Definition
A pickpocket is a thief who secretly and stealthily steals money or other property directly from the person of another — typically by removing items from clothing, bags, or hands without the victim's awareness. The offense is distinguished by its method: the taking occurs on or about the body of the victim through sleight of hand, distraction, or concealment, rather than by force, threat, or entry into a premises.
As a legal matter, pickpocketing is a form of theft or larceny. Depending on jurisdiction and the value of the property taken, it may be charged as petty theft, grand larceny, or a specific statutory offense. Because the taking is accomplished without force or threat, pickpocketing is generally treated as a non-violent property crime, which distinguishes it legally from robbery.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To pick pockets; to steal.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who steals purses or other articles from pockets.
The common and legal meanings are closely aligned here, but the legal significance lies in classification: ordinary usage treats "pickpocket" as a colorful descriptor, while the law uses the concept to draw a hard boundary between theft and robbery. A victim who feels nothing and loses a wallet has been pickpocketed; a victim who is jostled, threatened, or overpowered has been robbed. That distinction carries sharply different consequences in charging, sentencing, and the historical record.
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Common Confusion
Pickpocketing is frequently confused with robbery in non-specialist sources. The distinction is legally fundamental: robbery requires force or intimidation directed at the person, while pickpocketing involves secret or undetected taking. Some historical statutes grouped both under broad larceny frameworks, which can obscure the distinction in older case records. Researchers should also note that "purse snatching" occupies an intermediate zone — courts have split on whether a sudden grab that the victim immediately notices crosses into robbery, depending on whether sufficient force or confrontation occurred.
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Why It Matters in Research
Pickpocketing appears in legal sources under several different labels depending on era and jurisdiction, which creates real research traps. In older English common law materials and their American descendants, the offense typically appears as a species of larceny from the person — a category that carried enhanced penalties compared to ordinary larceny because of the violation of bodily proximity, even absent violence. Researchers working in 18th- or 19th-century materials should search under "larceny from the person" rather than expecting the term "pickpocket" to appear in headnotes or statutory text.
Modern statutory codes often do not use the word "pickpocket" at all, preferring "theft from the person," "larceny from the person," or incorporating the conduct into general theft statutes with aggravating factors tied to proximity to the victim's body. The practical consequence is that cross-era research on this offense requires attention to the underlying conduct, not the label.
The force-versus-stealth boundary matters enormously for corpus researchers working on robbery, assault, or sentencing materials. Cases that turn on whether a taking was sufficiently forceful to constitute robbery frequently involve pickpocket-adjacent facts and are a rich source for understanding how courts have drawn the violence line over time.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) defines a pickpocket concisely as "a thief who secretly steals money or other property from the person of another." The definition is accurate but thin — it does not address the offense's relationship to larceny from the person, the force question, or the evidentiary challenges inherent in prosecuting a crime the victim often did not witness in real time.
Historical legal dictionaries generally treat pickpocket as a descriptive term for a factual pattern rather than a distinct legal category with its own elements, which accurately reflects how courts and statutes have historically handled it: as a variety of larceny, not a freestanding offense. What historical sources miss is the doctrinal work done at the boundary with robbery — a line that has generated substantial case law that the dictionary entries do not capture.
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Jurisdictional Note
Most U.S. jurisdictions address pickpocketing under general theft or larceny statutes, with penalty level determined by the value of property taken. Some states retain enhanced penalties specifically for theft from the person regardless of value. English law historically treated larceny from the person as a distinct and more serious category, and researchers working in comparative or colonial-era materials should be alert to that framing.
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