The Right Way to Do Wrong by Harry Houdini Page B

SUPERSTITIONS
    Some people imagine that a burglar is forever on the still hunt for plunder; that the breaking into houses forms a nightly part of his program, and that he would be a lonesome individual unless he had a dark lantern in onehand and a jimmy in the other. The truth of the matter is that professional burglars rarely make more than eight or ten good hauls in the course of a season, and that to be out on more than one job inside of a week or ten days would be considered rather dangerous. Of course, there are cases where gangs of burglars are working certain sections of the city where a number of startling robberies are committed one after another, but your careful and successful cracksman limits his work and increases his safety.
    The burglar, no doubt, may be a quiet citizen, a householder himself, and one known as a respectable man to his neighbors, and when occasionally he disappears for a week or a fortnight, it is attributed to business in a distant city. His “business” brings him in another rich haul, and when that is disposed of he is on “Easy” street again until inclination or necessity compels him to go forth in quest of other plunder.
    Sailors are superstitious, but burglars share that honor with them, for there is no class of individuals who look more carefully to signs of good and evil omen than does your professional crib cracker. From an ex-convict whom I once befriended, in Omaha, and from other sources, I learned the following most common superstitions of thieves and burglars.
    A black cat is a certain forerunner of disaster to the burglar, and householders who suddenly find their black cats poisoned may take it as a warning that the robbery of their domain has been decided upon, for the criminals take care to destroy their dumb enemies before paying a midnight call. Dogs, on the contrary, they fear but little,however savage they may be, because they take care to carry in their pockets pieces of ivory, a certain cure for dog-bites.
    The cries of an infant warn the marauder that misfortune awaits him in the neighborhood. He will not stay in a house if he finds a clock stopped, a broken mirror, or an unframed oil painting; these are infallible omens of disaster.
    One of the chief terrors of the burglar is a newly painted house. Several years ago in a northern town, some disciples of the jimmy broke into a large domicile, but removed nothing, though they favored the next house with a visit the same evening and stole everything of value. They were captured as they were scaling the garden wall, and at the trial one confessed that they had spent eight weeks in making preparations for entering the house from which they removed nothing, and upon doing so found it to have been freshly painted, so transferred their attention to the adjoining building, thereby bringing about their capture.
    A criminal studies the weather quite as carefully as the farmer does. He will not perpetrate a crime on the night of a new moon, nor if the orb has a halo or mist round it. And were he to plunder a house during an eclipse, he might as soon give himself up to the law at once, for his days outside of prison walls would be numbered. Even more trifling incidents are of equal significance to the robber. It is bad luck to be followed by a dog, and any undertaking or plundering plan will be abandoned for the time, as it means capture or failure.
    If the house selected has crape on the door, to enterwould be to court disaster, and to kick against a piece of coal in the road would bring about a similar result.
    Pickpockets are very careful not to rob a cross-eyed or club-footed person. To rob a blind man would be to bring down misfortune; but, curiously enough, a blind woman can be victimized with impunity. A stolen purse that contains a battered coin or lock of hair is thrown away intact, or the thief will find himself a prisoner before the day is out.
    Talismans are freely carried and implicitly believed in.