A Conversation in Flash

[George Thompson]

My reading of this passage is in line with JG's: the message is to
pluck the pigeon quickly, before the cops come in.
I have several passages from this era explaining that pickpockets
always work in at least a pair: one takes the wallet and passes if off
to the other, so that if there is a beef, if the victim feels
something and accuses the taker, the taker can say, you're crazy, I
didn't take your wallet, you can search me.  I believe that this is
how the game works still, if there are any artisanal crooks left who
don't simply knock the guy of the head (or shoot him) and go through
his pockets.  I also have at least one instance, on a ferry boat, when
the victim beefed and the ferry boat captain held the boat off the
dock and threatened to search all passengers.  The missing wallet and
cash was quickly "found" on the deck, where it had "fallen from the
victim's pocket".  (Not a boat the size of the present Staten Island
ferry, but a very small boat, possibly horse-powered, with few enough
passengers to make searching them all practicable, if not
constitutional.)
In this case, since the scene is an upstairs room, if the taker handed
off the wallet to someone who quickly pulled out the cash and threw
the empty wallet under a table, and the cops were then to raid and the
victim to beef, there would be no witnesses or evidence to determine
which of the villains were involved.  And if the villain who wound up
with the wallet could get down to the bar before the cops came in,
then the corpus delicti would be even harder to determine.
On the other hand, paper money then was not printed by the feds, but
by a multitude of different banks, and therefore was not uniform, but
to a degree distinctive, so that the victim might be able to say, I
had 2 twenties on the Farmer's and Drover's Bank of Macomb, Ga., and
if one of the rogues had such bills in his pocket, that could be a
problem.  The bills were also printed on one side only, so that
perhaps the victim could say he had a $3 on a city bank, but had
written his girl-friend's telephone number on the back.  Limitations
on unreasonable searches were not much of a hindrance to the cops back
then.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Jonathon Green <slang at ABECEDARY.NET>
Date: Tuesday, March 7, 2006 8:12 am
Subject: Re: A Conversation in Flash

> Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header ---------
> --------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: A Conversation in Flash
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> --------------
> >
> > Jon,
> >
> >   Here's how I read it:
> >
> >   ..."Have they robbed a victim ?"
> >      "Yes."
> >      "Then tell them to give back the loot. The police have been
> watching the place for the last half hour."
> >
> >   Unless the thieves surreptitiously return the loot, the police
> may recognize them and catch them with it when they leave.
> >
> >   On the other hand, if the point of the story is simply to show
> how stupid thieves are, the humor wold lie in the non sequitur
> advice to "hurry up," in spite of the fact that the police are
> watching and may seize the thieves as soon as they emerge.
> >
> >   Jon
> >
> > J
> JL
>
> Fairy snuff, as they say. But... I envisage the bloke downstairs
> sendingthe boy to tell his accomplices to get on with the job
> before the traps
> raid the inn. But as is too often the case in non-contemporary
> slang/cant where the language defeats us and no hard-and-fast
> clues are
> on offer, I fear it comes down to educated guesswork and we may be
> educated, but we're still guessing. I see Fagin (I know we're in NYC,
> but homour me) sending the boy up to the Dodger and Charley Bates
with
> instructions to get on with it, you see him sending a warning to
> stop. I
> think we have to leave it there, though in all honesty, I do find it
> hard to imagine our pickpockets _giving_ or even _putting back_ their
> loot; after all that could lead to arrest - the traps are outside -
> and
> thence Botany Bay or even the gallows. Hey ho. Little did the writer
> know how much analysis his penny-a-lining (if that) would incur 150
> years late
>
> JG
>
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