Definition
In Scots law, petty theft — specifically the stealing of trifles or items of small value. Pickery was distinguished from more serious forms of theft by the minor nature of the goods taken and by its punishment, which was not fixed by statute but left to the arbitary discretion of the court. It corresponds roughly to the modern concept of petty larceny or petty theft in common law systems.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A place where cotton is picked; alternatively, petty theft.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Petty theft. [Scot.]
The general English meaning of pickery — petty theft — aligns closely with the Scots legal meaning, but the legal term carries specific technical weight within the Scots criminal law system. Notably, its defining characteristic is not merely the smallness of the theft but the court's discretionary, non-statutory response to it. The Wiktionary agricultural sense (a cotton-picking site) is an entirely separate word of American English origin and has no legal relevance.
Why It Matters in Research
Pickery is a term of exclusively Scots law origin with no direct common law English counterpart. Researchers working in historical Scottish criminal records — particularly pre-19th century — will encounter the term in indictments, court records, and institutional Scots law sources. Several navigational points matter:
First, the punishment described as "arbitrary" does not imply capricious or unlawful discretion; in historical Scots law usage, "arbitrary punishment" meant punishment at the court's discretion rather than a fixed penalty prescribed by statute. Researchers unfamiliar with this usage may misread historical descriptions of pickery sentences as procedurally irregular when they were not.
Second, because pickery appears primarily in Scots law sources, it will not appear in English common law digests or treatises of the same period. Researchers searching common law English sources for an equivalent should look to petty larceny. The two concepts are functionally similar but arise from entirely separate legal traditions.
Third, the Burrill entry cross-references Pitcairn's Criminal Trials — a primary source for early Scottish criminal proceedings — which is the most useful corpus resource for encountering this term in its original procedural context. Researchers tracing the term through case records rather than institutional sources should prioritize Pitcairn.
Fourth, pickery is substantively distinct from the immediately adjacent entry in several historical dictionaries: picketing (labor law). The physical adjacency of these entries in Black's and Black's 2nd creates a minor risk of cross-contamination when reading scanned or abridged historical dictionary sources. The terms are entirely unrelated.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree closely on the definition: petty theft in Scots law, punishable arbitrarily. Black's, Black's 2nd, and Bouvier each cite Bell's Dictionary of the Law of Scotland as authority. Burrill adds the citation to Pitcairn's Criminal Trials and preserves the Old Scots form pykerie, which locates the term's linguistic roots in Scots vernacular rather than Latin or Norman French.
There is no meaningful divergence among the historical sources on substance. Bouvier adds reference to Tait's Institute on Theft, providing a secondary institutional Scots law anchor. None of the historical dictionaries attempt to map pickery onto a precise English equivalent, a silence that researchers should treat as meaningful — the term was understood to belong to a distinct legal system rather than as a translatable common law concept.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: any procedural specifics about what thresholds of value distinguished pickery from theft more generally, or how Scottish courts in practice calibrated their discretionary punishments. For that level of detail, primary sources such as Pitcairn and Scots institutional writers (Mackenzie, Hume, Burnett) are necessary.
Jurisdictional Note
Pickery is specific to Scots law and has no recognized equivalent in English common law, Irish law, or American law. Researchers working in any jurisdiction outside Scotland will not encounter this term in operative legal sources.