These girls are natives of Dublin. When at home they live in Thomas-street, in the Liberty. When they come to Manchester they are quite plain in their dress, and no person on earth would suspect them. I believe there is nowhere their equal in being expert at ladies’ pockets. When they first came to Manchester they stole a large amount of money in shops and omnibuses.
When an omnibus leaves Market-street, for Oxford-road, Cheetham-hill, or elsewhere, they get into it, and being dressed like any gentleman’s girls, with one of those French baskets in their hands, nobody suspects them; they get close beside a lady, and contrive to place their shawl or mantle over the lady’s dress pocket, which shades their hand; the rest is an easy matter.
When these two girls and their mother and myself were having a glass of liquor, they told me they often sent twenty pounds to their parents in Dublin.
To the progress of civilisation in one particular is attributable much of the increased crime as regards pocket picking.
Railways, while they have added to convenience and luxury, to a great extent have also increased the demand for skilled thieves—so much may be done by them in trains, in the stations, and at the attendant omnibuses.
Yet surely these encouragements and facilities to crime, arising out of the railway system, are susceptible of counteraction.
It is well deserving of note that a fashion in dress may lead to a fearful increase of crime and criminals.
Flanagan and the Clarkes, as well as other “authorities” on the subject, declare that ladies’ outside pockets cause many boys and girls to begin “wiring.”
For this department of the thief’s business men and women—unless of low stature—are unfitted, and therefore the master thief, who has become too tall for practice, takes on pupils, by whose gains he is maintained in “style.”
“At this time,” Flanagan affirmed, “there were at least ten times as many boys ‘wiring’ as there were when I was young. Kelty, who has been up to everything for twenty years, trains these boys. He has pointed to a lad and said to me, ‘There’s one of my bringing out!’”