Mary Frith, AKA “Moll Cut-Purse”
1584-1659
Mary Frith, better known as “Moll Cutpurse” is one of those historical figures that often feels too elusive to properly pin down. Her crimes are fairly well-documented thanks in part to the Newgate Calendar chapbooks which appeared at the close of the eighteenth century, and a likely hyperbolic biography published in 1662, three years after her death, as well as, most usefully, a string of arrest records. Yet the woman herself is still somewhat of a mysterious figure.
Perhaps the most important part about the legacy of Mary Frith in the history of women and women’s equality, isn’t where she got her nickname “Cut-purse”, but the fact that she turned her transgression of femininity into a performance. Was she transgender, a lesbian, a cross-dresser or just a woman trying to survive within a dangerous patriarchal society?
Called a “roaring girl” by pamphleteers (early modern press), Mary Frith was a well-known thief on the streets of London, known for her years on the streets but also for her characteristic cross-dressing. Frith was born sometime in 1584, into a respectable working-class family, her father was a shoemaker. Several parts of her life remain unclear, enlightened only by a sensational biography published in 1662, three years after her death. Although some scholars have suggested that Frith herself may have participated in the authoring or research of this book, its legitimacy as an accurate narrative is mostly disbelieved. One thing we do know is that she had been troublesome ever since her youth and that efforts to reform her behaviour, for example, her uncle attempted to send her to New England, proved unsuccessful, she actually jumped overboard off the ship and swam back to shore.
Understanding Frith from her childhood is perhaps too hopeful, we can gather from legitimate primary sources (legal and arresting reports) that Frith was on the streets from a young age, not because she explicitly needed to be, as with many other lower-class people in Elizabethan England, because she wanted to. This, and descriptions of her general attitude and demeanour indicate why Frith was long thought to be transgressive in her nature. She was not interested in the complexities of learning how to be a woman, she was ‘loud and boisterous’, had an inherent ‘abhorrence’ to children and crucially, is often described as ‘masculine’. In her criminal career, she often took to cross-dressing, the source of much of the controversy concerning her, this choice might have simply made her life easier, yet by the point of her early twenties she had turned her daily life into a performative event, itself a lucrative venture, and it is for cross-dressing, or rather, ‘public immorality” that she is arrested for on Christmas Day in 1611 and publicly humiliated for in January 1612 in front of a crowd of keen fans of “Moll Cutpurse”.
But are these descriptions fair, do they accurately display a woman who might have actually been a transgender man or do they present a woman who was simply unhappy with the lot she was given? That’s a complex question that in reality, we can’t ever hope to answer. Yet, she almost exclusively dressed as a man throughout her adulthood, she engaged in masculine activities, and several arrest reports write with disgust about her swearing, drinking and smoking. But, there is no proof of anything which would further a transgender or even lesbian conclusion, bar perhaps an aversion to prostitution. So, what exactly makes this woman, firstly so popular, and secondly commit an act which arguably puts her life and her freedom at risk more than her actions of petty theft?
Let’s consider the why first, as stated above, Frith would have had no real reason to sink into this life of crime in Southwark throughout her childhood. She and her family were lower class, yes, but that didn’t lower her chances of respectable employment. Many daughters throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were actually trained in their father’s profession, Frith would have likely had this opportunity herself, especially as there is no mention of brothers. Furthermore, lower-class women did in fact have a clear route for the development of careers in service. Teenage girls would regularly begin service as kitchen maids, or housemaids in the service of nobility, many others would be married by their early twenties, their husbands making enough in their own professions to allow the women to be housewives, as frith’s mother appears to be. Yet whilst still a teenager, Frith was arrested at least twice for petty theft, in 1600 and in 1602, indicating that she had no interest in traditional life. This simple fact makes her transgressive of seventeenth-century gender roles, but does it make her transgressive today? Not really, right? The options for women might have been secure but they weren’t exactly freedom, perhaps that freedom of choice was what Frith was searching for.
But that doesn’t really explain the cross-dressing. If we think about crimes that women committed on the streets, I bet the first thing that comes to your mind is something like Nancy in Oliver Twist, she might be a thief but she is primarily a prostitute, inarguably a dangerous position, even if you weren’t in actuality soliciting you might still be attacked, assaulted or raped, or on the other hand, arrested for soliciting. So, the choice to parade in men’s clothing might have initially been a sort of protective and practical measure. Similarly, it would have initially given her a sense of anonymity, allowing her to thieve without recognition. This anonymity was a common thread among other women, who would dress as men to move through society with more ease, for some, this choice was unquestionably gendered, see those who dressed as or even lived as men to work, marry, or even serve in the military, Frith’s actions don’t appear to be driven by a rejection of gender, rather of gender roles, which were not singularly tied. Being a woman in early modern England was often a case of ornamentalism rather than practicality, Frith’s rejection of marriage, of children and of her prescribed gender role does not appear to be anything but a rejection of an arbitrary performance. This is argued based on a number of facts, firstly, her character remained female in her performance, secondly, she did live entirely as a woman in the later years of her life, thirdly, her home was inextricably feminine (although this doesn’t necessitate gender it does support an argument that her rejection of gender norms was performative only), finally, Mary Beard has described it most succinctly, there was “no template for what a powerful woman looks like, except for that she looks rather like a man”. Even Queen Elizabeth I avoided several restrictions and expectations of her gender throughout her reign. So, it is reasonable to assume that whilst Mary Frith actively transgressed her prescribed gender role, she was not necessarily driven by a sexual or gendered disparity.
Finally, let's consider the impact of Mary Frith’s transvestitism. We know that Frith rejected the arbitrary and stifling restraints of her gender from her childhood on and her efforts to turn this cross-dressing into performance throughout her adult life was not only lucrative but also, unsurprisingly, divisive, we also know that her fans, for want of a better term were rather disappointed with the woman herself, most leaving out of boredom when she was stood in repentance at St Paul’s Cross in 1612, but did she impact other women in transgression or crime? Arguably yes, so much so that the authorities were specifically looking out for women dressed as men whilst ‘important’ men (read those who are institutionally misogynist) published transcripts and denouncements of these women. Frith wasn’t the first, and she wasn’t the last but she was certainly extremely influential.
The true extent of Mary Frith’s transgressions of her prescribed gender will never be fully clear to us, but what we can conclude is that she was stifled within a patriarchal society, unhappy with the life she was supposed to have and decided, through criminality and drama, to create her own. A transgressor if ever that was one.
Sources
Kyte, Holly, Roaring Girls, (London: Harper Collins, 2019)
'Mary Frith, or Moll Cutpurse, the Roaring Girl', East End Women's Museum, (20/11/2016), < https://eastendwomensmuseum.org/blog/mary-frith >, [03/03/2023]
'DANGEROUS WOMEN: THE CROSS-DRESSING CAVALIER MARY FRITH', Historic Royal Palaces Blog, (28/02/2020), < https://blog.hrp.org.uk/curators/dangerous-women-the-cross-dressing-cavalier-mary-frith/>, [03/03/2023]