Miss Moriarty
Miss Moriarty is an article written by R. E. Corder published in the Sunday Dispatch on 19 august 1928.
Miss Moriarty
Woman — Not Angels.
Their so-called 'victims' are generally men well past middle age.
Since the war there has been a disturbing increase in the number of women criminals. More than 2,000 cases have been recorded during the last few years of crimes committed by women in excess of the records kept before the war.
Professor Moriarty, the arch criminal created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is dead; but his place has been taken by Miss Moriarty, who is bringing feminine intuition into the never ending war fought between the law makers and the law breakers.
Before the war women criminals were in a negligible minority. They were not worth watching. Then came freedom and licence. Women were allowed to do as they pleased. They were placed on an equality with man, and women feminists shrieked and men lambs bleated that now we should see a great social reform.
Man, the habitual criminal, was sure to be converted by woman, the natural angel.
Head of Underworld.
What really happens? A startling and disturbing increase in the number of women criminals. The restraining hand of man had been withdrawn, and instead of a flight of angels we saw a scourge of criminals.
Miss Moriarty is now in charge of the underworld, and her activities are keeping Scotland Yard awake o' nights. Black-mailing, shoplifting, housebreaking-schemes are planned, and in many cases carried out by women.
But the women are too clever to be caught. Miss Moriarty supplies the brains, and dodges the penalty.
Women criminals go for where the money is. They are to be found to-day at pleasure places like the Lido, Deauville, and Le Touquet, well dressed, perfectly mannered, playing the paying game of blackmail against some rich but foolish husband whom they have compromised.
Jewel Thieves.
The police of several countries are watching these women, but they can do nothing, because the victims shrink from giving evidence.
The most expert jewel thieves of to-day are women who, with their gift of bargain allied to a practical sense, can and do beat the fences down to a profitable deal.
Miss Moriarty it was who planned the use of swift motor-cars to carry out successful burglaries, and she was at the wheel in the get away.
Scotland Yard knows that, despite popular opinion to the contrary, women make excellent drivers of motor-cars. Their nervous temperament enables them to take risks, and they will drive to the devil when a mere man is trying to remember his prayer.
It is the woman behind the wheel who, to-day is driving man along the broad highway of crime.
Coming down to meaner methods of crime, we find an extraordinary increase during the last few year in convictions for shoplifting, and the convictions, I am told, constitute a very small percentage of the actual offences.
Man thousands of pounds are lost annually by the big West End stores, which have been driven to employ women detectives on the principle of "Set a woman to catch a woman."
I had a talk the other day with one of these women detectives, and clever as she is she was almost in tears at her failure to keep down the raids of her sex.
"They are cunning devils," she said passionately. "They work in groups of threes, two to cover the one who works. All even now I don't know the professionals from the amateurs.
"Every time I see a woman suspect a thief, it is terrible. Men are not like that. They are too stupid. And it is getting worse every day. I am just sick of my own sex."
Still more sordid we come to the girls from the country who are looking for jobs as domestic servants in London.
Fascinated by the impossible pictures shown at the local cinema, they picture London as a place where a pretty girl can dig up gold.
They come to London, find it full of pretty girls, and rob their employers to indulge their vanity. Scores of these cases are heard every week in the London courts. Innocent country girls with no sense of morality!
Drink and Dance.
Let us dig deeper still. The modern youth does not drink. He may be a weakling, he may be lazy, a son of the dole, a hanger-on at the Labour Exchange, but he does not drink.
Rarely do I see a young man in the dock charged with drunkenness. I wish I could say the same thing about young girls. Girls do drink to excess. In their desire for "a good time" they know no restraint.
One of the most experienced of the metropolitan magistrates made me shudder by his unofficial revelations of the number of young girls who went to the devil by way of the dancing hall.
"They are not innocent victims," he declared; "they have just broken out of bounds. They don't care and they laugh at good advice."
I have spoken with women police-court missionaries, women who know the world, women with great hearts and keen brains, and they, too, say the young girl who has once broken loose is a hopeless problem.
What I reluctantly wish to point out in that the underworld to-day is getting most of its formidable recruits from women.
Miss Moriarty is queen of the underworld.
