The leaves that hung but never grew

The local free paper today had a headline: ‘Fraud alert for shoppers’. Police in Leicester, it says, ‘have received reports of people being caught out by a scam where they have bet on which one of three cups a pea will turn up under – after the cups have been quickly switched around’. Apparently there is a gang hanging out in the city centre enticing passing shoppers into their ‘game’.

Real thimble-riggers! I thought it was an extinct craft, in this country, at least. Last time I saw thimble-riggers at work was down an alley in the West End of London, some time in the early seventies.

A street conjuror speaks:

I never practised thimble-rigging myself, for I never approved of it as a practice. I’ve known lots of fellows who lived by it. Bless you! they did well, never sharing less than their £4 or £5 every day they worked. This is the way it’s done. They have three thimbles, and they put a pea under two of ’em, so that there’s only one without the pea. The man then begins moving them about and saying, ‘Out of this one into that one,’ and so on, and winds up by offering to ‘lay anything, from a shilling to a pound,’ that nobody can tell which thimble the pea is under. Then he turns round to the crowd, and pretends to be pushing them back, and whilst he’s saying, ‘Come, gentlemen, stand more backwarder,’ one of the confederates, who is called ‘a button’, lifts up one of the thimbles with a pea under it, and laughs to those around, as much as to say, ‘We’ve found it out.’ He shows the pea two or three times, and the last time he does so, he removes it, either by taking it up under his forefinger nail or between his thumb and finger. It wants a great deal of practice to do this nicely, so as not to be found out. When the man turns to the table again the button says, ‘I’ll bet you a couple of sovereigns I know where the pea is. Will any gentleman go me halves?’ Then, if there’s any hesitation, the man at the table will pretend to be nervous and offer to move the thimbles again, but the button will seize him by the arm, and shout as if he was in a passion, ‘No, no, none of that! It was a fair bet, and you shan’t touch ’em.’ He’ll then again ask if anybody will go him halves, and there’s usually somebody flat enough to join him. Then the stranger is asked to lift up the thimble, so that he shouldn’t suspect anything, and of course there’s no pea there. He is naturally staggered a bit, and another confederate standing by will say calmly, ‘I knew you was wrong; here’s the pea;’ and he lifts up the thimble with the second pea under it. If nobody will go shares in the ‘button’s’ bet, then he lifts up the thimble and replaces the pea as he does so, and of course wins the stake, and he takes good care to say as he pockets the sovereign, ‘I knew it was there; what a fool you was not to stand in.’ The second time they repeat the trick there’s sure to be somebody lose his money. There used to be a regular pitch for thimble-riggers opposite Bedlam, when the shows used to put up there. I saw a brewer’s collector lose £7 there in less than half-an- hour. He had a bag full of gold, and they let him win the three first bets as a draw. Most of these confederates are fighting-men, and if a row ensues they’re sure to get the best of it.

Henry Mayhew (1812–1887)

from London Labour and the London Poor (1851)


tags: crime | swindle

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