Miss Moriarty, the Adventuress and the Crime Queen: The Rise of the Modern Female Criminal in Britain, 1918–1939

Abstract

This article demonstrates the reconceptualisation of female criminality in interwar British popular culture. It argues that in fiction and the popular press, the period signalled the rise of the strategic female career criminal who challenged traditional gendered patterns of law-breaking, appropriated wider notions of fashionable modernity and transgressed social and geographic boundaries as poorer women embraced new opportunities for masquerade and used crime for upward social mobility. The article shows that the modern female criminal reflected broader shifts and changes in opportunities and roles for women, suggesting that she functions as a prism through which to explore wider debates and anxieties around femininity, 1918–1939.

Keywords:

• Gender
• Crime
• Interwar
• Fiction
• Popular Press

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Lucy Bland and Eloise Moss for their valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this work and to the two anonymous referees for their constructive comments. Particular thanks to Daniel Tarozzi for supplying the many Agatha Christie novels devoured in the making of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^[1] R. E. Corder, ‘Crime Queens: An Evil of Modern Freedom’, Daily Mail, 12 May 1928, 19.

^[2] Frederick Clifton, ‘Woman the Criminal’, Daily Mail, 23 September 1924, 8.

^[3] Thom, Nice Girls and Rude Girls; Woollacott, On Her their Lives Depend; and Todd, ‘Young Women, Work’.

^[4] Doan, Fashioning Sapphism; Dyhouse, Girl Trouble; and Tinkler and Warsh, ‘Feminine Modernity’, 113–143.

^[5] Kent, Making Peace; and Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty,.

^[6] Lawrence, ‘Forging a Peaceable Kingdom’; and Emsley, ‘Violent Crime in England in 1919’, 173–95.

^[7] Laite, ‘Immoral Traffic’, 693–721; Woollacott, ‘“Khaki Fever” and its Control’, 325–347; and Levine, ‘Walking the Streets in a Way’, 34–78.

^[8] Robb, ‘Women and White-Collar Crime’, 1058–1072; and Wiener, Men of Blood.

^[9] Smart, Women, Crime and Criminology.

^[10] Leonard, Women, Crime and Society, 1. As quoted in Evans and Jamieson, ‘Introduction’; Evans and Jamieson, Crime and Gender.

^[11] Seal, Women, Murder and Femininity; Ann-Shapiro, Breaking the Codes; and Kilday, History of Infanticide in Britain.

^[12] Executed in January 1923, Thompson's case is considered one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British legal history. Bland, ‘Trials and Tribulations of Edith Thompson’, 627; and Houlbrook, ‘Pin to See the Peep Show’, 251–249. For further examples of scholarship on interwar celebrity criminal trials, see Bland, Modern Women on Trial; Wood, Most Remarkable Woman in England; and Ramey, ‘Bloody Blonde and the Marble Woman’, 625–650.

^[13] Walkowitz, Nights Out, 218–219; and Shore, ‘Constable Dances with Instructress’, 190.

^[14] For scholarship on ‘traditional’ female crimes including shoplifting and property theft, infanticide, and prostitution, see, Meier, ‘Going on the Hoist’, 410–433; Callahan, ‘On the Receiving End’, 106–21; Kilday, History of Infanticide in Britain; Laite, Common Prostitutes; and Settle, ‘Kosmo Case’, 562–584.

^[15] Houlbrook, ‘Man with the Powder Puff’, 145–171.

^[16] Todd, ‘Poverty and Aspiration’, 119–142,

^[17] Julia Laite stresses the danger and exploitation experienced by prostitutes working in Britain between the two world wars as legislative changes meant they were especially vulnerable to ruthless pimps and landlords. Laite, Common Prostitutes, 145–148.

^[18] Circulation figures for the Daily Mail reached 1.96 million by 1930, eventually surpassed by the Daily Mirror and Daily Express. Bingham, Family Newspapers?, 19.

^[19] Literary scholar, Gill Plain, explains Christie's unprecedented popularity as a response to the immense losses experienced during the First World War. Plain, Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction, 29–43.

^[20] Moss, ‘How I Had Liked This Villain!’, 137. Recent historical scholarship examines crime coverage in the interwar press and highlights the complexities around rise of sensationalist journalism. See, Special Issue, ‘Criminality, Policing and the Press’; and Special Issue, ‘Press and Popular Culture’.

^[21] Light, Forever England, 61–112.

^[22] D'Cruze, ‘Dad's Back’, 266. On the relationship between the interwar press and gender, see Bingham, Gender, Modernity, and the Popular Press in Inter-War Britain.

^[23] McLaren, ‘Smoke and Mirrors’, 599. See also, Houlbrook, ‘Man with the Powder Puff’, 165.

^[24] ‘Has Crime Quite Died Out After All?’, Daily Mirror, 10 January 1919, 7.

^[25] G. T. Crook, ‘Women and Crime’, Daily Mail, 12 December 1921, 8.

^[26] R. E. Corder, ‘Crime Queens: An Evil of Modern Freedom’, Daily Mail, 12 May 1928, 19.

^[27] In 1921, 63 per cent of women aged between 15 and 24 years of age, worked, rising to 69 per cent in 1931. Todd, Young Women, Work, and Family in England, 20. See also, Alexander, ‘Men's Fears and Women's Work’, 401–425.

^[28] Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse, ‘Crime and the Woman’, Daily Express, 2 October 1925, 8.

^[29] G. T. Crook, ‘Crime in 1921’, Daily Mail, 31 December 1920, 4.

^[30] R. E. Corder, ‘Skilful Women Crooks Becoming Difficult to Catch’, Daily Mail, 23 October 1931, 11.

^[31] ‘Modern Women's Freedom’, Daily Mail, 18 November 1924, 4.

^[32] Simon and Ahn-Redding, Crimes Women Commit.

^[33] Moss, ‘Cracking Cribs’, 135.

^[34] D'Cruze and Jackson, Women, Crime and Justice, 31–41; 66–76 and 76–84.

^[35] ‘Modern Women's Freedom’, Daily Mail, 18 November 1924, 4.

^[36] ‘Women as Criminals by a Criminologist’, Daily Mirror, 4 August 1933, 10.

^[37] Frederick Clifton, ‘Woman the Criminal’, Daily Mail, 23 September 1924, 8.

^[38] Home Office, ‘Criminal Statistics England and Wales 1938’. Statistics Relating to Crime, Criminal Proceedings and Coroners' investigations for the year 1938; 1939, 106.

^[39] Home Office, ‘Criminal statistics England and Wales 1938’. Statistics relating to crime, criminal proceedings and coroners' investigations for the year 1938; 1939, xxvi.

^[40] The rise may also reflect the implications of the 1927 Street Offences Committee, which extended the offence of importuning to men and women, removed the requirement to prove annoyance, and permitted the police to be the only parties required to deliver evidence. Laite, Common Prostitutes, 131.

^[41] ‘Queen of Forgers’ Gang with 20 Names Gaoled’, Daily Mirror, 25 September 1937, 5.

^[42] ‘A Night Club “Queen” At 80’, Daily Mail, 26 July 1933, 7.

^[43] Kohn, Dope Girls, 88.

^[44] ‘Blonde “Vampire” of West-End is Gaoled’, Daily Mirror, 28 May 1937, 5.

^[45] ‘Cocaine Sentence’, Daily Mail, 19 December 1918, 6; ‘Cocaine Trafficker’, Daily Mail, 17 May 1922, 7. See also: ‘Woman Cocaine Dealer’, Daily Mail, 11 January 1921, 8; ‘Cocaine Charge’, Daily Mail, 22 August 1923, 2; ‘Three Women Charged’, Daily Mail, 26 September 1923, 7.

^[46] ‘Cocaine Exposures’, Daily Mail, 19 April 1922, 4.

^[47] Kohn, Dope Girls, 120–149.

^[48] Jackson, Women Police, 48.

^[49] ‘Set a Woman to Catch a Woman’, Daily Mail, 17 August 1933, 8.

^[50] ‘The Perfect Sleuth’, Daily Express, 13 December 1933, 28.

^[51] ‘Queens of the Underworld’, Daily Mail, 4 March 1929, 2.

^[52] Jackson, Women Police, 49.

^[53] Christie, Peril at End House, 18 and 20.

^[54] Christie, Lord Edgware Dies, 11, 29, and 47.

^[55] Roper, Secret Battle, 276–306

^[56] Christie, Lord Edgware Dies, 346, 347, and 349.

^[57] Ibid., 351.

^[58] ‘Crime Invasion. Scotland Yard Plans to Prevent it’, Daily Mail, 19 February 1924, 5.

^[59] ‘Flapper Crooks: The Imaginative Touch’, Daily Mail, 10 April 1929, 11.

^[60] Ibid.

^[61] ‘Golden-Voiced Adventuress’, Daily Express, 11 December 1925, 9. See also, ‘Zoo Magic in the West End’, Daily Mail, 9 December 1933, 16; ‘Took Her Car to Go Shoplifting’, Daily Mail, 9 January 1939, 12.

^[62] ‘The Life of the Convict’, Daily Mail, 28 October 1926, 8.

^[63] Christie, Lord Edgware Dies, 350.

^[64] Grandy, Heroes and Happy Endings, 168.

^[65] ‘How Men Judge Us, by a Woman’, Daily Mail, 10 October 1923, 8.

^[66] G. T. Crook, ‘Crime in 1921’, Daily Mail, 31 December 1920, 4.

^[67] Christie, Secret Adversary, 67. For further examples of Christie's link between glamorous beauty and immorality or criminality, among others, see the character of Marthe Daubreuil in Murder on the Links (1922) and Loraine Wade, Seven Dials Mystery (1929).

^[68] Christie, Secret Adversary, 8.

^[69] Alexander, ‘Becoming a Woman in London’, 245–271.

^[70] Dyhouse, Glamour, 3 and 56.

^[71] Christie, Dumb Witness, 9.

^[72] Ibid., 92.

^[73] Christie, Five Little Pigs, 24 and 35.

^[74] Houlbrook, ‘Man with the Powder Puff’, 167.

^[75] Ibid., 169–170.

^[76] Christie, Man in the Brown Suit, 30–31.

^[77] Christie, Peril at End House, 146.

^[78] Houlbrook, ‘Man with the Powder Puff’, 167.

^[79] Miller, Framed, 92.

^[80] McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, 1–43; and Cannadine, Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, 557–605.

^[81] Petter, ‘Temporary Gentlemen’, 127–152.

^[82] Zola, Nana.

^[83] Houlbrook, ‘Commodifying the Self Within’, 328.

^[84] ‘Women as Criminals’, Daily Mail, 16 March 1921, 6.

^[85] ‘Masquerades of Adventuress’, Daily Mail, 4 January 1924, 2.

^[86] ‘Blindness Fraud’, Daily Mirror, 4 January 1924, 4.

^[87] Ibid.

^[88] Ibid.

^[89] Houlbrook, ‘Fashioning an Ex-Crook Self’, 1–30.

^[90] ‘Crime Invasion’, Daily Mail, 19 February 1924, 5.

^[91] ‘Adventuress Unmasked’, Daily Express, 21 March 1921, 6; ‘Woman and Fabulously Wealthy Italian Friend’, Daily Mail, 16 May 1931, 9; ‘Bogus Fortune of an Adventuress’, Daily Express, 2 December 1925, 2.

^[92] Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, ‘The Brain behind the Crime’, Daily Mail, 2 February 1920, 6.

^[93] On interwar physical culture and the emphasis on fitness and health in Britain, see Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body.

^[94] R. E. Corder, ‘Crime Queens: An Evil of Modern Freedom’, Daily Mail, 12 May 1928, 19.

^[95] Todd, People, 110.

^[96] ‘Woman with Many Names: Adventuress Goes to Gaol Again’, Daily Express, 1 Jul 1925, 2.

^[97] ‘Bogus Woman Doctor’, Daily Mail, 27 December 1921, 2.

^[98] Ibid.

^[99] ‘Woman with Many Names: Adventuress Goes to Gaol Again’, Daily Express, 1 Jul 1925, 2.

^[100] ‘Adventuress's Frauds’, The Times, 9 October 1918, 3.

^[101] ‘Women Crooks of Mayfair’, Daily Express, 22 Oct 1919, 6

^[102] ‘Flapper Crooks: The Imaginative Touch’, Daily Mail, 10 April 1929, 11.

^[103] Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, ‘The Brain behind the Crime’, Daily Mail, 2 February 1920, 6.

^[104] Robinson-Tomsett, Women, Travel and Identity, 54.

^[105] Bland argues Fahmy drew on contemporary anxieties around orientalism and miscegenation to frame her husband as a brutal, sexual deviant in order to elicit sympathy from the judiciary, the press and the public. Bland, Modern Women on Trial, 132–175.

^[106] ‘Whose Child Am I?’, Daily Mail, 30 May 1925, 6.

^[107] ‘Thefts from Jewellers’, The Times, 22 November 1939, 3.

^[108] Bland, ‘White Women and Men of Colour’, 29–61.

^[109] ‘The Smuggled “Countess”’, Daily Express, 9 October 1923, 5.

^[110] Police caught Betty Simpson, aged 27 from Oklahoma, hiding on a Cunard ship from New York to Southampton. They claimed: ‘no doubt the woman was an adventuress who got her living by stowing away in ships’. ‘Woman Stowaway in Liner’, The Times, 10 August 1928, 9. See also, ‘Gang Girls Sent Here, Dupe Men’, Daily Mirror, 13 March 1937, 1.

^[111] Christie, Mystery of the Blue Train, 10.

^[112] Ibid., 57. For further examples, see the blackmailing dancer Anita Grunberg in The Man in the Brown Suit and jewel thief Countess Vera Rossakoff in Big Four.

^[113] Bland, ‘White Women and Men of Colour’.

^[114] Seal, Women, Murder and Femininity; Shapiro, Breaking the Codes; Whitlock, Crime, Gender and Consumer Culture; and Abelson, When Ladies Go A–Thieving.

^[115] Davies, ‘These Viragoes’, 85.

^[116] See, for example, Thom, Nice Girls and Rude Girls; and Woollacott, On Her Their Lives Depend.

^[117] Houlbrook, ‘Man with the Powder Puff’; and Alexander, ‘Men's Fears and Women's Work’.

^[118] Grandy, Heroes and Happy Endings, 141.

^[119] For an article that offers an excellent comparison of discourse on problematic femininity in the twentieth century, see Jackson and Tinkler, ‘“Ladettes” and “Modern Girls”’, 251–272.

^[120] Smart, ‘New Female Criminal’, 50–59.

^[121] Walkowitz, Nights Out.

^[122] Caslin-Bell, ‘Gateway to Adventure’, 146–150.

^[123] Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society Women; Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight.

^[124] Bland, ‘Trials and Tribulations of Edith Thompson’, 647.

^[125] Bingham, Gender, Modernity, and the Popular Press, 74–77.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Charlotte Wildman

Charlotte Wildman is Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Manchester. Correspondence to: History, School of Arts Languages and Cultures, Samuel Alexander Building, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK. Email: [email protected]