Spiked drinks, counterfeit coins and the lodgers from hell

Drugging, fraud, even murder – women couldn't really commit such heinous crimes, could they? Rosalind Crone explores five audacious female-led felonies from the 18th and 19th centuries

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1 The Victorian spiking crisis

Female thieves took to drugging men’s drinks with opiates before cleaning out their victims’ pockets

On 2 January 1865, Elizabeth Bagwell (alias Elizabeth Manning) was convicted at the Middlesex Sessions of “larceny from the person”, and sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude. It was a harsh punishment, reflecting the fact that she already had three previous convictions — but also that she was no ordinary pickpocket.

Bagwell had spiked the drink of James Rintoul, a London cab driver, at her lodgings off Edgware Road, according to press reports of her committal hearing at the Marylebone Police Court. The drugged glass of gin she gave James was, he claimed, “so hot that it burnt my mouth”. He fell unconscious, and later woke to find himself “alone in the room, and in darkness. My gold watch and chain were gone... my ring also [and] 25 shillings from my pocket.”

He had fallen victim to a crime commonly called ‘hocussing’, derived from “hocus pocus’ - the term used since the 17th century for conjuring, trickery or sleight of hand. By the late 19th century, ‘hocus’ had become shorthand for drugged liquor. Hocussing had become more prevalent by that time, likely because of the ready availability of cheap drugs including opium (in the form of laudanum), morphine and chloroform.

Particularly in convivial social settings such as Victorian public houses, it was easy for thieves to slip drugs into drinks undetected.

With their victims bewildered or unconscious, hocussers had time to search pockets thoroughly, remove any valuable jewellery and escape the scene of the crime, making pursuit and prosecution difficult.

Poisoners in prison