Meet the fur coat gangsters: Notorious Victorian girl gang who hid stolen jewellery in knickerbockers, carried razors wrapped in lace handkerchiefs and used a hatpin to blind anyone who crossed them

Send us a text

Swathed in luxurious fur coats, wearing diamond rings as a knuckledusters and hats to hide their stolen wares, Britain's most notorious all-female gang ruled the tenements of Waterloo and Elephant and Castle and earned the respect of Soho's most feared underworld bosses.

In this fascinating conversation, bestselling author Beezy Marsh reveals how she discovered the story of this notorious gang at a funeral and then used painstaking investigative journalism to uncover the richness and complexity of the lives of the so-called, Forty Thieves.  The result is her new gangland series, The Queen of Thieves.

Beezy Marsh is a Sunday Times top-ten best-selling author and journalist who puts family and relationships at the heart of her writing. She believes that ordinary lives are extraordinary. Her historical novels featuring the gritty lives of working class women in the first half of the twentieth century have spent six weeks in the Sunday Times top ten bestseller list in the U.K. and nine weeks at the coveted #1 slot in Canada. 

Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy. Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.