36. Sophie Lyons - Crime Doesn't Pay

Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley

BBC

Personal Journals, True Crime, History, Society & Culture

4.7 • 908 Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this brand new series Lucy Worsley switches her attention from Lady Killers to Lady Swindlers - con women, thieves and hustlers.

This is where true crime meets history - with a twist. Lucy and her team of all female detectives travel back more than 100 years to revisit the audacious and surprising crimes of women trying to make it in a world made for men.

In this episode Lucy is exploring Sophie Lyons, pickpocket, blackmailer and conwoman extraordinaire, known as the infamous Queen of the Underworld.

Born in Germany in the late 1840s, aged 8 Sophie moves to New York, USA. She is taught from an early age to steal and pickpockets, and is in jail from the young age of 12.

She becomes a career criminal, constantly crafting new schemes and disguises to make money. But in her later years, Sophie has a change of heart and encourages others to stay away from a life of crime such as hers. She even writes a book: ‘Why Crime Does Not Pay’.

With Lucy to explore Sophie’s story is Guest Detective, Evy Poumpouras, former NYPD officer, criminal investigator, interrogator, and ex special agent with the US Secret Service. Being a first-generation American herself, Evy discusses Sophie’s experience as an immigrant in underworld New York and how women are drawn into crime to survive.

Lucy is also joined by biographer Barbara Gray, who is writing a book on Sophie. Barbara visits the site of Sophie’s childhood home to tell us about what life was like as an immigrant in 1850s New York. And she explores the veracity of Sophie’s memoirs, asking the question - how much can we trust her?

Lucy wants to know: is Sophie’s reform genuine, or just another scheme to make money? Can a career criminal ever truly give up crime?

Producer: Hannah Fisher Readers: Laurel Lefkow and Jonathan Keeble Sound Design: Chris Maclean Executive producer: Kirsty Hunter

A StoryHunter production for BBC Radio 4.

If you're in the UK, listen to the newest episodes of Lady Killers first on BBC Sounds: https://bbc.in/3M2pT0K

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about what goes into making one.
0:06.5	I'm Sadata Sese, an assistant commissioner of podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:11.2	I pull a lot of levers to support a diverse range of podcasts on all sorts of subjects,
0:16.0	relationships, identity, comedy, even one that mixes poetry, music and inner city life.
0:22.4	So one day I'll be helping host develop their ideas, the next fact-checking, a feature,
0:28.3	and the next looking at how a podcast connects with its audience, and maybe that's you.
0:33.6	So if you like this podcast, check out some others on BBC Sounds.
0:39.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:46.1	Welcome to Lady Swindlers with me, Lucy Worsley, where true crime meets history with a twist.
1:00.8	Music where true crime meets history with a twist. Join me and my all-female team of detectives
1:03.8	as we travel round the world and back in time
1:07.0	to revisit some audacious crimes,
1:09.9	all of them committed by women, women who are trying to make it in a world made for men.
1:15.3	Our Lady Swindlers stepped outside their ordinary lives to do some extraordinary things.
1:21.8	Imagine starting life in a tough neighbourhood of New York as an eight-year-old immigrant on the eve of the American Civil War.
1:29.8	But you'll go on to live through the gilded age,
1:33.3	the later 19th century, when America's rich are getting tremendously richer.
1:38.6	The robber barons, as they're known,
1:40.6	like Carnegie and Rockefeller and Vanderbilt,
1:44.1	are travelling about in trains and hotels
1:46.6	and luxury steamers, and you too can try to get a piece of the American dream in your own way.
1:54.0	I did not know it was wrong to steal. No one ever taught me that.
	...

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