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Turdmonkey2 t1_je2g8nm wrote

Reply to comment by jcd1974 in TIL about the Forty Elephants or Forty Thieves, an all women crime syndicate in London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that specialized in shoplifting and pretending to be maids and robbing the wealthy families who hired them. by Professor_Hillbilly

Truthfully, anytime there is an "all women this" or "first X was black" I am skeptical, not because I don't believe it, but because so often it's not what it's hyped to be and it's only identifying trait is gender or race and are almost always mathematically insignificant.

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temporarysecretary17 t1_je3kpjm wrote

At least in this case it would matter though. They exploited the gender norms of the time for their own schemes, like cleaning out stores because of a social norm that men couldn’t accompany single women while they shopped, and then passed off the stolen items to a different all men gang they were partnered in to fence the items. They weren’t the peaky blinders or anything like that.

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Turdmonkey2 t1_je3rppr wrote

I'll upvote that. If it's relevant, then I love little twists and turns of history or even those gotcha "a ha!" moments that totally subvert out notions of the past. I'm all about clear views of history, but sometimes it comes off as very "look at us" energy when these TIL come up.

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