Curtis and the Covent Garden Lift
Category: Artful Pickpockets 26th July 2026
Londoners expected a bit of melodrama at the Royal Italian Opera. They did not expect their waistcoats to go missing like props. Thomas Curtis arrived, apparently, with the breeding of a touring gentleman and the fingers of a man who had practised buttoning gloves on other people's hands. His technique was subtle. He worked the stalls with a smile, a handkerchief flourish, and an elbow placed where an honest fellow would never put an elbow. The brazen simplicity was rather brilliant.
Curtis's story reached the Old Bailey because the law has a taste for finishing acts. A gentleman complained, an usher tutted, a constable did the slow waltz down the aisle. Evidence piled up. A purse, a cipher of receipts, a witness who remembered a face as if it were a half-forgotten aria. The prosecution presented the theatre as if it were a stage for moral clarity. The defence, marvellously, insisted on the usual fog of accident and coincidence. The bench had to untangle three pairs of gloves and one improbable alibi.
What pleases me, and what should please anyone with a liking for social theatre, is how elegantly petty it all was. There was nothing operatic about greed in this case. Instead there was the tiny commerce of sleights. Curtis had, it must be admitted, the air of a man who had spent yonks practising the lift. He wore a coat that sat like a sofa on a polite husband. He addressed witnesses with old chap politeness that made jurors suspect their own manners.
After conviction Curtis rubbed shoulders with the usual string of punishments. The newspapers savoured the scandal. Gentle readers tutted. Some said the whole thing was codswallop to a man and that the theatre should be closed until napkins were inspected. Others called for better ushers. I call it instructive on how social rituals offer the perfect clearing for small thieves to flourish. In the end the law did its business. The audience got its applause. The opera carried on. Cheerio.