• Comment: I'd like to see a couple more sources from academic books/journals. qcne (talk) 14:20, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Alice Tankerville (also Tankerfelde) was an English thief, pirate, and possibly a prostitute, hanged in chains in 1534. She is the only woman known to have escaped the Tower of London.^[1] In October 1533, she and her common-law husband, John Wolfe, were implicated in the theft of 366 gold crowns from a ship at the Steelyard of the Hanseatic League in London.^[2] After months of fruitless investigations, John Wolfe was arrested in Summer 1532 and confined to the Tower, but was released after six months due to insufficient evidence.

In 1533, Tankerville, Wolfe, and several accomplices, among them two Yeomen, were connected to the murder of two Italian merchants, Jerome de George and Charles Benche, on the Thames on 16 July 1533. Alice had spent the afternoon with the Italians at Durham Rents at the Strand, before luring them into a wherry boat. In the middle of the Thames, they were robbed and murdered by Wolfe and two Yeomen who had disguised themselves as watermen.^[3] The group was also linked to the burglary of the Florentine merchant John Gerald's house near St. Benet Gracechurch, which was also the home of the two murdered Italians.

Tankerville and her husband applied for sanctuary status in Westminster.^[4] They were arrested and confined to the Tower, after Parliament had issued an act of attainder, upon request of the King's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Thomas Cromwell.^[5] After bedazzling her jailers, Tankerville managed to briefly escape the Tower with the help of Yeoman Warder John Bawde on 23 March 1534. She was rearrested the same night, and was hanged together with her husband at the pirate gallows in Wapping on 31 March 1534.^[6]