3. Early women thieves were shoplifters and pickpockets
Besides luring potential sexual partners into harm’s way in back alleys and other out-of-the-way locales, women in early Victorian London operated as pickpockets. The voluminous dress styles of the age provided a myriad of hiding places upon their person in which to immediately conceal an ill-gotten purse, watch fob, or expensive silk handkerchief. No self-respecting police constable or other functionaries would dare lay a hand on a woman’s personality in that chivalric age and society. Women became adept at surreptitiously passing illicit loot between each other, hidden in scarves, muffs, cloaks, and other items of clothing, By the time a police “maiden” arrived to conduct a more thorough search, the evidence had vanished. Women operating as pickpockets often worked in conjunction with male companions, who provided diversionary interruptions to ease the work of their light-fingered female partner.
The same billowing clothing, with ample places to secure hidden pockets and other receptacles, provided women so inclined prolific shoplifting opportunities. Markets and shops of the day were crowded, usually with just one or two shopkeepers in attendance. All sorts of briefly unattended merchandise disappeared into the folds of women’s clothes. Snuffboxes and candlesticks, watches and chains, silk scarves and handkerchiefs, vanished from inventories into women’s hidden pockets. Again, many worked with companions, male and female, who distracted the shopkeeper long enough for two-foot-long candlesticks to seemingly disappear into thin air. During the Victorian Age, several major gangs emerged, operated and staffed by women, for the purpose of achieving wealth through the art of shoplifting. One of the most famous, or perhaps infamous, operated in an area of London known as the Elephant and Castle, a relatively affluent area when the gang reached its height.