The Criminal Alphabet by Noel "Razor" Smith Read Free Book Online

‘the Queen of the Forty Thieves’ or ‘Diamond
     Annie’. At one time, in the 1960s, ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser’s sister Eva was a prominent
     member.
    The word ‘hoisting’ could come from the
     fact that women would ‘hoist’ up their outer garments and secrete the goods under
     them, or it could refer to the even older practice of hoisting up the side of a tent
     in order to steal its contents.
    See Hoisting bag
HOUSEBREAKING
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    Housebreaking and
     burglary are two sides of the same crime. Housebreakers are burglars who specialize
     in breaking into houses during daylight hours, whereas burglars will break into any
     building, but usually during the night. On the whole, housebreakers are more random
     and disorganized than night-time burglars, though most of them will dress smartly in
     order to blend into the areas where they plan to commit their crimes. Unless they’re
     working on inside information, which is rare for housebreakers, they’ll simply pick
     an area and walk or drive around it looking for a likely target before knocking on
     the door to see if anyone is home. If no one answers the door, the housebreaker will
     do his job and break in. A lot of housebreakers will enter via the front of the
     house, either by breaking a window or kicking or otherwise forcing the front door
     open, and they’ll go through the premises in a matter of minutes looking for
     valuables. The first room a housebreaker will head for is the master bedroom, as
     they know this is where most people will keep jewellery, cash and other items of
     value. Housebreakers are looking for quick cash and easily saleable items that are
     not too bulky. Housebreakers rely on speed and can be in and out of a house within
     five minutes.
    See Aggy/Aggy Merchants
JIGGLING AND SCISSORING
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    These days, most car thieves and those
     who steal from vehicles tend to cause a lot of damage in pursuit of the prize.
     Because of the sophisticated security systems now fitted as standard on most
     vehicles, the only way in is normally to break a window or jemmy the boot or doors.
     Though some commercial vehicles can still be scissored,this is
     mainly used by jump-up merchants. Scissoring is
     using a large pair of stainless-steel scissors to open a lock. You insert the point
     of the scissors into the lock, wrench them up and down to break the tumblers, then
     give them a quick twist, and the lock should spring open. This whole process should
     take no more than a few seconds. Jiggling can be used on older
     vehicles, and this involves using a car key (pretty much any key will do) in the
     lock to work it open. You have to move it in a fast up-and-down and side-to-side
     motion in order to catch the tumblers in motion and then give it a sharp twist when
     you get a bite.
    See Draggers
, TDA Merchants
, Twockers
THE JUMP-UP
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    Another crime that has now become
     associated with desperate junkies is the jump-up . In the jump-up, a thief follows delivery trucks and vans
     in their smoker and waits until the target vehicle is left
     unattended. The thief then jumps up on to the back of the delivery vehicle and
     throws off as many goods and parcels as possible. Usually working in pairs, jump-up
     merchants will steal anything that might have even the slightest resale value. Back
     in the 1940s and ’50s, the jump-up was a respectable crime for any aspiring
     professional criminal wanting to get into the game on the ground floor. All you
     needed was a smoker and a bit of bottle when it came to nabbing the prize. Nowadays,
     the jump-up is mostly the preserve of junkies and petty thieves, some of whom have
     no embarrassment or compunction about doing a jump-up on a bread van or milk float
     in order to feed their habit. (If the doors of a delivery van are locked, the
     jump-up merchant has to open them quickly, and this is done by jiggling and scissoring .)
See Clipboarding
, On the
     UPS
LAY
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    Lay is an old-fashioned
     word dating from