panel-thief

We can never have a born penitentiary-bird, or panel-thief, or lowest gambling-hell or groggery keeper, for President—though such may not only emulate, but get, high offices from localities—even from the proud and wealthy city of New York.

General Suffrage, Elections, &c. Notes Left Over 1892

We can never have a born penitentiary-bird, or panel-thief, or lowest gambling-hell or groggery keeper, for President -- though such may not only emulate, but get, high offices from localities -- even from the proud and wealthy city of New York.

Notes Left Over ; from Complete Poetry and Collected Prose 1855

We can never have a born penitentiary-bird, or panel-thief, or lowest gambling-hell or groggery keeper, for President -- though such may not only emulate, but get, high offices from localities -- even from the proud and wealthy city of New York.

Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy Walt Whitman 1855

Thus, proud and happy Mother, might _your_ boy have been a defaced and distorted being, kicked, cuffed, knotted with frost, blackened with bruises; a pick-pocket, a wharf-rat, a panel-thief; with his intellect sharpened to an intense and impish cunning -- only knowing that it is a hard world, and he must get out of it what he can.

Humanity in the City 1847