An adventuress of the first water
A criminal posed as a heroic war nurse in order to defraud compassionate people.
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I must admit that the medical connection here is tenuous, but I couldn’t resist this story of a career criminal who plagued the English courts in the 1920s. At times she pretended to be a military nurse or a doctor to gain people’s trust, and told extravagant stories of being everything from an ambulance driver to a Canadian racehorse breeder.
Her name – at least to begin with – was Linda May Sutcliffe, born to a humble family in Halifax in 1895. Her long association with the criminal justice system began in 1917, when her own mother had her arrested for pawning a tablecloth and other household items. Linda’s father, who normally worked as a waiter, was contributing to the war in the Labour Corps and Linda had been ‘nothing but a source of trouble and expense’ since his departure. Although 22 years old, she refused to get a job, and Mrs Sutcliffe worried that ‘if I kept her much longer, I would not have a home for her father to come back to.’1
In 1918, Linda Sutcliffe suffered an illness – possibly rheumatic fever – which damaged the muscles in her left thigh and left her needing crutches. She would later use this as an opportunity to gain sympathy and money from unsuspecting people. For at least the next 20 years, she was ‘in and out of prison with monotonous regularity.’2
In 1920, she was arrested at Aldershot for obtaining food under false pretences. Using the name Sergeant Kitty Henderson and claiming to be a nurse with the American Women’s Legion, she turned up on her crutches at a hostel. She told the proprietor she was going to the Cambridge Military Hospital at Aldershot Garrison to receive treatment for her shrapnel-damaged leg, and the doctor there would settle her bill at the end of the week. After three days, she left without paying.
Later that year, she appeared in Wallasey as ‘Doris Buchanan’, who had received the Military Medal from the King for her heroism as an ambulance driver in France. That, she said, was when her leg got wounded. She claimed to be the daughter of a major, but her actual father (who had survived the war) confirmed that this was not true. It was unlawful to wear medals to which you were not entitled, and she went to prison.
A new alias – Veronica Doucett – accompanied Sutcliffe to Huddersfield in 1922, where she stole clothing from a lady to whom she spun the story that she had been a nurse in Egypt and France for eight years, planned to open her own nursing home, and was awaiting her luggage. After decamping with the clothes, she called at another residence and claimed to be a doctor who had just bought Carisbrooke House for £1,700 and needed somewhere to stay while it was being cleaned. She overplayed her hand, however, by boasting that she owned 35 racehorses and a pack of foxhounds, and would take her hosts to dinner with the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. It was during this episode that the Chief Constable described her in court as ‘an adventuress of the very first water’.3
Another notable arrest (of many) occurred in 1927 on the High Street in Barnes, which she sauntered along wearing a stylish grey riding habit and stolen 11-guinea boots. This outfit was part of a story in which she represented herself as a wealthy horse breeder who had brought a string of horses across from Canada to sell. A detective recognised her from the Police Gazette mugshot above, which was accompanied by the description: ‘sturdily built, coarse appearance, plausible, boastful and very untruthful.’4 She tried to rebuff his enquiries with ‘a well-assumed air of nonchalance’, but ended up being convicted at the Old Bailey for the theft of the boots, three jumpers and a gold watch.
It emerged that she had set her sights on obtaining a Rolls Royce and had done the rounds of car dealers calling herself ‘Miss Dorothy Marshall, daughter of Admiral Marshall’, ‘Lady Carlton’ or ‘Lady Joan Marshall’. She eventually succeeded in hiring a cheaper car, and drove about shopping for fashionable clothes on credit – which she had no intention of ever paying. On this occasion, she went to prison for three years’ penal servitude and five years of preventive detention on account of being a habitual criminal. Although she refused to speak during the trial, she responded to her sentencing with ‘most unladylike invective’.
Sutcliffe was released from Aylesbury Prison in April 1934 but by June she was defrauding people again and got another sentence of six months. After this stint, she managed to get a job as head cook at Webster’s Café in her home town of Halifax.
The problem with working as a cook, however, is that you need to have some cooking ability, and Sutcliffe clearly did not. According to the café manageress, she got the sack the same day due to being useless.
She did not seem to have any knowledge of cooking, and certainly not about café work. I paid her 5s., which I considered far too much.5
While many of Sutcliffe’s antics are amusing in their audacity, they took a cruel turn at times. Early in her career she allegedly posed as a nurse from Manchester Hospital and visited the parents of soldiers still missing from the war. She told them that their boys were in the hospital suffering from amnesia or insanity, and hinted: ‘some people give me money when I bring them the good news’.
Altogether, Sutcliffe collected around 25 convictions and spent a total of 22 years in prison over the course of her career. Perhaps it would have been easier just to learn to cook properly and get a normal job, but her compulsion to scam people always won out and she was still at it at least as late as 1941.
What a story! And so well reported!