These women seldom or never allow drunken men to have criminal connection with them, but get their living by this base system of plunder. They change their field of operation over the metropolis, followed by the sneaking “stickman.”
Some of these females have been known in early life to sell oranges in the street.
The “stickman” during the day lounges about the parlours in quiet public-houses where thieves resort, and the women during the day are sometimes engaged in needlework,—some of the latter have a fair education, which they may have learned in prison, and others are very illiterate.
Though respectable in dress and appearance, they generally belong to the felon class of Irish cockneys, with few exceptions.
They are to be found in Lisson-grove, Leicester-square, Portland-town, and other localities.
Females in respectable positions in society occasionally take too much intoxicating liquor, and are waylaid by old women, gin-drinkers, who frequent public-houses in low neighbourhoods. They introduce themselves to the inebriated woman as a friend, to see her to some place of safety until she has recovered from the effects of her dissipation,—she may have been lying on the pavement, and unable to walk. They lift her up by the hand, and steal the gold ring from her finger.
At other times they take her into some by-court or street in low neighbourhoods, where doors may frequently be seen standing open; they rob her in some of these dark passages of her money, watch, and jewellery, and sometimes carry off her clothes.
If seen by persons in the neighbourhood, it is winked at, and no information given, as they generally belong to the same unprincipled class.
There is another low class of women who prowl about the streets at midnight, watching for any respectable-looking person who may be passing the worse of liquor. If they notice a drunken man, one comes and enters into conversation with him, and while thus engaged, another woman steps up, touches him under the chin, or otherwise distracts his attention. The person who first accosted him, with her companion, then endeavours to pick his pockets and plunder him of his property. A case of this kind occurred near the Marble Arch in August 1860.
They have many ingenious ways of distracting the attention of their victim, some of them very obscene and shameless.