You have to pay close attention to know that, in her terms, her life was a success - her great adventure." The hope and vitality in this story takes longer to find than in conventional stories. Still, O'Faolain said, "This is not a negative story at all. While the Tribune and other newspapers played up the glamour of May's life as an international crook, it was a life without the benefits of a more mainstream existence, such as stability, membership in a family and roots in a community. She's kind of matter-of-fact that life dealt her this hand of cards, and she played it her way." She's perfectly open about what a bad, dreadful woman she was. "May has some absolute core acceptance of herself," O'Faolain said. But the money never lasted very long.Įven so, May lived a much more interesting life than she would have in Edenmore. She engaged in scams that, when successful, netted great loot. She sold her body for money or as a lure for robbery. In a 2005 interview, O'Faolain noted that May's life had been far from cushy. The years, though, were taking their toll on May. For the book, she added the "e" to Sharp, perhaps to give her byline a touch of gentility. She married a second time in 1927 to James Sharp of New Jersey. Most news stories over the years referred to her as May Vivienne Churchill because of her short-lived marriage to Dal Churchill. For her autobiography, she called herself May Churchill Sharpe. Throughout her life, May used any number of aliases. Later in 1928 she published a rough-hewn, straight-talking autobiography titled "Chicago May, Her Story: A Human Document by 'The Queen of Crooks.'" Later, though, apparently with May's help, he became one of the few prisoners to escape that infamous hellhole.Īt the time of Herrick's Tribune feature, May seemed to be attempting to turn over a new leaf. Guerin was given life on Devil's Island, a French penal colony. She was sentenced to five years in prison. When they were convicted in a French court, the Tribune reported, May "threw her arms around Guerin's neck and kissed him." In 1902, with May's help, Guerin and an accomplice robbed the American Express office in Paris of $6,000, the equivalent of $165,000 today. Although Herrick wrote that May "made the front page of newspapers oftener than she made the desk sergeant's entry book," she'd spent a third of her life in prison.Ī key man in May's criminal life was Eddie Guerin, the scion of a well-to-do Chicago family who, upon his death in England in 1940, was described as an "incorrigible jail bird who had run the gamut of crime." In fact, she was 57.īy this point she'd had a long life with a lot of bumps in the road. Her gaze was direct, and her mouth was set in a smirk. Pictured with a much younger British author whom she said she was going to marry, May exuded a nonchalant assurance and a "bubbling vitality" that were her trademarks, according to news stories. One from earlier in May's career showed her to be an attractive woman, but it was the second, taken at the time the story was written, that gave a better hint at her personality.
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