[1 year later]
[London-UK, May 1715]
The watch was the first object on my long list of now stolen items. Each day that went by I went to the carpenter shop where I mostly practiced sleights of hand and picking things without moving them all too much, then when it was time to go I put the things I was learning into practice.
What started as a desperate act to save my mother had become something else entirely. The nine shillings from that first watch had bought medicine, yes, but it had also bought me a taste of something I'd never experienced before... control.
For the first time in my life, I wasn't at the mercy of Kneebone's mood or the scarcity of carpentry work. I had found a way to make my own fortune, however small and however dangerous.
My mother had passed away three months after I sold that watch. The medicine had helped for a while, easing her pain and giving her a few more lucid days, but in the end, the fever took her just as it had taken my father. I'd held her hand as she slipped away, and her last words to me were a whispered blessing.
"Be good, John. Be better than this world."
I'd tried to honor that wish, truly I had. For exactly one week after her funeral, I'd thrown myself into legitimate carpentry work, sanding benches until my fingers bled, fixing broken stools with the dedication of a damn clergyman.
But the coins I earned were so few, and the memories of how easily I'd acquired that first watch kept creeping back into my thoughts like smoke under a door.
The second theft had been easier than the first. A silk handkerchief from a merchant's coat pocket as he haggled over the price of mutton. The third, a small silver spoon from a tavern table while the owner was distracted by a brawl.
Each success built my confidence, and each coin bought me a little more freedom from the grinding poverty that had killed my parents.
Now, a full year later, I had perfected my craft. The carpenter shop had become my training ground, where I practiced the delicate art of misdirection under Kneebone's unknowing supervision.
I would practice palming wood shavings, making them disappear and reappear with the fluid motions that would later serve me on the streets. I learned to identify the exact moment when their attention would be focused elsewhere.
Kneebone, bless his soul, remained none the wiser. He continued to treat me as his apprentice, occasionally praising my improved dexterity with the tools, never suspecting that my nimble fingers were being honed for far different purposes. The irony wasn't lost on me, here I was, supposedly learning an honest trade, while secretly becoming one of London's most skilled pickpockets.
I had built myself a pretty good reputation from being a carpenter and helping the people like me, that's to say poor ones, fixing their floors, walls, roofs... So with my already built reputation I could stroll through town, pickpocketing with no one being the wiser as long as I was good at it.
The beauty of the scheme was in its simplicity. During the day, I was Jim the carpenter's apprentice, the boy who had fixed Mrs. Hartwell's broken window shutter for half the price any other craftsman would charge.
I was the lad who had volunteered to repair the loose floorboards in the church vestry without asking for payment. This reputation preceded me wherever I went, creating a shield of trust that made my true work almost laughably easy.
Who would suspect Honest Jack of lifting their purse?
I was employing a similar strategy that Jonathan Wild the Thief Taker General used but on a much smaller scale, if the rumors were anything to go by. Basically in England you could get hanged for stealing but selling stolen goods, now that was completely legal.
Wild had become something of a legend in London's underworld, a man who had somehow managed to position himself as both the hunter and the hunted.
The authorities praised him as their most effective agent against crime, while the criminals said that he was the puppet master pulling all their strings.
It was a brilliant setup, really, and one that I found myself praising.
A person who was previously renowned for taking names and hanging thieves, but some very weird rumors started crawling around the streets about the oh so perfect Thief-Taker General, that almost every thief in London was under his control.
So when you were robbed, pickpocketed or mugged it was most probably one of Jonathan Wild's thieves, you would then go to Jonathan Wild and ask for his help, which would lead to you ransoming your stolen goods, getting them back and then paying a small fee to Jonathan Wild.
Safe to say it was an excellent scheme but again rumors of such a scheme had been growing and growing.
The merchant would leave grateful, never questioning how Wild had managed to track down goods that the official authorities had given up as lost. The system worked because everyone got what they wanted, the victim got their property back, Wild got his cut, and the actual thieves got to keep operating under his protection.
Still that didn't matter much right now because right now it was time for the thievery hanging, where thieves were hanged by the dozen but weirdly enough it was also the perfect place for a pickpocket to thrive.
Tyburn Tree, they called it, though it was more gallows than tree by now. The massive wooden structure could accommodate two dozen condemned men at once, and on busy days like today, every noose would be put to use.
The irony was delicious, here was the place where thieves came to die, and yet it was also the richest hunting ground in all of London for those of us still practicing the trade.
The crowds that gathered for executions were unlike any other assembly in the city. Rich and poor mingled together, their usual class distinctions temporarily forgotten in the face of the spectacle.
Merchants stood shoulder to shoulder with beggars, fine ladies pressed against whores, and pickpockets like myself moved through them all like fish through water.
"HANG HIM!"
"OPEN THE TRAP DOOR!"
"HURRY UP! WE HAVE DINNER TO COOK!"
Similar shouts rang through the streets as everyone both rich and poor looked upon the sentenced, some crying, others praying, and some cheering and laughing together, a spectacle like no other, and one that had the population both in awe and by the balls.
There was no entertainment like watching human beings die. I had long since stopped trying to understand the psychology of it all.
Some people seemed to genuinely believe they were witnessing justice being served, while others, most in fact were simply hungry for entertainment.
The condemned men stood on the platform, some defiant, others broken, all of them knowing they had only minutes left to live. I recognized a few faces, subpar thieves.
Making my way through the jumbled up crowd, I was able to start pickpocketing things such as stopwatches, wallets, or anything else I could get my grubby hands on. Soon I had my pockets almost completely full of stuff and because of the spectacle of the hangings no one was the wiser.
The beauty of working execution crowds was that everyone was too distracted to notice their belongings going missing.
Even if someone did feel a suspicious tug or brush against their person, they would assume it was just the press of the crowd, the inevitable jostling that occurred when hundreds of people packed together to watch a man die.
I had developed a system over the months. Light items went into my left pocket, heavy items into my right. Anything particularly valuable got tucked into the special compartment I'd sewn into the lining of my coat. If someone did somehow notice their loss and raise an alarm, I could quickly ditch the most obvious evidence while keeping the truly precious items safe.
"HANG!"
A final voice yelled silencing all others, the trapdoors beneath the men's feet opened, and they fell with a sickening crack bellowing through the air, their broken necks the cause of it.
Still there was always one whose noose didn't work properly, the man began writhing as the noose cut off his air supply and he began suffocating, that single one was what almost the entire crowd here was looking forward to.
"YEAH THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR, THAT'S WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT!"
"LOOK AT HIM GO, LOOKS LIKE MY GOLDFISH!"
Similar shouts could be heard across the plaza, yet as I looked upon the struggling thief who could maybe have been hanged for simply stealing a fork, spoon or cup, I reminded myself that in this world to be a thief meant to die by hanging.
Of course they'd need to find a prison that could actually keep me locked up before that could happen.