Aah, Funeral Wells.

A gray-bearded man with sunken eyes befitting his constant state of bereavement, he specialized in picking pockets at places of mourning. One minute he’d be keening beside you; the next, he’d be gone and so would your wallet, intensifying the weeping and wailing over fresh loss.

And don’t forget Poodle Murphy, a slim man with the weary look of a beleaguered clerk, but perhaps the finest pickpocket in the country. Among his gifts was the ability to grow a full red beard quickly — a fortuitous talent for someone often on the lam.

There was lanky Banjo Pete Ellis, who gave up minstrelsy to star instead as a bank burglar and all-around sneak. And Little Annie Reilly, a house servant adept at flattering the lady of the house, fussing over the children and vanishing with all the jewelry. And Lord Courtney — a.k.a. Lord Beresford, a.k.a. Sir Harry Vane of Her Majesty’s Lights — a suave British commoner who liked to swindle money from the wealthy belles he bedazzled. Introducing himself to Baltimore society as an officer of the Royal Navy, he so charmed its women that they cut the buttons from his fake uniform to cherish as relics of the empire.

This fraudulent nobleman, along with many other underworld denizens of late-19th-century New York — the pickpockets and hotel thieves, the forgers and confidence men — would surely be forgotten today, their distinctive faces lost to cruel time, were it not for a New York police official whose legacy straddles fame and infamy: the singular and supremely confident Inspector Thomas F. Byrnes.