On Monday 16 March 1874 Miss Caroline Greene arrived at Paddington Station on a train from Bath; she was on route to Essex, where she lived. She left the train and was waiting for her mother to join her when a well-dressed woman in her thirties approached her. The stranger engaged her briefly in conversation and then went to move off.

At that moment William Clarke appeared and took hold of the woman, accusing her of attempting to pick Miss Greene’s pocket. The would-be thief, who gave her name as Catherine Morris, was arrested and taken before Mr Mansfield at Marylebone Police court on the following day.

In court Clarke, a sergeant in Great Western Railway’s private police force, said he had been watching Morris carefully as she worked the crowds on the platform. He’d clearly seen her dip her hand in Miss Greene’s pocket and then walk away. Caroline Greene then testified that she had felt the prisoner’s hand go into her pocket but fortunately she didn’t keep her purse there so hadn’t lost anything.

Catherine Morris vehemently denied the charge and said she’d been set up. Clarke had told the young woman what to say she added, and said she too was only waiting for a friend. Unfortunately for her  the address she’d given to the sergeant implicated her further. Detective Smith of X Division said he’d visited the house she claimed as home to discover that she’d only stayed there for 10 days. He also found out that on the previous Sunday she’d been consorting with a man who’d just been released from prison.

In court Morris refused to say where she had been staying recently and that must have helped the magistrate make up his mind that she was guilty of something, even if direct evidence of pickpocketing was circumstantial at best. He sent her to the house of correction for three months with hard labour.

[from The Morning Post, Wednesday, March 18, 1874]