This was a narrow escape to me, and I was so frighted that I ventured
no more at gold watches a great while. There was indeed a great many
concurring circumstances in this adventure which assisted to my escape;
but the chief was, that the woman whose watch I had pulled at was a
fool; that is to say, she was ignorant of the nature of the attempt,
which one would have thought she should not have been, seeing she was
wise enough to fasten her watch so that it could not be slipped up.
But she was in such a fright that she had no thought about her proper
for the discovery; for she, when she felt the pull, screamed out, and
pushed herself forward, and put all the people about her into disorder,
but said not a word of her watch, or of a pickpocket, for a least two
minutes' time, which was time enough for me, and to spare. For as I
had cried out behind her, as I have said, and bore myself back in the
crowd as she bore forward, there were several people, at least seven or
eight, the throng being still moving on, that were got between me and
her in that time, and then I crying out 'A pickpocket,' rather sooner
than she, or at least as soon, she might as well be the person
suspected as I, and the people were confused in their inquiry; whereas,
had she with a presence of mind needful on such an occasion, as soon as
she felt the pull, not screamed out as she did, but turned immediately
round and seized the next body that was behind her, she had infallibly
taken me.
This is a direction not of the kindest sort to the fraternity, but 'tis
certainly a key to the clue of a pickpocket's motions, and whoever can
follow it will as certainly catch the thief as he will be sure to miss
if he does not.
I had another adventure, which puts this matter out of doubt, and which
may be an instruction for posterity in the case of a pickpocket. My
good old governess, to give a short touch at her history, though she
had left off the trade, was, as I may say, born a pickpocket, and, as I
understood afterwards, had run through all the several degrees of that
art, and yet had never been taken but once, when she was so grossly
detected, that she was convicted and ordered to be transported; but
being a woman of a rare tongue, and withal having money in her pocket,
she found means, the ship putting into Ireland for provisions, to get
on shore there, where she lived and practised her old trade for some
years; when falling into another sort of bad company, she turned
midwife and procuress, and played a hundred pranks there, which she
gave me a little history of in confidence between us as we grew more
intimate; and it was to this wicked creature that I owed all the art
and dexterity I arrived to, in which there were few that ever went
beyond me, or that practised so long without any misfortune.