The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-10-28
LONDON's OMNIBUS THIEVES.
Their Work SO Profitable That They
Ran n Line Of Pirate Vehicles.
From the Pittshurg Dlsnatch.

From the Pittsburg Dispatch.
one of the happlest hunting grounds for
a pickpocket is a London omnibusl Peo-
pie have been warned of this over ana over
again; notices are kept continually pasted
on the doors and windows of the bus:
conductors watch with keen and susplc-
ious eyes Notwithstanding passengers, and
yet all this energy seems to make little
or no difference to the pickpockets They
seem to thrive almost as well as If buses
were provided for their special edlfca-
ton, and there are quite a large number
of thieves in London who make a living
by working almost entirely in public CON
Veyances
one gang in particular was broken up
long ago. 1t consisted of about twenty
three men, and was known-on account
of practice they had of singing a hook
ed stick over their arms-as the Crooked
Stick Gang" 1t was started in 1898, and
the originator was an exceedingly clever
thief with whom the police desired fur
Their acquaintance. He started this brill
liant idea by giving an "At Home" in the
Seven Dials. He hired a room i'm the
public house for the purpose Gas he In
ormed the landlord) of holding a "Friendly
Lead" but as a matter OF fact the people
who turned up were one and all practicod
pickpockets, and the outcome OF this meet
ing was the formation of a sort of thieves
union, the object of which was to pry
upon unwary people who travel in omni-
buses 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 we'll for
a time. Each pair of thieves had a num-
Der of ingenious DISCUSSES; on different
occasions they exchanged routes; and as
they kept a particular record Of their
proceedings, and were careful not to work
too often in the same district, they were
for long time Undecided. At the end
of each day they met at public house.
previously appointed, for dividing their
spells, and fair idea of the profits of the
concern 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 the principal thoroughfares
| like Piccadilly) got to know the gang,
| and become strangely shortsighted when
| one of them hailed them from the pave
| ment. They treated them with an indif-
ference that was CALLING, and their behav-
! ior seemed especially brutal when the
| passenger with the CROOKED stick hap
| pened to be an old, white-haired gentle
! man with gold eyeglasses.
When at last business became so involv-
ed that the directors of the omnibus COM
! panles began to employ detectives to
watch them, the gang thought It advs-
! able to run buses of their own, and they
| did. They started a number of pirate
! buses, and as just somewhere about this
| time the company buses raised their fares,
| they easily got a large number of pas
| sengers by retaining the old prices. They
! were very careful, however, to stop only
| for well-dressed and respectable looking
| people, and IL was a strange thing II a
| passenger did not miss something before
/ ne or she reached the end Of the journey.
Each person who entered the bus was
| of course most carefully watched. The
cry, "All fare" gave the thieves "A clue
| to the whereabouts Of the purses and n
| shore time after they were replaced they
were skillfully removed by the working
| members" one of the gang manipulated
| matters inside the bus was most dex-
! ferrous pickpocket. II 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 it in the onwer's poclott
| without exciting the slightest suspicion.
For a while these pirate" buses sue
/ ceeded even better than the others. on
some occasions a single bus has yielded
4 over twenty purses a day, some OF them
containing as much as SIS, and 1t was sell
| dom that "A pocket was picked without
something of value being found.
| AT idol, HOWcNSit CONipldititb 1T SCOt-
land Yard became so numerous that the
authorities set a special detective on the
| track of the crooked sticks with the re-
suit that one of the members was caught
red-handed. and this led shortly afterward
to the arrest Of several others. After that
1t was not long before they were entire
| ly broken up. Without head they were
incapable OF working systematically. and
they scattered in every direction-mostly
to Portland, where many Of them are still
doing time"