How to train a pickpocket

Could you make it as a Victorian ‘breech buzzer’? This is how Manchester’s wiliest pickpockets learned their trade

One of the most notorious characters in the slums of Victorian Manchester was best known by her nickname — Cabbage Ann.

She had an unusual but important job in the grimy backstreets of the city.

Cabbage was a thief trainer who spent her days educating pickpockets at her very own school of crime.

In her lodging house in Charter Street, around a dozen lads w…