The Gang of St Bride’s

I could see the blue uniform of a police constable among the melee, and as we moved closer it became clear that he was trying to keep everyone calm. The lady sitting on the ground wore a smart moss-green dress with a matching hat and looked to be around fifty years of age. A young lady was crouched down beside her.

“I’m all right, I’m all right!” grumbled the older lady. “Just let me get up!”

“But you’ve had such a dreadful shock, Mother!” said the young lady.

“I’ve survived far worse.”

“It’s an absolute disgrace!” fumed a gentleman in a velvet-trimmed jacket and top hat. “This sort of thing keeps happening. Something needs to be done about them!”

“About whom?” I asked.

“The vagabonds roaming our streets! It shouldn’t be allowed to happen on Piccadilly!”

“What’s happened?”

“This lady’s been robbed! Her purse was cut from her wrist!”

“Did you see who did it?”

“Three women,” a lady called out from close by. “We saw them running away!”

“Which way did they go?” I asked.

Fingers were pointed in a westerly direction, toward the location of Hyde Park.

I joined James, who was talking to the constable.

“They’ve taken off,” said the constable. “A member of the public has already gone after them. A woman, believe it or not!”

“I saw them turn up Sackville Street,” added the young lady who had been tending to her mother.

“Right under the noses of the officers at Vine Street police station,” said the man in the top hat. “It’s a disgrace that the police keep allowing these people to get away with it!”

“Let’s see if we can catch them,” said James, dashing off in the direction of the three women and the lady pursuing them.

I followed after him, feeling burdened by my long skirts and tight corset.

James turned into Sackville Street and I followed suit. The street was home to a number of cloth merchants, with rolls of fabric filling the shop windows and covering the trestle tables laid out on the pavement.

“Did you see any women running this way?” I asked a lady with an oversized feather in her hat.

“Yes, they went that way,” she replied, pointing up the street. “What’s going on?”

“There’s been a robbery.”

“Oh, goodness. Not again!”

I felt many pairs of eyes on me as I continued running. I had to hold my spectacles in place to keep them from slipping off my nose.

“Is everything all right?” a gentleman with grey whiskers called out. “What the devil’s going on?”

“There’s been a robbery,” I called back. “Did you happen to see any women running this way?”

“Yes, three or four of them!”

I eventually reached the crossroads at the top of the street, where James had stopped outside a public house. He was speaking to a lady in a blue flannel dress who looked about thirty years of age. She held her hat in her hand, and her brown hair had fallen loose from its pins. Her complexion was freckled and her face was flushed from the exertion of running.

“I did my best, Inspector,” she puffed, “but somehow I lost them. I can only assume they ran into this public house here. That’s the only explanation I can give for their sudden disappearance. But when I went inside there was no sign of them, and the fellow working behind the bar hadn’t seen them either.”

James glanced over at the crossroads. “I suppose there are a number of directions they could have run off in,” he said. “There were three women, you say?”

“Yes. The first thing I knew of it was when an elderly lady fell to the ground and three others ran off, which instantly struck me as suspicious, Once I’d seen that there were people on hand to assist the old lady, I decided to give chase. I didn’t expect them to take off as they did. They’re clearly well-practised at scarpering.”

“Can you describe them for me?” James asked, taking out his notebook.

“I’m afraid I didn’t get a good look at their faces, Inspector. They were all wearing hats, which were quite dark in colour. Not particularly fancy hats, but smart. One of them had a dark feather in hers. Their clothing was dark, too.”

“Any idea of the colour?”

“One was dark blue and I’m sure another wore dark brown. Well, it was more of a burgundy sort of colour, actually. They hitched up their skirts in the most unladylike manner and made a run for it. One of them glanced back at me, now I come to think of it. It was a very quick glance, but enough for me to see that she had a smirk on her face, as if she were amused by my attempt to chase them down. She urged the others on with some sort of encouraging cry, and they moved even more swiftly after that.”

“What did this particular lady look like?”

“I remember her being young. She was the lady in the burgundy. Fair-haired from what I could tell, though most of her hair was pinned beneath her hat.”

“Eye colour?” James asked.

“I wasn’t close enough to see, I’m afraid.”

“Height?”

“Well, let me think… I stand at five feet five inches. The woman who turned to look at me was the shortest of the three, and a bit shorter than I am. I’d hazard a guess that she was no taller than five feet.”

“And the other two?”

“Somewhere between my height and the height of the smallest one. It’s difficult to be more accurate than that, Inspector. Between five feet and five feet five inches, I would say.”

“And the hair colour of the other two?”

“One had darker hair, probably a shade of brown. I’m certain she was the one wearing dark blue. The other was also wearing dark blue, but with a slight green tinge. I think her skirts were a dark blue and green plaid. I couldn’t tell you the colour of her hair, though.”

“You remarked that the shortest of the three called out to her companions while you were running. Did you hear any of the words she used?”

“No, I’m afraid not. I’m assuming it was something along the lines of ‘Run faster!’ given that she’d spotted me running behind them.”

“You didn’t hear her call either of them by name at all?”

“Sadly, no.”

“And you heard no other words exchanged between them at any time?”

She shook her head. “None. I wish I’d been able to catch up with them, but I’m not accustomed to running as a general rule. The three women gave the distinct impression that they run a great deal. They’re obviously used to evading capture by the looks of things.”

“These ladies were well-dressed, you said. Did they strike you as being of a particular class?”

“An interesting question, Inspector. There was something about the manner in which the shorter one smirked and then urged her companions to run that seemed rather coarse in nature. It wasn’t what you’d expect from a lady with refined manners. My impression was that they were women of a lower class who had assumed the dress of gentlewomen in order to blend naturally with the environs of Piccadilly. Members of a pickpocketing gang would surely do such a thing, would they not?”

“That would make sense.” James wrote this down. “And you’ve already told me your name is Mrs Henrietta Worthers, is that right?”

“Yes.” She reached into a small bag and retrieved a carte de visite. “Here, Inspector, please take this. If you need to speak to me again about this afternoon’s incident, I shall be only too happy to oblige.”

“Thank you, Mrs Worthers.” James took the card and placed it in his pocket. “And thank you for trying to apprehend these thieving women. You’ve been a great help.”

“I’d have been of even greater help if I’d managed to catch one of them!”

James and I walked back to the scene of the street robbery on Piccadilly.

“It’ll be interesting to see how that information tallies with what the victim is able to tell my colleagues in C Division,” he said. “I shall leave them to see to this case. There’s no reason for the Yard to be involved in the case of a street robbery. C Division will be quite capable of managing it.”

“Judging by the comments from some of the onlookers it sounds as though this sort of thing has happened several times before.”

“Unfortunately, it has. We’ve known about a female pickpocketing gang in this area for a while.”

“And nothing has been done about them?”

“I can’t be telling C Division how to manage their own cases. There are so many gangs in London these days, the work required to tackle them is never-ending.”

“I can understand why people feel frustrated when nothing ever appears to be done about them.”

“Work is underway, but its effects aren’t always immediately obvious. I shall speak to Inspector Paget at C Division, he’s at Vine Street. I’ll find out how his work is progressing with regard to this particular gang and ask if he’d like some assistance. If it was easy to stop them, they wouldn’t still be roaming the streets. Besides, you know how it is with these gangs. You think you’ve cracked one and arrested the ringleaders, but then the remaining members reform and continue. It’s akin to chopping off one of the Hydra’s heads.”

“Well, I hope the poor lady who was robbed will recover from her ordeal. She didn’t seem to be injured, fortunately.”

“That is fortunate indeed.”

“Do we still have time for a trip to the Grosvenor Gallery?”

James checked his pocket watch. “Yes, I think so. I’d like to find Inspector Paget and have a quick word with him first, but after that we can continue on our way. Let’s hope Eliza is still there by the time we arrive.”

“And let’s hope she won’t be in a foul temper with us!”