A thief reveals how he made a fortune pickpocketing women as a teen, calling it an easy and lucrative graft.
This episode is the second chapter of a first-person narrative from a professional thief. The unnamed narrator recounts his early career as a teenage pickpocket specializing in stealing from women. He details the specific conditions that made this criminal trade particularly profitable during his youth.
The narrator operated as a "moll buzzer," a thief who exclusively targets women. He describes how women's dress designs, specifically back pockets, made stealing purses and silk handkerchiefs easy. Every woman, including "Bowery Cruisers" or street walkers, carried fine silk handkerchiefs at that time. The narrator and his associates would resell the stolen handkerchiefs back to the very women they stole from for one or two dollars. He notes this was before large department stores and home delivery, so shoppers carried more cash and parcels in public. Valuable jewelry was also more commonly worn by both men and women in that era. The narrator states there were fewer thieves and a less effective police protection system at the time.
He earned as much as two thousand dollars a month from this graft as a boy. The narrator emphasizes that being young and handsome provided a significant advantage, as boys aroused less suspicion from female targets. He claims a clever, innocent-looking boy could get physically closer to a woman in a crowd or on a streetcar than a man could. The narrator reflects on this period as the "halcyon days" for his line of work. He operated successfully for two years, from age thirteen to fifteen, without police trouble.
The entire episode is a direct, confessional monologue delivered in a gritty, historical tone. The style is narrative and autobiographical, focusing on detailed recollections of a criminal subculture.
Listeners interested in unfiltered social history, underworld jargon, and personal crime narratives will find this compelling. Those seeking a modern analysis, ethical commentary, or a dramatized story might find the straightforward recounting too sparse.
