Evening Star Newspaper, December 14, 1930, Page 95

| Exposing the Christmas holiter Department Store Crooks, Who Choose the Busy Yuletide Season for an Orgy of Theft,Have Their Weaknesses. And Here’s a Femi- nine Hawkshaw W hoTells YouHow They Invariably Come to Grief. ' BY IRMA BENJAMIN., O your Christmas shoplifting early!” That appears to be ihe -slogan of the professional shop- lifter, as indicated by the “pick- up” in department stores as long dwo months before the real Christmas shop- season begins. October starts the open geason for the “human fox” hunt, The prey of the shoplifter may be anything om a toy airplane to a sable coat, while ths tive’s hunt includes an amazingly large ©oross-section of humenity. From the small who covets the colapsible. and. easily ked-away foot ball to the erquisitely gowned [ er who haughtily walks out of the store h that much-desired fur coat thrown non- Ohalantly over her arm, they are all there, Ehiug shoulders with the innocent shopper, ng their insidious trade right under the ) eye of unsuspecting salesgirls. ING the gate of the detective bureau of a department store (that is, if one is er detective nor shoplifter) is as difficult &8 bolting jail. But it was finally accomplished; ® lady of the press was sandwiched in between almost steady stream of crafty derelicts. &g may visualize a' Hawkshaw type of de- ve as the match for the astute wits of the lifter. But instead, a very businesslike memnn at the head of the department in- uced, in turn, his best detective, and here's real catch; for she’s a blue-eyed, guileless, ~cheeked lad§, with none of the fiction- tive manner. Fifteen years ago when she her profession she was Margaret Leigh- & name she made so well known in her In five years that it still lives along with more recent one of Pettit. A girl at exchangz, two years before she was y a store detective, Miss Leighton lost her in the dressing room, and in teling head of the department her loss she was ized immediately as having the qualities g0 to make up a good detective. She ::tved the good judgment on the part of her boss. This was her introduction: “Meet Miss Leighton, or Mrs. Pettit, if you will, and $oy to remember her gracious manner and dis- Mrming smile as she speaks for herself.” “You see, I was just 19 when I started as a @estective, and I weighed only 95 pounds then, h enabled me physically to wriggle my way fn anywhere.” Even though Mrs, Pettit may be ¢lassed as a stylish stout today, her scarce five #eet still serve to make her inconspicuous, And ng from the collection of deadly weapons displayed, the aforementioned “disarming” was a most valuable and necessary weapon self-defense. “Can you guess what this is?” smilingly asked as she picked from the wer of ominous and belligerent looking airs a heavy brass arrangement with four therein. I passed! “It's a knuckle,” said blithely, slipping her four fingers through hostile arrangement. “Of course, revolvers Such as these are common, and dope sets like ¢his,” producing a neat red leather case con- g all the paraphernalia for the so-called Shappy dream.” “Here’s a single knuckle,” and 8bhe slipped her dainty forefinger into a ring that resembled the one granny used to wear for fheumatism, but in weight it could knock out & much deadlier foe than disease. = “What's the idea of the baby’s feeding spoon, #ll burned on the bottom?” I asked. “Oh, that is one of many belonging to a less Ppulent ‘dope. He puts the ‘snow’ into the bowl of the spoon, heats it to a liquid, scratches his arm and drops the liquid in with one of medicine droppers. Unfortunately dope and theft go hand in hand. A son of a very Wealthy man, an expert accountant himself, Was sent up after several thefts as much for cure as punishment. He Wwas kept a year until @pparently cured, but in two weeks bad com- pany and an independent income had him in their toils again, and he is a professional shop- lifter today. *“This is one of our prize captures,” she con- tinued, and I was shown the most innocent looking cane, made of metal and painted black, . except for the crooked handle, which was of silver. “The crook who carried this cane was THE SUYNDAY STAR, WASHINGT A motley collection of odds and ends taken from captured shoplifters, which includes brass knuckles, cartridges, a hypodermic syringe, a spoon and several stolen rings. an inventor as well. We've never seen another like it. Look!” And with the lightest pressure of a button at the top near the handle two inconspicuous wire antennae extended craftily from the ferrule of the cane. “It was used in a pre-Christmas rush artfully to remove bills and bonds from the banking window of the store. The.man who carried the cane, most dapper in appearance, slipped it through the window while his accomplice, standing close to the window, palmed the booty the moment it was released from behind the barred cage. It took a long time to catch these two, and there are special detectives on the lookout for any more of the same variety. Here is something similar but not so clever.” This was a con- traption of steel crossbars with handles like scissors. It folded neatly, but when the han- dles were pressed together it shot out more than two feet and its tonglike ends could pick anything up just as pincers do. But the finesse of the cane was decidedly missing. uTHE trick overnight bag is common in usage. The shoplifter puts the bag over. the de- sired article, opens the bag, removes a hand- kerchief or what not, and the bottom simul- taneously acts as a suction pump, drawing the article into it most efficiently. 2 “This looks just like a box, doesn't it?” she asked, exhibiting an apparently carefully wrap- ped box, with the four corners on one end of the brown paper sealed with red wax. But one side of the box opened, and the coveted article was slipped under this flap. A particularly useful receptacle for books was a more complex tool in the shape of a large, square box, resting on a flat package. The box was carefully lifted from its foundation and showed that it had only three sides. “These contraptions are, of course, the former possessions of professional shoplifters, but the more crude, homespun tariety of properties are sometimes very bafling,” Mrs. Pettit declared. “It took us quite some time to land the ‘stove- pipe sisters.’ They were two Negro women, who worked with a roll of linoleum wrappsd up as though newly bought and carried under the arm of one, while the other did her stuff by shoving all sorts of things into the curious receptacle. Of course, the good old muff days used to harvest the real loot. Then there are the ‘swing unders,’ the women who throw dresses or furs on the floor and swing them under their skirts. For a while the short-skirt era put that method out of business, but they are at it again now. I followed a woman for two blocks yesterday. I knew she had a fur piece under her dress. I brushed up against her in the street crowd and felt the head of the fur piece. But how to get it? We must e very careful before we ac- cuse, She stopped a moment on the pavement of a florist’s. I leaned down quickly, as though to pick up a plant, and pulled the fur from under her dress. Of course, she put up an argument (they always do), but when I got her back to the store we found a fine hat also tucked away. The millinery departments are always carefully watched because of the ease with which the prevalent small hat may be lifted. “THE ‘frying pan’ kids were another ingenious pair, but we finally got them. Two frying pans were used, one into which the booty was dropped by the accomplice and the other turned over as a cover.” Giving credit is one thing, but handing out credit in money to the professional crook who steals one day and brings ack the goods the next, with some plausible complaint, is another. According to Mrs. Pettit, this is a regular racket, but it is being curbed now by the watchful detectives placed at the credit desks for that purpose. “If we don’t catch them one day, we do another. They always come back for more.” In the coat department we met one of her co-workers, who discussed with her the case of two women whom they had caught together a few hours before. “I was glad to deposit my charge while you followed yours,” said her dainty co-worker. “Mine wore a dress size 56,” she laughingly added, “with just enough space between her and the dress to ‘tuck in’ a nice coat. We followed them out together. I nabbed the per- fect 56 while Mrs. Pettit followed her smaller friend into a treet car.” “And then the trouble began, because she was an accomplice with no goods on her,” said A curious cane with movable wire an- tennae in its ferrule was used by one professional shoplifter to pick up small valuables. Mrs. Pettit, taking up the thread of the story, “I always try honeyed measures first, but they didn’t go over with this one, so I had to appeal to the conductor, but not before her nauses, due to an overdose of gin, had attracted his attention. That one was two handfuls,” added this most efficient go-getter. “Perhaps our easiest catch in weeks was the case of the woman who was just about to get away with three dresses when a nearby shopper, having seen the theft, fainted dead away and frightened the shoplifter, so that she dropped the dresses and ran.” Apparently there is as much class distinction among shoplifters as among soclety shoppers, and these classes are dealt with accordingly. ‘There is the subway-store thief, who is usually the ofiinary type of shoplifter, unprofessional and therefore more easily caught. But the higher-ups in the “profession” choose the cor- respondingly high-priced departments. = The technique differs materially with the status of the crook, as related by this detective, “The typical pickpocket chooses the Christ~ mas season as his busy time. Bargain counters are his open sesame. Many of them pick a pocketbook and then chivalrously tell their vic- tim that her purse is open.” A hint to the Christmas bargain hunter should be sufficient, but according to Mrs. Pettit all the “funnies” are right when it comes to the bargain hunter. She has the proverbial onee track mind. She knows her bargains and she’s out to get them, while her purse dangles tempt- ingly upon her arm to free her hands for the bargain-table reach. Then there is the coat shopper, who invariably places her purse care= fully under her old coat while she drapes her- self unsuspectingly before the mirror. The sneak thief peers undeér the old coat on the nearby chair and successfully walks off ‘with his booty, entirely unheeded by the owner, "I DON'T think our customers realize how much trouble we take to protect them,” sald Mrs. Pettit. “At sales times and round Christmas the customers suffer most from this sneak-thief menace. It is then that we enlarge our detective staff. We station men around with the comic-strip whiskers and advise them to act like the storybook detective. Women are used in the same fashion, snooping around, obviously eying everybody, leaning on counters, and in general acting so ostentatiously that the most casual observer will recognize them as dee tectives. The shoplifter always looks furtively. about and, seeing such a detective, moves along right into the arms of the real detective who moves unobserved among the shoppers.” Mrs, Pettit’'s charming street gown of brown, with hat to match and pocketbook carefully tucked under her arm, with her hand upon it at all times, as we entered into various departments of the store, proved conclusively her foregoing statement. “We caught a woman today whose hands were laden with diamonds—and what do you suppose she had stolen? Nothing more valuable than a few strings of costume beads and phony, Jewelry. She said she stole them for her maid, That’s a case that needed a lot of study, as do S0 many of our problem cases. It was said of one professional crook that he could steal anye thing that wasn’t nailed, and a week ago he deliberately walked out of the store with a baby coach. I often think if the cunning, successful thief, of which there are many, would think out as cleverly methods of running legitimate business they couldn’t help but land at the top of the ladder. Most of the people we find are degenerates in some way, but always unusually clever. But do you know,” she added, “it's got to be a hard racket, and, like the business man of today, the crook's nerves are all ragged. One told me that for a $50 tablecloth she Had stolen she could gef only $2. Many of the olde timers at shoplifting have gone into bootleg= ging and joined underworld gangs for ‘bigger and better booty.’ However, there are plenty left who turn the Christmas season into an orgy of stealing, and 1t is up to the customer as well as to the detective to do all in his power to prevent this annual menace.”