James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

Which simply meant that I was ripe and ready to better my circumstances at the expense of everybody or anybody, as well as I knew how. Had I known how to pick pockets I am afraid that it would not have been any consideration as to the enormity of the crime that would have stood in the way of my setting about it at once. But I did not know how; it was much too tremendous an undertaking for me. It was easy enough to snatch fruit from Covent Garden stalls, while the salesman was too far away to see you, or to catch you should you unluckily be detected in the act before you had time to get away; but the bare idea of going up to a lady or gentleman and inserting your hand in their pocket, take out and make off with whatever it might contain—whew! he must be a much pluckier boy than I was that attempted it. Of course, I knew that it was done—nay, I had had boys pointed out to me, while I lived under the arches, who picked pockets for a living, and I had likewise seen conjurors and people that could throw summersaults and swallow clasp knives, and one was as great a mystery to me as the other. Morality aside, had the two tasks been set before me—turning a summersault and picking a pocket—I certainly should have chosen the former as being the easiest. And reflecting more than ever before in my life on what a tremendous business picking pockets must be, I sauntered out of the slums, and shortly found myself in Aldgate, where the shops were all alight and gay, and the pavement was thronged with people who carried plenty of money with them.

Close by Fenchurch Street there was a grocer’s shop. It was a very splendid shop, not only on account of the plate-glass, and the great show of foreign fruits, and teas, and spices, and jars of pickles and preserves, but besides these, there were all sorts of Chinese figures in stoneware and carved and painted wood, such as I had never seen before, and which, indeed, seemed strange to most people, for hardly any one passed but gave a look in, and not a few stopped for a still closer look, so that there was quite a small mob round the window. I just got a peep, and being in no sort of hurry, thought I would wait till the people had cleared away a bit, and then I would see all about it.

There was a lamp-post, just facing the shop window, at the edge of the pavement, and I stood leaning against it, waiting. Among the people round the shop was an old lady whom you could not fail to see, because she was very fat and took up more room than any one else. There was something she wanted to see at the bottom pane, and she had to stoop, and push out a good bit to see it. Keeping my eye on the fat woman, and wondering when she would have enough of it and move off, I presently saw a boy a little bigger than I was, pressing close behind her, and moving as she moved. He wasn’t a very well-dressed boy, and I thought he was going to have a lark with the fat woman—to push her head against the window, or something. I thought so till I got a peep at his face, and then I saw that whatever he was after—and that he was after something more than was to be seen in the grocer’s window, I was boy enough of the world to see at a glance—it was not larking. Then, as I looked harder than ever, I saw him do a thing that made me catch my breath and hold on to the lamp-post as though the risk was my own. He put his hand down by the side of her silk dress, took it away again, and as he did so, somebody shifting from the window caused a streak of gas-light to fall on his hand, and on a purse he held in it, and on a bulge of white money showing through the silken chinks. Then he slipped off, no one taking the least notice of him, while the old woman, having finished her inspection, went the other way smiling and nodding her head as she thought of the funny mandarin in the window, making the whole business seem a little like a lark, after all.

But what a lark for the boy! That lovely silk purse with all that money in it! I had sold my boots and stockings for a shilling and about two pen’orth of bread; and I’ll be bound there was at least a dozen shillings in that purse—and that only in the end I had got a glimpse of!

“What a shocking thief!”

“What a lucky chap!”

“Don’t I wish I had that purse?”

These were the thoughts that came into my stupid head one after the other, and then came other thoughts, which were so sudden, and so powerfully wicked, that they made me look to the right and to the left of me as though I was afraid that somebody might hear them.

“How easy!” “While you’ve been shivering here it might have been done three times over!” “You haven’t got pluck enough!”

“That’s all very well,” said I to myself in answer! “easy enough when a fat old woman, with a pocket in her silk frock, sticks herself out like that! Any one could do it. I could! But how long might a cove wait for another such a chance?”

And so it came about that I presently found myself standing against the lamp-post waiting for “another such a chance!”

I didn’t have long to wait The “luck” that attended my first pilfer in Covent Garden Market seemed ready at hand. Before I could have counted fifty, a lady—not a stout one nor an old one, it is true, but owning a bead purse and wearing a silk dress—came out of the grocer’s. She was fidgeting at the purse, out of which, I suppose, she had paid for the goods she had bought; and just as she reached the door, she shut the snap of the purse and dropped it carelessly into the pocket of her silk gown.

“ You would be the sort to crowd in among the others round the window,” thought I.

And so she did.

She sauntered up to the window to have a look at the nodding mandarins, and I crept softly behind her. It seemed that in wishing that she might go to the window I had pledged myself to a bargain I was bound to go through with if she did so. I did as nearly as possible as I had seen the other boy do. While I looked very hard indeed at the Chinaman, my hand slid between the folds in the silk gown, through which I had seen the purse disappear. In an instant my fingers were touching the slippery bead-work, and in another instant the purse was mine! I was strong to run now, and I did run; I ran all the way to Whitechapel Church, and there, in a by-street, and by a light that shone from a little shop window, behind which an honest old tailor sat stitching a coat, I opened the clasp of the purse, as it still lay in the pocket of my trousers, and emptied it. One at a time I took the pieces of money out, looked at them, and slipped them into the other trousers’ pocket. I kept count as I went, and found that I had got eighteen shillings and four-pence—two half-crowns, a half-sovereign, three shillings, and a fourpenny-piece.

In all my life I had never had so much money; no, nor a half, nor a quarter as much. It was an enormous lot of money. But I was not pleased on that account The largeness of the sum seemed to make the crime I had committed all the more tremendous. The half-sovereign, especially, made the business seem dreadfully wicked. Had it been an old purse, with a couple of shillings—or, at the outside, half-a-crown—in it, I believe I should have got a sort of comfort out of the reflection that it was a great risk, and the money no more than paid for it; but when I saw the rich-looking shining purse, and the gold and the large and small silver, I was in great terror, and fully of half a mind to take some of the weight from my conscience by dropping the half-sovereign down the tailor’s area. I did drop the empty purse there.

I didn’t quite know what to do; that is, I didn’t know what to buy to eat, or where to buy it. “If Mouldy or Ripston was with me now I should be all right,” I thought; but, at the same instant, it came into my head that perhaps my old friends would not speak to me now, or have anything to do with my money. I was a pickpocket—a real thief, such as Mouldy had described that time when he was trying to prove to me that our business at Covent Garden was not real thieving. “I don’t call myself a thief, I can tell you,” said Mouldy; and he spoke as though he would be very sorry indeed to be one. Yet I was one, and Mouldy, if he met me, might turn his back on me. It made me feel very miserable indeed to think of this, nor did I arrive at a more comfortable condition of mind until I had stopped at a hot-eel stall and spent the whole of my odd fourpenny-piece.