Moll Cutpurse: ‘Bawd, Bully, Pick-purse, Receiver, Forger, Fortune Teller’

thegavoice.com:

When you hear the term “militant bisexual woman,” a certain image may come to mind. That image is probably not that of a 17th century female “highwayman” who ran a gang of cutthroat thieves, swaggered through London streets in male drag and lived unrepentantly to the age of 75.

Born instantly rebellious, Mary Frith was indulged by middle-class parents. She grew up “very tomrig and rumpscuttle” and became an exceptional horsewoman and fine shot.

But Daddy Frith eventually thought to guide his rebel girl into womanly ways. Endure a proscribed and deadly sedentary life sewing samplers?

According to The Newgate Calendar—a series of 18th- and 19th-century criminal biographies named for Newgate prison in London, “[H]er needle, bodkin and thimble she could not think quietly, wishing them changed into sword and dagger for a bout at cudgels.” Despairing, her father sought to pack her off to the colonies (i.e.