Review: The Prince of Pickpockets
| Published date | 01 April 1931 |
| Date | 01 April 1931 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X3100400220 |
THE POLICE JOURNAL
pathologicallyrather than one to be punished by the law; and yet after having
worked on the reader's feelings most cleverlyfor some
200
pages, he finishes
his book by saying that for his part he hopes that the day will never come
when pathologicaltreatment will supersede the penal code, which, to say the
least of it, leavesthe serious student of criminology
rather'
in the air.'
The
book gains by being written from
the'
amateur' standpoint, but an amateur,
however, who possessesa keen sense of humour and an appreciation of human
psychology.
It
will be of value to all students of criminology.
THE
PRINCE OF PICKPOCKETS. By
RICHARD
S.
LAMBERT.
us.
6d.
net. (Faber & Faber, Ltd. London.)
THIS
is the story of George Barrington, notorious in the latter half of the
eighteenth century as a pickpocket in fashionable London, who succeeded in
extending the field of his operations even to the Royal Levee at the Court of
St. James's, where, disguised as a clergyman, he ' found means to deprive
the Earl of Mexborough of his diamond Order, and to get away from the
palace without exciting suspicion.'
The
author speaks of Barrington in the opening chapter as ' An obscure
Irishman who
••.
might have become a prosperous business man, a respected
public servant, or even a successful lawyer or politician.'
In
his later years,
after his transportation to the Convict Colony in New South Wales, he does
appear to have actually earned respect as a public servant, though not in the
exalted rank the author possibly had in mind in estimating his potentialities.
His suavity and persuasive eloquence alone might have brought him success
as a politician, while the latter of these gifts, combined with his skill in hood-
winking judges and juries by ingenious pleading, suggest that he might have
been a greater success as a lawyerthan he was as a thief. For in spite of his
exploit at the Court of St. James's and the fact that early in his career he
seems to have been able to maintain himself by the proceeds of theft in a style
that enabled him to ' penetrate the society of princes and peers ' and to get
himself' accepted as their companion and equal,' the narratives of his frequent
arrests later indicate that in comparison with
modern'
dips'
he was at times
a rather clumsy operator at the light-fingered business. Then, as now, people
were easily taken in by a glib tongue and elegant manners, and with these
Barrington seems to have been gifted from his earliest youth, notwithstanding
the handicap of illegitimate birth, meagre education, and unpolished sur-
roundings in childhood.
The
author traces the life of this most interesting criminal from his early
days in Ireland right through his amazing career as a thief in London, which
eventually brought him twice to ' the hulks,' and ended with his voyage to
Botany Bay, where he seems to have at last reformed, so far that in 1796
Governor Hunter, in a letter to the Under Secretary in London, mentioned
him specially as ' most zealous on public duty, and one of the most exemplary
in private life of any within the colony.'
No less interesting than the tale of Barrington himself is the very full
description given of the horrors of ' the
hulks'
(the floating prisons in the
Thames, which from the outbreak of the war with America to the founding
of the convict settlement in Australia, were used for the imprisonment of
convicts liable to transportation) and of the life and conditions in the early
days of the convict colony in New South Wales, when the colonization of
Australia was so much in its infancy that food supplies were sometimes
reduced to famine conditions, and a surgeon's mate wrote of rats, crows, and
dogs as articles of diet men were happy to get hold of to supplement their
meagre rations.
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