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.
In popular culture
Notable gentlemen thieves (and lady thieves)
in popular culture include the
following:
Professor James Moriarty, the archnemesis
of Sherlock Holmes
Leslie Charteris's Simon Templar
Thomas Crown from The Thomas Crown Affair
John Robie in Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch
a Thief,
E. W. Hornung's A. J. Raffles
Carmen Sandiego (character)
Edward Pierce from The Great Train Robbery
Frank L. Packard's Jimmie Dale, aka The Gray
Seal.
Selina Kyle (Catwoman)
Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin
Arsène Lupin III, from Lupin III (by Monkey
Punch).
Kaito Kuroba the Phantom Thief Kid from Magic
Kaito and later Detective Conan (by
Gosho Aoyama)
Meimi Haneoka, who transforms into Saint Tail,
a thief with acrobatic and
magician skills, from Saint Tail (by Megumi
Tachikawa)
Dark Mousy the angel-like thief from D.N.Angel
(by Yukiru Sugisaki).
David Goldman in An Education
Sir Charles Litton/"The Phantom" in The Pink
Panther (1963 film)
Pierre Despereaux in Psych
Rodney Skinner in League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen (film).
All are superb at stealing while maintaining
a sophisticated front and/or a
thief's code of honor: Raffles steals mostly
when he is especially in need of
money; Lupin steals more from the rich who
don't appreciate art or their
treasures and redistributes it (not unlike
a modern Robin Hood); Saint Tail
steals back what was stolen or taken dishonestly,
or rights the wrongs done to
the innocent by implicating the real criminals.
In real life
Christophe Rocancourt is a modern-day, real-life
example of the gentleman thief.
Charles Bolles, a.k.a. Black Bart, outlaw
of the American West, was known as a
gentleman thief in the 1870s and 1880s.
