Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley becomes Lady Swindlers for new series

The new series of Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley is switching its attention to swindlers, con-women and hustlers.

In Lady Swindlers, Lucy and a team of all female detectives revisit the crimes of women in the past who were trying to make it in a world made for men.

These are women who stepped outside their ordinary lives to do extraordinary things. What do their crimes and the times they lived in teach us about women’s lives today?

The series features queens of the underworld, hoaxers, thieves, scammers and even a fake heiress from the past across England, Wales, Scotland, the US and Australia.

Lucy says: “In Lady Swindlers we have identified various interesting female criminals from the last 200 years.

“We tell their stories, we work out how they got away with it (if they got away with it!) and we use that to ask ourselves, what were the circumstances? Were they breaking the rules because they lived in a world made by men?

“I hope that people will listen to Lady Swindlers for the fun of it. We’ve got crime capers here; we’ve got some extraordinary stories about some extraordinary women. But I think that you will also, just by osmosis, learn loads of really interesting social history.

“You’ll learn about the birth of modern feminism; you’ll learn about how female consumerism was a thing in the early 20th century. You’ll learn quite a lot about Victorian beauty techniques that you’ll wish that you didn’t know, because they sound absolutely horrific!”

Lady Swindlers with Lucy Worsley is available on BBC Sounds first as a boxset from today, Monday 23 September, and then broadcast weekly on BBC Radio 4 from 30 September.