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11. America had its share of women burglars and thieves as well
Great Britain did not hold a monopoly on notorious female thieves and criminals during the so-called Gilded Age. North America produced some of the most infamous of the age, some of them after they fled Britain to Canada, eventually finding their way south to the United States. Among these was a pickpocket, shoplifter, con artist, and burglar named Sophie Lyons. Married at least four times, mother of seven, she once prosecuted her own son for being incorrigible. In court, the son announced his accuser was a notorious thief, under another name, and an escapee from New York’s Sing Sing prison. Originally from Germany, Sophie lived a life so littered with abandoned husbands, abandoned children, arrests, and scam victims she is almost impossible to trace with accuracy.
At one point in her career, a store detective caught her in the act of shoplifting. In a masterpiece of persuasion, she convinced the detective that she suffered from kleptomania, and was unaware of the act for which she had been accosted. The detective let her go. In another, she and her then husband, fellow burglar Billy Burke, were arrested in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky. She convinced the magistrate to release her and fled to New York, abandoning her husband to his fate. He served a lengthy sentence in a federal institution, she continued her criminal career until 1913, when she published her memoirs, Why Crime Does Not Pay. Eventually, she owned over 40 properties in the Detroit area, and worked for prison reform. When her own home was burgled in 1922, she complained, “that men would do such a thing to an old woman…”