In our modern age, even theft has lost some of its glamour. Don’t get us wrong, if you are on the receiving end of a theft, there’s nothing glamorous about it, and there never has been. Whether it’s your identity someone is stealing (you should have purchased identity theft protection) or your heirlooms (you should have bought better locks), there is little that can make you feel more violated than someone taking what rightfully belongs to you.
Still, all throughout history, we have had romantic notions of our outlaws, and some of them we cast in a heroic light. Here are some of our favorite thieves of all time:
- Robin Hood. We all love the underdog, and when you have someone who robs from the rich and gives to the poor, it’s hard not to pull for them. Of course, no one knows for sure if he was a real person or not. We suspect that there was a historical Robin of Locksley, though we figure the stories about him got bigger with each retelling, if you know what we mean.
- Ali Baba. You have to love a guy with the ingenuity to steal from other thieves. Ali Baba, of course, stole from the 40 thieves, making himself rich in the process. In the end, old Ali is living comfortably and the thieves are brought to justice. Not too shabby.
- Bonny and Clyde. We know, they were gangsters, and dangerous people. We also know that it hurts everybody when banks get robbed. Still, bad as they were, Bonny and Clyde managed to be sexy while committing their crimes.
- The Artful Dodger. Of course, he’s fictional, but the Artful Dodger is still one of the most colorful thieves throughout time. We recommend the musical version, by Lionel Bert over the Dickensian version.
- Long John Silver. He switches sides occasionally, but by the time you learn that he’s a pirate, you’ve already become attached to the character.
You will notice, of course, that identity thieves don’t appear on our list. They probably never will. There is simply nothing appealing at all about someone who sits at a computer and ruins someone else’s life by using their identity. Appealing or not, though, this is one of the fastest growing crimes in the world today, to the point that it’s almost silly to bother locking your doors if you aren’t also going to invest in identity theft protection.
