Part One: Crime Pays: The Sophie Lyons Story

Her stuff would make me. Jamie stuff is so positive, Jamie, if you and funny, I did get to be uh. I did get to be uh on one of the did you do like the voice acting for it? I did do one of them, so I'm jealous. I want to do that. I got to beat jigs. Anyone who's listening,

go listen to Jamie Loftus podcast. Any of them would be sad secretly the other third cool Zone new podcast, like she needs help with all the I don't know how she can talk over all the awards she's won, just like Uncle Scrooge jumping into the money pit, just pull money. Yeah, anyway, I wish I had my Webby handy. This would have an age time to hold it up. I don't know how you eat all those hot dogs

in front of all those awards. Well. In speaking of which, that other voice is our producer, Sophie, the Webby Award winning Sophie Lecterman. Sophie, how are you doing? I'm laughing, Dr Dre P Diddy a podcast. Jamie deserves all the credit, though she's the ship, and so do both of you. I'm just here sure awards. So he actually provides all of the scripts and writes it all, um, and I just voice it. Yeah, and all of Robert doesn't do anything. Yeah, no,

Robert proper, there's no other post. Yeah no, yeah, no, Jamie and Jamie just just Margaret and Robert lazy. Yeah. Yeah. So, Sophie, have you ever met anyone else named Sophie in your life? I have a great story about this, actually, and it is a point of childhood trauma. Um oh good, I'll bring that back up. In the seventh grade. In the seventh grade, there was another another Sofie. If you're listening to this, yes I still remember this, Yes you still

It's scarred me. Thank you so much. Also, I hope you are doing well because I do not hold resentment. Uh, and you haven't seen in seventh grade this is exactly there was. There was another Sophie in my class, and the science teacher said, how how would you like me to differentiate? Would you like me to call you Sophie? Lu would you like me to call you? And she goes and I quote to the entire class, well, that

is easy because I am the pretty Sophie. Oh no, did it work with my little saturn er self close. I'm smart Sophie, and I've never been more ashamed and and seen. Thank you, I've done that and you just you just yes, and your way through that, way through it. I'm the pretty one, You're like, I'm this, I'm the smart one. My friend, my friend, my friend Tia handled it for me after class, good shout out. She was like, I'm gonna make you no longer to pretty Sofie, but

you know, yes, why are you asking me this horrible? Well, I think that is how the Sophie we're gonna be talking about would have handled it. But you're no longer than pretty Sofie to the other Sofie. Probably today we're going to talk about crime. Have you ever heard of crime. I have. I'm pretty uh, pretty astute in crime. I hear that it's got a lot of sodium, but when you put it on your eggs, tastes amazing. Right, yeah, that is wait, and that's salt. Oh yeah, no, I'm

mixing year. Yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah. So today we're gonna we're gonna talk about crime. And most of the time when we talk about criminals on this show, they're usually criminals because they're like trying to change the system that they live in, which usually involves breaking the law right most places, most times, throwing a bomb at the

czars for some unknowable reason. Illegal. Yeah, But today we're gonna talk about crime for the sake of crime, or rather crime for the sake of money, because today we're gonna talk about a professional criminal who did lots of criming and nineteenth century America, she was the Queen of the Burglars, as she called herself in her memoir. She was called the Queen of the underworld by her peers, but we like to call her Sophie Sophie Listererman. No, wait,

Sophie Lyons, Sophie, I see what you did there? Thanks, I didn't even write that like that, and that was the cuff. Let's go market, all right, we've got I've got two disclaimers for you this week. Neither one is a content warning. It's no worse than usual in terms

of the stuff that happens. So, first of all, usually okay, I started this episode like I usually do, right, I was like, Oh, I know a story that I think is really cool because I've heard this story told by people before, and I was like, this story is cool. Sophie Lions is cool. And then I um started learning more about Sophie Lyons because most of what I knew before was what she had written about herself in which she lionized herself. Of course, so if you do, you

get the joke. I liked it. It was very close because lion isn what I was like, of course, Yeah, thanks Margaret, thanks for explaining. Yeah, that's that's how you make the joke extra funny. Um where no one gets it, you just doubled down. So I did more research and this week's episode is a bit more of a complicated person who did interest in stuff than a cool person who did full stuff. But I think it's a story

worth telling. And secondly, prop. How do you feel about the fact that white people love when white people do crime, but create an entire system of mass incarceration that perpetuates white supremacy and demonizes the black people who do the same crimes. Yeah, man, this is tale as old as time. Great. I'm so excited to hear about a story about a person who's a hero doing the same exact ship that got my family locked up for it. I cannot wait to hear this again. Yeah. Um, and that's you know

what here? Okay? Side notes? Yeah. Yeah. One of my buddies was asking about Blue Eyed Soul, right, and it was like, did you know that was a thing? I was like, Yeah, one of favorite voices of all time Michael McDonald. I mean, that's the greatest, The greatest person to impersonate is Michael McDonald's wonderful voice. He was like, Yo, why is that of thing? Why do white people love when white people do black stuff? YEA, Like, why y'all love it? It's just always the most amazing thing to them.

And they're just like because they're kind of like it's kind of a side note, but it's just like I don't feel that way. I don't feel as strong as he does about like this is absurd, Like why do y'all just love because I'm like, well, you know, representation, you like seeing, you know what I'm saying. And of course you're gonna favor somebody that looks like you doing something that you think is awesome that you didn't think

you could do. You know what I'm saying. I get it, But it is there is a special thing about specifically white people that like y'all love it when y'all do the thing, Like it's never wrong when y'all do it, and it's always better when y'all do it, Like it's just what I really do. That is a thing to

think about. Yeah, no, I, um yeah. I Like I started this episode and I'm like, oh, this is this is about a white fucking criminal, And like I'm hoping that by exploring this story, I'm hoping to like kind of touch on and address some of that ship and like I'm hoping to sort of lay open those hypocrisies.

But like I don't know. Um yeah. A friend of mine, Miriam, is a guest on this show a lot, and she used to work at the Museum of the American Gangster in New York City, and we talk a lot about how people would come in and all all these white tourists would come in and they'd be like, hell yeah, all of these white gangsters who fucking machine gunned each other. Well, at the same time, they're like freaked out by the

fact that they're in New York City. Where is the city full of like crime, let's say, and in particular, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, while they're like going and being like, oh, but it's cool that like, you know, this Irish guy was a gangster or whatever, right, and in particular, people were excited as long as it was someone of their own ethnicity like Irish, Italian or Jewish, and and so you know, here I am telling you story about German born Jewish

white crime lady. Um, but this isn't the gangster era. And I actually think there's something kind of interesting to this. And I'm wondering if by the end whether we'll have like hit that is interesting. Yeah, that's dude. I'm now okay, Like all jokes aside, Like I am interested in stuff like this because I do. I do enjoy a good peaky blinder, you know what I'm saying, Like I enjoy seeing like ratchet white people. I do enjoy seeing that,

Like I think that like there I get. I do get a little bit of joy from that because I do feel like generally, like I like I understand them more, you know what I mean, Like, I'm like I understand you, you know, because most of time when people are being a ratchet, it's a crime of survival, like haint no food, so I'm gonna get mine, you know what I mean,

Like I get that, you know what I mean. Yeah, Yeah, And that's and that's what's kind of interesting me about this is because this pre uh, this pre mafia era crime was like people just trying to figure out how to fucking get by, as compared to like necessarily like building empires. There's a little bit of like empire building and ship in this, but but not to the same

degree that you hit in the like Prohibition era. Um. And then actually Sophie saw a little bit of the Prohibition era and hated it because she was like, now you all robbed poor people and kill people. This sucks like this some this some bullshit. Yeah we're not hungry no more. Man, you ain't got to do this to people. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So we're gonna talk about the Gilded Age of America the second half of the nineteenth century, which means talking about the era that is ruled by crime, but not the kind of crime we're talking about today. Yeah, corporate Yeah, Okay, Yeah, you got And so I wanna just to like, I feel like it's if you're going to talk about someone who like robbed a bunch of ship, I feel like it's worth pointing out some of the people who robbed a lot of ship that are at the time the

robber barons. Okay, So the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in eighteen sixty nine. By nine seventy two, it came out that the Union Pacific had just created shell companies and like robbed the US government and taxpayers about a billion dollars in today's money. They just and then just bribed the government to let them keep robbing everyone. Right, So this is the air of what's fucking happening. Um, And this wasn't the soul cause of the Panic of eighteen

seventy three, but it's actually part of it. This big depression that happened. It fox up the U. S economy, It hits small farmers and small shops and poor people like just way more than hits big corporations. This might be familiar to people who are listening now, or you have a depression where suddenly, even though you're in the middle of the depression, the rich keep getting richer and

all the economic numbers start creeping up. Yeah, unemployment hit and Vanderbilt was the first guy who actually got called a Robert Baron. Basically, everyone found ways to take public money, taxpayer money, and use it to fund private enterprise. And then one fun thing is that they used the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed to um help people who are recently freed from slavery, they used it to shield corporate rations from government scrutiny. M hmmm, venting a lot of inventing

of culture here. Huh. Yeah, some ship that we are definitely still dealing with. Yes, this is the culture in which Sophie Lyons is working Sophie van Elkin Lions, which is interesting too because so van Elkin is actually also Sophie the producer Sophie Lichterman, it's actually her middle name as well as van Elkin. Word ah, Sophie is making a face that implies that she doesn't want me to tell people the truth about her name. No, okay, okay, it is a ray of sunshine. So Sophie, are Sophie

um not smart? Sophie, I don't know. Sophie Lyons. Sophy Lyons used a couple of different aliases here and there, just a couple. Here's a list of some of them. Louis Is Andress, Mrs f H. Brody, Ella Drama, Sophia d Varney, Rose, Divine, Sarah English, Julia Kelso, Sophie Levy, Susan Lockwood, Katel Angie, Kate la Anger, Sophie Lawrence, Kate Lucas, s E. Lucas, Sarah Lyons, Sophia Monikey, Fannie Owen, Sarah Richardson, Harriet Smith, Jane Smith, Sarah Smith, Louisa Sylvan, Mary Walton,

Katherine Williams, and Kate Wilson. Yo. I respect that so much. That is hard. What was the second name? I think the second name is the one that stuck with me. Mrs f H. Brody, Mrs f HS Brody. That is great. That is the most That is a perfect, like eighteen hundreds name, and it's just oh, it's just f H. Brody. I love it. You don't even know what f H stands for. You're just the arrested me. You're not exact you know what I'm saying. What's your name? F H. Brody?

Know I'm saying, which means funk a hol? I don't know, Like just you know, I love it, f H Brody. My name is H paper Stacks. Yeah, yeah, totally. It sounds like a woutang name. Yeah. So. So, Sophie was born in Germany and she was born to a wandering Jewish merchant. Jews weren't allowed to be citizens in Germany at the time, so she was a resident alien. Her dad and her some of her siblings were like, all right, fuck this, and you know, rising anti Semitism as always,

they go to the States. They don't have enough money to bring the whole family. So I think it's like her dad and like, I think it's her brothers who are old enough to work. Basically, they go and then they start trying to get some money. And then when she's seven, her and her siblings and some of her cousins come over on the next boat that they can

and they arrive on December eighteen fifty five. She turns eight on the voyage and she shows up sucking, starving and poor and then was immediately granted US citizenship, at

least according to one book. Other sources say it took them two years for citizens But either way, it's really funny to me because there's all of this talk about how um, there's absolutely some truth to the fact that, like ethnic whites weren't white in nineteenth century America, but there's also some complete bullshit to that because free the the law about who can immigrate freely was free white people can come immigrant legally without restriction, and that included

these people who, like, you know, the Irish, Italian and Jews and stuff, who were like sort of considered not white, but we're still white enough to get fucking citizenship. Yeah, Whitewood an astrict, Yeah yeah, totally yeah, Yeah, I mean it still wasn't fucking easy for him. They live in a neighborhood called Little Germany and a row home subdivided to hold several families per floor, so it's like probably her and like fucking six or seven siblings living in

one goddamn room in a row home. There's no indoor plumbing, there's a chamber pot or maybe an outhouse water who was brought in from the yard. They had to walk like a mile to go take a bath at like a public bath house, so they probably didn't. She was out that much disgusting. I see why you choose not to bathe if you're just like, look, man, like you want to get in this this gray water that the

whole city was in. Like Nam Also, I would still like to reiterate um when we did the Potato Blight with on the Bastards podcast that like, I really feel like the Irish missed the boat when because y'alls, like y'all's race was it was up for grabs, like you could have you could have been drafted as a person of color, you know what I'm saying. And I'm like, y'all could have since it was up for debate, you know, since since whiteness was like I we don't know about y'all,

you know what I'm saying. I'm like, I wish I would have just thought about what whiteness did to you and been like, you know what, just think about how different history would be if the who were like, nah, wholl cool, you know, keep it, we don't need it.

I fucking wish jus fucking wish being like oh, instead like learning English, the language of the people who are the reason that we had to flee our country, and like yeah, yeah, I know, like like my my grandmother didn't didn't learning but sorry, didn't learn Irish even though her parents spoke Irish because they were like, no, you gotta be a white American, you know. But I want you to know that Sophie Lyons was not a working class family. They were very much Sophie has a quote,

I don't belong to the working class. I belonged to the criminal class. So if that's her family and her love with the streets, yeah, her upbringing is a bit of a mystery because she lies constantly because she's a con artist. She writes about it, but she lied about it, and so but she grew up with her father, and then either her mother or her stepmother, and her real mother might have died early and her father might have remarried.

Either way, every one of the families doing crime. In her telling of it, she steals her first pocketbook at six, although different source claims three. But I don't know whatever, and she gets punished harshly by her family if she refuses to steal. This is the part I actually don't necessarily trust, because she uses this in court constantly. She's like, I was forced into crime by my evil, wicked stepmother. Oh my god, my mama made me. Yeah, and so

so her quote about this. All during my early childhood, I did little but steal and was never sent to school. I did not learn to read or write until its years old. If my stepmother brought me to a place where many persons congregated and I was slow in getting pocketbooks and other articles, she would stick a pin into my arm to remind me that I must be more industrious. Yeah, she's like making like that's movie lore. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know what else is movie lower prop? It's adds.

I don't actually know how their movie luwer. Um, okay, Well, we are sponsored by ads, and movies aren't sponsored by ads, so we actually we are not really related in that way. Yeah, what movies have ads? This just other movies. That's true, isn't there? That's true. That's a good point. And I suspect that we're Depending on where you're listening, most of your ads are going to be for other podcasts usually,

So here are some of those ads. Let's do it. Okay, we're back and we're talking about Sophie Lyons in the criminal class and she claims once again, this is her claim the first time. One of her first memories is getting arrested and it was better than home because the cops gave her candy and let her play. Oh my god. Yeah, yeah,

I'm not. I'm not convinced by that one. But who knows of all of her numerous siblings, only her and one other one made it to adulthood because it's the nineteenth century, and that sibling was never convicted of a crime, lived a nice long life. And then in eighteen fifty nine, she's like twelve years old and she starts seeing how

corrupt the fucking criminal justice system is. Her dad, Jacob, is arrested on perjury charges, which was just blackmail by the cops because he had been arrested on some bullshit charge and he'd gone and complained to the police commissioners. He was like, hey, cops has tried to blackmail me. And so the cops then, including the police commissioners he had just talked to, turned around and blackmailed him and accused him of perjury. Yeah, you're obviously lying unless you

pay me this money. Exactly. It was that he refused to pay a bribe, and so that's like, that's that's definitely true. Yeah, yeah, And that's like some of this like oh, it's this criminal family and I'm like, yeah, they they wouldn't fucking pay bribes to the cops, so they keep getting arrested, Like like, at what point is society making the criminal whatever? Totally, the cops are fucking in on all of this crime that's happening in the

nineteenth century. Only the nineteenth century that has stopped the criminal justice system works at expertly. Now, that's not true. Her dad stayed mostly free for a while. He got the name Old Elkin the Fence, and he ran a clothing store where he fenced stolen objects. And at one point he signed up to fight in the Civil War. But he did it like right before the war ended because he just wanted the recruitment bonus. Yeah, he was like, oh, I think this war is almost over, I'll do it.

Absolutely brilliant And in her book, Sophie paints a story of how she had an evil, wicked step mom who, as soon as her noble dad was off fighting the noble war turned around and like corrupted her. But this is just entirely a lie. Her dad was like barely gone for either days or months, but not not very long.

Her mom was a crook. She spent at least three terms in Sing Sing prison, and one time she was arrested because she she stole some diamond jewelry, right, and so she fenced it at a pawn shop like you do. And then she was thinking to herself, man, I wonder whether there's anything I can steal. I know where there's some diamond jewelry. So she went back to the pawn shop. She just sold the stuff too, stole it from them, and then sold it to another poun shop, which would well,

except she got caught. Dang it. I was like, that's pretty, that's bold. That's a bold I know. He was like, yo, ain't you the lady that was just here too minutes? Yeah? I mean like, how can I see that one that looks interesting to me? And then just just bolts out the doors like yeah, totally alright right here. And when she dropped off jewelry, her name, yeah, hr paper Stacks. So when Sophie was twelve, she gets arrested for burglary

and she gets sent to a juvenile detention center. It's the first one in the United States, the House of Refuge, and she's one of the first girls at this newly opened she's she's one of the first girl juvenile delinquents in the United States. What an's called the House of Refuge? Yeah, and it had been created by a group called the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism. Wow, I thought it was going to be. Wow, the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism. Yeah, that's quite a name. Also, House of

Refuge is the name of many Black churches. Oh interesting, Oh yeah, so many black house refuge. That that's a more deserving name, or like they deserve the name more. Yeah, right, that's all what it's called House of Refuge. I was like, I thought you was gonna say, which was founded by House of Refuge missionary Baptist Church. But never mind, no, no, no one seems to know what she was convicted over,

how long she stayed there. Most of her fellow inmates where kids who had been convicted of vagrancy, so she was like one of the like got it most sketchy. She was like one of the most badass people there or whatever, because everyone else was just like fucking thrown in prison for being homeless. And while in the house of refuge, she faced whipping solitary confinement. She kept in

the leg irons. She's twelve years old, damn. And it's funny to contrast this with what she supposedly faced at home, right, Yeah, they were all taught how to sew. All the girls were taught how to sew and cook and clean and basically how to get shitty jobs for life outside of jail. And so this is probably when she was like, all right, given my options, I choose crime for sure, for absolutely sure. Yeah, she gets out since her family is all tied up in court and ship, Like, I think her dad's in

jail at this point, maybe her mom is too. She sets out on her own. She's fourteen years old. She gets arrested right away, like less than a year later, she gets arrested her picking pockets, spends two months in an adult prison for the first time, and she gets out and she's going back to her crime. She's fifteen. She's good looking and she knows it, and she uses that to distinct advantage her entire life, which makes sense. Yeah.

At fifteen, she gets married to another Germany fIF Yeah, yeah, okay, I think as far as I can tell, basically, it was just like if two people were hooking up, they were like, we should probably get married, right, okay, yeah, so it's got to be that because I was like, I ain't no way. Yeah. Then again, it is like she ends up with four husbands and fox a many many other people besides that. But she marries Mari Harris, who was about twenty and he was a shoemaker in

a pickpocket and the marriage lasted about two years. Okay. Around this time, though, she finds a new mom, a mom she likes way more than old mom. And this is in one of the most cinema cinema movie like parts of this whole story. The sort of orphaned crime girl discovers the old matron of crime because she gets a new crime mom. Old crime mom kind of mean, new crime mom super nice. Yes. Federica yeah, yeah, exactly, Fedorica what mandel bomb? These names are flawless b oh yeah.

And she's known to everyone as morm Okay. She's another German immigrant and she's a widow and she's the most famous fence in America at the time. She inherited the business from her deceased husband. I don't think she like poisoned her husband or anything, but you know, wouldn't wouldn't put it past anyone. And she ran the business with her two daughters, and they basically they would have like pawn shops and ship right and jewelry stores and clothing stores.

And then any time the police would raid, they had this like whole crazy mechanism with like a dumb waiter in the chimney where you can throw the jewelry into it and it hides the jewelry behind the fire like an active burning fire. Um. There's diagrams of it in in Sophie's book, Okay. And she runs the shop from behind a counter with iron bars, so it's harder to rob her. And this is something that never really occurred to me, because you know, I've lived in cities where

everything is behind bulletproof glass or whatever. Right, the iron bars make it harder to rob her, but they also make it hard to arrest her. And that was absolutely part of the point, because cops come in and you've got some time, you know, they can't do anything for a minute. Yeah, that's brilliant. Yeah, I'm actually you're I mean, I'm kind of liking her so far. Oh yeah, no, totally,

like I actually like her. It was just a little bit like, well, we'll get to it, Okay, Well she's not like, she's not a monster, this is not a bastard's episode. Yeah. True. Oh I have to keep reminding myself.

You're right. Yeah, totally people. Yeah, And basically what she does is she has this whole fucking empire where the thieves come in and they drop off all the jewelry and ship, and then she has employees who are jewelers who spend all of their time pulling all the stones out of the settings and like melting down the gold and like just selling gold en gets and jewels like loose. I think maybe even making new jewelry out of all the stolen ship, which would be what an amazing way.

I wish I had the story of like someone who was just a jeweler who like later becomes some world class jeweler because he kinda start just melting down stolen ship. Yeah, and like and like the Dove story would be like you don't even know stolen it was just it's just the homegirl down the street, you know, the big HOMEI down the street. She said, hey, you want a little job. You know, here's a nickel, here's a nickel. Put this together. You're like, dude, I'm getting life skills out later on.

Yeah that was stolen. Yeah, And I wouldn't put this pastor right. And she's she's fencing um and the cops keep trying to get her, but her security culture is just like too fucking good. Every time they come and try and get her. It's like she's getting tipped off before they come and get her. Like she fucking marm seems to have a flawless career. She fences goods from all over the East Coast in the Midwest, so she's coming from like St. Louis, if you like, pick a

pocket in St. Louis. The ring gets sent to New York to be melted down, and I know, and it's like no fucking cars, right, it's just on train, like y'all walk in this stuff, like the horse care courrier who just shows up in the middle of the night with a saber and some stolen ship. Yes, And so she's crime boss mom and she makes a fortune off of her pickpockets. She pays all the cops off to keep everyone safe, and she pays this massive retainer to like the most prestigious law firm in New York City

to defend them all in court. So anytime one of her pickpockets gets caught, world class lawyers come in and defend the pickpocketing court. And but everyone, okay, the one trap, right, everyone's in debt to her because not everyone like if you get caught, she'll pay your bail and then she charges interest and so you basically have to keep working for because okay, yeah, that's how it works. That was how it works. You know, we was talking all the politics.

It's like there are some favors you have to add you it's like used to trade. It's the opportunity costs like this, if I make this call, it's gonna work, but it's gonna cost me, and you gotta like you listen. Sometimes there's some there's some cousins, there's some uncles, there's some friends you don't call because even though to work, but I don't know if I should call it this. Yeah, it's so she sounds like she's that where it's like, oh yeah, we'll take care of you. Yeah, but you're

gonna own me something. Yeah exactly. Yeah, And like, you know, I bet you that, Like, if I'm facing two months, maybe I'll take two months instead of owing her money, you know, yes, yes, exactly, I'll just take these two months tough it out. You're already a street You're already a street person, so you're fine. You probably know half the people in the sales anyway. Yeah, yeah exactly. So she has this big fancy house, Morm does, and she throws big fancy parties. But the thing that I really

like about this, it's not high society parties. It's not for the rich assholes around the city. She throws high society parties for her thieves. Yes, they all kick it. Yeah. And so this is this is how Sophie comes up. And eventually later end of her life, Morm finally gets caught, so she pays her bail, moves to Canada, and died a free woman. And so that's that's Marm's and brilliant morm is hard And this is how Sophie learned the tricks of the trade. She already knew how to steal,

but now she learns how to bribe cops. She learns how to get out of jail and ship. She learns how to move goods. She learns how to change jewelry. She meets petty thieves who end up like world class art thieves, like a lot of the like world class art heist people from the time, all like came up under marm And she learns some some shoplifting tricks that I think are fucking sick, but I've never encouraged anyone to make whatever people can whatever skirts with hidden pockets

is a big one that she steals. And then the other one is that she walks into the store with a folded up umbrella like as a cane, and then just drops the objects into the umbrella. And she's say that again. Yeah, so she walks into the store. She's got an umbrella, but it's like folded up right, and so she has it upside down like a cane. And so that's where she just like drops ship that she's trying to steal. Brilliant. Yeah. Uh, that beats the whole like up the sleeve thing. Not that I would know

anything or anything like that. Now, why why would you? Why would you? I don't even know. Yeah, I definitely didn't spend a long time as a squatter, uh no, And so she was beautiful and vain. She kept her hair cropped short, which was not the fashion, but so that she could wear wigs more easily for her crimes. And so although like photos and etchings of her, she has this like total Dike haircut, it rules. But then she meets ned Lyons, who's eight years older than her,

and this is where she gets the name Lions. He was Irish. He had fled Ireland because of the potato famine again colonial genocide, not to follow the potatoes pato blight. Yeah, and once in America, ned Like lied and said he was British, but it was just to deal with all the anti Irish bigotry that he faced everywhere he went. Which again I'm like, I'm I'm with you, I like wish it just I don't know whatever which the Irish different, you know what? No, I'm cool, yeah yeah. But at

one point he gets arrested. He listed his occupation as jeweler when he gets arrested, because he was one of Marm's jewelers. But more than that, his occupation was something called a cracksman, which meant that he blew up safes. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely thought Cracksman as something else but century early

yeah yeah, yeah, and that's actually interesting. There's like I cannot find and histories really pick what they do and don't talk about, right, Like one of the main things that I keep running across is history books don't like to talk about sex work, and history books don't like to talk about the drug trade if they can fucking help it. Yeah, And I I don't know whether or not any of this criminal enterprise stuff involved the drug trade.

There's like some stuff where at some point, like she claims to be a morphine addict a lot, but I think she's literally just faking it to get sympathy from the courts, which is really funny to imagine that that would get you sympathy from the courts as compared to now. Yeah, but I think that there's like like you said, like history don't like talking about it, mainly because like most drug syndicates were actually the government, so you want to

admit that, like the government's actually doing it. But like you said, ain't no way, Yeah, ain't no way, She's not moving drugs, heroin, morphine, poppy, Like ain't no way. You don't say yeah, yeah, yeah, because I mean, like where would the other because someone is doing that, right, and like how else would you get hot adrenaline at the time, But that still had to get moved by someone. You just you threw that. You threw that in there. That was a freebee. That's the first time I ever

heard those two words. But yeah, yeah, no, I want some. I once edited an article about all the nineteenth century drugs that people did, and the only one that I remember, sides like ether is a orangutanng adrenaline, which people would just yeah adrenaline, which imagine that fucking crime scene, like the not crime scene, like the syndicate that's moving arang and the supply chain out mug like that's wow, okay, anyway,

going alright, so this whole scene. You have to be the toughest human being to get adrenaline out of an orang orangutank Yeah yeah nah, you'd like that's a scary that's a scary person who's able to go get adrenaline out of yone. That's true. I would not. I wouldn't sunk with someone who's on it, and I wouldn't work with someone who gets it because on it when you're

trying to get it exactly. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, all right, So this whole scene it seems like almost like free love or polyquel ish because they meet everyone through like like she meets Ned Lyons through his previous wife. Their mutual friend, an Irish woman named redheaded Kate. Sophie was probably Ned's like third wife. He's like in his early twenties. Yeah, and I don't know, basically people kept marrying the people

that they were dating instead of just dating them. Um. I think partly because like she's Jewish, but almost all these people are Catholic, because it's all fucking Irish people, and but everyone's fucking everyone and it seems to be it's basically like so they're not Polly, but they're all sucking each other and it's totally fine until one day it's just not fine, and then there's like gunfights and ship you know, because like you sucked my wife and

you're like, well it's fine last week, and like I don't care you sucked my wife. Suck you you fucked my wife, Like that's different. Yeah, I know that's different. Yeah, that's awful away. Yeah yeah, and so I think it was totally normal that they were all just like mutual friends. And she made her new husband through her new husband's ex for whatever, who might not even be legally married, who knows, And so if he fucking hates Nedlines by

the end of her life. But at the time she's seventeen, they fall madly in love and become partners in crime, okay, And in eighteen sixty five she gets pregnant she's seventeen, and then a couple of months later they get married I think, like right on her basically or eighteenth birthday, although I don't know if that has any significance. I'm

sure they can get married before then. And kind of fun Nedlines he did some interesting ship, but he was controlling, right, because he was this Catholic man, right, and he wanted to provide for his family, And so they go out places and he would jack she would jackson watches or whatever, and then like come home and be like, oh, what

did you get? I got some watches? And he'd be like mad right, And then because he wanted to be the provider, yeah, even though he blew all their money all the time, so she the family relied on the fucking on her her thievery Yeah, so ned lions by eighteen sixty nine. He's feeling the pressure. He's got two kids and he's got one on the way, and he's like, this is it, man, I need a big score take care of my family. So he cruise up with a bunch of other big time bank robbers and they're gonna

hit Ocean Bank in Manhattan. So it's oceans for this is my theory. But before we learn about the bank robbery, first, we're going to learn about the opposite of bank robbery, where instead services take money from you, instead of you taking money from services, and then they enter it into banks. Yes, yeah, here's some ads and we are back. So our our bank robbing crew. The bank is on the first floor of a brownstone near Wall Street, and the vault is

steel and brick. It has three heavy doors, so there's no need for a weekend watchman because no one can get through those three heavy doors and that vault. Right, So what do the robbers do? They do the same ship everyone in this fucking podcast does. They every tunneler, every everyone. They rent a space nearby. In this case, the space is real nearby. The bank is on the first floor. There's a a basement storefront underneath the bank. Yes,

so they rent the basement storefront under the bank. They set up a fake business. I wish I could find out what the business was. I'm really sad. Maybe it was a florist. I don't know. They set up a wall in the basement shop so they can work without being seen. And then they just dropped the fucking bank. It's closed on Sundays, so as soon as it closed this door on Saturday, they saw a hole through the ceiling into the floor of the bank. They climb up through,

they break through each of the heavy doors. Then they blow the vault the funk open, and they leave with a half a million or a million dollars, which is like ten to twenty million dollars today. I love it. And fucking a few days work for like four people, and they never got caught and they never got charged,

no one got hurt. How if you two dudes that rented, like when you signed the lease downstairs, did you guys not go eight and floes that rented those four Yeah, yeah, I mean probably just went up and it was like, I'm Mr. F. H. Aubrey and it has a monocle and ship, right, you know, I don't know, like, hello, what is your name? Beatrid Hamiles fourth? Yeah, exactly. And then they go and spend a lot of time trying to track down Mr Hamilt's fourth and yeah he's in

the wind. Yeah, And so you'd think they've done this big score. So they're all set to go straight right from penniless immigrants to middle class citizens. You could start their own businesses. Now they just they just keep they just keep robbing ship. Yeah, because that was too easy, Like you're just like you telling me, with four days work, we made twenty million dollars and don't nobody know who we are and nobody asking where we got this money.

We have to do this again, yeah, like there's no townside. Yeah, at least that time. So Ned though, he kind of sucks up his career because in the in the criming world, being able to change your appearance is really important, right, especially because there's no fucking fingerprints yet photos have barely been invented. There's a really good time to be a

criminal in some ways. Some ways it was really terrible, actually, but Ned he goes and he picks a fight with a really fighty guy with a really fighting name, Jimmy Haggarty, and Jimmy bites most of Ned's ear off, everything but the ear lobe. Let's go, yeah, ear off. So Ned's fucked now, right. He grows his hair long, and he grows a sideburns out to try and cover the fact that he's missing a fucking ear and he's sort of successful. Jimmy Haggerty. However, he's a little bit too fighty and

he dies in a fight. A couple of years later. He died doing what he loved. And then one night in seventy Ned was mining his own business, just hanging out in Philly with some of his friends, including someone with the name Jimmy Hope. And my theory here is that if your name is Jimmy, don't go by your first or last name, or you'll just sound like an old timy crook. Yeah Jimmy one leg one year, Yeah, lefty, Jimmy, Yeah,

Jimmy Hope whatever. Ye. So, so Nan and his buddies, including Jimmy Hope, they're just hanging out and they're carrying a safe across the street that they just stole from somewhere. When someone tries to arrest them, pulls a gun out even and Ned gets arrested. He gives a fake name, Edwards Salman, and then he goes back to New York after he jumps bail, because that's what you do. You get caught, you give a fake name, you pay bail, you fucking jump bail and move to a different city. Day.

It must be nice being a white criminal. Yeah, I know, I'm trying. I was. Actually I spent a while trying to find out about black crime in this era, and it's like, in terms of like professional crime, I mostly started seeing in my research someone listening might know more about this, or you might know more about this, But I started seeing like professional crime coming up more in the Prohibition era. Um and then instead of course, what you know, the black crime at the time was being

black and they continue, yeah, yeah, exactly. So you know, it's not that there weren't a lot of black people in prisons then and now the reason that whatever. One day it's more of a bastards thing, I guess, But one day I want to do stuff that touches more on the fact that, like the fucking prison system just came out of the like slave system. Oh yeah, we did that okay, well behind the police. Oh yeah, okay, that's right, and everyone should go check that out because

that is important context to have. Ye yeah, alright. Anyway, Yeah, so Jimmy one Leg. Yeah, so he's hanging out with Jimmy Hope, Jimmy one Leg and Hope up in New York and he's he's just doing his thing. A couple of days later, a couple of weeks later or whatever, we can't catch a break. He's just doing his thing, robbing a bank. When some armed citizens stopped him, some gunfire was exchanged. Our man Ned gets in jail again.

This time he goes to jail under the name Robert E. Hapgood but yeah, and he gets he gets five years upstate in Auburn prison. He does not get away with it this time. I think they don't offer a bail. I'm not sure. And this prison is fucked up. The cells are three and a half feet wide, and there's a code of silence enforced at all hours, like it's a silent retreat of a fucking prison. It's awful. Yeah.

So Sophie, she does what any good partner would do, and she starts figuring out who she has to bribe. Or funk to get him transferred to Sing Sing Prison, which is way closer and has much more bribeable guards because the guards in and Auburn were much harder to bribe. So she finds a long term sitter for the three kids, basically like, hey, someone, can you watch my kids? I gotta go figure out how to get my fucking husband out of this fucking prison. She moved to Albany, New York.

She finds a lawyer politician guy and starts fucking him, and then he then starts putting the wheels of justice in motion to get her husband transferred to Sing Sing prison. But then she feels very betrayed because after doing all of that work, he then demands on top of the sex um. But her husband gets transferred, and so she's like, all right, I go back to New York. I'm gonna start looking after the kids the only way I know how by stealing a bunch of ship. Yeah, And she

immediately gets busted. And she gets busted for stealing a cloak, which feels really fucking old timing a cloak, But what I realized is that cloaks. Cloaks have been in fashion for like four thousand years and they only went out of fashion, like the nineteen thirties. We live in this tiny little period of non cloak wearing. Everyone else in history got to wear cloaks. I'm not that's crazy. I never thought I never thought of it like that. Yeah, like,

who's been wearing a cloak since? Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, just run fair people and me. I guess I'm probably run fair people. You're definitely a You're definitely a cloak. Yeah. My ex partner made me a cloak. Is very nice. You're listening. Thanks for the cloak. Um, right, did you say? Did you say, Margaret, it's a cloak kind of gala? So she is, that's true, It's absolutely true. I love that.

So she steals a cloak. This gets her sense to sing Sing prison, where her husband is, and a few months later her mother ends up there too, So the whole family is reunited in sing Sing prison. And oh yeah, but not not the not good trime mom, but like wicked evil stepmom who was probably fine. Yeah, and the whole family of course works with out pay up in sing Sing prison because the thirteen Amendment says, the one

that outlaws slavery says, well that loaves. Some slavery says neither slavery nor involuntary servitude accept as punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States. You know, now I wrote into the script here like here talk about the thing that we already talked about about, how fucking the reason the prison system exists so that black people have to keep working for free mm hmm. But Sophie, she figures, I

don't want to be in prison anymore. It's not working out for me. I liked hanging out with my kids and being not in prison. Um. And she preferred not working for lots of money than lots of working for not money. Yeah. So they organize a prison break, and who does this prison break As a matter of who you ask, you ask her, she's the entire thing. If you ask history, probably husband did most of it. Mm hm.

Basically everyone knows that he's richest ship from the bank job, and so everyone's willing to put in a lot of work to get him out because they're like, oh, if we get him out, he'll give us his richest ship money. And he convinces an inmate who's a clerk, to get in on it. They bribe guards to bring in disguises, which are men's clothes, wigs, fake mustaches, and beards, basically like to be like fancy gentlemen. They hide all this

ship under dark stairwell in the prison. The clerk steals documents that has all of the info someone would need to like send a fake telegraph. It's like all of the who to address ship to stuff. And then they wait. They wait for their opportunity because their plan is to find an excuse to lure the warden and the chief

clerk away from the prison. So this politician dies is this big funk off funeral, and outside contacts send a fake telegram to the warden and the chief clerk and they're like pretending to be a prison supplier, and they're like, oh, we love you so much, you buy all the ship from us. Capitalism is totally the same in the twenty century the nineteenth century. You two should come to the fucking funeral and we'll all watch it together. So it works.

The two fucking head people out of the jail are gone. Some other crooks dressed up like rich assholes. They ride up in a coach. They asked for a tour of the prison, and then Ned and his accomplice donned their rich asshole clothes and put on fake beards and ship and they walk out of the prison into a horse draung coach and funk off out of there. And two weeks later, because he's a stand up guy right now, at least, he comes back for his wife and he does more or less the same thing. He shows up

in his dandy outfit. He goes up to the kitchen of the prisons hospital where Sophie is working, and he shows up with a big basket of fruit and he's like, Oh, I'm some rich asshole and I have bought so much fruit for the poor prisoners. And so someone goes off to take the fruit basket away and while and so now he's alone with Sophie, and so he throws up, let's go yeah. Yeah, he throws a fur coat over her.

They walk out into the snow as some rich asshole couple, and they get on a fucking sleigh and then they ride away on a sleigh because there's so much fucking snow, Oh my god. And they go home in the nobody was like, who's that? Did you come in with it? Yeah, nope, Wait a second. Yeah, they probably run out with their whistles and they're like fucking sticks and they're like funny

hats and ship Oh god, hilarious. So they break out a fucking sing sing prison and they lost a kid while they were in uh, like one of their six year olds dies because it's the nineteenth century and kids die all over the place. I think she dies of scarlet fever or something. They moved to Montreal because Canada

has no extradition treaty. But then a super hot crime lady named Becky showed up and was like, Becky, I know, I know, Hey, Ned, help me break my husband out of prison, because you're very good at breaking people out of prison, I hear. So he goes to Maine and he works on a jailbreak, but he fails at the jail break, and but he does succeed at sleeping with Becky, of course, so if he gets mad about this. But then Ned was like, but you fucked that guy to

get me transferred. Yeah, wait a minute, and she's like, but I did that for you, yeah, yeah exactly, yeah, yeah, I can imagine that fight, you know, And there's there's some truth to that, but whatever. Yeah, So they bicker, she leaves him, then they get back, moves to New Orleans, and they get back together. She has three more kids. She just shipping all of her kids off to Catholic

schools in Canada. And it took me a while to get a sense of this, right because at first, because I'm kind of like, oh, you just have kids and ditch them, which is not like the best look, right, Yeah, But I actually believe her in what she talks about this later. She didn't want her kids to be crooks because she came up in a crime family. And she's like, and I think she likes her crime life, right, but she's still kind of like, I don't want I don't

want this for my kids. So she doesn't everything she fucking can to get them a proper education and go through life without knowing mom and dad, basically like without knowing what they were up to, which basically made barely knowing them. Yeah, And it's kind yeah, like tracks, yeah, yeah, it's interesting to me, right because it's it's the greatest emotional wound of her life, right, um, that she's estranged from her family. But she's like, oh, I'm doing it

for my kids. Yeah, probably even to like, although a lot of it, you know, sounds a lot like folklore as far as like her wicked stepmom or whatever, but just being like, you know, her coming to terms with being like, why would you do that to a child? You know what I'm saying. And then after spending so much time and then yeah, like anybody who's like, no matter how institutionalized or like hardened you are, at some point you like, man, you know, nobody should have to

live like this, you know what I'm saying. So I could see I could see her being like, man, I don't want you to live like I lived. Yeah, especially if she can provide them enough money and enough education to have them not like because if it's for her it was like that, or be a pauper like the Society of the Prevention of Pauperism wanted, you know. But the couple they keep doing all their crime stuff. Ned goes off to rob banks, he narrowly avoids capture. Then

they go on shoplifting dates. Whenever they get caught, they give a grand to the cops who catch them. They get off free. They move all over the place. This goes on to her mid thirties or so eventually they get caught when a bribe failed. They offer the cops thousand bucks. The cops like fuck you, and they get sent off to prison to reserve the remainder of their sentences right because they escaped. But this is what a

good lawyer will do. The good lawyer was like, well, actually her prison time is elapsed, so you can't put her in prison. And it worked brilliant And I don't go but it fucking worked, but amazing. It didn't get her husband out, but I think she's kind of done with them. She moves to Yah, she don't care to more. Yeah, she moved to Detroit, which remains her home base for the rest of her life, close enough to Canada that

you keep her eye and her kids. And it's here in Detroit that she goes from good thief who was kind of overshadowed by her husband to the fucking queen of the underworld. And on Wednesday is my cliffhanger. On Wednesday we will talk about that. What an origin story is my heart? You are man? Okay? All right? Uh? Well, prop do you ever talk about anything or is there anything that people could listen to of you doing? Yeah, I'll be talking about a lot of stuff. The politics

will prop. I don't know when this is coming out, but next week. Okay, So we would have just completed cractober Fest, right, which is about blowing up saves. Right. Yes, so go learn about what it's like to blow up safe out crack um and how it got to our streets. Uh. So that's a hip politics who prop. It's a it's a vastard's prop crossover. It's pretty fun to do. Um. I make music, I write poetry. I have a cold

brew coffee company called Terraform Cold Brew. Uh. If you're into ready to drink coffee, that's taste delicious and um yeah Terraform cold Brew. But yeah, people's I got a book called Terraform. Also, what's it about. It's about that. It's poetry and short story about the idea of like building a livable world. Pretty fun. Yeah, it's about yep, building a world. Uh and um yeah and yeah so propity pop dot com um and uh hood politics pod and Margaret you have a book and another podcast. Correct,

it's true. I have a book called We Won't Be Here Tomorrow, which is about mostly crime people actually, but it's science fiction and fantasy and I have a podcast that is not about crime people. Sometimes you could be the crime people if you want the dear listener. It's called Live Like the World Is Dying and it's about individual and community preparedness. And you can follow Sophie's life of crime at why Underscore Sophie. I actually don't remember

your handle? Yeah yeah, yeah, Why Underscore Sophie underscore hy on Twitter and we will see you on Wednesday. I Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. M HM