Poor Girls
England 1922. Eleanor Mackridge, 24, former WW1 munitions factory worker, now waits tables at a posh Brighton hotel where she has a fling (champagne and sex) with John, a suave operator, actually a villain on a heist. Increasingly dispirited by the demeaning treatment she receives from snobby hotel guests, Eleanor accepts his offer of ‘work’ in London, lies to her family and quits. Re-named Nell, she joins Alice Diamond’s notorious 40 Elephants gang of female thieves in a ‘cell’ of four women – they’re soon besties. She undergoes ‘training’, i.e., learning to secrete furs down her bespoke XXXL bloomers, and swap new rings for fakes. Taking easily to robbing by day, cocaine and fizz by night, she earns a good crust, but worries about her increasingly estranged family, to whom she sends money. Close shaves and increased risks persuade her to plan alternative hits outside Alice’s remit, but her one independent mission, while successful, has gruesome consequences. Then Alice is jailed, leaving the Elephants leaderless. Nell finally goes home but misses the thrill and camaraderie of her previous life.
Comparisons between Poor Girls and Beezy Marsh’s recent Queen of Diamonds (HNR 108) are inevitable. Both have sass, both repeatedly reinforce powerful pro-women, anti-establishment (anti-men) messages, both highlight exhilarating crimes and large rewards. One difference is that the Marsh is more about Alice Diamond herself, whereas in the Whitfield, eclipsed by Nell’s story, she features only occasionally. Further, Marsh’s gritty contrasts of squalor and extravagance outweigh the more straightforward Whitfield, plus, the former’s lustful romping leads to pregnancy, with consequences: improbably, the latter’s doesn’t. Good reads both – you choose.
