The pickpockets of New York are very numerous. The term pickpocket is regarded by the police as including not only those who confine their efforts to picking pockets and stealing satchels, traveling bags, and valises, but also gradations of crime which approach the higher degrees of larceny from the person, and highway robbery. The members of this class of the thieving fraternity are well known to the police, and the detectives are kept busy watching them. Their likenesses are contained in the "Rogues' Gallery" at police headquarters, and the authorities know the thieves well, as their careers embrace in every instance a long record of crime.

Instances are not rare in which a whole family, from the oldest to the youngest, is equally deep in crime, the little ones having been thoroughly and systematically educated by their parents in the different branches of stealing, beginning with the simple picking of the pocket of some unwary person, and finally becoming able to commit the most daring burglaries. The pickpockets are largely recruited from the newsboy class. These boys grow up in such constant association with criminals, that their moral sense becomes so stunted that they step readily into lives of crime. They are utterly cut off from any saving or refining influence, and their lives throw them into the companionship of thieves and abandoned women, whose influence over them is all-powerful.

Pickpockets do not as frequently travel in gangs now as in former years. With the exception of the old and well-known professionals, most of this class of thieving is done by young men of 16 or 18 years, who rob men whom they find intoxicated of the money or valuables they may happen to have about them. It is difficult to keep the track of the residences of professional pickpockets, as they change them very often, and also give a different name every time they are arrested, so that they are best known by their aliases.

 The police endeavor to have all known professional thieves constantly under surveillance, but the task is a difficult one. In addition to constantly changing their places of abode, they are in and out of the city frequently. Several saloons and localities, however, have become notorious as resorts of pickpockets. A saloon and hotel near the Bowery and Canal Street, a saloon near the junction of the Bowery and Fourth street, and one near the corner of Mercer and Houston streets, are well known to the police as resorts of thieves.

Most of the pickpockets now come, as we have said, from among the bootblacks and newsboys, who do a thriving business in the winter time, when overcoats are worn with outside pockets for small change. A newsboy, when offering to sell a paper, and while holding it before his customer's face, will skillfully extract from the change pocket in his customer's overcoat all that may be there. Great dexterity is sometimes acquired in this manner.

The ferry boats, the street cars, and the platforms and trains of the elevated railroads are favorite fields for the operations of pickpockets. The neighborhood of the Grand Central Depot is also busily worked by them. One or more thieves will work his way into a crowd of passengers, jostle them about, and rob them with the utmost ease. Some are so bold as to make scarcely any concealment of their work.

All professional pickpockets that are arrested, are photographed, and their pictures are placed in the "Rogues' Gallery" at police headquarters. It sometimes happens, though this is very rare, that one reforms and endeavors to gain an honest livelihood. In that case his picture is taken out of the gallery and privately kept by the Superintendent of Police or the Chief of the Detective Force, and if the reformation proves to be complete and thorough, the picture is either destroyed or given up to the original.

The detectives claim that their efforts to arrest and convict pickpockets are not properly seconded by the police magistrates. In case a professional pickpocket who is well known to the police is arrested late at night on suspicion. he has to be taken to the police court by ten o'clock the next morning. It often happens that there are complaints in the detective office against this very man, and a full description given by some robbed person, which points out this one as the thief wanted. The police magistrates, however, insist that the evidence against the prisoner shall be immediately forthcoming; and, as it is frequently the case that the complainant may be out of town, or for some other reason cannot be immediately found, the prisoner is discharged.