One who steals from the pocket of a passerby, usually by sleight of hand.
Old men, young men, and boys, stalwart burglars and highway robbers, slept side by side with wizened pickpockets or cunning-featured area-sneaks.1874, Marcus Clarke, For the Term of his Natural Life, Penguin, published 2009, page 52:
For several days, Mr. Sammler returning on the customary bus late afternoons from the Forty-second Street Library had been watching a pickpocket at work […] Mr. Sammler if he had not been a tall straphanger would not with his one good eye have seen these things happening.1970, Saul Bellow, chapter 1, in Mr. Sammler’s Planet, Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, published 1971, page 8:
Vodafone has also dropped its claim against one of Rhys Edwards’s travelling companions – who had been at the same reunion and had his phone pickpocketed two hours later in almost identical circumstances to Rhys Edwards.2014 November 22, Miles Brignall, “Victory against Vodafone for schoolteacher billed £15,000”, in The Guardian: