In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many offences were described as ‘unusual crimes’ in the press, in order to get the reader’s attention; but these were not always bizarre offences. Instead, they were often tragic, and detailing them as ‘strange’ or ‘unusual’ serves to downplay them.

In 1931, for example, the Nottingham Evening Post described a French road worker’s murder of his wife, followed by his suicide, as ‘an unusual crime’. Murder-suicides were by no means unusual, in fact, either at home or abroad; but in this case, it appeared that the husband, who had regularly tried to kill himself, had got out of bed one night to try and cut his throat with a razor. When his wife tried to stop him, they fought, and he cut her throat instead. He then put his own head in a noose and cut his throat. The ‘unusual’ aspect of his case was that he ‘only’ killed his wife when she tried to stop him killing himself; but then he killed himself anyway.

However, the epithet of being a criminal committing unusual crimes was often reserved for a female offender. In part, the British press couldn’t quite believe that women would commit crimes, particularly if they weren’t obviously working class (the press often linked crime with class, which was perhaps understandable given that if you were struggling economically, you might be tempted to steal, for example). They still preferred their female criminals to be ‘foreign’, however; foreigners were seen as living by different rules, and their women, perhaps, were also viewed as more exotic and therefore interesting.

Madame de Varney
In 1889, the admittedly rather fascinating case of Madame de Varney grabbed the attention of press and public. Madame de Varney was a well-dressed woman who had been arrested on suspicion of picking pockets in the Champs Elysées. She was furious at being arrests, and even more so at being imprisoned at St Lazare.

It emerged that she had been a lodger with a former police commissary in Neuilly – her landlord, Monsieur Fabre, said it was impossible that she could be a criminal, in particular because she had lots of money and a ‘delicate sense of honour’. The suspect also stated that she was American, and the American Legation in Paris managed to obtain her release and get her sent home from France. Madame de Varney muttered that in France, ‘it was impossible for an honest woman to get into a tram-car without running the risk of being mistaken and arrested as a thief’.

Rather than being embarrassed at having accused a rich American woman, friends with the former police commissary, with being a common or garden pickpocket, the Chief of the Detective Force, Monsieur Goron, had faith in his men. He insisted the police had not been mistaken in their suspicions, and duly sent a photograph of Madame de Varney to the Chief of the New York Police, Mr Byrne. New York duly sent word back that the 30-year-old woman was ‘one of the most celebrated criminals of America’.

She was from a family of professional thieves, with her mother, father, sister and both her first and second husband working as such. She had ‘always’ lived by robbery, being trained by her shoplifting father in childhood and regarded as an adept thief by the age of 12. At 16, she had married Mr Harris, another thief, but he disappeared on their honeymoon after being arrested for theft. She worked with her second husband, Ned Lyons, to live by theft, but after Ned decided to give up crime, arguing that they should live ‘like honest people’, she struggled. One day, on impulse, she shoplifted, was caught, and sent to prison for five years. The loyal Ned, however, bribed the prison warders to let her go, and they fled to Canada.

A quiet life ensued, together with the birth of four children, but again, the female thief rebelled at this life of domesticity. She turned up one day in New York, and made her way to a bank in a carriage, at lunchtime when she knew there would only be a couple of clerks on duty. From her carriage, she sent word that she was lame, unable to walk in, and could a clerk come and speak to her? As she kept the poor man talking, her accomplice managed to steal sums of money from the bank.

Her life of crime resumed, and she ‘forgot’ to return to her husband. Ned died shortly after her return to New York; her son, by now also working as a thief, was sent to prison and died there. Meanwhile, her daughters were taken into care by a charity, who then sent them to a Montreal convent. Their mother left America, fearing she would soon be identified by the police, and travelled through England, Germany, Austria and Russia, stealing all the way. After she was identified in France, other countries soon stated that they would ‘like to know her present address.’

Madame Vallee
Another strange crime was committed in France in 1929, and although this one involved both a man and a woman, it was the woman’s role that garnered more press columns and debate. A married couple and parents of four, Monsieur and Madame Vallee, were jointly charged with the murder of the wife’s lover. Monsieur Desmaret, the victim, was a farmer, and employed both the Vallees as labourers. Desmaret had started an affair with Madame Vallee the previous year, and had also taken 3000 francs from her husband: apparently, the loss of the money had troubled Monsieur Vallee more than the loss of his wife.

The affair had ended and both lovers had returned to their families; but Madame Vallee was jealous, and although she was back with her husband, she resented Desmaret returning to his wife. One day, Desmaret was found dead, having been shot five times with a revolver.

In court, the Vallees spent much of their trial trying to blame each other for Desmaret’s death. Monsieur Vallee said that his wife’s ex-lover had hit him with a stick, and the two men then started fighting. As they were punching each other, Madame Vallee started shooting at Desmaret. Madame Vallee, however, insisted it was her husband who had done the shooting. Two of their children had witnessed the crime, but they differed in how they remembered the act. Their son said: “It was mother who went pan pan with the little gun at Monsieur Desmaret”; however, his sister said both parents had been shooting.

Both Monsieur and Madame Vallee were both convicted of his murder. Their crime was deemed ‘unusual’ because both were said to have agreed to kill the man together; equally unusually, the wife was seen in court to be the main instigator of the crime, with the husband having ‘extenuating circumstances’ (unnamed). In the event, Madame Vallee was sentenced to death, and her husband to life in prison.

Mary Edith Church
It was relatively unusual for women to commit murder – although the Victorian and Edwardian newspapers detailed some particularly famous cases, such as those involving Florence Maybrick and Constance Kent – and the Vallee case undoubtedly received more publicity because of this. However, in 1904, it was reported that ‘burglary is an unusual crime for women.’ This was in connection to the case of 40-year-old Mary Edith Church, alias Kirkby, a woman who had, nevertheless, developed quite a skill at burgling houses in the Battersea. She was only caught when she was spotted by a policeman wearing a hat that had previously been reported stolen from one of the houses. At the Newington Sessions, the ‘small’, otherwise unemployed, woman was convicted of three in the area’s Meyrick Road, after being described by police as ‘a clever burglar’ who was able to unlock windows by pushing in their catches. When asked whether she intended to carry on robbing people, she rather insouciantly answered, ‘Certainly not, if I can get work.’ Although she was trying to suggest that she only burgled out of economic want, she was still sentenced to three years in prison.

Mary Edith may not have been telling untruths when she said that if she had been able to get a job, she wouldn’t be burgling. She would have been out of prison in about 1907, but the 1911 census shows that she was not from an affluent background. The census records her as a resident of a Salvation Army hostel in Stoke Newington, and working there as an ironer in their laundry. Mary Edith, who was from New Ashford in Kent, described herself as a widow; without a husband to provide for her, at a relatively young age, she had had to become self-sufficient, but without a decent education or training, legitimate work appeared to be hard to come by.

There are a disproportionate number of such stories in the British press, which makes them appear common; but, in fact, the opposite could be said to be true. Female criminality was, compared to male, relatively rare; so when a case involving a woman emerged – particularly when it involved murder, or other types of crime more commonly associated with men – it got coverage because of its ‘unusual’ nature.