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Article: Street-rats and gutter-snipes: child pickpockets and street culture in New York City, 1850-1900.(Abstracts)(Author Abstract)
- Article from:
- Journal of Social History
- Article date:
- June 22, 2004
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Journal of Social History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Abstract: Timothy J. Gilfoyle, "Street-Rats and Gutter-Snipes: Child Pickpockets and Street Culture in New York City, 1850-1900"
For over half a century, the street child was an inescapable fixture of the nineteenth-century industrial city. Lacking formal education, adult supervision, and sometimes even a home, such youths were derided as "rats," "gamins," "Arabs," "urchins" and "gutter-snipes." In a country which identified geographic mobility and physical movement as freedom, the street kid represented the logical nightmare--the replacement of community, ...