Cutpurses

This printed ballad broadside sheet with woodcuts of gentlemen and ladies in fashionable clothing features the lyrics for the ballad A Caveat for Cut-purses, c. 1647–1665. Courtesy of The English Broadside Ballads Archive. Original copy in The British Library. CC-BY.4.0.

A cutpurse was the common word for pickpocket in early modern England. Many clothing items did not feature sewn-in pockets, so people had purses of fabric or leather on strings that were tied around the waist or to a belt. The origin of the term comes from late middle English and it references thieves who would cut these suspended purses, which mainly held coins. The playwright and poet Ben Jonson features a ballad about the cutpurse in his popular 1604 comedy, Bartholomew Fair.

Cutpursing made up about 10% of the property crimes in early modern England and was most often perpetrated by males, although historians believe that female participation in crime is underreported during the era.

Life of a Cutpurse

Successful cutpurses were like most successful thieves, with a quiet approach, quick hands, and an even quicker escape. If a cutpurse was caught during a performance at a theatre, he/she would be tied up to the stage and the audience was encouraged to throw food and verbal abuse at the culprit. The punishment for cutpurses was both physical and emotional abuse, followed by other physical sanctions handed out by a magistrate such as whipping, branding, ear-clipping, or being placed in the stocks. Serial offenders might even be hanged.

Cutpurses in Shakespeare’s Plays

One of the most recognized cutpurses in Shakespeare’s plays is Pistol from Henry V. Pistol is a solider who marries the hostess of the local tavern in the London neighborhood of Eastcheap. Very brash and quarrelsome, Pistol is eventually revealed to be a coward and he flees to England to become a cutpurse. A cutpurse is also referenced in Hamlet. Prince Hamlet, while speaking harshly with his mother, Queen Gertrude, says, a murderer and a villain; a slave that is not twentieth part the tithe of your precedent lord; a vice of kings; a cutpurse of the empire and the rule, that from a shelf the precious diadem stole, and put it in his pocket! (3.4.110). Cutpurses carried a strong negative connotation, similar to how society today regards muggers and other petty thieves.

Edgworth in Bartholomew Fair

Ben Jonson’s 1614 city comedy Bartholomew Fair depicts the raucous world of this annual London fair, complete with petty criminals, lovers, clueless officials, brothel keepers and more. The thief Ezekial Edgworth is a cutpurse, who is falsely introduced to the misguided Justice Overdo as an honest clerk. He participates in several schemes during the play, including picking pockets and stealing a marriage certificate. His accomplice Nightengale sings A Caveat for Cutpurses during the play.

Moll Cutpurse

Mary Frith (c.1584–1659), who went by the name Moll Cutpurse, was a famous criminal in 17th century London. She was a thief, broker of stolen goods, talented entertainer in taverns and theaters, and was notorious for parading through London wearing men’s clothes. Numerous references to her were made in the period, including a play in which she is the central character, Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s play The Roaring Girl, published in 1611 but likely performed earlier. One reported incident claims that the cross-dressed Mary Frith took the stage after the play to perform some songs and give bawdy speeches, and so similar afterpieces in London theater were banned because they encouraged debauchery and crime, specifically the work of cutpurses. She was sent to Bridewell, a house of correction for women, several times and had to perform public penance, which she apparently did while drunk. Her raucous life and presence in Middleton and Dekker’s play glamourised her criminal activities, but most cutpurses of the period perpetrated their petty crime in relative obscurity until (or if) they were caught and punished.

Key Print Sources Eastwood, Adrienne. A Tribe of Roaring Girls: Crime and Gender in Early Modern England. Explorations in Renaissance Culture vol. 44, no. 2, 2018, pp. 202–219. Liapi, Lena. Roguery in Print: Crime and Culture in Early Modern London. Boydell Press, 2019. Walker, Garthine. Crime, Gender, and Social Order in Early Modern England. Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Key Online Sources Best, Michael. A Cutpurse. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/history/crime%20and%20the%20law/cutpurse.html. Accessed 21 Feb. 2023. cutpurse, n. OED Online, Oxford University Press, 2022, www.oed.com/view/Entry/46392. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023. Fearn, Esther. Moll Cutpurse. Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 Jul. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Moll-Cutpurse. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023. Mary Frith, Moll Cutpurse, The Roaring Girl. East End Women’s Museum. 20 November 2016. https://eastendwomensmuseum.org/blog/mary-frith. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023. Shakespeare, William. Henry the Fourth, Part 2. Folger Digital Texts. The Folger Shakespeare Library. https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/henry-iv-part-2/. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Folger Digital Texts. The Folger Shakespeare Library. https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.

Image Source Jonson, Ben. A Caveat for Cut-purses. c. 1647–1665. MS. The English Broadside Ballads Archive. https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/30274/album.