Coney-catching is Elizabethan English slang for theft carried out through trickery and swindling rather than force, a widespread street crime in medieval and Renaissance England. The term derives from coney, a rabbit raised for eating and so regarded as tame, likening the victim's vulnerability to that of a tame animal caught by a hunter; a practitioner was called a coney-catcher, in effect a con artist. The writer Robert Greene first used the term in print in a series of 1592 pamphlets, including The Defence of Conny-catching and A Disputation betweene a Hee Conny-catcher and a Shee Conny-catcher, and the practice and its name also appear in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and The Merry Wives of Windsor and in John Florio's translation of Montaigne.
Facts
Elements of Offense Notable ExampleRobert Greene's 1592 pamphlets on the subject, including The Defence of Conny-catching and A Disputation betweene a Hee Conny-catcher and a Shee Conny-catcher 1 Jurisdiction VariationMedieval and Renaissance England: devious people on the street would try to con or cheat vulnerable or gullible pedestrians 1 Classification
Offense GradeMinor or Summary Offense 1 Connections
Has Offense Grade
Entity-backed identity for the offense-grade enum value this offense already carries, resolved to a crime concept by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The offense-grade fact itself stays on the offense unchanged.
Sources
1. Coney-catching, Wikipedia
Lead, first paragraph
for theft through trickery.
Lead, third paragraph
It was a practice in medieval and Renaissance England in which devious people on the street would try to con or cheat vulnerable or gullible pedestrians.
Lead, fourth paragraph
A Disputation betweene a Hee Conny-catcher and a Shee Conny-catcher
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