Edmund Reid

I was searching a newspaper archive for something or other when I came across
this story, my eye being caught by the headline ‘Girl Motor Bandit’. I read a little
more about the Forty Elephants back in 2013 in Brian McDonald’s Gangs of London:
100 Years of Mob Warfare (2010), but other things conspired that year to giving the
book more than a glance through. Anyway, the Forty Elephants stuck somewhere in
my mind and a very, very faint bell rang when I read the title of this book, and much
to my pleasure it tells the story of the ‘Eton-Bobbed Bandit’, as the newspapers
dubbed the supposed gang leader.
Her name was Lillian Rose Kendall, born in Wandsworth in 1902, indicted into the
Forty Elephants, and by 1920 prostituting herself in the East End for a man named
Henry ‘Harry’ Goldstein, who went to prison for living on immoral earnings.
Brian McDonald, who also authored a family memoir, Elephant Boys (2000),
about Charles McDonald and the south London McDonald gang, tells the full story
of the mainly female Elephant and Castle-based Forty Elephants, sometimes called the Forty Thieves. The leader was
called the ‘queen’ and the first is generally thought to have been Charlie Pitts. By 1896 it was a woman named Mary
Carr. By the 1920s it was Alice Diamond (aka Diana Black). A junior lieutenant in Alice’s gang was Maggie Hill, who would
succeed her as ‘queen’ in the 1930s. Maggie’s 13-year-old brother was Billy Hill, who later claimed to be Boss of Britain’s
Underworld. The gang initially targeted shops and department stores, shoplifting a staggering amount of booty, the
organised getaway involving hoisters, who did the actual thefts, boosters, to whom the stolen goods were passed, and a
third group who discouraged pursuers.
When London got too hot, the gang moved into the provinces and seaside towns,
often organising a ‘blitz’ attack on a large number of businesses in one town. When
shoplifting became too difficult, the gang moved into smash and grab raids and
housebreaking. She was born in 1896. She acquired a record as a juvenile, came to
police attention when in her late teens, having been arrested in 1912 for stealing
chocolate, in 1913 for stealing a blouse, and in 1914 she received 12-months with
hard labour for assorted thefts. By 1926 was the accepted ‘queen’. She had light
brown hair, green eyes, a dimpled chin, and stood 5ft 10ins in her stockinged feet,
which was remarkably tall for the time, and her diamond rings were as effective
as a brass knuckle-duster. She was also in and out of prison, her last conviction
being in 1929. Alice Diamond was not mad, but to paraphrase Lady Caroline Lamb’s
description of Lord Byron, eh was most certainly bad and dangerous to know. For
example, just before Christmas 1925 Alice and a gang of men and women raided the
home of William Britten. It was a brutal attack, Britten being badly injured, his son
hurt and his wife threatened with a gun. These were definitely not nice people. Alice
received 18-months.
Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants isn’t the easiest of books to read. There are a lot of names and relationships
to remember, and the narrative does follow a sequential dates, but sometimes skips about a bit. But once you settle into
the book it’s easy enough.
The book isn’t all about Alice Diamond, who died in
the 1950s, but begins with female criminals, starting
with Moll Cutpurse and the highway-woman Lady
Katherine Ferrers (1634-1660), allegedly the real-life
model for the ‘Wicked Lady Skelton’ in Magdalen King-
Hall’s novel upon which the classic Margaret Lockwood
movie, The Wicked Lady (1945), was based. It comes
pretty much up-to-date. I thoroughly enjoyed this
book, which opened a window on a criminal history of
Britain that I’d hitherto pretty much overlooked.
Ripperologist 147 December 2015 64