The Cony Catching Pamphlets of the 15th Century

By the end of the 15 hundreds, it had a population around a hundred and 50 thousand people. Estimates suggest that about 20 thousand of them were vagabonds, beggars or thieves. There may have been another ten thousand such people roaming the highways in the countryside. That was the context for all of those books and pamphlets that focused on this element of society. They described common scams and schemes used by thieves and petty criminals.