Caitlin Davies - Queens of the Underworld: A Journey into the Lives of Female Crooks

To Maureen Gill, Queen of the Bargain. And in memory of Bruce Gill, with love.

First published 2021

The History Press

97 St Georges Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Caitlin Davies, 2021

The right of Caitlin Davies to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9911 3

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

On the morning of Easter Monday 1960, a petite, grey-eyed woman called Zoe Progl set off for work. She was wearing her usual outfit, a sporty tweed suit, brown flat-heeled shoes and a pair of semi-rimless spectacles. Her dyed blonde hair was pulled back into a chic hair bun, and she carried a large black handbag. It was unseasonably warm that April, so instead of her usual leather gloves, she wore a fashionable white nylon pair. The 32-year-old passed quite unnoticed on the train from London to Brighton, just another harmless schoolmarm heading to the seaside, along with thousands of others. But Zoe Progl was a day-tripper with a difference.

Around two oclock that afternoon, as holidaymakers thronged along the beach and promenade, Zoe made her way to a Regency house in one of the towns most exclusive squares. She knocked on the door of the ground-floor flat, and when no one answered she rang the bell. Zoe was an expert at drumming ensuring that no one was home when she called and she knew how to blend into her surroundings as if she belonged.

This was no impulsive trip, the flat belonged to a wealthy wholesale tobacconist who was said to keep a few thousand readies at home, and Zoe had already spent several days casing the joint. Once she established that the flat was empty, she took a loid from her handbag. It was the main tool of the housebreakers trade, a narrow strip of celluloid, about 2in wide and sharpened to a fine point. She slipped the loid between the wedge of the door and the lip of the lock and let herself in.

Zoe Progl had been a professional crook for fifteen years; shed once stolen 250,000 worth of furs in a single evening, and a few months earlier shed been arrested in London after breaking into a block of flats in St Johns Wood and stealing a fur stole, Tiffany jewellery and a fat wad of dollar notes. Blonde Mickie, as she was known by the press, was now on bail, but as far as she was concerned, this was simply a licence to go on grafting.

The Brighton flat was sumptuously furnished, but despite rifling through every room, all she found was 11 in cash. Disappointed but not deterred, Zoe headed to a different address and an hour later she was forcing open the door to a seaside mansion. Diamonds were a girls best friend, she reasoned, and she wanted some new friends. In the master bedroom, she found some choice items of tom tomfoolery or jewellery carelessly dropped on a dressing table: rings, bracelets and brooches worth thousands of pounds. Zoe could immediately tell if an item was genuine and shed recently stolen a diamond ring from a Mayfair apartment worth around 650, the average annual wage for a woman in 1960.

She gathered up the jewellery on the dressing table and put it in her handbag. The woman who owned them wouldnt mind very much, she told herself no one kept valuables like these without making sure they were well insured. She might keep a piece as a souvenir to attach to her own gold charm bracelet, which now had several pieces lifted from some of the stateliest homes in England, including a miniature gold Cadillac.

Zoe let herself out of the Sussex mansion and returned to London in a merry mood. But a few days later, the Flying Squad arrived at her Clapham flat, and Zoe Progl learned that shed made a serious mistake. As shed broken into the Regency flat, the strip of celluloid had torn the right index finger of her fashionable nylon glove. Zoe had left a fingerprint, and Scotland Yard had just caught Britains No. 1 Woman Burglar red-handed.

She was convicted of housebreaking and sent to Holloway Prison, the most notorious female jail in the UK, to serve two and a half years. But if the authorities thought she would take her punishment, they were wrong. On 24 July 1960, Zoe Progl climbed over the 25ft perimeter wall in her prison-issue bloomers, in the most successful jailbreak in seventy-five years.

She went on the run for forty days, along with her 4-year-old daughter Tracy, and by the time she was recaptured, Zoe Progl was an underworld celebrity. But, back in Holloway once more, and now facing an additional eighteen months, she had the chance to think things over. As she sat alone in her prison cell, Zoe decided shed had enough of crime. She no longer wanted to be Queen of the Underworld; instead she wanted to forget her criminal past. She would write her memoirs, to serve as a warning to others crime was no way of life for a woman. I am deeply sorry, she confessed. I now have the chance of living an ordinary, decent life and fitting into society; the very society which I have abused for so long.

Zoe owed her three children comfort, security and love, and when the prison gates opened on the morning of her release, Britains No. 1 Woman Burglar had retired. Her criminal days were over from now on, she would devote herself to being a good wife and mother.

Im walking down a quiet residential street in south London on my way to visit Zoe Progls daughter. Its the summer of 2018 and in my bag, I have a copy of her mothers autobiography, Woman of the Underworld, a thrilling tale of a life of crime and her escape from Holloway Prison. A few weeks ago, I posted a photo of Zoe on Twitter, on the anniversary of her jailbreak, and I had no idea her daughter was even alive, until she sent me a tweet, Hey, thats my mum!

I unlatch a wooden gate, climb the steps to a Victorian maisonette, and ring the bell. Im not sure who or what to expect, but I want to know what happened after Britains No. 1 Woman Burglar went straight.

When a slim, dark-haired man about my age opens the front door, I hesitate. Ive come to see Tracy, I explain.

The man gestures me into the front room, the windows half open on this sunny Sunday morning. Tracy Bowman is sitting on the sofa, dressed in a red tartan shirt and black trousers. Shes in her early sixties, blonde hair falling in ringlets around a delicate face, her make-up careful and precise. Im not sure how to start the conversation, but Tracy exudes an air of total serenity.