Evening star., 1896-10-23
LONDON's OMNIBUS THIEVES.
Their Work SN Profitable That They
- Run q Line of Vehicles.

Their Work So Profitable That They
Run . ttne of Vehicles.
From the Pittsburso oDhpatch.
One Of the haRpiest hunting grounds for
a pickpocket is q London omnibusl Peo-
| pie have been warned Of this over and
over again. Notices are kept continually
pasted on the doors and windows of the
bus: conductors watch with keen and
| suspicious eyes ,doubtful-looking passen-
| gers. and yet al this energy seems to
| make little or no difference to the pick
| pockets They seem to thrive almost as
we'll as II buses were provided for their
special ediflcation, and there are quite a
large number Of thieves in London who
make a living by working almost entirely
| in public conveyances.
One gang In particular was broken up
long ago. 1t consisted OF about twenty
| three men, and was known-on account Of
| a practice they had Of Singing a hooked
stick over their arms-as the Crooked
Stick Gang" 1t was started in 1893. and
| the originator was an exceedingly clever
| thief with whom the police desired further
acquaintance. He started this brilliant
idea by giving an AT home" in the Seven
Dials He hired room in a public house
! for the purpose (as he informed the land
| lorO Of holding Friendly Lead" but as
| matter Of fact the people who turned up
| were one and all practiced pickpockets,
and the outcome Of the meeting was the
| formation Of a sort of thieves union. the
object of which was to prey upon unvary
people who travel in omnibuses and trans
and public conveyances generally. The
| members worked in pairs, the one thieving
and the other watching that he did not
cheat his fellows.
This system worked remarkably well for
time. Each pair Of thieves had num-
Der of ingenious disguises; on different oc-
casions they exchanged routes, and as they
Kept particular record of their proceed
i1gs nfesn and a., L., were careful ref not to work too
long time undetected. At the end Of each
day they met at public house, previously
appointed, for dividing their spoils. and
will be gathered from the fact that they
have divided as much as $3.50 ON a single
day.
After time the conductors of the buses
Especially in principal thoroughfares like
Piccadilly) got to know the gang, and be-
come strangely shortsighted when one of
them hailed them from the pavement
They treated them with an indifference
that was calling, and their behavior seem
ed especially brutal when the passenger
with the crooked stick happened to be
an old. white-hafred gentleman with gold
eyeglasses
When at last business became so in
volved that the directors Of the omnibus
companies began to employ detectives to
watch them. the gang thought it advisable
They started a number Of pirate" buses,
and as just somewhere about this time
the company buses raised their fares, they
easily got large number Of passengers
by retaining the old prices. They were
very careful, however, to stop only for
well-dressed and respectable looking peu-
pie, and 1t was strange thing If a pas
senger did not miss something before he
| or she reached the end OF the journey
Each person who entered the bus was,
OF course, most carefully watched. The
cry All fares" gave the thieves a clue to
| the whereabouts Of the purses, and a short
after thew
| skillfully removed by the working mem
bers.' One of the gang who manipula ted
matters inside the bus was a most dex-
| ferrous pickpocket. 1t was his boast that
| he could extract a purse with a pair Of
| sugar tongs. and he has been known to
steal one, remove all the money, and then
| quietly replace 1t in the owners packet
without exciting the slightest suspicion.
For while these pirate" buses sue
ceeded even better than the others. On
some occasions a single bus has yielded
| over twenty purses day, some of them
containing as much as s15, and 1t was sell
dom that a pocket was picked witht ut
| something Of value being found
At last however, complaints at Scot
| land Yard became numerous that the
| track of the crooked sticks, with the result
handed. and this led shortly afterward to
the arrest Of several Others. After that
| it was not long before they were entirely
| broken up. Without lead they were in
capable of working, systematically, and
| they scattered IN every direction--me stly
| to Portland, where many of them are still
doing time