arrested. Both parties are responsible for this infamous course, the
party in power usually making the greatest use of these scoundrels. This
is the cause of the confidence with which thieves of this kind carry on
their trade. Those who desire the city's welfare will find food for
reflection in this fact.

Many of the pick-pockets are women, whose lightness and delicacy of touch
make them dangerous operators. Others are boys. These are usually
termed "kids," and are very dangerous, as people are not inclined to
suspect them. They work in gangs of three or four, and, pushing against
their victim, seize what they can, and make off. Sometimes one of this
gang is arrested, but as he has transferred the plunder to his
confederates, who have escaped, there is no evidence against him.

III. THE FEMALE THIEVES.

In the collection of photographs at the Police Headquarters, to which the
authorities have given the name of "The Rogues' Gallery," there are but
seventy-three portraits of females. The best informed detectives,
however, estimate the actual number of professional female thieves in the
city at about 350.

Women do not often succeed in effecting large robberies, but the total of
their stealings makes up a large sum each year. They are not as liable
to suspicion as men, and most persons hesitate before accusing a woman of
theft. Yet, if successful, the woman's chances of escaping arrest and
punishment are better than those of a man. Her sex compels her to lead a
quieter and more retired life, and she does not as a rule frequent places
in which she is brought under a detective's observation.

Some of the female thieves are the children of thief parents, and are
trained to their lives, others come to such a mode of existence by
degrees. All, as a rule, are loose women, and were so before they became
professional thieves. A few of them are well educated, and some of these
state that they adopted thieving only when all other means failed them,
and that they hoped it would keep them from sacrificing their virtue.
This hope proved vain, and imperceptibly they glided into the latter sin.
Some of these women live in handsomely furnished private rooms in such
localities as Bleecker street. Others herd together in the lower
quarters of the city. The female thief, even the most abandoned,
generally has a husband, who is himself a thief or something worse. She
takes great pride in being a married woman, and