The thief and the crime

Text 1: A Watch Lost in Fleet Street, by Lionel Ashcombe

An original essay written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

I lost my watch on the afternoon of the 3rd, in Fleet Street, in the space of perhaps a second and a half. I felt a slight tug at my waistcoat, no more than a sparrow might give, and looked down to see the chain swinging empty, and looked up to see a very small boy in a very large coat vanishing between an omnibus and a brewer’s dray. I gave chase, shouting ‘Stop thief!’ with a vigour that surprised me, and a constable at the corner of Shoe Lane caught the boy by the collar as neatly as a man takes an apple from a tree.

At the station house I was able to look at my thief properly. He was ten years old, or said he was, and could not have weighed more than four stone in his coat. His feet were bare and black with the mud of the streets. He gave his name as Jack Smith, which the sergeant wrote down without much hope, and he answered every question with perfect politeness and perfect untruth. When I asked him who had taught him his trade, he looked at me with a kind of pity, as if I had asked who taught him to breathe.

I had my watch back within the hour, unharmed. I have not had my peace of mind back since. The magistrate gave the boy fourteen days and a whipping, and I sat in the court and watched him led away, and found that I did not feel avenged in the least. I keep thinking of the second and a half, and of the skill it must have taken, and of the years of hunger that went into learning it. I am not sure, now, which of us was robbed.

Text 2: Just a Voice, by Janet Morrow

An original contemporary article.

The call came at ten past four on a Tuesday. A calm, pleasant young man said he was from my bank’s fraud team, and that someone had been trying to use my card in Manchester. He knew my name, my address and the last four digits of my account number. He apologised for the inconvenience. He talked me, very patiently, through moving my savings into a ‘safe account’ while the problem was investigated. By half past four, eleven thousand pounds that had taken me twenty years to save had gone.

The police were kind and frank. The money had been moved through several accounts within minutes and was almost certainly abroad. They would investigate, but I should not expect to see it again. I did not. What I had not expected was the shame. I am fifty-eight. I have a degree. I always thought these things happened to other, more foolish people, and for weeks I could not bring myself to tell my sister, because I knew she would think the same.

I still think about him. I wonder how old he is, and where he sat while he talked to me, and whether there were other people in the room doing the same thing, and whether he went home that evening to a family and a meal. I wonder whether he was pleased with himself, or whether I was simply number thirty on a list. I will never know. That is the strangest part. Somebody walked into my life, took something enormous and walked out again, and I could not pick him out of a crowd of two people. The crime is all I have. The criminal is just a voice.

‘Both writers are more interested in the thief than in the crime.’

How far do you agree with this statement?

In your answer you should:

• discuss what we learn about the crime committed against each writer
• explain how far you agree that both writers are more interested in the thief than the crime
• compare the ways the writers present the thief and the effects of the crime.

Support your response with quotations from Text 1 and Text 2.