Jacobean pickpockets

George Wilkins is one of the more obscure writers of Jacobean England. He probably wrote the first two acts of Pericles, Prince of Tyre (everyone agrees that they are much too feeble to be by Shakespeare). Apart from that, no one remembers him. But his day job was keeping an alehouse in Clerkenwell, a district notorious for prostitutes and thieves. And one of the things he wrote was a piece on thieves and their methods. Plenty of writers mention pickpockets. But in this period only Wilkins will tell you exactly how they went to work:

First know your pocket is drawne up, that he may the easier come by your purse with two fingers, onely the forefinger and the middle; and with that forke he catches hold not of the lining, nor on the side next your skin, but the other: for if hee should fasten on that next your thigh, he were in danger you would feele him sooner then on the other. When having drawne your pocket up, till he can reach your purse, it is then gon with the least twitch, nay by this meanes of drawing if your money be loose, they will turne you the case* cleane out, and the bit** into their hands.

George Wilkins (d. 1618)

from Jests to make you Merie (1607)

*pocket

**money


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