Glamorous Portrait of Lilian Rose Goldstein, a Member of the Forty Elephants

This glamorous portrait is believed to be Lilian Rose Goldstein, the Bobbed-Haired Bandit. Taken in about 1926 and found among one of the Forty Elephants, Ada Johnston’s possessions when she died, it has the stylized look of film actress Louise Brooks, who popularized the bob haircut.

Goldstein was a young, middle class woman from Wembley who acted as the getaway driver for John ‘Ruby Sparks’ a notorious smash-and-grab burglar in the 1920s. She was inventive and it has her idea that he “take bulldog paperclips with him to hold the cuts on his hands and arms together.”