Forty Elephants
Selfridges had only been open for six years when one afternoon a group of fashionably attaired women drew up outside the Oxford Street store. Naturally the staff treated them as potentially important customers. Prudish Edwardian England still influenced how staff treated their customers, this meant ignoring the women as they tried on clothes in privacy, they were rich after all.
When the women departed, while probably promising to return, the staff realised these women had shoplifted a fortune’s worth of gems, furs, and clothing.
Known as The Forty Elephants, London's first documented all-female gang, they had already been around for nearly 50 years. Wishing to break from the male-dominated Elephant & Castle Mob, participating as accomplices, which meant a smaller cut of the earnings.
Alice Diamond, also known as “Diamond Annie,” began leading the Forty Elephants Gang in 1916. Other members included Lillian Rose Kendall, also known as the “Bobbed-Haired Bandit,” left, and Florrie Holmes. (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Expert thief, Mary Carr became queen of this new gang, having gained assurances from the men to provide protection in exchange for a portion of their earnings. Carr’s expertise was in fencing stolen goods.
The gang stole gems, jewellery, furs, and fashion items. With the money they made through resale, they purchased even more expensive items for themselves, never wearing what they had stolen.
The following year leadership of the Forty Elephants was taken up by skilled shoplifter Alice Diamond. First arrested at seventeen, 5'9" Alice was known to wear diamond rings as makeshift brass knuckles.
Fortuitously named Diamond split the gang into separate cells, allowing them to rob simultaneously in various parts of the city, dividing the police’s attention. She also codified the crooks charter naming it the Hoister’s Code, a demicratic code of conduct that outlined the manner in which the gang operated: equal division of stolen money, care for the family of an imprisoned thief, always provide alibis for each other, and the one which would bring her downfall, forbidding relationships without permission, ensuring outsiders who might report their activities to the police were excluded.
In the 1920s, the Forty Elephants reached apex of their success and notoriety. All the thieves had secret pockets and flaps in their gowns to facilitate shoplifting. One ingenious trick was to stick expensive jewellery under a shop counter, while the shop assistant was distracted. The stolen gems were collected later by another member, ensuring the original thief could walk free. Diamond was so notorious that the staff of department stores recognised her and knew to keep watch, using herself as a distraction allowed lesser-known members rob unnoticed.
When in 1925 a gang member married without permission Diamond led the gang against the newlyweds so disruptive that it became known as the Lambeth Riot. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
On her release a new queen had taken over, so she turned to managing a brothel and teaching young thieves, one of which Shirley Pitts, became queen of the gang in the 1960s.
Forty Elephants disbanded upon Pitts’s death in 1992, the result of decline by stores' increased security. It would mark an end of 120 years of criminal activity by a single gang, far longer than any male counterparts.