#Outer worlds pickpocket professional
“If any reader were to encounter such a thief, they’d have a hard time believing they were looking at a professional criminal,” prominent early 20th century lawyer and criminologist Grigory Breitman wrote. In order not to arouse immediate suspicion with their manners and looks, the pickpockets had to look the part. They primarily worked the spots with the largest crowds – theaters, banks, expensive stores. With each ‘training session’, I’d try to get closer to the moment when not a single bell would ring.”īut why the need for artistry then? Well, the first pickpockets appeared in Russia at the time the first paper money and exquisite body jewelry did – in the 19th century, in other words. While serving our sentences in labor camps, in the workshop zones, we’d make a dummy and hang bells on it – that’s how they honed their thieving skills. “Nevertheless, thieves would exchange experiences behind bars. “The skill is impossible to teach,” according to Soviet-era pickpocket Zaur Zugumov. By the way, if you ever hear someone mention “bending fingers” in relation to Russians, it’s a nod to the arduous practice of training finger plasticity while cooped up in prison, something the thieves would do with all that time on their hands. One must naturally possess a particular nervous system, instant, precise reactions, a particular constitution of fingers, palms, elbows and shoulders, as well as a necessary flair for the artistic.” And these are inclinations that required years of honing and were no less difficult than the training of magicians or cardsharps. Criminologist Leonid Belogritz-Kotlyarevsky remembers the following story: “The professors of the thieving world would show right there, in a public square, how sleight of hand works: they’d pull out a snuffbox from the pocket of a passerby, sniff the tobacco and put it back without the the man ever noticing, simply continuing on his journey.”Ĭriminal researcher Aleksandr Kuchinsky writes: “Top-tier pickpockets are born.
The skill often manifests itself before the child hits puberty, which is why seasoned old thieves would often replenish their ranks by making future pickpockets out of small boys – reeling them in with the aforementioned game or impressive magic tricks. Pickpocketing is a criminal enterprise that few can master. Stanislav Govorukhin, 1979, Gosteleradio USSR, Odessa Film Studio A pickpocket arrested at a tram stop, still from "The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed," 1979.
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