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HOLIDAY week is the shoplifters’ harvest. The ladylike and gentlemanly pilferers of the city know this. They feel that Christmas comes but once a year, and before and after opportunities for spoliation are most abundant. So the shoplifter sallies forth and the pickpocket wends his way with keen eyes and ready hand among the throng—wends her way perhaps it should be put, for of the shoplifters who infest the city the large majority are females. There are various reasons for this. The work of shoplifting is comparatively easy, it is sometimes remunerative, and above all it is congenial. There are few ladies to whom the visitation of the shops and the handling of the wares are not joys which transcend all others on earth. And the female shoplifter has that touch of nature left in her which makes a clothing store, variety bazaar or jewelry establishment the most delightful spot to exercise her cunning.
In the last few years professionals of this order have wonderfully multiplied in this city, but their increase has been no more than commensurate with that of the metropolitan bazaars. That tells its own story. It is these very places which are most preyed upon and in which the temptation to larceny is most freely offered. The general exposure of the goods of the house on counter or on floor, the throng which is ever stirring about, the constant diversion for the eye or ear of watchers—all serve to prepare an easy way for the shoplifter.
The clerk’s duties are generally manifold. He has to take down and sort his wares for customers; he has to answer a thousand idle queries; he has to puff up the goods, summon the cash boy and see to the account and change, while all that time the throng are whirling past him, and he has no eyes for an individual lounger. Women who, above all others, infest these places cannot but see how ample are the chances offered them, and such as are of the light-fingered community, and even some who are simply not strong in resisting the temptations to which their sex are most subject, are only too liable to pick up some stray trinket or bundle they have been handling and walk away with it. During the holidays many a jacket and dolman, and many a sealskin sack as well, could tell a curious tale of the odds and ends that were huddled beneath it.
It is true that articles of value are seldom captured by the shoplifter. It is generally pieces of dry goods, lingerie or cheap jewelry that are collected. But it is in the number of such petty larcenies that the losses to shopkeepers chiefly lie. Only recently a woman was arrested on whose person were found articles from nearly all of the variety stores on Broadway and Sixth Avenue. The ordinary female dress may be skilfully constructed so as to be an expansive receptacle for loot of all kinds, and the regular professional takes care that she is prepared for her trip with just such available provisions. That is how some of the stores where floor-walkers are employed are sometimes boldly plundered. The shoplifter gathers in her booty, safely stores it, and if detected in picking it up she becomes indignant, boldly subjects herself to an immediate search and nine times out of ten the employe, who is not familiar with criminal methods, misses the false pockets and is forced to admit the offender’s innocence in spite of the evidence of his own senses. The cloak is also a useful article of attire for the shoplifter, and record is kept of women who have concealed inconceivable quantities of goods under a sweeping outer garment. Large rolls of cloth, costly dresses and sealskin sacques have been withdrawn from such repositories, and it is remembered at the Central Office that one clever professional carried under her arms a number of articles of various sizes which it would puzzle a man to bear about with his outstretched arms. A woman was noticed on Fourteenth Street leaving one of the bazaars with a big dolman on her, and a moment later a clerk came out saying that a number of valuable bonnets were missing. A detective elbowed his way through the crowd and overtook the amply clad woman. He feared to make a mistake and subject himself to merited censure by making an improper arrest, so he conceived the ruse of stumbling, apparently accidentally, and raising up one of the suspected stranger’s arms. The trick worked admirably. The arm went up like a flash, and the ground forthwith was strewn with bonnets. She had nearly $200 worth in the collection.
Of course there are occasions when the shoplifter need not convert herself, into a migratory storehouse. She sometimes has a confederate. She of the ready fingers and fluent tongue makes the circuit of the counters. The other presses along after her, gazing vacantly around and keeping severely distant from any of the wares exposed. When her confederate has slipped something out of sight she conveys it adroitly to the other, and the pair go on again. If the more clever operator be detected, no more than a single article will be found on her, and she can generally brazen her way out of its possession by alleging an absent mind or some distraction elsewhere in the store.
There are generally but two classes of shoplifters—the regular criminal professional and the kleptomaniac. The very poor classes seldom take a hand in it. Poverty is held by the world to be the badge of crime, and the poor slattern who enters a store is sure to be so carefully watched that larceny is next to impossible. The shoplifter is always a person of fair apparel and she generally has a comfortable home. If she be a professional she may be one of a criminal community and her home may be shared by some other engaged in equally evil ways. If she be a kleptomaniac—and in shoplifting the word has peculiar significance—she is possibly a woman whose life in other respects is exemplary. It does seem strange that a wife and mother whose home is an honest one, who attends religious service regularly, and who seems far removed from the world of crime, should be so carried away by her admiration of some trinket or knickknack as to risk home, honor, everything to secure it. But the annals of metropolitan offenses are full of instances of just this kind. It is the sex’s fondness for finery that nine times out of ten gets them into trouble. A woman who has left a home happy and well provided for goes shopping. She buys the necessary article she first started to procure after a good deal of selecting and chaffering. Then she has time to look about her and goes counter-gazing. That is the fatal moment. Some taking article—it may only be a trifle—catches her eye and absorbs her. She has already spent the contents of her purse, and she cannot honestly possess it. But the object every moment gains new fascination. She must have it. Then comes the temptation. It is so exposed. There is no one about. It would be such a simple thing to take it and conceal it. Conscience stifled by cupidity is dormant, and the lust of possession is all that possesses her. A moment more and the article is under her cloak, and all of a tremble she is edging away, half frightened, half regretful, yet wholly swayed by the securing of the moment’s idol. Then comes detection. Everything about her rises to betray her—her frightened glance, her sneaking attitude, the closer clutch she has upon her cloak. She is accosted, questioned, and then every thought of home, family and the disgrace that threatens rises before her, and she summons all the pluck there is in her poor, fluttering heart, and denies.
Fatuous soul! She forgets that the sanctity which a moment since surrounded her as an honest woman is now stripped from her. She is searched. The stolen article is found upon her, and she stands there drooping and despairing—a proven thief.
Every year, repeated over and over again, is this sad scene produced. Kleptomania is a by-word applied to Heaven knows how many forms of crime. But among the shoppers of New York there are more women who have had a passion for larceny bred in them than perhaps anywhere else in the world.
Of the real criminal set of shoplifters there are some who extend their operations and embrace picking pockets in the part they play. They are a dangerous class, for at no place are opportunities for plying their arts more frequent than in a shopping bazaar. Attention is engaged by articles that have a greater lure for female eyes than anything else in the world. There is a constant excitement and ripple of conversation. Minds are full of purchases and heedless of pockets. Satchels and purses are laid carelessly upon the counter. The shoplifter sees all this and is ready to act upon it. Not long since a lady placed on a counter beside her a well filled purse. A moment after she mechanically picked it up again and prepared to pay for a purchase. She opened it. There was a bundle of paper in it. She looked at it again. It was not her own, but one that had been adroitly substituted for it.
An unusually cunning shoplifter successfully operated for several years by means of a scheme that he had devised himself. He traveled through England, France, and other European countries, leaving a trail of mysterious thefts behind him. Upon his return to the United States he was detected in the act of committing a robbery, and his plan was exposed. Cloth and silk houses were the scenes of his crimes. The fellow was aided in his thieving by a large-sized valise. The bottom of the bag, which parted in the middle, was hinged to the sides. Near the handle was a spring arrangement which connected with the movable bottom. The shoplifter was in the habit of entering a store while the clerks were engaged in the rear. Going boldly up to a counter he would seemingly carelessly set down his valise upon a pile of goods. As he did so he would spring the bottom, and thus bag a roll of silk or fine cloth. That done he might make a small purchase, or ask one of the clerks for the address of another firm in the same line of business. His appearance was such that it would not cause the slightest suspicion, and the thief, until his way of working was discovered, always managed to leave the store with his gripsack full of plunder.
Two or three shoplifters have been known to enter large cloth dry goods or ostrich feather establishments in the morning just before business opening time, and while the porter or clerk was sweeping out. On some pretext or another one of the rogues engages the single guardian of the store in conversation, and invariably succeeds in luring the unsuspecting man to the rear of the place. This is the thieves’ opportunity, and when the porter’s or clerk’s back is turned to them the shoplifter’s confederates are busy. In a twinkling they conceal whatever goods they are able to capture in false pockets upon their person. Then the first man tells his dupe that he will call again, and leaves the store after his associates.
By what is known as “substitution,” a few skillful male and female shoplifters occasionally succeed in making rich hauls. They operate solely in jewelry stores, and have a fondness for handling and pricing diamond rings and pins. A lapidary who manufactures paste rings and pins is next visited. He is employed to make a substitute for the piece of jewelry which the shoplifter intends stealing. A good description of the article wanted is furnished him, and it is soon finished. When the duplicate has been secured, two or three of the shoplifters acting in concert call at the jewelry store. While the diamonds are again being examined, the spurious article is deftly substituted for the genuine one. After an extended examination the supposed purchase is deferred, the case is returned to the safe, and it is often days before the fact is discovered that a costly ring or pin has been stolen and a paste one left in its place. The shoplifters who make a practice of stealing uncut diamonds sometimes substitute spurious stones to cover the theft. They have been known to swallow the gems, and when arrested on suspicion were able to escape conviction on account of the clever manner in which the trick was performed. This class of thieves are not numerous, and but few have operated in the metropolis within the last ten years. Of late they have plied their vocation with considerable success in several European cities; and it is a well known fact that an ex-official of New York City went to Europe in connection with two of this class of thieves, and he is credited with receiving the proceeds of their plunder and shipping it to this country.
But while the shoplifter’s depredations have made people wary and led to considerable losses to the storekeepers—not so much from very costly articles, but from a quantity whose number aggregates a goodly sum—their practices have frequently led to the injuring of clear reputations and the subjecting of tender feelings to great suffering. Most of the large jewelry establishments and great bazaars employ detectives, the rest floor-walkers. Many of these do not possess the intelligence and cunning they require, and deplorable mistakes occur. Ladies of position have time and again been accused of larcenies of which they were guiltless. And some really absent minded have carried some article away from the counter utterly unconscious of it. Of course it would require an adept in psychological arts to tell the really absent minded woman from the one who pleads it in extenuation of an actual crime, and that makes shoplifting and its consequences all the more deplorable. The guilty have again and again secured immunity from punishment by a well concocted story of forgetfulness. And, perhaps as often, the truly innocent has suffered for the guilty.
There seems no immediate relief for this. But the employment of intelligent and discriminating watchers, and the painstaking investigation of cases of shoplifting are all that can be done to facilitate an apportioning of punishment to the offender, and the saving of the unintentional transgressor from the unhappy consequences of a moment’s distraction.