Mugger Money and a New Epidemic of Crime

“Young people in this city,” a native New Yorker said to me last week, “don’t even know what mugger money is.”

He went on to explain. Mugger money was the small wad of bills most New Yorkers would carry around with them between the mayoral administrations of John V. Lindsay (1966–1973) and David N. Dinkins (1990–1993).

Mugger money was what you kept with you because you expected to be mugged eventually and you needed something to hand over to placate the attacker and persuade him not to kill you. It was kept separately from your actual money in your actual wallet—my friend told me that some more theatrical friends of his would keep their mugger money in a dressed-up fake wallet—and you’d toss it to the mugger and then make a run for it.

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The criminal would get some cash and the victim would keep the bulk of his money, along with his identification—a bureaucratic nightmare to replace—and…