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Agentleman thief, gentleman burglar, lady thief, or phantom thief is a stock character in fiction. A gentleman or lady thief is characterised by impeccable manners, charm, courtesy, and the avoidance of physical force or intimidation to steal, and often has inherited wealth. They steal not only to gain material wealth but also for the thrill of the act itself, which is often combined in fiction with correcting a moral wrong, selecting wealthy targets, or stealing only particularly rare or challenging objects.

In fiction

In fiction, the gentleman thief is typically superb at stealing while maintaining a gentleman's manners and a code of honour. For example, A. J. Raffles steals only from other gentlemen (and occasionally gives the object away to a good cause); Arsène Lupin steals from the rich who do not appreciate their art or treasures and redistributes it; Saint Tail steals back what was stolen or taken dishonestly or rights the wrongs done to the innocent by implicating the real criminals; Sly Cooper and his gang steal from other thieves and criminals. Another example would be Kaito Kuroba who only steals to amuse the audience, to find the Pandora Gem and find the people who killed his father.

Gentlemen/lady thieves

Notable gentlemen thieves and lady thieves in Western popular culture include the following:

Phantom thieves

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Phantom thief (Japanese: 怪盗, Hepburn: kaitō) is the term for the gentleman/lady thief in Japanese media such as anime, manga, and JRPGs. It draws inspiration from Arsène Lupin and elements in other crime fictions and detective fictions.

Notable phantom thieves in Japanese popular culture include the following:

• The Bundoru Gang (ブンドル団, Bundoru-dan), the main antagonists of Delicious Party Pretty Cure.

Perceptions of real historical figures

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• Charles Earl Boles (b. 1829; d. after 1888), known as Black Bart, was an English-born outlaw noted for the poetic messages he left behind after two of his robberies.^[7] Considered a gentlemanly bandit with a reputation for style and sophistication,^[7] he was one of the most notorious stagecoach robbers to operate in and around Northern California and southern Oregon during the 1870s and 1880s.
• Willie Sutton, a gentleman bank robber of the 1920s who never harmed a person during his robberies and carried only unloaded weapons during the heists.
• D. B. Cooper, the only unidentified hijacker in American aviation history, who, in 1971, extorted $200,000 from an airline before parachuting out of a plane during the cover of night. A flight attendant described him as calm, polite, and well-spoken, not at all consistent with the stereotypes (enraged, hardened criminals or "take-me-to-Cuba" political dissidents) popularly associated with air piracy at the time. Another flight attendant agreed: "He wasn't nervous," she told investigators. "He seemed rather nice. He was never cruel or nasty. He was thoughtful and calm all the time."^[8] He ordered a bourbon and 7 Up, paid his drink tab (and attempted to give a flight attendant the change),^[8] and offered to request meals for the flight crew during the stop in Seattle.^[9]
• Bạch Hải Đường was known as the phantom thief (Vietnamese: siêu trộm) in southern Vietnam from 1970 to 1982. He was wanted by both the pre-1975 National Police and the later Public Security Forces. Bạch Hải Đường was believed to have never killed anyone and that he had only actually used his gun once in a gold robbery, which was also the reason the police started to use lethal force on him.^[10] During one of his arrest, he confessed that he used all stolen money for himself.^[11] However, since Bạch Hải Đường wasn’t known to be a wasteful spender, there were rumours that he donated his money to charity.^[12]

See also

• Gentleman detective
• Wuxia, a genre often with secret societies of outlaws who value honor
• Xianxia, a wuxia offshoot that is a fantasy genre with some popular works that value radical politics often of a traditionalist Chinese religious bent, and often have brutal thief characters who steal and lie but still have a sense of honor^[13]

References

Works cited

• Himmelsbach, Ralph P.; Worcester, Thomas K. (1986). Norjak: The Investigation of D. B. Cooper. West Linn, Oregon: Norjak Project. ISBN 978-0961741501.

Further reading

• Maria K. Bachman (2019). "Keeping Up Appearances; Criminality, Durkheim, and the Case of A. J. Raffles, Gentleman-Thief". In Maria Bachman; Albert Pionke (eds.). The Socio-Literary Imaginary in 19th and 20th Century Britain; Victorian and Edwardian Inflections. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429352829. ISBN 9780429352829. S2CID 198795382.

External links

• The Saint and Leslie Charteris