THE PICKPOCKET’S ART

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20930, 8 January 1938, Page 4

THE PICKPOCKET’S ART

TYPES OF OPERATORS' A DIMINISHING TRADE With the approach of the holiday shopping season, New York awaits its annual influx of pickpockets from the hinterlands, lured by the promise of easy pickings in crowded stores. But the influx will be smaller than it used to be and the pickings will be scarcely half their former size, for increased police vigilance, sterner laws, and changed styles have sharply restricted the field of the “dips” and “cafinons,” as they are known in the argot of the underworld, says a writer in the “New York Times Magazine.” The decline of the light-fingered gentry is perhaps epitomised in the case of Richard (Diamond Dick) Fisher. When jewelled tie pins were the vogue two and three decades ago Diamond Dick was a master cannon. Swaying with the motion of an elevated car, it was said, he could bite the setting out of a scarf pin without disturbing the composure of his victim.

A little over a year ago, Fisher, now 77 years old, was arrested on the lower East Side in the act of picking the pocket of an intoxicated man. In the fall of this once talented thief to the status of a “lush worker” —the lowest rank in the pickpocket scale—is symbolised the fall of what was once a flourishing and expert crime. Further evidence of the decline of the pickpocket may be found in statistics of the police department pick-pocket squad. This department of which Acting Captain William Raftis is supervisor, once comprised sixty-five active detectives. To-day, with a decreasing case load, its personnel has been reduced by a third. The pickpocket of 1936, according to Captain Raftis, is a mere stepchild at the dinner’ table of illicit gain. In the past ten years his number has been more than halved . In another ten, Captain Raftis predicts, he will be “practically a memory.” Two Classes Pickpockets fall into two major classes: “tools” and "stalls.” The tool is the operative who performs the actual theft. The stall serves to screen the tool’s activities and distracts the victim’s attention during the robbery. The stall is a minor character in the melodrama of crime. Many tools w’ork alone, without the assistance of a stall, and it is with the tool himself that the police are really concerned. He is the craftsman of his profession. In the detective files at headquarters

pickpockets are indexed according to the specific character of their thievery. Each tool has his specialty and his rating with the police and the underworld is determined by the skill which his type of pocket-picking requires. In the order of their ranking pickpockets are listed as “pants-pocket workers,” “buzzers,” “moll buzzers,” “patch-pocket workers,” “fob-pocket workers,” and "lush rollers” or “lush workers.” The pants-pocket operative is the prince of his trade. He is a precarious business, requiring lightness of touch, and fraught with imminent danger of detection. The meagre pickings in this age of cheque-books and scant cash have contrived to thin their numbers. Buzzers are male pickpockets who specialise in opening women's hand-

bags. Moll buzzers are female operatives of like character. Both carry on their calling in department stores and other busy shopping centres. They, like the pants-pocket type, are a vanishing species. Patented catches have made women’s bags all but inaccessible and the buzzers and moll buzzers who still stick to their trade; have to wait for their victim to put I her bag down while donning or examining an article of purchase before they can rob her. Then they try to seize her bag and walk off with it. Less expert than buzzers are the patch-pocket and fob-pocket workers. The patch-pocket thief tries to take a woman’s change purse from her outside pocket. The fob-pocket chief works on men’s outside pockets. Lush Workers Lowest of them all is the lush worker, the only pickpocket who today functions in large numbers. At least 75 per cent of the pickpockets who are arrested each day belong to this classification. Lush-working requires almost no skill at all. The victim —the “lush” —is an easy mark. The term embraces intoxicated sleeping travellers, crippled, or slowwitted persons. Two lush robberies in recent months have resulted in murders. Sometimes lush rollers work alone, sometimes in pairs. Their favourite hunting ground is the subway, but they also functioh in side streets and in darkened doorways.

Although lush working was practised even by dips of an earlier time, it is mainly a modem phenomenon, the product of depression and unemployment. With the exception of the lush worker, the pickpocket always prefers to work in a crowd. Subways, railroad terminals, steamship piers, hotels, and department stores are their major’ points of operation. But these do not complete the list. Dips work in schools and colleges at graduation time, in theatres, at prizefights, and other sporting events.