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Victorian Britain's fearless female felons
Drugging, fraud, even murder – women couldn’t really commit such heinous crimes, could they? Rosalind Crone explores five audacious female-led felonies from the 18th and 19th centuries
- Rosalind Crone
Published: June 12, 2025 at 9:00 AM
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1. The Victorian spiking crisis
Female thieves took to drugging men’s drinks with opiates before cleaning out their victims’ pockets
On 2 January 1865, Elizabeth Bagwell (alias Elizabeth Manning) was convicted at the Middlesex Sessions of “larceny from the person”, and sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude. It was a harsh punishment, reflecting the fact that she already had three previous convictions – but also that she was no ordinary pickpocket.
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Bagwell had spiked the drink of James Rintoul, a London cab driver, at her lodgings off Edgware Road, according to press reports of her committal hearing at the Marylebone Police Court. The drugged glass of gin she gave James was, he claimed, “so hot that it burnt my mouth”. He fell unconscious, and later woke to find himself “alone in the room, and in darkness. My gold watch and chain were gone… my ring also [and] 25 shillings from my pocket.”
He had fallen victim to a crime commonly called ‘hocussing’, derived from ‘hocus pocus’ – the term used since the 17th century for conjuring, trickery or sleight of hand. By the late 19th century, ‘hocus’ had become shorthand for drugged liquor. Hocussing had become more prevalent by that time, likely because of the ready availability of cheap drugs including opium (in the form of laudanum), morphine and chloroform.
With the victims bewildered or unconscious, hocussers had time to search pockets thoroughly
Particularly in convivial social settings such as Victorian public houses, it was easy for thieves to slip drugs into drinks undetected. With their victims bewildered or unconscious, hocussers had time to search pockets thoroughly, remove any valuable jewellery and escape the scene of the crime, making pursuit and prosecution difficult.
Poisoners in prison
Hocussing was deployed by women and men against victims of both sexes. As a weapon of the weak, poison enabled female thieves to overcome stronger male victims. Men who had been lured by the promise of sex with women hocussers may have been reluctant to prosecute, for fear of reputational damage. Certainly, by 1865 Bagwell had already hocussed at least two other men – a medical student and a midshipman – both of whom declined to press charges. Following her release from prison on parole in 1869, she was convicted of theft from the person two more times. Her story suggests that there were probably many more victims of this technique – and many more female hocussers at work.
2. The counterfeit coin con
Instead of stealing money from the pockets of others, some women had a go at literally making it themselves – and gambled with their lives
On 3 September 1788, Elizabeth Alford went to a neighbour’s room in the lodging house she inhabited in Aldgate, London, to buy some thread. The neighbour, Christian Bowman (alias Catherine Murphy), was a single mother of three who worked as a servant in a public house and lived with a man named Hugh Murphy. On entering the room, Alford noticed “some bad money on the table”, and that Bowman and Murphy looked a bit shifty. “They wanted to shut me in,” Alford later told the court. Yet when she informed the couple that she had left her own door open, they let her go – and she went straight to her landlord, asking him to fetch an officer of the parish.
The BBC series The Gallows Pole tells the story of a gang of 18th-century coin clippers in Yorkshire (Image by Element Pictures – BBC)
Fatal consequences
Later that day, officers caught Bowman and Murphy in the act of colouring pieces of base metal in the hope of passing them off as silver shillings. Bowman begged the officer for mercy, explaining that she had got involved in making counterfeit coins only after her husband had left her, and “never [passed] any bad money in the neighbourhood”. Her pleas fell on deaf ears. The pair were both convicted of coining at the Old Bailey court, and sentenced to death. Murphy was hanged, while Bowman was strangled and her body burned at the stake outside Newgate Gaol.
Christian Bowman was one of 13 women burned for coining offences in England during the 18th century. It was a terrible punishment and used sparingly, but lawmakers believed it reflected the gravity of the crime, as coining was considered a form of treason. Between 1700 and 1789, 166 women were tried at the Old Bailey for coining offences. These included making, colouring or rubbing counterfeit coins; clipping or filing precious metal from legitimate coins; possessing tools to make counterfeit coins; and ‘uttering’ (trying to use) counterfeit coins. Only 65 of these women were found guilty, and about half of those were sentenced to death.
Christian Bowman was one of 13 women burned at the stake for coining in England during the 18th century
Women represented around one third of those tried for coining offences in England in the 18th century, a surprisingly high proportion. Though some women, such as Bowman, made counterfeit coins with male accomplices, others worked in single-sex groups. Coining was an activity that could be done at home, and with the help of family members.
Making fake coins required skill. Advances in the manufacture of legitimate coins, such as milled edges and gilding, made it harder for counterfeiters to produce convincing copies. Some women used the skills gained from other types of delicate finishing work to make coins; most almost certainly resorted to coining to supplement meagre wages.
The levels of evidence required for prosecution were demanding. In addition, most ordinary people did not regard coining as a heinous offence. So there were likely many female coiners who never came to court – and simply got away with their crimes.
3. Maladies, magic and murder
Fraudulent ‘wise women’ and ‘cunning folk’ scammed desperate people hoping for cures – and some resorted to poisoning their victims
In March 1809, Mary Bateman was hanged at York for the murder of her client, Rebecca Perigo. Over the previous decade, Bateman, the wife of a wheelwright and the mother of four children, had been supplementing the family income by selling fortunes, charms and alternative medicines, and claimed to act as an intermediary for other ‘wise women’, including a Miss Blythe in Scarborough. Bateman’s name was often recommended to those in need of help, including Perigo, who was suffering from a “fluttering in her breast”, believed to be an “evil wish” that required the “arts of sorcery” to resolve. In May 1806 Bateman suggested that, with the help of Miss Blythe, Perigo could be cured – in time, and at some expense.
A scene such as this, showing two young women having their cards read by a fortune-teller, was a familiar one in the early 19th century (Image by Getty Images)
Over the following 12 months, Miss Blythe sent letters via Bateman to Rebecca and her husband, William, requesting money and various items – shoes, hat boxes, a tea caddy, eggs and bacon – in exchange for charms and spells to relieve Rebecca’s symptoms. Then in April 1807, Miss Blythe warned Rebecca and William that they would soon succumb to a terrible illness. To escape death, she told them, they must “eat pudding for six days and… put into it one of my powders everyday”. The powders contained poison, and Rebecca died. William continued to correspond with the ‘wise woman’ in Scarborough until October 1808, when he discovered that the charms were fake, that ‘Miss Blythe’ did not exist – and that Bateman had killed his wife.
To escape death, she told them, they must “eat pudding for six days and put into it one of my powders”
Repeat offender
The unfortunate couple were the latest in a long list of ordinary and often desperate people duped by Bateman. Some lost only money and possessions; others also lost their lives. Bateman had earlier been publicly exposed as a fraud when she was caught pushing eggs, which contained the message “Christ is coming”, back up the oviduct of her supposedly prophetic hen. Yet her perfidious activities continued.
The 1735 Witchcraft Act had made it a crime to pretend to exercise or use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration, to tell fortunes, or to use “crafty science” to locate lost or stolen goods. Offenders were to be sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment. This legislation did not stop Bateman nor, in all likelihood, others like her.
- Read more | Victorian murder scandals: what six killings tell us about women's lives in the 19th century
We must not assume that all ‘cunning folk’ at the turn of the 19th century were knowingly fraudulent; some sincerely believed in their magic powers. The case of Bateman, though, exposes an unscrupulous side to this business – frauds who took advantage of ordinary people living in uncertain times, who sought explanations and remedies for misfortune and illness, and who continued to believe in the supernatural and the utility of magic. This type of criminal activity might have been far more prevalent than previously imagined.
4. Light-fingered lodgers
People who rented rooms in furnished lodgings pilfered items to pawn or sell – and many probably got away with their crimes
Criminal justice historians suspect that women perpetrated far more theft from private spaces than was ever prosecuted. Many domestic servants casually or even systematically appropriated or stole things from their employers. Larceny by a servant was even a specific category of offence. When the items were of relatively low (or sometimes even high) value, many masters and mistresses did not think taking such thieves to court was worthwhile. Instead, a pilfering servant was typically dismissed without a reference – a tough punishment.
The case of Amelie Decuypere and her husband, Paul, sheds light on a different type of theft from the domestic space: taking goods from furnished lodgings. In July 1859, the Decuyperes were arrested in London, following a complaint made by their former landlord, David Berri. Just six days after moving into a furnished room in Berri’s house, the couple disappeared – along with a coffee pot, a clock and several paintings. To divert attention from their absence, or to indicate their intention to return, the couple left in the room a large chest that, on inspection, “turned out to be filled with straw”.
The police found in the couple’s possession a pile of receipts issued by pawnbrokers for items exchanged for cash – property that “no doubt had been stolen from other lodgings”. Three landlords pressed charges, but the magistrate believed that there could have been “at least a dozen” victims in total.
Amelie and Paul Decuypere got caught largely because of the impressive scale of their theft, and were sentenced to six and eight years’ penal servitude, respectively. Although Amelie remained silent during her trial, the judge and jury decided that she and her husband were equal partners in the crime. As historians have shown, women made good thieves in private spaces because they often best understood the value of domestic items.
- Read more | Who were the real Forty Elephants? The true story of Mary Carr and the all-woman crime gang
5. Criminal credit crunch
As retail opportunities opened up to wider society, female fraudsters abused ease of credit to take goods with no intention of paying for them
For centuries, wealthy people in England purchased goods and services on credit, promising to pay at a later date. In the 19th century, as real wages were rising and the ‘retail revolution’ was under way, personal credit was extended to more people across society, including the upper working classes and women. This system relied on reputation and trust – and was increasingly open to abuse in densely populated urban environments. To gain credit, a woman needed simply to look respectable and to provide a plausible address.
It was often difficult for those demanding payment to prove that unpaid debts were not bad debts but were criminal frauds. The difference hinged on whether there was ever an intention to pay: bad debt was dealt with by civil courts, while fraud ended up in the criminal courts. The popular depiction of the faux-aristocratic male swindler likely enabled many fraudulent women to escape detection simply because they didn’t fit that stereotype.
Personal credit was extended to women in the 19th century for goods including clothes (Image by Getty Images)
One woman who did get caught was serial swindler Annie Gordon Baillie – not her real name, but one of some 40 aliases she used across her lifetime. The illegitimate daughter of a farm servant from Peterhead, Scotland, Annie harboured ambitions of wealth and fame. Her career included collecting money for fake charities and the ruthless exploitation of an aged baronet, but began and ended with the fraudulent acquisition of goods and services on credit.
Annie ran up debts in cities across Britain and much farther afield: in Dundee, London and Broadstairs, but also in Rome, New York and Melbourne, Australia. In 1884, the London Association for the Protection of Trade warned about a woman using several aliases who had run up bills with piano manufacturers, chemists and other businesses. By 1888, the police in London and Edinburgh were on the case, and published a full expose in the Edinburgh Evening News.
Despite this publicity, it wasn’t until four months later, on 23 June 1888, that the culprit was finally arrested. At Annie’s committal hearing, Detective Inspector Marshall said that the police had uncovered “hundreds, and probably to the extent of thousands” of frauds. “The prisoner is an extraordinary woman,” Marshall declared, “one of the greatest swindlers in the country.” Greed, and a love of attention, had led to Annie’s downfall. Had she been less flamboyant, by living more modestly and eschewing interviews about her outlandish charitable schemes, she might well have got away with it.
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This article was first published in the June 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Authors
Rosalind Crone
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