Submitted by Professor_Hillbilly t3_124yp1v in todayilearned
Truthfully, anytime there is an "all women this" or "first X was black" I am skeptical, not because I don't believe it, but because so often it's not what it's hyped to be and it's only identifying trait is gender or race and are almost always mathematically insignificant.
At least in this case it would matter though. They exploited the gender norms of the time for their own schemes, like cleaning out stores because of a social norm that men couldn’t accompany single women while they shopped, and then passed off the stolen items to a different all men gang they were partnered in to fence the items. They weren’t the peaky blinders or anything like that.
I'll upvote that. If it's relevant, then I love little twists and turns of history or even those gotcha "a ha!" moments that totally subvert out notions of the past. I'm all about clear views of history, but sometimes it comes off as very "look at us" energy when these TIL come up.
Would make a great movie
There's a Disney+ series with Erin Doherty and Stephen Graham in production from Steven Knight which is supposed to involve them.
There's a couple of scenes in Gangs of New York with women who do similar things.
Jenny was a Bluget, a girl pickpocket and a turtledove. A turtledove picks out a fine house, disguises herself as a housemaid and robs you blind. It takes a lot of sand to be a turtledove.
I leave you in the grace and favour of the Lord.
Takes a lot of sand to be a turtledove.
That had to have been the inspiration for Cameron Diaz's character in Gangs of New York.
For sure. Leo's character actually says "Forty Thieves" when following her and describing what she was doing.
She's a turtle dove!
Didn't they make fun of this group in an episode of Monty Python?
I’m very surprised some media corp like Disney or Amazon hasn’t already gotten their hands on this.
The concept of a group of women subverting gender norms and robbing all the aristocrats in broad daylight seems like it would appeal extremely well to Gen Z and especially Gen Z girls
But then again, there’s very little evidence for it according to the article. Even so I’m sure these studios could slap “based on a true story” on the opening credits
Good for them
Based
They also took giant dumps in their victims homes as a joke. I mean that's what I would do so I assume they did as well.
jcd1974 t1_je2dfvd wrote
Two of the only three sources cited in the wikipedia article are the same person. So I'm skeptical as to how much is true.