Definition
A cutfurse is a thief who steals by cutting the purse strings or cords by which a purse is suspended from a person's belt or girdle, thereby taking the purse and its contents. The term describes both the method of theft and, by extension, the person who commits it. In the historical legal context, a cutfurse was treated as a species of pickpocket or common thief, prosecuted under larceny doctrine applicable to the taking of personal property from the person of another.
The offense was significant enough in its era to warrant its own designation precisely because of how common the practice was — and because courts and commentators needed to distinguish it from other forms of theft, including robbery (which required force or fear) and general larceny (which did not require proximity to the victim's person).
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Cutpurse. An archaic or literary term for a pickpocket or petty thief; a person who cuts purses to steal them. Used today almost exclusively in historical, theatrical, or literary contexts.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "One who steals by cutting purses; a pickpocket; a thief." Webster's treats the term as synonymous with pickpocket without legal distinction.
The gap between common and legal usage here is one of precision rather than meaning. In ordinary historical language, cutfurse and pickpocket were used interchangeably. Legally, however, the distinction mattered: the method of taking — cutting versus slipping the hand into a pocket — could affect whether the taking was deemed from the person, which carried heightened penalties under English criminal law.
Common Confusion
Cutfurse is sometimes conflated with pickpocket and with the later variant cutpurse. These terms describe related but technically distinct acts. A pickpocket takes property by sleight of hand from a pocket or garment without cutting. A cutfurse specifically uses a blade or sharp implement to sever the cord or strap securing a purse to the body. The distinction had practical legal relevance in earlier English law, where the precise method of taking bore on whether the act constituted larceny from the person — an aggravated form carrying the possibility of capital punishment under certain statutes. Researchers should not assume that historical sources treat these terms as identical, even when modern usage does.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a historical artifact, not active legal vocabulary, but it appears with meaningful frequency in early English criminal law sources, court records, and commentary dating roughly from the medieval period through the eighteenth century. Researchers working in those materials need to recognize it immediately and understand its legal context.
Several navigational points are important:
First, spelling variation is significant. Historical sources render this term as cutfurse, cut-purse, cutpurse, and cut purse almost interchangeably. Search strategies in archival and digitized historical corpora must account for all variants.
Second, the decline of the term tracks directly with changes in fashion. When belted purses gave way to interior pockets, the practice became physically obsolete, and the vocabulary shifted accordingly. Sources after roughly the mid-eighteenth century use cutpurse increasingly as a generic synonym for thief or pickpocket rather than as a term of art.
Third, the legal significance of theft from the person — as opposed to theft of unattended property — is the key doctrinal thread to follow. Researchers tracing larceny doctrine, aggravated theft, or the history of robbery should use cutfurse as a waypoint into earlier materials, then pivot to the broader larceny and theft-from-the-person framework.
Fourth, Black's citation to Wharton (the reference to "wharton" in the supplemental entry) points toward Francis Wharton's criminal law treatises, which are accessible in the Law Mind corpus and provide more developed doctrinal context for this and related historical theft offenses.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) offers a brief but accurate entry: "one who steals by the method of cutting purses; a common practice when men wore their purses at their girdles, as was once the custom." The entry cites Wharton, situating the term within the criminal law treatise tradition rather than statutory definition. This is consistent with the term's status — it was never a term of statutory art in the way that burglary or robbery were, but rather a descriptive label for a recognized criminal practice treated under general larceny principles.
Historical dictionaries are largely in agreement on the core meaning. The legal dictionaries add the connection to larceny doctrine and the aggravated character of theft from the person; the general dictionaries (Webster's, in particular) treat it as a simple synonym for thief or pickpocket. Neither the legal nor the general historical sources offer extended doctrinal analysis — for that, researchers must go to the treatise literature, particularly Wharton and the older English commentators.
Jurisdictional Note
Cutfurse as a legal term of art is specific to English common law and its early American inheritance. It does not appear as a term of art in civil law jurisdictions. American legal sources rarely use the term after the colonial period, having absorbed the conduct into general larceny and theft-from-the-person statutes.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Historical Theft Offenses
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Larceny
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Theft from the Person