Even pickpockets know the value of a good education.

The School of the Seven Bells is a legendary, possibly apocryphal, and deliciously plausible school, said to be based in Colombia. Pickpocketing is largely a skilled combination of timing, and distraction, but South American pickpockets are particularly notorious.

There is, of course, an exam. Thieves-to-be are faced with a mannequin (or even a teacher) in a man’s suit, strewn with pockets, and rigged up with seven strategically-placed bells. They must pick the mark clean, without ringing a single bell.

The story changes with each telling: one version has it that the ‘diploma’ consists of a fake passport to the United States, and entry into one of the major American city crime gangs. The school may have closed, or even moved to Canada. Whatever the truth, the legend won’t die.

(Posted in honor of Mardi Gras: an amazing holiday, and a pickpocket gold mine.)