The Dutch Mob was a New York pickpocket gang during the late nineteenth century.
Formed during the late 1860s by Little Freddie, "Sheeny" Mike Kurtz, and Johnny Irving, former members of the Italian Dave Gang, the Dutch Mob soon became one of the largest pickpocket gangs in the United States numbering around 300 members. Operating in the Manhattan neighborhood east of the Bowery, the area between Houston and Fifth Streets was known as a "pickpockets paradise" to the local press. A common tactic of the gang was to stage a street fight and pickpocket the gathering crowd. A variation of this technique was to have several gang members pick a fight with a victim where he would be "rescued" by other gang members posing as innocent bystanders and have his pockets picked while being rushed through the crowd.
However when Anthony J. Allaire was appointed precinct captain in 1877, police "flying squads" were sent to clear the district attacking anyone who was suspected or resembled a pickpocket or other criminal and by the end of the year few members of the gang remained.
The same area would become home to another gang of mostly teenaged pickpockets, the Crazy Butch Gang in the late-1890s.
Famous quotes containing the words dutch and/or mob:
“Too nice is neighbor’s fool.”
—Common Dutch saying, trans by Johanna C. Prins.
“The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks after them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendour of those who eclipsed and preceded them.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)