by Beezy Marsh
Oh, it ain’t the same as life on the outside, I know. But I can’t help it if the women look up to me, can I? They need a Queen to guide them and if being a Queen of Holloway is the role that fate has handed me, then who am I to refuse it?
I hear someone else is a pretender to my crown with The Forty Thieves while I’m languishing in jail. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and certain things have fallen into place as far as she is concerned.
When old Queen Bess banged her sister up in the Tower, did she stop being Mary Queen of Scots, queen of people’s hearts? No, she bleeding well did not.
As Nell will discover in the fullness of time, some of us are born to it and some of us had better watch their backs when I get out
Author Note
Writing this book during the long months of lockdown allowed me to escape to an exciting world in a bygone age in London and I am thrilled to share that with you.
Gangland has always held a fascination for me, but this extraordinary set of women gripped my imagination because their story is so unusual.
Working class communities in London of the early twentieth century - where part of my immediate family has its roots - are so often portrayed as a place where women had little to do but cook the dinner, raise the kids and be “her indoors”.
The Forty Thieves gang, which had its heyday from the 1920s and the 1960s, took that notion and threw it out onto the cobbles, challenging any bloke who dared to try to stop them.
To those who knew them, they were like film stars, who dressed glamorously, fought harder than the men and refused to bow down to the law. Yet they could be caring, standing up for wives whose husbands frittered the housekeeping on drink or who were handy with their fists behind closed doors.
The moment I got to know some of the leading lights of the original gang, their daughters and granddaughters - including one of the later “Queens” - I knew that there was more to their story than met the eye.
The Forty Thieves and their Queen were bound up with London’s underworld in a way few people realise, and these women held extraordinary power in their communities. Some had reputations that would make the toughest gangsters think twice before crossing them and their influence is enough for their names to be whispered by hardened criminals, in a way which is still almost reverential.
They lived outside the law at a time when women, poor women of their class, had few opportunities other than going work at the local factory. Married women were usually expected to give up work. I knew from my own family that rationing and the long years of the Second World War had left the most decent working-class people tempted to take “a bit of crooked” to get desirable items such as a nice cut of meat, stockings or a new dress.
In this environment, the Queen of Thieves and her shoplifters, or “hoisters” flourished.
Sometimes, the lives of the hoisters intertwined with underworld bosses, so that they became lovers, or they had family ties through siblings or marriage, but even then, they fiercely guarded their right to earn their own money, to run their own gang, free from male interference.
Creating a fictional world for these women in Queen of Thieves was an absolute joy because their voices demanded to be heard.
And there is still so much more for them to say…
Acknowledgements
I am delighted to be part of the Orion Dash family and in Rhea Kurien I have found a dynamic editor who shares my fascination for The Forty Thieves, the era and the characters I have created. That makes working on a book a real pleasure.
I would like to thank my agent Giles Milburn of Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency for believing in this book from the outset and sharing my enthusiasm for the world of Alice Diamond, Nell and the Queen of Thieves.
My family and friends have supported me in more ways than I can mention while I was writing this book and I am so grateful for their love. Thank you to Reuben and our boys Idris and Bryn, you rock my world and also to my friends Jo and Mark, Sally and Marcus, Clare, Tania, Al and Fiona, Hannah and Carli.
Finally, a huge thanks to my readers.
About Author
Beezy Marsh is an international #1 and Sunday Times Top Ten bestselling author who puts family and relationships at the heart of her writing. She is also an award-winning investigative journalist, who has spent more than twenty years making the headlines in newspapers including Daily Mail, Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph. She believes that ordinary lives are often the most extraordinary and sisters, mothers and wives are the glue which binds everything together. Beezy is married, with two young sons, and lives in Oxfordshire with a never-ending pile of laundry. She also writes a LIFE-LOVE-LAUNDRY blog on her website.
Twitter: @beezymarsh
Website: https://www.beezy-marsh.com/
Also by Beezy Marsh
Keeping My Sisters’ Secrets
Mad Frank and Sons
Her Father’s Daughter
All My Mother’s Secrets
Queen of Thieves
Copyright
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Orion Dash
Ebook first published in 2021 by Orion Dash
Copyright © Beezy Marsh 2021
The right of Beezy Marsh to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN (eBook): 9781398707757
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
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50 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DZ
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www.orionbooks.co.uk