Lily Argent

Lily Argent
Lily Argent in Swansea Prison, 18 November 1905, aged 19
Born	(1886-10-08)8 October 1886 Swansea, Wales
Died	13 December 1916(1916-12-13) (aged 30)
Resting place	Danygraig cemetery
Nationality	Welsh
Other names	Lily Bumster
Occupation(s)	Petty criminal, prostitute
Spouse	Michael John Bumster

Lily Argent (8 October 1886 – 13 December 1916), Lily Bumster from November 1913, was a petty criminal from Swansea, Wales. She grew up in a home in which drunkenness and crime were commonplace, and received her first criminal conviction at the age of 19. She was arrested for theft, along with fellow prostitutes Kate Driscoll and Selina Rushbrook, in 1905. She was found not guilty, and the experience appears to have deterred her from a life of crime; she instead became a prostitute. Following the death of her mother in 1906 Argent descended into alcoholism.

In 1913 she married Michael John Bumster, the son of the owners of the boarding house in which she was living. The relationship was to be brief, as less than a year later her husband enlisted in the army on the outbreak of the First World War. Lily Bumster, by this time suffering severe tuberculosis, died in late 1916.

In her lifetime, Argent attracted little notice beyond official records and local newspaper accounts. Her life was examined by local historian Elizabeth Belcham in her book Swansea's 'Bad Girls': Crime and Prostitution 1870s–1914.