mobsman

The existence of the mobsman or the slave who lives on in this unthinking way, stands very much nearer than ours to that of the brute, which is confined entirely to the present moment; but, for that very reason, it has also less of pain in it than ours.

Studies in Pessimism 2004

Stanley Lake was swearing, in his low tones, like a swell-mobsman to-night.

Wylder's Hand 2003

His quarry that day was not the swell mobsman, but much more dangerous game.

Number Seventeen 1915

'He's a vulgarian, he's a swell-mobsman, he's the sort of man who hangs about the corridors of trains going to the Riviera and steals ladies' jewel-cases.

Seven Men Max Beerbohm 1914

And the landlord had ever insisted that no one, no one at all, could always distinguish with certainty between a real gent and a swell-mobsman.

Tales of the Five Towns Arnold Bennett 1899

"Unless you've got to cope with a _swell mobsman_ who steals your wife's jewels and then gets in such a funk that he practically gives them back again!"

Mr. Justice Raffles 1893

"Merely that the perpetrator of this amusing outrage can be no other than the swell mobsman who relieved Lady Melrose of her necklace and poor Danby of half his stock a year or two ago."

A Thief in the Night: a Book of Raffles' Adventures 1893

At first the thought flashed across me that he might be a "swell mobsman."

The Lock and Key Library Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Modern English Egerton Castle 1889

His callous eye vainly rested on the peopled loneliness of the bustling crowd, intent only upon the possibility of a sudden dash of some sneak thief, or the chance malignity of some swell "mobsman."

The Midnight Passenger : a novel Richard Savage 1874

He may be a swell mobsman for me with his aliases.

St. Ives, Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England Robert Louis Stevenson 1872