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Women That Left Their Mark Throughout History

Khalid Elhassan August 4, 2020 34 min

33. Tearing Down the Crime Queens’ Realms

While crime queens Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine were tearing each other on the streets during the Razor Wars, Lillian Armfield went about patiently tearing down their criminal empires. Her most powerful weapons were doggedness, coupled with kindness. Instead of arresting prostitutes, Lillian showed them compassion, and helped them get out of the life. Between that kindness to exploited workers and ruthless pursuit of their bosses, Lillian decimated the crime queens’ businesses.

She drastically reduced their workforce, and drove the once-prosperous Leigh and Devine to destitution, breaking their power, and ending the Razor Wars. Lillian even managed to put Leigh behind bars on drug charges. Badass Lillian Armfield stayed on the police force for over three decades, before finally retiring in 1949. Which was when the establishment dished out its final act of sexual discrimination: unlike her male colleagues, she was not given a pension.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.