Last Updated on October 15, 2025 by Matt Staff
Victorian headlines loved a good scandal, and these women delivered it with their stagecoaches stopped, bottles swapped, and alibis that unraveled by lamplight. This set pulls together female outlaws who moved from rumor to wanted posters in a hurry.
Some chased quick money, some chased notoriety, and a few just found trouble and doubled down. Either way, their stories still feel close. I’m personally just waiting on the inevitable moment when we end up getting another Netflix show about another one of these Victorian-era outlaws.
1. Belle Starr
Also known as the “Bandit Queen”, she mixed with post-war raiders and made a reputation fencing horses in Indian Territory. She knew the courts as well as the back roads, and the legend only grew after she died in 1889.
2. Pearl Hart
Alongside a partner, Hart robbed a stagecoach in Arizona in 1899, and her calm in court turned her into a media star. The prison stripes didn’t dull the hat-tilted swagger.
3. Laura Bullion
She was a member of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch. She moved money and plans as easily as she worked a pose. Arrested in New York in 1901, she stared down the camera like it owed her change.
4. Anna “Cattle Annie” McDoulet
Annie was a teenager running with stock thieves in 1890s Oklahoma. She scoped out the lawmen and ghosted through town fast. Marshals finally grabbed her, though the dime-novel attitude never left.
5. Jennie “Little Britches” Steven
She was Annie’s partner in prairie mischief. She could ride, shoot, and vanish into grass taller than a saddle. The court called her reckless, but the papers called her famous.
6. Rose Dunn
Also known as “Cimarron Rose”, she kept company with outlaws and learned the trade by campfire light. When gunfire found the gang, her name made it into the same columns as theirs.
7. Mary Katharine Horony Cummings
“Big Nose Kate” was Doc Holliday’s fiercest ally. She was arrested more than once and talked her way straight through it. She lived long enough to tell the stories herself.
8. Etta Place
Etta was Sundance Kid’s companion. She slipped through the borders as easily as she slipped into photographs. Pinkertons hunted the men, and her mystery did the rest.
9. Kate Webster
Webster was an Irish housemaid who killed her employer, Julia Martha Thomas, in 1879. She later tried on new names as if that could change the facts. Londoners learned the details street by street.
10. Christiana Edmunds
She was known as the “Chocolate Cream Poisoner” who sent tainted sweets around Brighton in the early 1870s. Respectability was her mask, but the courtroom pulled it off.
11. Florence Maybrick
She was an American in Liverpool society who was convicted in 1889 amid fierce debate over the evidence for her husband’s murder. Public opinion swung like a pendulum for years.
12. Lizzie Halliday
She was considered the first serial killer in New York, and the city called her the “worst woman on earth” in the 1890s. Her name turned local crime into a national dread. She died in the electric chair.
13. Mary Surrat
Pulled into the Lincoln conspiracy in 1865, she ran a boarding house that prosecutors said held secrets. The war had just ended, but the shock hadn’t. She was the first woman executed by the federal government in the U.S.
Explore more historical content:
If this Victorian detour hit the spot, keep the mood going with these 20 Mugshots from the Edwardian Era, or these 20 Photos of Female Criminals from the 1960s. If you want more criminal-related content, here are 20 Lesser-Known Tales About Criminals from the 1990s.
