Wicked Ladies

Maureen Swanson is the scourge of the neighborhood. At age nine, she already has a reputation as a hard slapper, a loud laugher, a liar, and a stay-after-schooler. The other kids call her Stinky. So sometimes when Maureen passes the crumbling (and haunted?) Messerman mansion, she imagines that she is Maureen Messerman–rich, privileged, and powerful. Then she finds a way into the forbidden, boarded-up house. In the hall are portraits of seven young women wearing elaborate gowns and haughty expressions. Maureen has something scathing to say to each one, but then she notices that the figures seem to have shifted in their frames. So she reaches out her finger to touch the paint–just to make sure–and touches . . . silk! These seven daughters of privilege are colder and meaner than Maureen ever thought to be. They are wicked, wicked ladies, and Maureen has something they want. . . .

In recent years, much has been published on women, crime and justice in English history. However, for a variety of reasons, particularly the ready availability of source material for the capital, such research has tended to have an overwhelmingly Metropolitan focus. This book aims to redress the balance for the ‘long’ eighteenth century by concentrating on women from outside the London area. Although vitally important to the wider country, the Metropolis always contained a small minority of the country’s female offenders and defendants, albeit a significantly higher percentage of the latter than its share of the national population. The capital also had a rather different criminal justice and policing system to that found in the rest of the country at this time. The book focuses on women’s experiences in provincial England as both the perpetrators of various crimes and as suspects or defendants in the country’s criminal justice system. The areas considered range from the West Country to the Scottish Border, and the offences examined include all of the major crimes, such as murder and theft, as well as some more arcane forms of deviance, including arson and coining. The factors that prompted women to offend, their likelihood of exposure when they did so, and their treatment before the courts and in the penal system are all considered in detail. In particular, the book examines the gendered differences found in female crime when compared to that of their male counterparts, and how women’s experiences of the era’s justice system differed from those of men. It also compares provincial women to those found in the Metropolis in these respects. Extensive use is made of primary sources in portraying the lives of female criminals from Kent to Cumberland, while comparison is also made with women from other parts of the British Isles and beyond, so that the respective roles of structural determinants and national ‘culture’ in crime and justice can be considered.

Everyone loves a romantic rogue whose exciting exploits feature a cheeky disregard for the law, narrow escapes and lots of love interest. Even at the height of highway robbery activity in the eighteenth century, it was thought that the death penalty was too harsh for these wayward scoundrels. There was the ever-courteous Claude Duval, the epitome of gentlemanliness; the infamous Katherine Ferrers, who was the inspiration for the film The Wicked Lady; Dick Turpin, the most famous highwayman of them all; and lesser-known characters such as Tom Rowland, who dressed as a woman to avoid capture. All these and more form an entertaining volume that follows the mounted thief in their endless match against the law and a death by public hanging.

This collection of short, action-filled stories of the Old West’s most egregiously badly behaved female outlaws, gamblers, soiled-doves, and other wicked women by offers a glimpse into Western Women’s experience that's less sunbonnets and more six-shooters. Pulling together stories of ladies caught in the acts of mayhem, distraction, murder, and highway robbery, it will include famous names like Belle Starr and Big Nose Kate, as well as lesser known characters.

This fascinating study delves into the lives of six Tudor women celebrated for their reputed wickedness. Collected here are accounts of Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, Anne Seymour, Lettice Dudley, and Jane and Alice More. Warnicke rescues these women from historical misrepresentations and helps us to rediscover the complex world of Tudor society.

A Perfect Lady. . . To catch a thief, you must set a trap. . .and Captain Ward Montgomery is amazed to find out that the intruder in his house is none other than Morgan Turner, the Englishwoman he'd so admired--and secretly lusted for--during a previous ocean voyage. What to do? He cannot resist the young widow's brazen proposal that she make herself at home in his bed. . . . . .Except For Her Past Morgan was raised a lady, but she's a wanted woman now, despite her innocence. She has nowhere to turn but to Ward and no other choice but to become his paramour. But his fiery passion soon captures her, body and soul. She must tell him the truth. If she is discovered, not even the man who's stolen her heart will be able to save her. . .

Nine-year-old Maureen is the terror of her neighborhood until the day she begins to explore an old deserted estate and encounters a leprechaun and seven strange ladies.

Author Tobin T. Buhk recounts the thrilling tales of Detroit's most violent, clever and misunderstood female criminals. "Queen of the Underworld" Sophie Lyons faced off with detective Teresa Lewis in court three times, and twice in the street, rendering both women battered and bloodied. Nellie Pope goaded her lover to axe her husband in what the press called "one of the most atrocious, cold-blooded, and deliberately-planned murders" in city history. Mother Elinor L. Mason, "High Priestess of the Flying Roller Colony," was no holy roller but a criminal chameleon who changed personas as easily as some people change clothes. And a feud between Delray madams Julia Toth and Annie Smith exposed widespread graft in the thriving red-light industry and led to one of the worst police scandals in Motor City history. These stories and more await in this deliciously entertaining collection.