Lady Killers Read online

  It wasn’t until the morning of her execution—Monday, March 24, 1684—that Elizabeth confessed. Perhaps it finally sank in that “she must die, and that her Denials would avail her nothing.”

  Newton, gratified that his tricky confessee was coming around at last, found her tearful and “in contemplation of approaching Death and Judgment.” She admitted that she had killed her husband because of her inability to love him and because of the shock of his debt. She spoke of her suicidal tendencies: three years ago, around the time of her mother’s death, she had purchased poison with the intention to kill herself, and she had again planned to poison herself with the arsenic from Ashby-de-la-Zouch before she ended up using it on her husband.

  A pamphlet from London about the “most Barbarous and Cruel Murders” of Elizabeth Ridgeway gives us a far spicier recounting of her final confession. In it, she supposedly admits to another confessor that for the past eight years she had “lain with a Familiar Spirit.” This demon first tempted her to poison herself, and, subsequently, “anyone that offended her.” Elizabeth confessed that she was always carrying poison hidden in her hair, and would renew her stash whenever she went to market. She admitted to the murder of her mother, her coworker, and John King, and acknowledged that she had been planning to kill both of her husband’s apprentices, too.

  Despite the poison-in-the-hair detail and the demonic overtones, this wasn’t the dramatic unburdening people had hoped for, as Elizabeth “did not seem very free in her Confession, mentioning only those with whose Death she had been charged.” Many people were suspicious that during her eight years with the familiar spirit, she’d killed others. But Elizabeth had never seemed particularly concerned with the act of confession, and if any other crimes were burdening her soul, we’ll never know them.

  Lamentable Girl

  Newton finally realized he’d never get an immaculate conversion narrative from Elizabeth. She simply wasn’t going to fall on her knees and tear out her hair in guilt. And so, when he told the story of Elizabeth Ridgeway to his congregation, he apologized to his readers for the “Lamentable Form, as well as Matter” of his tale. The topic was unsavory—“horrid Poysoning”—and he wished desperately that he could present his parishioners with some sort of final atonement. He tried as hard as possible to make Elizabeth seem truly repentant, saying that she cried during her last confession and “did earnestly entreat me to make known [her confession] as the real Truth,” but that’s about as cathartic as it gets.

  Unfortunately, Newton’s portrait of a somewhat-penitent Elizabeth is contradicted by Elizabeth’s final actions. The authorities kept her in prison for most of the day, hoping she’d confess to additional murders, but she said nothing. She may have been afraid to die, but fear didn’t silence her; when Newton and another clergyman offered to assist her to the stake, she snapped that she didn’t need them to make any sort of divine intercession for her, as she could “Read and Pray as well as they could.” A hungry crowd came out to see her burn, yearning for last-minute revelations, but Elizabeth disappointed them by declaring that she’d already confessed in prison and wouldn’t repeat or add anything to it.

  Before the time came for her execution, Elizabeth was forced to witness the execution of two brothers—a last-ditch effort to terrify her into admitting more crimes. One of the brothers was offered an awful clemency: he could go free if he would act as an executioner for both Elizabeth and his own brother. The man refused, and the siblings were hanged together, with Elizabeth watching.

  The accounts of Elizabeth’s day insisted that she was the worst, the most evil. (Sound familiar?) Centuries later, her crimes seem practically quaint. It’s a perfect example of the obliterating nature of history: after a while, as we grow overwhelmed with the horrors of our present day, the past loses its bite, becomes almost picturesque.

  But if we try to categorize evil, we can say that Elizabeth probably wasn’t “the most” of anything at all. She was angry, yes, and sullen and callous and suicidal. She was quick to jump into relationships and quick to end them. But she certainly wasn’t the most “barbarous Example” of violence and death that the century had ever seen, despite what people claimed. She doesn’t even seem particularly bloodthirsty. Rather, she comes across as numb—insensitive to death and willing, at least twice, to end her own life. We see this in the extraordinary indifference she had toward John Newton, who was probably kind of annoying in the way he kept popping into her cell and pressing her for a confession, but who also wanted desperately to bring her some measure of peace. A woman who can laugh about lying to a pastor the night before her execution does not seem like the type of woman who fears death very much. Maybe she did carry poison in her hair, after all.

  Just before the end, Elizabeth raised her voice. She begged the authorities to let her be hanged first and then thrown on the fire, but they refused. Instead, they tied her to the stake and lit the kindling around her feet. When the flames touched her, she let out a piercing scream and tried to leap away from the fire. This meant—somewhat mercifully—that she choked, because a rope was tied around her neck and the smoke was beginning to crowd her lungs. Then, unconscious, she burned.

  VIPERS

  Raya and Sakina

  In the poorest district of Egypt’s Alexandria, there once lived a woman known for burning too much incense. It didn’t matter if it was day or night; the house of this woman, Raya, was always wreathed in thick, sweet smoke. Her neighbors thought it was odd, but they had their own lives to contend with. There were cafés to run, neighborhood toughs to appease, authorities to avoid.

  Though the city of Alexandria was praised for its beauty and sophistication, if you crossed paths with Raya and her younger sister, Sakina, you were probably looking for vice. Theirs was the criminal underworld: streets of runaways and prostitutes, rooms smelling like resinous hashish. Their district, al-Labbān, was full of shady businesses designed to service the occupying British troops, and the Alexandrian elite mostly ignored whatever unsavory trouble was brewing there. The police usually ignored it, too. After all, it was 1919, and there was a revolution to take care of.

  See, the Egyptian people had been led to believe that their country would become a self-governing nation after World War I ended, and when that didn’t happen, nationalists rose up against the British occupation. Strikes, riots, and demonstrations exploded across the country, and for quite some time the police were more preoccupied with politics and rebels than with brothel madams and drug dealers. “Where are the police?” bemoaned the journalist Fikri Abaza. “The government has been too intent upon training the hordes of its secret political police to concern itself with training forces necessary to safeguard our internal security or personal safety.”

  It was pretty obvious—at least to those who could read the coded and illicit activities simmering under the authorities’ noses—that Raya and Sakina were mixed up in something sketchy. But people were just too busy to care. Even if the incense did seem a little peculiar. Even if occasionally, from one of the sisters’ apartments, they heard someone scream.

  Pearl of the Mediterranean

  Raya was born around 1875, and little Sakina came along a decade later. Their family lived in an isolated village in Upper Egypt, and their childhood was both unregulated and full of overwhelming adult responsibilities, the way childhoods often are when parents are abusive or absent. Their folks were both: their father was gone, and their mother was a narcissist who failed to show them much, if any, love. They had an older brother, but he couldn’t hold down a job. Money was always tight, so Raya and Sakina took on the burdens of their family together, scraping together an income in whatever ways they could. Needless to say, they were forced to grow up fast.

  As the family moved aimlessly around Upper Egypt, the girls found work selling roasted vegetables or waitressing in cafés. Eventually, Sakina turned to prostitution, sleeping with clients in exchange for food. When their self-absorbed mother occasionally deigned to contribute
to the family’s income, she’d pull off a robbery or two. Raya and Sakina would often join her.

  This transient life spooled on for them until Sakina grew tired of living hand-to-mouth. First she got married, then she got divorced, then she took a lover and ran away with him. They landed in the city of Tanta, broke up, and Sakina began working as a prostitute again. By 1913, she was in the hospital being treated for venereal disease, where she met her second husband, Aḥmad Rageb. When she recovered, the two of them ran off to Alexandria.

  Soon enough the entire globe was rocked by World War I, and Rageb left to join the Labor Corps. He returned home a couple of times, but his visits were never pleasant: on the first, he found his wife working as a prostitute; on the second, he discovered that she’d moved in with another man and wanted a divorce. Rageb gave in. By 1916, Sakina was married a third time to a man named Muhammad ‘Abd al-’Āl who worked at a number of cotton factories.

  Clearly Sakina was a bold one, unafraid of social and marital repercussions. (Rageb could have taken legal action against her for adultery, but he didn’t—maybe because he was just too mild-mannered, maybe because he was afraid of her.) She was always willing to talk openly about her sex life, and this fact, coupled with her long history of divorces, affairs, and remarriages—not to mention her various stints as a prostitute—would later contribute to the general idea that she was way too sexual for her own good. Libidinous, if you will. Concupiscent. She also picked up a nasty alcoholism habit at some point, which only contributed to her image as, well, totally out of control. The owner of her favorite bar noted that she could drink ten to fifteen glasses of wine in one hour without passing out.

  While Sakina moved around in the world, Raya stayed home. She too got married, and when her husband died, she married his brother Hasab Allah—a not uncommon practice in those days. Hasab Allah wasn’t such a catch. He had a reputation for thievery and hashish smuggling, and he’d already been banished from at least one city. But Raya was familiar with the life of petty crime, and the two stayed together and had a daughter. Sakina’s city- and husband-hopping were apparently not for her older sister, as it wasn’t until 1916 that Raya and Hasab Allah decided to join Sakina in Alexandria. He would work at the port as a day laborer. She would find her own sort of employment—as she always did.

  Alexandria, the Pearl of the Mediterranean, was chaotic and cosmopolitan and cerebral, forever haunted by the ghost of its famous burned library. But for Raya and Sakina, its beaches, parks, hotels, and museums may as well have been in another city altogether. People like them, who hailed from Upper Egypt (the Ṣa’īd, in Arabic), were known as Ṣa’īdīs, and Ṣa’īdīs were at a distinct disadvantage in the city: they tended to make less money than Alexandrian natives, they had trouble assimilating completely due to their darker skin and distinct accents, and they were accused of all sorts of moral failings, viciously stereotyped as “feeble-minded, lustful, hot-tempered, and vengeful.”

  But if Raya and Sakina were easily placed as outsiders, at least they weren’t alone. Alexandria was a land of opportunity for thousands just like them: almost one-third of its population originated from somewhere else. The city was “porous,” writes scholar Nefertiti Takla; there were boundaries, yes, but one could move through them. The railway station brought in workers from all over Egypt, while European sailors poured in through the port. And from the port, a main street ran like an artery straight into the dense heart of al-Labbān, where outsiders and locals alike could find all the debauchery their hearts desired.

  Gold Bracelets

  The sisters settled in al-Labbān, took a long hard look at the social and economic climate, and decided that the best thing to do would be to open a brothel. After all, World War I was still raging, there was a military camp full of occupying British soldiers nearby, and those soldiers wanted a few things badly: booze, drugs, and girls. The sisters’ most successful brothel was located next to said camp, and it was known as—wait for it—the Camp. Money poured in from the lusty, eager soldiers. The sisters thrived. Raya would say later that during the war, she always had money in her pocket. Sakina made extra cash by selling gold on the black market and attempting to open a café. At one point, she even hawked rotten horse meat to unsuspecting home cooks, for which she did a short stint in prison.

  Like many a good lady killer before them, the sisters had hustle. They saw a demand; they created supply. Business boomed during their first three years together in Alexandria, and it was all thanks to them, since both of their husbands were off working as manual laborers for the British army.

  We don’t know much about the characters of these husbands, but consider this: during the war, one of their jobs was to carry dead soldiers off of the battlefield, picking their way through the carnage and the screams and the blood. When they returned to their wives, surely they brought some of that trauma back with them. Raya certainly preferred the years when her husband was away, though she framed it in financial terms: when he returned, she no longer had money in her pocket, because he took it from her.

  The Camp, though popular, was technically a covert operation. Though prostitution had been regulated in Egypt since 1882, running a legal brothel was a bit of a headache. It required paperwork, taxes, and weekly medical exams for the workers. Plus, it meant you had to openly admit you were running a brothel, which meant you were more or less giving up on any chance of joining bourgeoisie society. Because of this, most owners and sex workers preferred to work underground. By keeping their business secret, the sisters were able to fill the brothel with sex workers of a slightly higher class, who prostituted themselves covertly because it let them appear respectable in public. These women were basically contractors: when they used the rooms owned by the sisters, they’d pay Raya and Sakina half of what the clients gave them.

  Although we often think of prostitution as coercive, being a sex worker was a well-paid gig at the time—one of the best-paying jobs a woman could get, actually—and even lower-middle-class women dabbled in it. The occupation’s profitability was advertised by the large amount of gold that sex workers wore in public. As they made more and more money, workers would invest in thicker and thicker bracelets, ostensibly guarding their money by keeping it close to their bodies, but also showcasing the very value of said bodies. If you were a john, you wanted to sleep with a girl who had so many bracelets that she jangled.

  The world may have rejoiced when World War I ended in late 1918, but the sisters did not. Fewer British troops meant fewer clients, and fewer clients meant that their prostitutes started looking for better-paying gigs. The husbands returned and took over the running of the business, which was probably frustrating for the sisters, who had thrived on controlling the means of production in their own clandestine way. Then the police shut down the Camp, and so the sisters teamed up with their landlord, Amīna bint Mansūr: she ran a hashish café on the first floor of a building while Raya and Sakina plied their trade on the second, luring the café’s customers upstairs. When this, too, was eventually shut down by police, the sisters moved their business to their own homes, which created spatial difficulties. Surely people were starting to get annoyed at each other after long weeks of scheduling the use of the rooms and stepping on various toes.

  During the war, the sisters’ workers were often able to pay for their own gold jewelry, because business was going so well. After the war, though, money was tighter for everyone, and so the sisters started buying jewelry for their workers. The girls were now in their debt, and Raya and Sakina began to treat them less like contractors and more like servants, occasionally forcing them to perform manual labor along with sex work. Worse, the sisters and their landlord would sometimes sell their girls to other brothels—wrenching them away from families and lovers—in order to make a little extra cash.

  Needless to say, the environment in the brothel was growing increasingly hostile, and this wasn’t helped by the presence of a number of neighborhood toughs, known as fitiwwa, who w
ere more or less a cross between mobster and Robin Hood. They would protect residents and settle disputes—Raya and Sakina used them to guard their clients and keep their neighbors quiet, ensuring that no one called the police on the brothel—but the fitiwwa would also abuse the neighborhood’s most vulnerable members. These men were known to rape the girls, and they weren’t afraid to hurt Raya if she disagreed with them. For Raya, who’d gotten a taste of independence during the war, this new male-dominated business model may have been highly offensive, even unbearable.

  In short, everything was changing, everyone was on edge. Alexandria itself was rocked by the revolution of 1919, and laborers from street cleaners to postal workers went on strike, temporarily paralyzing the entire country’s economy. The old underground order of World War I—the brothels near the camp, the black market for rotting horse meat, the absent husbands—was being replaced by a new order, and bringing along all the inevitable friction that results from a changing of the guard. But whatever their personal disappointment with this new order, Raya and Sakina were scrappy, and they recognized a shifting economic climate as well as anyone. They needed a new plan.

  Seventeen Dead Girls

  Toward the end of 1920, the police began receiving complaints about a terrible smell emanating from Raya’s home. Neighbors had always thought it was a little unusual that Raya was constantly wreathing her home in such heavy clouds of incense, but she quickly explained to them that since her customers drank and smoked in her house, she used incense to mask the scent of their revelry. At first the neighbors believed her. But eventually they smelled something not even incense could disguise—a cloying, heavy, rotten odor.