One night early in 1904, a printed card arrived at every pub in Birmingham. On it was a woman's photograph and a warning: serving her so much as a glass of beer was now a criminal offence. She was one of only eighty-two people barred from every pub in the city. Four days later, she walked into a house where a woman would be murdered before morning.

Her name was Alice Maud Tatlow. Born in British India in 1877, she had, by twenty-six, a string of aliases, a police record calling her "polisher and prostitute," and more than a hundred court appearances ahead of her.

This is her story, told through the records she left behind.