Mrs. Sophie Van Elkan Lyons Burke

Born Sophie Van Elkan, she became widely known as Sophie Lyons, a notorious New York pickpocket and confidence woman before later publishing her memoir Why Crime Does Not Pay in 1913. The book presents her life story as both confession and cautionary tale, tracing her years in crime and the hard lessons that followed.

Her reputation was big enough that she was remembered as the “Queen of the Underworld,” and her story stood out because it came in her own voice rather than through newspaper legend alone. That gives her work a special place among early crime memoirs: it is part self-portrait, part social history, and part warning.

For audiobook listeners, her appeal lies in that mix of drama and firsthand detail. Whether every page is read as strict autobiography or as a shaped narrative for readers of the time, her account opens a vivid window onto urban crime, reinvention, and the uneasy line between notoriety and storytelling.