Pickpocket's Hand in a Mole Trap

1905

Louis Hugon, a young pickpocket of seventeen, had a most unfortunate experience this afternoon while exercising his profession.

A crowd had assembled around a fallen horse in the Place d'Italie, and Hugon saw a lady whose bulging pockets offered all kinds of tempting possibilities. Without further ado he deftly introduced his hand, but instead of grasping the expected purse, found his finger securely caught in a new mole trap which the lady had just purchased.

With Spartan-like heroism, he uttered no cry, but tried to withdraw his hand. The lady, however, became conscious that something was wrong, and Hugon was seized by the bystanders and handed over to the police. The latter took him to the Hospital de la Pitie, where the amputation of his finger was adjudged necessary. — Paris correspondence, London Chronicle.


Descended Mountain on Skis

Norman Libby of Bridgton, Me., recently made the ascent of Mt. Washington and made the descent to the base on skis, without mishap, being the first man who ever successfully made the attempt.

Hired 'Wife' To Weep For Him

1914

But Court Learns of Trick and Sentences Pickpocket

New York, Jan. 22. — When, nearly a year ago, Samuel Berman was arraigned before Judge Nott in the court of general sessions on a charge of picking pockets, a wistful woman, with four children clinging to her skirts, wept pitifully.

The prisoner said she was his wife. The court, touched, suspended sentence and a collection of $100 was taken up for the family.

Berman was in court again on a similar charge. The court eyed him wrathfully. He had learned that the prisoner's "wife and children" of a year ago had been hired for the occasion.

The prisoner pleaded guilty to duping the judge and to picking pockets. He was sentenced to five years in Sing Sing.

A Lady's Long Trance: A Spasm, A Comatose State

1878

A Lady's Long Trance

The Des Moines (Iowa) Register of a recent issue, says: Yesterday evening there stopped at the Given House Mr. and Mrs. Shadle, of Guthrie county, accompanied by some attendants. They are escorting to Mount Pleasant Mrs. Shadle, who has been in an almost continual trance ever since last June.

Some time last March, without any premonitory symptoms, the lady became insane, wild at first, and finally violent. She was visiting a sister near her own residence. Soon after her arrival there she began to talk strangely, and a few days later was raving with insanity, and at times very violent. On the 12th of June Mrs. Shadle had a spasm, from which she passed off into a comatose state, which continued without intermission until October 1, when she awakened and conversed, although incoherently. The next day she again fell asleep and has not since been awake.

She is fed by forcing her mouth open and placing the food inside. Her respiration is regular, but a little more frequent than that of most people of her age, which is twenty-nine. She has one child, a boy of four years. The first evidence of wakefulness she has exhibited since the 2nd of October was the day before yesterday, when she was carried from her home to a vehicle to be transferred to the cars. The little boy climbed into the wagon and placing his arms about his mother's neck, kissed her. Tears immediately rolled from the closed eyes, but they remained closed, and there was no other sign of waking. She is to be taken to the asylum for the insane at Fort Madison.


Ingenious Pickpockets

Lucy H. Hooper says that the Parisian pickpocket has invented a special mode of theft. The thief enters the omnibus, chooses his seat beside some well-dressed and apparently affluent person, and remains motionless and apparently absorbed in his reflections. But between his finger and thumb he holds a very small grain of shot attached to a black silk thread of extreme fineness and strength. When his next neighbor opens his or her pocket-book to pay the fare, the thief adroitly throws his grain of shot into the pocket-book, retailing the end of the silk thread in his hand. The pocket-book is closed and replaced in the owner's pocket, grain of shot and all. The thief profits by some extraordinary jolt of the vehicle to fall against his neighbor, and in that moment he draws in the silk thread and gains possession of his prize.

Gypsy Is Identified by Alleged Victim

1920

Blacksmith Says Woman "Blessed" Away His Bank Roll.

LINCOLN, Neb. — William Dunagan, of Roca, a little village near Lincoln, has identified a young gypsy mother as the woman who "blessed away" $248 of his bank roll in Roca last fall.

Mr. Dunagan is a blacksmith and alleges that the gypsy woman was one of a party riding in eight automobiles that stopped in Roca to have one of the machines repaired.

After he had repaired the car, he says, the woman "blessed him" and took all of the money he had on his person.


20-Cent Tax for Bachelors

Ohio Town Wants Single Men to Pay Sum Monthly

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio. — Unmarried men who pay no municipal taxes may be taxed at a rate of about 20 cents a month. A measure including that provision was reported favorably by the city council and is being considered by the mayor's advisory board. It was estimated such a tax would net the city $192,000 annually.

An Old Time Playful Prisoner

1916

Over a century ago there occurred in London what the Annual Register called "a most unparalleled atrocity." It was only the theft of a pocket handkerchief from a pocket, but the circumstances of the deed explain the vehemence of this denunciation. Four men were on their trial for assaulting a man in his house at Ponder's End, putting him in fear and stealing from him, and one of them relieved the tedium of the trial, which lasted eight hours, by picking the pocket of one of the turnkeys as he stood in the dock. An official had the presence of mind to order the restoration of the handkerchief, and the prisoner had enough presence of mind to obey "with the most careless indifference," but the court, we read, "were horror struck." Justice, however, pulled itself together sufficiently to sentence all four men to death.

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 3.

Wouldn't Drop Eggs to Stop Pickpocket

1920

Thief Gets Away With Purse and Twenty Dollars

ST. LOUIS, Mo., March 25. -- Frederick H. Wedemeier was carrying eggs when he got on a Grand avenue car at Chouteau avenue. When he reached home he had the eggs, but his pocketbook, containing $20, was gone.

Wedemeier was jostled by a negro on the car, but he had to take care of his eggs, he says.

When he found his pocket had been picked, he had to find a place to put down the eggs. And by that time the negro had left the car and was three blocks away.

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 27, 1920, page 1.

Comment: It's kind of nasty seeing it phrased that way for us today. But 1920, there's a lot worse out there!