and somehow got away with it for almost two centuries.
Speaker 1: I want to see their like internal records, you know,
Speaker 1: for that two years, Like I want to see the
Speaker 1: turnover of like who who was in charge? If any
Speaker 1: of that was on paper, it probably wasn't It was
Speaker 1: probably all just like oral. I wonder, yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: it's a huge liability to have that laund but it's
Speaker 1: prestigious and it would be It would also really help
Speaker 1: out Marnie Dickens, who as of seventeen was developing a
Speaker 1: series on the Forty Elephants for Forty Thieves for the BBC,
Speaker 1: and it has the potential to be a Peaky Blind
Speaker 1: Jers kind of thing. Did you ever see that show?
Speaker 1: I started watching and I watched the first season and
Speaker 1: I like it. Yeah, I saw I guess all the
Speaker 1: first episode and I started wondering whether I should also
Speaker 1: carry a razor around in my hat. Our boss Connall
Speaker 1: really likes it a lot. I could see that. That's
Speaker 1: classic Connal. Have you ever seen Peaky Blinder's casey No,
Speaker 1: I don't think I've even heard of it. It Scott
Speaker 1: Silly and Murphy in it. It's about a gang in Ireland.
Speaker 1: I want to say, though, right, wasn't an Irish gang
Speaker 1: like around the same time in the early twenties. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know that they were around for two years though?
Speaker 1: So would you would you guys watch a show based
Speaker 1: on this, uh this crime Syndicate? Yes? I would too.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering who they would cast. Let us know who
Speaker 1: you think would play an excellent Alice or Annie Diamond?
Speaker 1: And who is unhinged enough to be a baby face
Speaker 1: Maggie in your book? You know how I could pictures
Speaker 1: being baby face Maggie. Who's that? Um? Melissa McCarthy, like
Speaker 1: she's got some acting shot Man. She does all these
Speaker 1: kind of goofy comedy movies. But I I think she's
Speaker 1: got the she got the range. I think she's got
Speaker 1: it man. Yeah, yeah, I like that. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna think about this and come back. It is the
Speaker 1: end of the episode, which means that if we are
Speaker 1: still carrying on this tradition, my friend, it is time
Speaker 1: for us to give a comic book recommendation or two. Wow,
Speaker 1: we're gonna keep them keep going with this. Huh, well,
Speaker 1: we said we would, we give it a shot. I
Speaker 1: like it. Have you read Saga? Yes, by Brian Cavan.
Speaker 1: I've only read a little bit of it, And again,
Speaker 1: I'm not as much of a comic head as you are,
Speaker 1: but I have enough of an idea of what's out
Speaker 1: there to give a recommendation for a couple episodes. But yeah,
Speaker 1: check out Saga by Brian Cavan. He Uh, it's sort
Speaker 1: of a sci fi star crossed space adventure. Was that
Speaker 1: in a good way of a frank Yeah, that's great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it breaks a lot of genre rules. I think you'll
Speaker 1: really enjoy it. He also wrote Why the Last Man,
Speaker 1: which I did read every moment of About the Last Man?
Speaker 1: On Earth after a disease kind of wipes out male
Speaker 1: population and this one dude still around everyone else's female.
Speaker 1: That's a good recommendation for this episode. Actually, um, that
Speaker 1: was actually my way. Oh no, my bad. I only
Speaker 1: said it because this and I believe that's being adapted
Speaker 1: into a big old series right right right, And for
Speaker 1: people who have yet to read it, this won't spoil
Speaker 1: in anything. There is a character in Why the Last
Speaker 1: Man named Agent three fifty five, and that comes from
Speaker 1: a real and mysterious part of early US history. So
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about the real life
Speaker 1: Agent three, check out our other shows. Stuff. They don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. That was just recent one. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't want to ruin it, but check it
Speaker 1: out please. Uh. And in the meantime, always always want
Speaker 1: to thank Casey Pegram, our superproducer. I don't know where
Speaker 1: we'd be without you. We would we would sound like fools,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. Um, So thank you to Casey, Thank
Speaker 1: you to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Yes, and
Speaker 1: thank you to Christopher hasiotis our research associate for this episode.
Speaker 1: Thanks also to our other research associates, Eaves and Gabe,
Speaker 1: Thank you knowl and thank you for listening. Folks. Hope
Speaker 1: this I don't know. I don't want to say. I
Speaker 1: hope this inspires people because I don't want us to
Speaker 1: get characterized as the inspiration behind a new gang of
Speaker 1: jewel thieves. You know what you do, you people out there,
Speaker 1: whatever you think me to be the change you want
Speaker 1: to see in the world. So also let us know
Speaker 1: if you have found a story of another crime ring
Speaker 1: this successful, because regardless of your opinions about the internal
Speaker 1: workings or the consequences or their own strategies, there's no
Speaker 1: arguing with it. They were very, very successful. You can
Speaker 1: tell us about this on Instagram. You can find us
Speaker 1: on Twitter. You can visit us on Facebook, where we'd
Speaker 1: love to introduce you to your fellow Ridiculous historians on
Speaker 1: our community page ridicul Hillis Historians