Gentleman Thief

In the Victorian vernacular, a gentleman thief or lady thief (called phantom thief in the East) is a particularly well-behaving and apparently well bred thief. A "gentleman or lady" is usually, but not always, a person with an inherited title of nobility and inherited wealth, who need not work for a living. Such a person steals not in order to gain material wealth, but for adventure; they act without malice. These thieves rarely bother with anonymity or force, preferring to rely on their charisma, physical attractiveness, and clever misdirection to steal the most unobtainable objects — sometimes for their own support, but mostly for the thrill of the act itself.

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Famous quotes containing the words gentleman and/or thief:

    Eighteen convicts being hanged in one day ... a woman was crying an account of their execution. A gentleman asked her why she said nineteen, when there had been but eighteen hanged? She replied, “Sir, I did not know you had been reprieved.”
    Horace Walpole (1717–1797)

    None can re-enter there—
    No thief so politic,
    No Satan with a royal trick
    Steal in by window, chink, or hole,
    To bind or unbind, add what lacked,
    Insert a leaf, or forge a name,
    New-face or finish what is packed,
    Alter or mend eternal fact.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)