Oliver Twist; by Charles Dickens.

The sentence that went reverberating through literature and history and - one hopes - caused reforms in social and legal systems - "Please, sir, can I have a little more?", from an orphan in a workhouse, who was punished for asking.

If you had a reasonably happy childhood, you held him close to your heart in your mind, and if you had enough weighing you down you sympathised in principle but disliked the requirement that demanded more out of you than you could afford.

A few years later I was working, and had leave from the gracious employers to attend classes three days a week, so I ran from the office at noon to catch the train to make it in time to classes - there were only two minutes during which I could run across the platform and buy a small roll tht the seller quickly buttered - and ran back to jump into the train, which moved before I could sit. I remember the begger children who would come running and jump in the train and sit in front of me, knowing my routine. I was desparately hungry but unable to eat while they watched and obviously would rather have it, and unable to give any because that was all I survived on, all I then had those days through the whole day.

Oliver Twist is the story of a boy who was genuine in his need, as many even now are, all through the world, and they are probably just as likely to turn to crime due to being unable to sustain - or even morelikely, due to the gangs of slightly elder youth and their bosses who kidnap these orphans for their purposes, to use them for crime.

I remember the exquisitely beautiful gang of girls in Paris metro that stole our money and more when they picked pocket of one of us. Fortunately then we could drive back without border check, and were helped by the hotel manager to inform the credit cards and pay with the one we had still on us. I wonder if those girls - having seen them behave suspiciously before on another trip, and having them jostle us before we alighted and discovered we had been robbed.

I am fairly certain it was they, since they could moreover lull any males with pickable pockets into being careless watching them - I wonder if they took to crime due to circumstance, as preferable to other options for them.

In any case, if society could give better options to poor children and orphans and those in need, perhaps crime would be unable to rope in those that do not take to crime out of choice.