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London: The conditions look perfect when I walk up from the underground to search for London crime. The sun is out, and so are the crowds. The footpaths around the Bond Street tube station are jammed with shoppers heading to the big department stores nearby, while tourists linger at the souvenir stores.
I can see why this neighbourhood is known for mobile phone theft. Some pedestrians are glancing at their screens as they walk, and some stop to take selfies along Oxford Street, holding their phones out near the kerb. That seems risky in a city with almost 200 cases of phone theft and robbery each day.
But I’m searching for the scene of an older crime. I find it when I get to the corner of Oxford Street and Gee’s Court, a tiny passageway leading to a pedestrian mall. Here, two centuries ago, an ancestor of mine took up a common trade on these streets. He snatched and ran.
William Daley, 17, was a young Irish lad at work with an even younger accomplice. Together, they found a target on Oxford Street in the winter of 1818. England was at peace after defeating Napoleon, but London was ravaged by crushing poverty – and a small square of silk could be worth about two days’ wages.
The target, George Reid, did not even notice the younger thief steal his handkerchief. But a worker nearby saw exactly what happened: the boy took the silk and passed it quickly to Daley, who slipped it into his hat and walked on in the hope of a swift getaway along Oxford Street. That walk turned into a run, however, when Reid called for help. “Stop, thief!” he yelled.
Daley ran from Oxford Street towards Marylebone Lane, a curved street of stores and pubs. A policeman then made an arrest that changed history – at least in my family. “I heard the alarm, and saw the prisoner running up Marylebone Lane,” the constable told a court a few weeks later. “He was stopped, and the handkerchief fell out of his hat.”
We know this because the Old Bailey, in a testament to British justice, kept the transcript from Daley’s appearance in court. The sentence for stealing a silk handkerchief with a value of seven shillings? “Transported for life.” Daley was on a ship to the colonies in July, and he arrived in Sydney on New Year’s Eve. He may not have felt like celebrating.
It seems like a story from Charles Dickens, although Oliver Twist did not appear until 20 years later. In that tale, the hero is found to be of high birth and inherits a fortune, but there was no secret family wealth for Daley. He was sent to work on the farms west of Sydney as a convict labourer before eventually gaining his ticket of leave. At least things did not end badly: he married, became a farmer and died at 70 near Windsor.
I think about that life-changing punishment as I walk down Marylebone Lane. Some of the shop workers around here tell me they rarely see a thief being caught. One of the bar staff at the Spread Eagle, a nearby pub, says she sees a phone being stolen on most nights when she finishes her shift. A thief will speed past on an electric scooter or bike, snatch a phone and race away.
The Metropolitan Police release videos showing brazen thefts in busy areas like Oxford Street, but they say they are cracking down. “Phone theft and robbery fell from 81,439 offences in 2024 to 71,867 in 2025,” they say. It looks like falling again this year, judging by the tally to August. This seems to add to the progress we reported last year.
In one celebrated case, the victim of a phone theft helped guide police to a warehouse at Heathrow Airport using a “find my phone” feature. Remarkably, the phone was left on, and the location signal was still working, so police were able to arrest a gang responsible for shipping about 40,000 phones to China. The three men were sentenced last month to prison terms of up to nine years.
While the official numbers say things are getting better, it is hard to be sure. So I talk to someone who sees a lot of what happens on these streets. Stan Blake, 61, has been selling The Big Issue near Marylebone Lane for about three years. Raised in Wales, he was a builder but lost his job and now relies on magazine sales for his living.
Just last week, he saw two police cars chasing a man on a scooter who had allegedly just stolen five phones. A few years ago, he watched in disbelief as a thief snatched the phone of a woman trying to pay for The Big Issue using Blake’s mobile payment device. He lent her his phone so she could call for help.
Has he ever seen anyone chase a thief and recover a phone? “No, they’ve always got away,” he says. This is a key reason why mobile phone theft is such a talking point in London: many people are worried authorities are not bringing people to justice; that there is a breakdown in law and order.
In a sense, the silk handkerchief was the mobile phone of its day: a small and relatively common item of high value. The difference is that today’s bikes and scooters seem to guarantee a quick escape. And with so many tourists in this city, the thieves are never short of targets.
David Crowe is Europe correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.
