Pickpocket Poems

HE way was long, the wind was cold, The minstrel was infirm and old. Of two bioncs I robbed the bard, For which I got three months with hard.

She wore a wreath of roses The night that first we met, I went to call her carriage— Ne’er that night can I forget. I held the door a moment, And, as she stepped inside, I sneaked her lovely bracelet, And round the corner guyed. The next time that I met her ’Twas in the busy Strand; She wore a hat and feathers, And her purse was in her hand. I saw it in a moment, And methinks I see her now As I snatched her purse and hooked it Ere she’d time to make a row. Yet once again I saw her— It was in the witness-box— A fashionable bonnet Adorned her golden locks. She looked at me a moment, Then said what she’d to say; And that is why they sent me To gloomy Holloway.

It was night in the month of October, And the stars were alight in the sky, When a gent as I thought wasn’t sober The corner I stood at passed by. I saw that his chain was a gold one; I guessed that his watch was the same; And so, as the gent was an old one, I thought him legitimate game. I’d got his gold chain in my fingers, And was going to give it a tug, When whack came a couple of stingers— Two beauties—and right on my lug. Then I’d one that struck stars from my peeper And another that shifted my jaw— A regular send-you-to-sleeper— And that is the last that I saw. The last that I saw till a peeler, To fill sorrow’s cup to the brim, Put my carcase inside a four-wheeler, And said, “What a flat to try him!” “Who is he?” I groaned, as in torture I nervously felt for my face; And he said, “Well, you tackled a scorcher; That elderly gent was Jem Mace.”