Definition
A cutpurse is a thief who steals by physically cutting the strings or cords by which a purse is suspended from a person's belt or girdle. The term describes both the method and the offender: in an era when portable wealth was carried in pouches worn openly at the waist, slicing the attachment cord was the dominant technique of street theft. As a legal category, cutpurse functioned as a species of larceny from the person — a theft accomplished by stealth and manual dexterity rather than by force or threat. The act did not constitute robbery because it involved no violence or intimidation directed at the victim; the ideal execution left the victim unaware until the thief had fled.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A thief who steals from others' purses or pockets in public.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who cuts purses for the sake of stealing them or their contents, an act common when men wore purses fastened by a string to their girdles; one who steals from the person; a pickpocket.
The common and legal meanings here are closely aligned, but the legal usage carries a narrower technical edge: it fixes the offense to a specific physical method — cutting — that distinguished cutpurses from pickpockets in historical indictments and legal commentary. By Webster's 1913, the distinction had already blurred in popular usage, and "cutpurse" was used loosely as a synonym for any street thief or pickpocket. A researcher reading an old indictment or statute should not assume the terms are interchangeable.
Common Confusion
Cutpurse vs. Pickpocket: These terms are frequently treated as synonyms in both historical and modern sources, but they describe technically distinct methods. A pickpocket extracts the contents of a pocket or purse through manual skill without cutting anything; a cutpurse severs the cord or fastening holding the purse. The distinction mattered to pleaders drafting indictments, because the specific method of taking could affect the form of the charge. By the nineteenth century, with the decline of girdle-worn purses, the practical difference collapsed, and "cutpurse" became archaic while "pickpocket" survived as the operative term.
Why It Matters in Research
Cutpurse is a term of historical legal art with no modern statutory counterpart. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in pre-nineteenth-century English sources — indictments, sessions papers, criminal law treatises, and early American materials derived from English common law. Several points warrant attention:
First, the term signals a specific charging method. Old Bailey records and similar court archives use "cutpurse" as a term of art in the charge, not merely as description. Identifying it in a record tells you something about the pleading conventions of the period, not just the nature of the crime.
Second, the offense sat in a legally significant gap between simple larceny and robbery. Because no force or putting-in-fear was required, the penalties and procedural rules differed from those governing robbery. Researchers examining punishment patterns, benefit of clergy eligibility, or transportation records should be alert to this distinction when cross-referencing offenses.
Third, the term disappears from legal usage as pocket-style carrying replaced girdle-worn purses — roughly by the mid-eighteenth century in practice, though it persists in legal dictionaries through the nineteenth century as a historical gloss. Its presence in a source is itself a dating indicator.
Fourth, American legal sources rarely use the term independently. Where it appears in early American materials, it is almost always borrowed directly from English authority. Researchers should not expect developed American case law on the term.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary consulted carry identical, brief entries: "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. Wharton." The attribution to Wharton refers to Francis Wharton's treatises on criminal law, where the term appears in the context of larceny from the person. The Black's entries do no more than preserve the historical gloss; they do not situate the offense within a broader analytical framework, address the distinction from pickpocketing, or note the legal consequences that attached to the specific method. Webster's 1913 is actually more expansive, citing Shakespeare and capturing the obsolescence of the practice, though without legal analysis. No edition of Black's attempts a modern reconciliation of the term with current theft taxonomy, which reflects its status as a purely historical entry retained for definitional completeness rather than current utility.
Jurisdictional Note
Cutpurse as a distinct legal category is an English common law term. American jurisdictions absorbed it only to the extent they adopted English common law of larceny; it never generated independent American statutory or case law development. Modern theft consolidation statutes in both England and the United States have rendered the category entirely obsolete.