Born in the mid 17th century as Jenny Fox, to travelling peddlers, her life of crime began early as a shoplifter in the streets of London. As with the lives of many broadside criminals of the period, she then joined a notorious gang, which translated into highway robbery while disguised as a man honing her remarkable skills with both a sword and pistol. Only one of a handful of female highway robbers known to history. 

Arrested and escaping four times, she was condemned to die by hanging at Tyburn on the 12th April 1665. Held at the infamous Newgate gaol, her story gained even further notoriety, when on the 11th she managed to have white mercury smuggled in, whereupon she swallowed it, taking her own life and cheating the executioner. 

Taken to her place of execution at Tyburn on the 14th, despite being already dead, her body was driven and buried with a stake, a common folklore practice with suicides (or self murder, as it was described in the period), throughout the late 17th into the mid 19th century.

We know these details from a pamphlet which appeared soon after her death, the period being the beginning of the ‘golden age’ of highwaymen. Or in this case, a very rare highway woman!