Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Queen Of The Underworld: The Biography Of Sophie Lyons (1848-1924), Barbara M. Gray
Queen Of The Underworld: The Biography Of Sophie Lyons (1848-1924), Barbara M. Gray
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Sophie Lyons was a nineteenth-century American pickpocket, blackmailer, con-woman, and bank robber. She was raised in New York City's underworld, by Jewish immigrant parents who were criminals that trained their children to pick pockets and shoplift. "Pretty Sophie" possessed a rare combination of skill at thievery, intellect, guts and beauty and became the woman Herbert Ashbury described in Gangs of New York as, "the most notorious confidence woman America has ever produced." Newspapers around the world chronicled Sophie's exploits for more than sixty years, because her life read like a novel. Her mentor was another forgotten woman who held a …