'Bustling, crowding, and pushing': pickpockets and the nineteenth-century street crowd. (May 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: ANDERSSON, PETER K.
• Is Part Of: Urban history. Volume 41:Part 2(2014)
• Page Start: 291
• Page End: 310
• Publication Date: 2014-05
• Subjects: Cities and towns -- History -- Periodicals; Cities and towns -- History -- Bibliography -- Periodicals; 909.09732
• DOI: 10.1017/S096392681300059X
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0963-9268

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="normal"> <title>ABSTRACT</title> <p>The history of walking in the city has long been neglected, and the existing scholarship is largely concerned with rioting, <italic>flânerie</italic> or urban geography. This article aims to detect the behavioural patterns of pedestrian traffic in the late nineteenth century through a close study of the methods of pickpockets in London streets, with information gleaned from trial reports and writings on pickpockets. By analysing the most common ways in which pickpockets operated, as described in numerous accounts, we can see how they adapted to nineteenth-century pedestrian norms, and through this method acquire a rough outline of what pedestrian traffic looked like, and thus how urban dwellers living in a critical historical period adapted and reacted to urban conditions on an everyday level. The evidence shows that pedestrian traffic through the century remained highly interactive, and that the modern aspects of cities identified in theories of civilizing or impoverishment of the public realm had a very limited impact at this time.</p> </abstract>