38. Fanny Davies - Uncommon Thief

Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley

BBC

Personal Journals, True Crime, History, Society & Culture

4.7 • 908 Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this 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 in time to revisit the audacious and surprising crimes of women trying to make it in a world made for men.

In this episode Lucy is investigating the life of Fanny Davies, a thief who will take everything you have, including your trousers. A pickpocket and prostitute, at the age of 20 in 1785 she pulled off the daring theft of a huge sum of money in an Essex pub which turned her into a national celebrity. Condemned to death for her crime, Fanny’s story was taken up by pamphleteers determined to profit from her story, and they embellished her life with tales of highway robbery and aristocratic seduction.

With Lucy to explore Fanny Davies’ story is the Essex-born barrister Alexandra Wilson. They discuss the glamorisation of female criminals then and now. And consider the reasons why a woman such as Fanny turned to a life of crime, finding uncomfortable parallels with women in the criminal justice system today.

Lucy is also joined by historian Rosalind Crone. They visit Southwark in South East London where Fanny grew up and learned her trade as a prostitute and pickpocket, and they travel to Tilbury in Essex where Ros reveals an extraordinary twist in Fanny’s tale.

Lucy wants to know: why did Fanny’s story capture the 18th century public imagination so powerfully? How can we get behind the celebrity criminal to find out what Fanny Davies’ life is really like? And what does Fanny’s story tell us about the lives of female criminals today?

Producer: Jane Greenwood Readers: Clare Corbett 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	Katie Simpson was a show jumper with a promising future.
0:06.0	She was just bursting with life.
0:08.0	A genius on horseback.
0:10.0	It took four years to bring Jonathan Creswell, her killer, to court.
0:16.0	He was within a whisker of getting away with him.
0:19.0	This is a story that rocked Northern Ireland.
0:22.3	A controlling and coercive individual
0:24.6	accepted in society
0:26.2	and no one brought their hand up and reported it.
0:29.5	Assume nothing. Murder at the stables.
0:32.6	Listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:36.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:42.4	Welcome to Lady Swindlers with me, Lucy Worsley, where true crime meets history with a twist.
1:05.7	Join me and my all-female team of detectives as we travel back in time to revisit the audacious crimes of swindlers, hustlers and women on the make.
1:13.3	Women who broke the rules, who stepped outside ordinary life to do extra-ordinary things? And we ask,
1:19.3	what might their crimes and the times they lived in teach us about women's lives today?
1:26.5	Let me take you back to 18th century Essex. Now, you won't be surprised to hear that travelling on Britain's roads at that time was a pretty
1:28.8	perilous undertaking. There were all sorts of dangers lurking just around the bend, and it wasn't
1:34.6	just highway men that you had to look out for, as this traveller near Romford discovered in 1735.
1:42.3	On Monday last, a wholesale butcher was robbed in a very gallant manner. He was
1:47.1	attacked by a woman, mounted on a very good horse with a side saddle, etc. She presented a pistol
1:53.3	at him and demanded his watch and his money. And even if you found a cozy inn for the night,
	...

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