Content Warning: The following section of the guide discusses sexual assault, murder, and capital punishment.

The book reveals the corrupting nature of ambition through various characters, most notably Maddox and Oakes. Both men are greedy and aren’t satisfied with the payouts they get from Nellie, so they decide to take down her empire. Their greed and ambition result in their ruin. Maddox is stabbed to death, while Oakes is framed for Maddox’s murder and hanged. These two characters get the harshest punishment for their ambitions because they go to the most harmful measures to fulfill them—for example, by organizing gang fights, fires, and murders at Nellie’s clubs. Other characters portray the corrupting nature of ambition, but—since they don’t go to such dangerous lengths to achieve their dreams—they are spared the terrible fates of Maddox and Oakes.

Nellie is another character who lets her ambition lead her to immoral acts. The primary crime that Nellie commits is theft: It’s by stealing a dead woman’s jewels that she’s able to launch her empire of clubs. This comes back to haunt Nellie in the form of Azzopardi, seeking vengeance for the stolen goods. Nellie realizes that “[h]e was after revenge” (379). While Nellie doesn’t express regret for the theft, she seems haunted by other regrets, notably the disposal of Maud’s body in the Thames.