Queen of Thieves

by Beezy Marsh

  In fact, I’ll let you into a little secret. It’s a tradition in my gang for new members to be put through their paces a bit, to test their mettle. I like to know what they’re really like under pressure and how likely they are to start squealing to the cozzers. Oh, I know, I can go over the Hoisters’ Code with them until I’m blue in the face, and they can swear blind they will never breathe a word but the first time you get your collar felt it can come as a nasty shock and some girls take it upon themselves to sing like a bleeding canary – until I can find a way to shut them up.

  As Queen of The Forty Thieves, I have a right to know what my girls are going to do under pressure. Some of them can get quite creative, punching people in the face, running like the clappers, putting on a show of fainting fits to get sympathy. They can discover they have an impressive array of hidden talents; acting skills that wouldn’t look out of place on stage in the West End theatres and boxing abilities that would make a fella blush.

  You name it, I’ve seen it all and thinking about it now does make me smile. Well, apart from the few silly cows who were daft enough to start blabbing, but let’s not dwell on them.

  So, a little bird went across the water and mentioned to the cozzers in the West End that The Forty Thieves were planning a little trip to Gamages with a sweet, innocent looking girl, mousy brown hair, five feet five inches tall, brown eyes and a bit on a skinny side, wearing a rose print cotton dress, at about half past three on Wednesday afternoon. She was planning, apparently, to hoist some silk stockings, the cheeky devil. Just fancy that!

  And this ain’t a case of me grassing her up. Perish the thought. No. Nell is not yet a fully-fledged member of The Forty Thieves, she is still learning the ropes, so to speak. So, I was really giving her the chance to prove herself. She impressed me the other day with that silk chemise she half-inched from Selfridges but I needed to be sure of her loyalty to me and the gang. There’s something unpredictable about Nell and I wanted to test her mettle. You can’t blame me for that, can you?

  The thing is, because she’s in the family way, I was expecting she’d get off with a stern talking-to from the management. But one look at this new manager they’ve got in Gamages and I knew that things were going to be a bit more tricky for our Nell, but by then it was too late. The Hunter they call her, and I’m determined not to have the pleasure of her acquaintance now I’ve had a good butcher’s at her. She ain’t doing this job just for the money, I can tell. She does it for the pleasure of catching us at it. Now, that is twisted in my book; it’s not normal. It’s just plain wrong. Who on earth gets pleasure out of stopping a few bits and pieces from going walkabout in Gamages, I ask you? It makes me wonder what the world is coming to. Is that what we had a war for? So women like her could get jobs like that?

  Anyway, my spies in Tenison Street tell me there was quite a to-do when the cozzer brought her home to her parents. Nell’s expected up before the beak in the morning. I do hope the magistrates will be lenient, as it’s her first offence and with her being up the duff an’ all. I was going to look in on Bow Street, just to remind her where her loyalties lie, but you’ll understand if I don’t because courtrooms aren’t among my favourite places in the world, so I’ll be sending a few of the girls along instead, just to give her moral support.

  She’s in a bit of tight spot, ain’t she, with her bun in the oven and feckless Jimmy as the father? He’s such a fly-by night! What kind of a life would she be having if it wasn’t for me helping her out?

  Thinking about it, I haven’t really got time for my girls to be looking after babies. They are adorable, the little mites, but they just get in the way of work and they’re like buses, really. Once one comes along, there’s always another following close behind. And another. And another.

  Earning the kind of money that I’ve got on offer requires a level of dedication to duty that just don’t go hand in hand with motherhood. Oh, I know she had some silly pipe dream about raising the baby on her own and I would be the last person to stand in her way but we all know that real life has a horrible way of throwing a spanner in the works, don’t it? She’s down on Jimmy now but the wind’ll change direction and he’ll be flavour of the month again, sure as eggs is eggs and then she won’t be focusing on hoisting, will she? Let’s leave the drudgery to the women who are born to it and whose husbands want them barefoot, pregnant and chained to the kitchen sink, shall we? That’s half of London from what I hear.

  If she gets time, being in jail means Nell will have somewhere safe to deliver the baby, which will be taken care of once she’s had it, in the way that’s best for the baby. That’s such a blessing for Nell.

  And The Forty Thieves, of course.

  So, really, even in these difficult circumstances, everybody wins.

  Especially me.

  Chapter Nine

  NELL

  Holloway, London, June 1946

  Six months; six lousy months and all for one pair of stockings.

  I swear my heart stopped beating for a moment as the magistrate banged his gavel and handed down the sentence. I gripped the edge of the dock, looking at that witch Miss Hunter practically clucking with pride and Detective Sgt Eddie Hart flicking imaginary dust from his trousers as the beak heaped praise on the pair of them for catching me. You’d have thought they’d solved a bleeding murder.

  ‘You are part of a pernicious evil in this society, a dangerous gang of criminals who are determined to purloin expensive goods for your own ill-gotten gains,’ said the magistrate. ‘I hope this sentence will persuade you of the seriousness of what you have done.’

  Now, I hadn’t a clue what half of those long words meant but I caught his drift: I’d been nicking stuff and he wasn’t swallowing my excuse that it was my first time on the rob because of the desperation of wanting to provide for my baby. He wanted to make an example, so he threw the book at me. It was such a stiff sentence for a first offence that I nearly fell over.

  There were gasps from the public gallery and I could just make out the top of my mum’s best hat as she hid her face and snivelled into her handkerchief. Iris was beside her, with a shiner to match the bruise on my cheek; there was no need to ask where she’d got that. Her Tommy had been hard at work throwing his weight around as usual.

  Molly was there too, smiling at me, and Em beside her, dressed up in a beautiful plaid skirt suit. Most what happened in court passed in a blur, except for the bit where the beak asked me if I had anything to say for myself.

  I opened my mouth to say I was sorry but closed it, sharpish, as Molly very slowly drew a finger across her throat.

  I got the message.

  The last words I heard as I left the courtroom in handcuffs were that magistrate intoning: ‘Take her down, officer.’

  I sat in the back of the Black Maria with my head in my hands, willing myself not to cry.

  Through the bars on the window, the entrance to Holloway Jail loomed up ahead. It was like a bleeding fortress, a huge castle of a prison, with buttresses and thick, grey stone walls about twenty-five feet high.

  There were three of us in the van; a tiny little sprite with hair the colour of straw, who looked as if the cuffs would slide off her scrawny wrists. Beside her was an old flower seller, reeking of gin and piss. I kept my distance not only because she smelled like a dosshouse lavvy, but because the nits were just about jumping off her head and I didn’t want them landing on mine. The little blonde girl intrigued me. She didn’t look like she’d say boo to a goose, let alone commit a crime.

  A fat prison guard sat by the back doors of the van, keeping a watchful eye.

  It wasn’t as if any of us was about to make a run for it. I was still in shock from my sentence, the flower seller was half cut from the night before and the blonde-haired thing looked as if she just wanted her mum.

  ‘What you in for?’ I whispered.

  ‘Thieving,’ she said, snivelling into her sleeve. ‘Stole a watch from the lady I clean for. Shouldn’t have done it b
ut my brothers and sisters were hungry.’

  The flower seller rolled her eyes: ‘A likely story! And I’m the Queen Mother…’

  ‘No talking!’ barked the prison guard, flinging open the doors and ordering us out.

  We were marched across the cobbled courtyard to an enormous black wooden door which creaked open. I glanced over my shoulder as we stepped inside, saying a silent goodbye to my liberty and the London I loved.

  Holloway Jail was as big as a cathedral inside, but quiet as the grave. Five galleried prison wings radiated off the cavernous centre, with row upon row of cells.

  The chief prison officer squatted like an enormous toad at her desk in the middle of a highly polished floor.

  She pursed her lips as we lined up in front of her.

  ‘Welcome back, Rose,’ she said to the blonde girl, whose face hardened, making her less like a schoolgirl and more like a criminal.

  ‘Fanks,’ she said, staring back, her slate gray eyes unblinking and insolent.

  ‘You will address me as Miss Fanshawe,’ she barked.

  ‘Sorry, Miss Fanshawe.’

  I could tell by the sneer on Rose’s face that she was hoping the chief prison officer would choke on her apology.

  ‘I had hoped we’d seen the last of you, Rosie,’ she said, a smile forming at the corners of her mouth.

  ‘It weren’t my fault, Miss, I shouldn’t be here…’

  Miss Fanshawe slammed her hand down so hard on the desk that I jumped. Her voice bounced off the stone floor, reverberating up the cast iron staircase to the cell wings where prisoners walked in silence, their eyes downcast. They were guarded by warders dressed all in black, with bunches of keys dangling from the belts at their waists.

  This lot were at the back of the queue when they were dishing out the milk of human kindness and all that was left for them had gone properly sour.

  ‘Part of your rehabilitation here is to face up to the fact that you are a thieving bunch of scum and pay the price for it,’ she spat.

  She stood up, the gleaming buttons of her uniform straining across her massive bust and frog-marched us across the circular centre, with the other prisoners gazing down at us from the galleries. Her glossy black leather shoes squeaked beneath her bulk as she strode, intoning: ‘Rule number one, you never directly cross the centre of this prison unless you are ordered to do so by a prison officer. Do so and you will be put on report to the Governor and lose your privileges.’

  Her voice ricocheted off the mustard brown walls. A row of women were on their hands and knees scrubbing the floor and the whole place stank of disinfectant and despair.

  We went down some metal stairs into the basement of the prison.

  I reeled down the corridor after her, only half-taking in the lists of dos and don’ts she was spouting.

  ‘Punctuality, politeness,’ she chimed.

  ‘Don’t ask too many questions of the other girls, you are all criminals in here and they wish to focus on their tasks and not each other.’

  She was hurrying along at quite a lick and I was getting a little out of breath keeping up.

  ‘You will never speak to the Governor unless you are first spoken to, do you understand? As far as you are concerned, she is God.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Fanshawe.’

  The door to one of the basement rooms swung open and a nurse in a starched uniform stood with a clipboard.

  There was a row of showers on one side and a bench with three sets of clothes, neatly pressed and folded.

  ‘So,’ said Miss Fanshawe, looking me up and down with bulging eyes, as if she were about to devour a particularly juicy fly, ‘you’re new here, are you?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Fanshawe.’

  ‘In that case, I’d like to wish you a pleasant stay,’ she smirked. She had a little ebony truncheon which she pulled from her belt, waving it under my nose. ‘Do as you are told and you won’t get into any trouble. Just ask Rosie.’

  Rose’s hands had balled into fists by her side.

  ‘Now, strip off ladies, we’ve got some lovely things for you to try on once matron has had a look at you.’ She paused in front of the flower seller, who was swaying gently, like a tall tree in the breeze. ‘And in your case, Lilian, a good delousing. We haven’t got room for any unwanted guests in here.’

  She turned on her heel, chuckling to herself: ‘Welcome to the Holloway Hotel.’

  The matron peered down my ears and throat, searched through my hair and then looking at my bulging, pregnant tummy, said: ‘When is that due?’

  ‘Sometime around Christmas, Miss,’ I said.

  ‘A fit young girl like you will be fine to continue with your prison work right up until the point you deliver,’ she said. ‘You will move to the hospital wing to have the baby. I presume you are not married?’

  ‘No, Miss.’

  Her face softened.

  ‘You can call me Ma Doherty,’ she said, smiling briskly. It was the first and only glimmer of kindness I’d seen in the prison, and I found myself smiling back.

  ‘I thought it was your first time in here,’ I whispered to Rose, as we pulled on our prison uniforms. There was a pair of scratchy-looking white bloomers and a worn, brown cotton dress. What a sight I looked in that, like sack of spuds. There was a grey wool cardigan, so heavily patched that it could have come off the rag and bone man’s cart, some hideous brown lisle stockings and a navy cape and hood. The whole outfit was topped off with a grey cloth cap. If someone had told me this garb was a practical joke, I would have believed them but sadly, it was what I was going to be wearing for the next six months.

  ‘Never assume. Makes an ass of you and me, don’t it?’ said Rose, with a laugh, setting her cap at a jaunty angle.

  The flower seller brushed louse powder out of her bird’s nest hair and said: ‘Young Rose here is one of the best burglars in the whole of London, ain’t she?’

  Rose puffed up her chest a bit, like a little blackbird rearranging its feathers: ‘If you say so.’

  Miss Fanshawe re-appeared and we followed her through a warren of passageways to the back of the prison and down a narrow, winding set of flagstone stairs.

  Before we entered, she gave us each a number and told us to answer to it or we’d be for it. I was 342, no longer a name, just a number. My luck couldn’t sink any lower.

  She pushed open the heavy metal door and we were hit almost immediately by great clouds of steam. Women with white aprons tied around their waists were toiling with their feet sloshing in the wet on the tiled floor and their heads bathed in vapour from giant coppers of boiling water. It was hot as holy Hell in there. Miss Fanshawe had managed to put purgatory in the basement of Holloway Jail, I had to hand it to her.

  The girls stirred the vats with wooden poles, before heaving wet sheets out into baskets, which they lugged over to hand mangles. My mum had shown me how to use a mangle in the communal laundry down in Waterloo, I knew what to do. I also knew that the weekly wash, just for our house, was a thankless and back-breaking task.

  The heaps of sheets and clothes piled here looked like the prison was taking in dirty washing for half the district. It was a never ending, miserable chore and one that I’d have to get used to.

  ‘You can start over here, on the washtubs, with Rose,’ she said. ‘She knows what to do.’

  Rose gave me a toothsome grin as she picked up a metal washboard and a bar of soap and began to scrub at a dirty nightgown.

  ‘Just take your time over each garment, there’s no prizes for rushing it,’ said Rose, her lips barely moving.

  She had a way of talking out of the corner of her mouth, so that the warders couldn’t spot we were gossiping. It reminded me of how the women at the Alaska fur factory spoke through gritted teeth to stop the rabbit fur getting into their lungs.

  A tall woman, like a beanpole, was eyeing me from the ironing tables in the corner. She had a pigeon feather in her prison cap that set her apart from the others and a cat sitting beside her.
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  ‘That’s Joan,’ said Rose, quietly. ‘Don’t cross her. Grasses everyone to the screws. She gets the extra milk and tinned salmon that the Governor thinks is going to her cat, the greedy cow. She runs a team of dippers on the outside, pickpockets, the lowest of the low.’

  After an afternoon scrubbing, my hands were so red raw that my knuckles had started to bleed. I took a heavy basket-load of sheets over to the mangle to run them through and Joan came over to me, with an iron in her hand.

  A warder turned away.

  ‘So, you’re one of Alice’s girls, are you?’ she lisped.

  I glared at her: ‘I’m saying nothing.’

  She held her iron up so that I could feel the heat of it near my face.

  ‘Well, she ain’t here to protect you now, so it pays not to be rude to me, dearie. She obviously don’t think that much of you, or she’d have paid a copper off, to let you go free, wouldn’t she?’

  I was doing my damndest not to flinch or show weakness but that took the wind out my sails. I don’t know whether it was tiredness or hunger or shock, but I almost crumpled. Alice could have tried to pull some strings to get me off the hook it was true. And she just hadn’t bothered. I’d never thought of it until now, but the truth had been staring me in the face.

  Joan adjusted the feather in her cap, put down her iron and laughed until she almost split her sides. ‘Oh, we’ve got a right one here. Taken for a packet of stockings and got a six and it was only your first offence, ain’t that right? You didn’t even know old Alice had dobbed you in it with the cozzers, did you, love?’

  Some of the other women were chuckling to themselves over at their washboards. I reeled backwards, as if I had been shot.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean…’

  ‘Oh, love, face the facts. That’s how Alice tests all her hoisters. She tips the boys in blue the wink and has them picked up for nicking to see if they’ll cough or not. You don’t just walk in off the street and become a member of The Forty Thieves, you have to pass the test. I’d never do that to my girls, seems a bit like being a grass.’