Crime City: Manchester's Victorian Underworld (13 page)

The stink of poverty, however, seldom deterred the dealer, who was prepared to buy virtually anything. The competition between dealers was cut-throat and their profit margins so minute that the money they made by buying stolen goods at a reduced price could mean the difference between making a profit and going hungry. Initially Jews monopolised the bottom end of the Manchester clothes market. Many believed they alone had the discipline, frugal habits and business acumen to survive on a minute income. But they reckoned without the Irish. The Irish reputedly had none of the qualities that made the Jews so successful in business. What they did have was a sharper and more recent memory of hunger that drove them to survive on less.

All fences, not only the Irish clothes dealers, paid only a minute fraction of the value of the goods they bought. Some paid as little as one shilling in the pound – a twentieth of the true value. What made matters worse for the amateur thief was the difficulty of contacting a fence. Most dealt only with known thieves. Newcomers had to use an established crook or other trusted intermediary and these go-betweens charged a fee.

‘Leaving shops’ (unlicensed pawnbrokers), chandlers’ shops, ‘green-stalls’ (markets stalls which dealt in all kinds of household goods), marine stores and metal dealers were all likely fronts for fences. Pedlars frequently operated as small scale fences. To avoid detection, thieves often disposed of their booty in a city other than where they stole it. Police records from this period suggest that there were more known receivers in Liverpool than Manchester and they generally paid a better price. Not surprisingly, many goods stolen in Manchester found their way to Liverpool. Really distinctive and extremely valuable booty went to London. The capital was the fence’s Mecca. Many of the goods stolen in England eventually found their way there because the city had outlets for every commodity and channels through which goods could be shipped abroad.

Despite all these precautions, the police had considerable success in identifying receivers – but it was difficult to convict them. Juries were reluctant to convict, often because a host of neighbours testified to the defendant’s good character. The only exception seems to have been when the man in the dock was a Jew. Perhaps juries were influenced by the image of Dickens’s Fagin. Maybe it was simply anti-Semitism at work. Either way juries were inclined to condemn a man simply because he was a Jew.

Yet there was at least one respect in which literature accurately reflected life. ‘Flash houses’ were places where experienced criminals trained their young protégés.
Oliver Twist’s
Artful Dodger and Charley Bates were the fictional equivalent of the thousands inducted into crime by their elders. As
St. Paul’s Magazine
put it in February 1869, ‘Nearly every adult criminal, usually when in prison, always when out, is busy in training young criminals.’

Everyone who bought stolen goods was snared in the web of crime that extended into every working class community. Goods that had ‘fallen off the back of a cart’ were everyday currency in the poor parts of the city. Few could resist the knowing wink of a friend who, proffering a bargain, told him that if he asked no questions he would be told no lies. The man in the pub was the first recourse of the thief and the pickpocket.

The Swell Mobsmen

To those who have never been to a race meeting, a horse is a horse. They don’t know the difference between a prize filly and the creature that pulls a dray. The respectable world likewise spoke of thieves without knowing that there were as many types as there are hairs on a woman’s head.

At all levels, there was a good deal of specialisation among Manchester thieves. Not only did each group differ in what they stole; they also differed in their standing in the criminal hierarchy. Pickpockets, because of their skill and audacity, enjoyed great prestige. Pickpocketing was the most prevalent form of theft in both Manchester and Victorian England generally. No other crime approached it in frequency.

Pickpockets plagued every public gathering. They were among the best-travelled criminals and, like a swarm of locusts moving from one feeding ground to another, always followed the crowd. As the century progressed, the amateur pickpocket or street thief – generally a child – declined with the spread of juvenile reformatories, leaving the field to the professional.

Several developments led to an increase in the number of professional pickpockets at the top of the trade. As the size of the prosperous middle class increased, so did the scope for profitable pickings. Cheap and convenient railway travel made it easy for the pickpocket to go from one race meeting to another, from a fair to a festival and then on to a crowded holiday resort. And trains made it easy for the professional pickpocket to move on before the police got to know him. The opportunities for pickpocketing also multiplied at this time. As ever-more shopping areas and places of public entertainment sprang up, pickpockets found opportunities to fleece the unwary victims awaiting them in every town and city. What’s more, the quantity of gold coins in circulation was steadily increasing, with the result that more people were carrying around substantial sums of money, generally without any precautions against theft. Even more valuable were the personal ornaments and jewellery, which became fashionable. The gold watch that pickpocket Charlie Parton stole from John Fletcher, a Manchester businessman, in a city street in 1889 was worth more than a labourer could earn in a year. As we will see, it was this watch which was to prove Parton’s undoing.

However, women were more frequent targets than men. This was largely due to prevailing fashions. The loose clothing favoured by women made it easier to reach into their pockets without being detected. When the victim was a man, it was generally his watch, shirt pin, snuffbox or handkerchief – his most valuable pieces – they targeted. A man’s trouser pockets were generally a no-go area as the fashion was for high-cut pockets to the front, close to the body. Changes in women’s fashions in the 1870s also made life more difficult for the pickpocket. The demise of crinoline – a stiff fabric that muffled the pressure of the thief’s fingers – and the vogue for skirts cut close to the legs, all made the pickpocket’s trade more hazardous.

The greatest threat to the career of a promising pickpocket, however, was imprisonment. A habitual pickpocket would sooner or later serve a long sentence that ruined the delicacy of touch on which he depended. Nothing was more destructive of a pickpocket’s delicate touch than picking oakum and swinging a pick. Oakum picking, the task of unravelling old rope and straightening and cleaning the strands by hand, was a punishment introduced to British prisons in the 1840s. It resulted in callused and thickened fingers lacking the sensitivity required by a pickpocket. This was one of the few occasions on which punishment effectively eradicated a specific crime. The other major hazard for even the finest pickpocket was the experienced policeman. The likes of James Bent and Jerome Caminada believed they could spot a pickpocket by the way he walked down the street. His walk exuded arrogance. Half swaggering, half furtive, he was usually in his late teens or early twenties, sometimes in flash clothes, sometimes threadbare but never ragged. The perceptive recognised his hairstyle as the result of a gaol cropping. Weaving through the traffic, stepping out in front of vehicles, he played a game of brinkmanship in which he knew his nerve wouldn’t be bettered. He was careless of all he passed, contemptuous of conventions of courtesy and safety.

He was a common sight in Manchester. Among his favourite spots were railway stations and food markets, which were conveniently near the slums into which he could at any time disappear. But no matter how skilful, more than any other criminal he depended on effective teamwork to survive and prosper. Most groups – ‘mobs’ – consisted of three or four men and a boy. Generally the boy specialised in women’s purses, handbags and pockets and the rest of the team targeted men. The boy was often taking his first steps in a life of crime. The manual dexterity and unobtrusiveness that made children excellent ‘dippers’ deserted them with age, forcing them to move on to other types of street crime.

Only the best retained their aptitude long enough to reach the elite of street criminals, the swell mobsmen or the swell mob, the crème-de-le-crème of the pickpocketing fraternity. In order to attain this status it was essential to dress well. As the best boasted of earning £30 in an afternoon this was well within their means.

The richest pickings were at a race meeting, the pickpocket’s ideal habitat. What could provide better dipping than a large, closely packed crowd, their attention focussed on the horses and many with their coats open to release the heat of excitement? The pull of the course was so powerful that even the most inept fancied their chances. James Bent once arrested two pickpockets at Manchester races. As both had been out of prison for only days, the court took a dim view of their recidivism and sentenced them to seven years’ penal servitude. Policemen like Bent, with long experience of racecourse thieves, believed that many of them were originally youths of good character but limited means. They often started out as occasional gamblers and then became addicted. Debt led to dishonesty and often dismissal, followed by a gradual drifting into crime. In this sense they were not ordinary criminals.

But once they embarked on a career of dipping they ran a great risk of being arrested. As they invariably operated in pairs, any astute observer scrutinising a crowd could generally spot them. Besides, the Manchester force took what would today be called pro-active action. Experienced men like Caminada and Bent went in search of pickpockets at every sporting event, expecting them to be active. They were seldom disappointed. The police also watched railway stations on the day of a race meeting in the hope of spotting known or suspected thieves. In his memoirs, Caminada describes an occasion when he followed two suspects from the railway station to the Manchester course. Once there they selected a likely victim and stood each side of him as he scanned his race card. The one on his left – the watch side – moved in close to him and positioned his elbow below the victim’s, preventing him bringing his arm down to his side. In an instant his companion relieved the target of his watch. They then disguised themselves by donning different clothes, hats and false whiskers. In order to get rid of the goods as quickly as possible they met their fence near the course. It was at this point that Caminada swooped, having waited for the opportunity to catch thieves and fence at the same time. On this occasion the two pickpockets got six months hard labour, the standard tariff for this offence.

Even if the police caught a racecourse pickpocket in the act, apprehending him was no simple matter. Caminada was fortunate in that he was able to follow his quarry from the course. In every racing crowd there were swindlers, sharpers and a host of others with no sympathy for the police. It was easy for those being arrested to stir up latent antipathy to the police and organise a rush to rescue the miscreants. The actual thief was often a boy but he needed others to jostle the victim and receive the booty. A common ploy was for four thieves to converge on the target, two from behind and two from the front. If the victim kept his hands in his pockets, one of those behind him tipped his hat forward, forcing him to remove his hands in order to right it. They then pressed against him, preventing him from lowering his arms. Those who operated in this way were known as ‘bloke-buzzers’.

Whatever his modus operandi, any pickpocket worth his salt would expect to earn at least five to ten shillings at a fair. Often, he made a great deal more, especially if he lifted a fat wallet. To facilitate this, many of the most successful pickpockets produced specialised tools. A wire device with three hooks and a spring that enabled it to snap shut around a wallet was particularly effective. But even the most sophisticated devices were no substitute for the audacity and coolness that marked out the pickpocket from lesser thieves. Failed dippers gravitated to crimes that afforded none of the aura surrounding the swell mob. In fact, even among the criminal fraternity, most street criminals had little standing.

Dragsmen

Among these were sneak thieves. Some specialised in trying the doors of houses in respectable areas. Mid-morning was their preferred time as servants were often busy making the beds. Clothing, umbrellas or ornaments left on occasional tables in the hall were readily saleable. Even at this level of crime the thief always worked with an accomplice. The golden rule for all thieves was to get rid of the proceeds as soon as possible. To be caught with stolen goods meant certain conviction.

Others were more diverse in their choice of a victim. These were the ones who roamed the streets looking for unfastened basement grids, back doors left unlocked, easily accessible sheds and any other opportunity that might present itself. As many shops in working class areas displayed their wares outside, the opportunist thief often merged into the shoplifter. Railway stations were a magnet for street thieves hoping to find unattended luggage or careless hauliers. These ‘dragsmen’ also hung about the roads leading to stations. A lax cabby might leave a fare’s Gladstone bag or a portmanteau where it could be snatched and spirited away in an instant. One notorious street thief went a step further. Harry Mountfield dressed as a railwayman and helped himself to parcels. Alice Matthews also liked playing a part. She posed as a sickly woman, calling on the surgery in need of the doctor’s help. As soon as the housekeeper left she stole anything of value.

Harry Lancashire matched Alice’s audacity. Adopting the persona of a wealthy businessman about to make an enticing offer for a pub, he asked the landlord to show him round. No sooner had Harry left to make arrangements for the purchase than the landlord discovered valuables were missing. Harry Burke loved a surprise – none more than the ones he got when he opened a letter and found paper money or postal orders enclosed. Of course, none of the letters was addressed to him. He’d fished them out of letterboxes with a piece of wire and some birdlime. Alfred Noakes hovered in church graveyards. A posy in his hands, he hunched over a fresh grave. After a suitable time he called into the church, not to say a prayer for the dearly departed, but to prise open the offertory box.