Crime Fighting in Suffragette City
7.00pm Thursday 30th April 2026
Victorian and Edwardian London was a city of shadows — of crime, performance, secrecy and surveillance — and within it moved figures who have almost entirely vanished from history.
Writer SARA LODGE brings these forgotten lives back into view. We encounter figures such as Elizabeth Joyes, known for tracking down criminals, and Kate Easton, an actress-turned-detective operating out of Shaftesbury Avenue, taking on cases that often veered into the sexually clandestine. Sara also explores their theatrical counterparts — the sensational, cross-dressing, fist-fighting female detectives of the Victorian stage — revealing how fantasy and reality intertwined in the cultural imagination of crime.
The story does not end in the Victorian period. As London moved into the 20th century, the stakes only intensified.
In 1914, against a backdrop that feels disturbingly familiar — low conviction rates for sexual violence, widespread trafficking, and deep mistrust of the police — a group of women decided to act. The outbreak of war became an unexpected opportunity. Five pioneering figures founded the Women Police Volunteers, determined to protect vulnerable women and challenge a system that consistently failed them.
Author SANDRA HEMPEL traces their extraordinary and often troubling journey: from idealistic beginnings to the complex realities of policing, power, and gender in a city under strain.
Together, these two narratives reveal a hidden history of women working in and against the structures of law enforcement in London — a story of courage, performance, resistance, and the ongoing struggle for justice in the modern city.
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SARA LODGE is Professor of nineteenth-century literature and culture at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of four books and many articles. Her latest book, The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective was featured on Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, and has been shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize, Britain’s biggest prize for history writing. She’s now working on her next book, The Haunted Causeway: magic, pilgrimage and imagination on the paths to Britain’s tidal islands.
SANDRA HEMPEL is a former Times journalist. She is the author of Controlling Women, Britain First Female Police Force. Her previous books include the award-winning “The Medical Detective”, and an 1830s true-murder mystery, “The Inheritor’s Powder”, which was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. She is also a consultant for radio and TV programmes.
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Our home, THE HORSE HOSPITAL, is a unique Grade II listed not for profit, independent arts venue within the only existing unspoilt example of a two-floor, purpose-built stable with public access in London.
Built in 1797 by James Burton. the shell is constructed with London Stocks whilst the interior features a mock cobbled re-inforced concrete floor and ramps with slats to prevent the horses from slipping. Each floor has 5 cast iron pillars and several original iron tethering rings.