Victorian Urban Legend: the Clever Pickpocket September 18, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Beach has recently been searching for nineteenth-century urban legends, a real challenge because the category did not exist as an idea, though of course incredible ‘true’ stories circulated. Perhaps this is one of them. The pickpocket who is so clever that he or she puts the wallet back once everything is stolen.
Folkestone is filling fast, and seems to promise gay season. Amongst other fashionable arrivals the pick-pockets are enjoying themselves successfully. Standing with a lady on the outskirts of a well-dressed crowd, while the band of 3rd Buffs was playing on the Pavilion lawn a few days ago I remembered a warning we had heard in a sermon not long before, that these light-fingered gentry are often present where one would least expect them. I reminded my friend, who immediately felt for her purse, as she happened to have unusually large sum in it. The purse was safe in her pocket, not an outside ‘temptation’ pocket but a sensible well hidden repository, and she retained her hold on it till we reached home, when on opening it to make some trifling payment, she discovered that it was empty. It must have been dexterously taken from her pocket, and as carefully replaced after every single coin had been abstracted. This is, I think, a new trick, and a dangerous one, against which all should be warned, as it delays the discovery of loss until any chance of detecting the thief is quite past. Whits Times, 21 Aug 1880, 2.
Beach has been scratching his head but can’t think of any reason why a pickpocket would bother putting a purse or wallet back. First, there is the danger of being caught in the act: also the amateur pickpocket in Beach tells him that unlike a bag, putting a wallet back in a pocket would be more difficult than taking it out. Second, there is nothing to be gained. Even if the person notices second after the wallet has been taken there is nothing that they can do, save if they are certain it was the guy with the hat ten metres down the beach and even then it is risky to do an Oliver and start shouting ‘thief’. However, Beach has found one modern clip of a pickpocket returning a stolen wallet so he’s keeping an open mind. Any other thoughts: is this or is it not an urban legend in the making: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
19 Sept 2015: Invisible writes in ‘A long time ago, when money had value, I ran a vintage clothing shop. I lived upstairs and felt secure in leaving the opening change for the next day’s business in the cash register. I began to notice–or think I noticed–that money would go missing from the register at night. It was small amounts–perhaps I thought I had left four $20s, but there were only three. I had one employee with a key and I knew she did not come in at night as she was home with her children. I also had known her a long time and trusted her not to pilfer from me, so it was quite puzzling. However, she had a rather rough boyfriend and, after he had been caught burglarizing a house, he told her that he would take her key while she was in the shower or asleep, come into my store and steal the small amounts. He always replaced the key without her noticing. He boasted that if anyone accused him he would say, “why would I have just taken a twenty when I could have emptied the register?” Other than the thrill he got from fooling people, I think that he figured that such relatively modest amounts taken on a regular basis would not point to him, but throw suspicion on his girlfriend. A bit different from putting a wallet back, but the theme of allaying suspicion is similar. He apparently did this in houses he broke into–taking only a few, obscure, easily fence-able items so that people might not know for weeks that something had been taken and allowing him to say, if accused, “Hey, if I had broken in, why didn’t I take your stereo or the silver?”
