![Pinterest](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://uknews.evprotec.com/inside-forty-thieves-girl-gang-who-wore-diamond-rings-as-knuckle-dusters/&media=https://uknews.evprotec.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/note-statue-anteros-often-mistaken-836033697-1.jpg&description=ARMED with diamond ring knuckle dusters and hair pins that double up as knifes, the infamous Forty Thieves weren't to be messed with. Ransacking stores across London's bustling West End in the 1920s, the all-female group - also known as the Forty Elephants - were in and out of jail so often they made the Peaky Blinders look tame. 7 Alice Diamond was the 'queen' of the Forty Thieves Credit: National Archives 7 The gang wreaked havoc thieving in the 1920s With shoplifting on the rise across Britain, even posh department store John Lewis is being targeted , with bosses declaring that gangs and shoplifters have become much bolder in their methods. But they still have some way to go to match the audacity of the Forty Thieves, who carried razor blades in their pockets like their fictional TV counterparts. Here, author Beezy Marsh - who has investigated the gang in her new crime saga Queen of Thieves - reveals how they operated... and how they are still at it today. The Forty Thieves rose to national notoriety for their exploits during the 1920s when they started "steaming" through London's top stores, in Bond Street and Oxford Street , in their daylight shoplifting raids. Jewellery and watches were snatched from countertops, swapped for worthless fakes and hidden under their hats or even in their hair. They were daring and, as police files in the National Archives show, were often violent when cornered. When the heat was on in London, they went on thieving trips to Southend, Brighton, Liverpool and Manchester. One of their favourite ruses was to post their loot back to London or deposit a suitcase full of stolen furs at the railway station's left luggage office, to be collected later. It was a sophisticated crime operation, with stolen goods dispatched by a network of female 'fences' throughout the slums. Mothers were even persuaded to courier furs, silks and stockings from street to street in their prams, for a fee. The gang is believed to have had its roots in Victorian){kind=link}
ARMED with diamond ring knuckle dusters and hair pins that double up as knifes, the infamous Forty Thieves weren’t to be messed with.
Ransacking stores across London’s bustling West End in the 1920s, the all-female group – also known as the Forty Elephants – were in and out of jail so often they made the Peaky Blinders look tame.
With shoplifting on the rise across Britain, even posh department store John Lewis is being targeted, with bosses declaring that gangs and shoplifters have become much bolder in their methods.
But they still have some way to go to match the audacity of the Forty Thieves, who carried razor blades in their pockets like their fictional TV counterparts.
Here, author Beezy Marsh – who has investigated the gang in her new crime saga Queen of Thieves – reveals how they operated… and how they are still at it today.