now for those of you who know anything about blind children you are aware that they make the very best thieves As you can well imagine blind children have incredible senses of smell and they can tell what lies behind a locked door be it fine cloth gold or peanut brittle at fifty paces Moreover their fingers are small enough to slip right through keyholes and their ears keen enough to detect the faintest clicks and clacks of every moving part inside even the most complicated lock Of course the age of great thievery has long since passed today there are few child-thieves left blind or otherwise At one time however the world was simply thick with them This is the story of the greatest thief who ever lived His name as you’ve probably guessed is Peter Nimble As with most infants Peter came into this world with no name at all One morning a group of drunken but good-hearted sailors spotted him bobbing in a basket alongside their ship Perched on the boy’s head was a large raven which had presumably pecked out his eyes Disgusted the sailors killed the bird and delivered the child to the authorities of a nearby port town Though the magistrates had no use for a blind infant a local bylaw required them to at least give the boy a name By silent show of hands they christened him Peter Nimble after a misremembered nursery rhyme With this name and nothing else he was sent off to make his way in the world For the first while he was nursed on the milk of a wounded mother-cat whom he met after crawling beneath the local alehouse The cat permitted baby Peter to live with
her in exchange for his picking the lice and ticks from her fur until one tragic day some months later when the alehouse manager discovered them huddled beneath his porch Furious at finding vermin in his establishment the man shoved the whole family into a bag and tossed them into the bay Using his skillful fingers to untie the knot on that bag marked the beginning of Peter’s career Being furless and naturally buoyant he managed to make it back to shore without too much trouble The cats on the other hand did not fare so well Until this point you have been witness to Peter’s rather typical infancy probably not unlike your own But it was only a matter of time before he distinguished himself from the teething masses The first hints of this appeared in Peter’s uncanny gift for survival Since he had no parents to purchase clothes and food for him he found it necessary to take matters into his own hands There is an old saying about how easy it is to take candy from a baby This saying is utterly false anyone who has tried to take anything from a baby knows well what sort of crying kicking and general commotion will ensue It is very easy however for babies to take things from us Despite being blind young Peter had no trouble sniffing out fruit stands and vegetable carts to steal from He would toddle wherever his nose led him and innocently cut his teeth on whatever food he wanted He soon began to pinch other necessities such as clothes bedding and a bandage for his eyes He tried stealing shoes but found that he preferred going barefoot By his third birthday he was an expert in petty theft and a known menace to the vendors More than once he had been caught in the act only to slip away before the constable could be alerted One problem with a life of crime is that it lowers your chances of social advancement Law-abiding citizens take one look at children like Peter and turn the other way never to offer sweets toys or hope of adoption In providing for himself our boy had all but guaranteed that he would grow up parentless and alone All that changed however when he met an enterprising fellow named Mr Seamus Mr Seamus was a tall wiry man with meaty hands and an enormous head Because of his clumsy touch he had been unable to live out his dream of becoming a cat burglar Instead Mr Seamus had taken a career as a beggarmonger A beggarmonger as you might imagine is someone who deals in beggars The man had built up a business of adopting orphans maiming them good and proper and then sending them out into the streets to beg for coins Any child who dared come home empty-handed was throttled and sold to the workhouse All told Mr Seamus had probably gone through about thirty orphans in his career Peter was five years old when the beggarmonger first spied him beside a fruit stand in the market Hullo boy Mr Seamus said upon his approach What’s your name They call me Blind Pete sir the small boy said still too young to know not to talk
