Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 November 1883 — The Science of Picking Pockets. [ARTICLE]

The Science of Picking Pockets.

“Pickpockets are a class of thieves who must be especially fitted for the business,” said - a headquarters detective to a reporter. “They go through a course of instruction, as a general thing, and learn it as a child learns to read. But no instructors will accept as a pupil anyone with short, stumpy fingers. It requires for picking pockets—just as it does for playing the violin—long, lean, flexible and even sensitive fingers.” _ ' “Do you mean to say that tbefe"are regular instructors in the art of digital appropriation ?” “Oh. yes; all experts who have reduced it to a science. Some of 'them who are advanced in (years, or otherwise incapacitated for active work on their own hook, devote all their time to instructing thieves and putting up jobs for them. It is a peculiar profession, and requires peculiar talents, as well as peculiar surroundings and circumstances, to make it a success. The Eickpoeket out of a largo city, ceases to e a great artist, and in a poorer town or a village, would degenerate into a mere burglar, or even become honest or prosperous. The pickpocket never commits violence, as the footpad, the burglar, or the garroter does. He performs his work unostentatiously, unobtrusively—l might even say delicately. He is a judge of character, too. He is a sort of detective in his way, knowing at a glance the kind of a man whose watch is likely to be solid and valuable, and not belonging to the order of flashy jewelry. Long experience has made him about as good a judge of the - value of things as a jeweler or a pawnbroker. There is a daily danger in his mode of life; which, no doubt, has attractions for the adventurous. He goes forth with bis liberty in his hand. He lives in the face of danger. He sees com* panions and friends perpetually struck off the roll of gentlemen-at-large. He knows not when his own day of doom may arriye. ” — Chicago Netcs.