Shirley Pitts: The Last Member of the Forty Elephants Gang

      While I’ve already covered the Forty Elephants street gang, I wanted to write about a specific member of the gang that represents the final era in their history. While not technically taking place during the historical period of the Victorian era, I think its relevant to focus on because this member reveals how the gang influenced both female counter culture and criminality as the gang rose out of the early industrial period of 1870s England and into the post industrial era of both world wars before finally falling prey to the conservative backlash that defined the 1950s.

      Shirley Pitts was born in 1934 to Harry Pitts, a bank robber, and Nell Taylor, an alcoholic. The extreme poverty that Shirley faced was a child meant that her and her brothers were forced to turn to crime to survive. Shirley, from the age of nine, was stealing bread and milk from the groceries to ensure her family had enough to eat. Shirley would eventually become entirely estranged from her family after her brother died in a bank robbery gone bad and would disown her brother completely after he was convicted of kidnapping and raping a woman.

      Her talents at shoplifting eventually landed her in the Forty Elephants gang during what was possibly their golden age. Prohibition, combined with the emerging flapper counter culture, suited the lifestyles of the Forty Elephants gang perfectly. They had already been partying hard and cutting their hair short for decades and well before it became popular during the war. While the ban on alcohol provided them with new markets to exploit, their shop lifting roots never really left. Shirley was put in charge of teams of ‘hoisters’ who had perfected the early acts of high-end shop lifting into a decades-spanning craft. Shirley’s reputation grew as a crafty individual who could get herself out in a pinch and was well liked by the Forty Elephant’s allied gangs. When it came to light that her husband was beating her, for example, the Kray twins showed up to their house to warn Shirley’s husband as to what would happen if they didn’t stop. Shirley would pride herself on accomplishing this reputation without the application of violence. She would spend a total of three years in prison, which would’ve been more but she escaped from a prison van while she was being transported to ensure her child wouldn’t be born in prison. Pitts would continue her career until the 1950s when criminal justice reform allowed law enforcement to finally begin breaking apart large scale criminal operations. Pitts would die in 1992 from breast cancer. Her funeral was a testament to a life defined by the legacy of the Forty Elephants Gang. Buster Edwards, one of the masterminds behind the Great Train Robbery of 1963 in which $2.3 million were stolen in broad daylight from a train, spoke personally at her funeral. The Kray twins, from prison, also personally sent their condolences. At the head of it all was a fix foot bouquet of flowers that spelled out the phrase “gone shopping.”

       Shirley Pitts represents the end to a historical of a women’s history that has, largely, gone entirely unexamined. That Forty Elephants gang is a testament to the fact that many women were able to not only survive, but thrive, both financially and personally, in an era defined by its oppression towards women. Additionally, there is a clear parallel that can be drawn between the early party-esque lifestyle of easy living and free sex that the Forty Elephants were known for and the emerging flapper culture that would come with their rise. This was an organization that was so foundational that it lasted until its final prominent member, Shirley Pitts, died at the comfortable age of 1992, 118 years after the gang was first initially created.