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Gentleman Thief: Difference between revisions
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== Literature ==
* In [[The Hobbit]] the Dwarves are under the impression that Bilbo gained his money as a hired thief or in other words was a professional of the type they naturally thought would be useful in stealing dragon treasure.
* [[Robin Hood]], in his usual classic portrayals, robs from the rich and gives to the poor. In some versions, he is a former Noble, making him more literally a Gentleman Thief.
* [[Raffles]]: a character who has been around in literary form since the 1890s. Invented by E. W. Hornung, who meant him to be a subversion of the trope: definitely not a nice guy, and stealing for profit rather than for fun or altruism. (See further discussion under [[Depraved Homosexual]].) It was no use, though; Hornung's readers saw Raffles as glamorous anyway, and later incarnations of the character invariably make him into a hero.
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== Real Life ==
* In his memoirs, [[Badass]] early 1900s detective Frederick Porter Wensley refers to the Spider, a brilliant Gentleman Thief who turned to a life of crime for a sense of adventure.
* Despite the fact that espionage is mainly about hustling, often hustling some quite vile pteople; and sometimes bears distinct resemblance to organized crime, both the OSS and the British Secret Service in World War 2 were crewed largely by upper class boys who had enlisted for patriotism and sense of adventure. Many of these were specialists at activities which in peacetime would be called safecracking, pickpocketing, abduction, extortion, assassination, vandalism-and burglary. Churchill himself jokingly called the SOE(sabatoge and covet ops)"the bureau of ungentlemanly warfare." Nonetheless despite all that nasty stuff a lot of sons of upper class families were willing to stoop to it and performed it with a distinct flaire.
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