They dress in various styles; sometimes in the finest of superfine black cloth; at other times in fashionable suits, like the first gentlemen in the land, spangled with jewellery. Some of them would pass for gentlemen—they are so polite in their address. Others appear like a mock-swell, vulgar in their manner—which is transparent through their fine dress, and are debased in their conversation, which is at once observed when they begin to speak.
The female pickpockets dress in fashionable attire; sometimes in black satin dresses and jewellery. Some of them are very lady-like, though they have sprung originally from the lowest class. You may see very beautiful women among them, though vulgar in their conversation. The females are often superior in intellect to the men, and more orderly in their habits. They are seldom married, but cohabit with pickpockets, burglars, resetters, and other infamous characters. Their paramour is frequently taken from them, and they readily go with another man in the same illicit manner.
They are passionately fond of their fancy man in most cases; yet very capricious—so much so that they not unfrequently leave the man they cohabit with for another sweetheart, and afterwards go back to their old lover again, who is so easy in his principles that he often welcomes her, especially if she is a good worker—that is, an expert pickpocket.
The greater part of these women have sprung from the class of Irish cockneys; others have been domestic servants and the daughters of labourers, low tradesmen, and others. This gives us a key to many of these house robberies, done with the collusion of servants—a kind of felony very common over the metropolis. These are not the more respectable genteel class of servants, but the humbler order, such as nursery girls and females in tradesmen’s families. Many of them have come from the country, or from labouring people’s families over the working neighbourhoods of the metropolis. They are soon taught to steal by the men they cohabit with, but seldom acquire the dexterity of the thief who has been younger trained. They seldom have the acuteness, tact, and dexterity of the latter.
They live very expensively on the best of poultry, butcher-meat, pastry, and wines, and some of them keep their pony and trap; most of them are very improvident, and spend their money foolishly on eating and drinking—though few of them drink to excess,—on dress, amusements, and gambling.
They do not go out every day to steal, but probably remain in the house till their money is nearly spent, when they commence anew their system of robbery to fill their purse.
The female pickpockets often live with the burglars. They have their different professions which they pursue. When the one is not successful in the one mode of plunder, they often get it in the other, or the women will resort to shoplifting. They must have money in either of these ways. The women do not resort to prostitution, though they may be of easy virtue with those they fancy. Some of them live with cracksmen in high style, and have generally an abundance of cash.
Female pickpockets are often the companions of skittlesharps, and pursue their mode of livelihood as in the case of cohabiting with burglars. Their age averages from sixteen to forty-five.
The generality of the pickpockets confine themselves to their own class of robberies. Others betake themselves to card-sharping and skittle-sharping, while a few of the more daring eventually become dexterous burglars.
In their leisure hours they frequently call at certain beershops and public-houses, kept possibly by some old “pals” or connexions of the felon class, at King’s Cross, near Shoreditch Church, Whitechapel, the Elephant and Castle, and Westminster, and are to be seen dangling about these localities.