Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/44

28 Many women are as expert as men, and they always have one or two at hand upon great occasions, as I said before. They are furnished with a species of pocket which completely encircles their bodies, coming down half way to the knees; if the wearer be somewhat stout and bulky, it is clear she can conceal a good deal. Besides, if she be searched upon suspicion, the articles will traverse from before to behind, and back again, with a very small quantity of dextrousness; and she would thus elude discovery by any ordinary scrutiny of her person. The same sort of pocket is used in shop-lifting.

Women who walk the streets at night, are invariably pickpockets; and I see no reason to set down those who by day entice the men into their dens, any thing better. Such as stand at the corners of lanes and courts, inviting men to stop, are clumsy hands, but contrive to pick up a good harvest occasionally: they rob indiscriminately every article of dress, knocking off the silly (perhaps drunken) man's hat in the street, with which the accomplice runs away; at other times they will take off his cravat, while bestowing upon him their salacious caresses. A broach, or shirt-pin, is constantly made good prize of, but should the deluded man enter one of those