Gangster's molls appear mainly in fiction these days, but a new memoir reminds us of a genuine real-life queen of the underworld.
Born in 1925, Gypsy Hill – so called because her mum's Gypsy friend decided that she must be of Romany stock – was the common-law wife of gangster Billy Hill, the so-called "boss of the underworld" in the 1950s.
A striking beauty, Gyp attracted Hill's attention by belting three women with a high heel after she had seen them mocking a deaf mute in the street. When Hill masterminded the famous 1952 Eastcastle Street robbery of £230,000 from a Post Office van, Gyp insisted on being one of the getaway drivers and they counted out the money in a suite at the Dorchester.
In 1955, the couple tried to move to Australia but, by the time they reached New Zealand via the Pacific, it was clear Australia would not admit them. "It makes you sick when you think we have come this far," Gyp told the Daily Express. "If only we had known sooner, we could have got off earlier – in Tahiti."
The actor Diana Dors became a pal and, in Cannes, Gyp met Picasso and Aristotle Onassis, who made a pass at her, according to Billy Hill's son, Justin, author of Billy Hill, Gyp and Me. Justin says of his father that "there was no shortage of girls auditioning to be his moll" but Gyp was his "criminal muse". (Justin is Hill's son by a dancer, Diana Harris, who killed herself when he was a baby; Gypsy became his adoptive mum.)
Gyp spent time in prison awaiting trial for smashing a table-lamp into the face of a man who made a mocking reference to her fur coat – "look at her, in her rabbit" – in a nightclub in Paddington in 1957. But was later cleared after witnesses suffered mysterious memory losses.
She moved to Tangier, where Hill had a club called Churchill's, kept a chimpanzee as a pet and eventually moved back to Britain and retired from the fray. Justin remembers her enjoying a spliff while watching Widows, the 1980s ITV series about gangsters' wives who carry out a robbery.
Gypsy died in 2004. Surely a film of her life must be on the horizon.
