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In the case of a mistake, as stated, the store-keeper generally makes the explanations, excuses, and so forth, supplementing them afterwards by payment in a suit for damages. Men shop-lifters or, more properly, store thieves pursue an entirely different method, and confine their operations to a far different kind of store.
In very many, perhaps the majority of, cases he will be satisfied if his goods are recovered, and permit the thief to go unpunished. This is very frequently the case with that class of shop-lifters called, by courtesy, the "kleptomaniac," the wealthy lady who steals what she could easily have purchased.
What he saw within needs no minute description; it may be seen there still, any day: a large, flagged court, surrounded on three sides by two stories of cells with heavy, black, square doors all a-row and mostly open; about a hundred men sitting, lying, or lounging about in scanty rags, some gaunt and feeble, some burly and alert, some scarred and maimed, some sallow, some red, some grizzled, some mere lads, some old and bowed, the sentenced, the untried, men there for the first time, men who were oftener in than out, burglars, smugglers, house-burners, highwaymen, wife-beaters, wharf-rats, common "drunks," pickpockets, shop-lifters, stealers of bread, garroters, murderers, in common equality and fraternity.
Nevertheless, it can be stated as an absolute fact that not less than half a million dollars' worth of goods yearly disappear from the stores through shop-lifters, embracing all kinds of articles, from diamonds to penny fans.
The crime was discovered, and the wretched woman sentenced to be hanged, along with the usual dockful of sheep-stealers, Whiteboys, shop-lifters, and cattle-houghers, who, to the amount of seven or eight at a time, were invariably 'turned off' within four-and-twenty hours after their sentences at each assizes.
For Bentley and Hatchard, alike with Rivington and Frazer, for Colburn and Nisbet, as well as Knight, Tilt, Tyas, Moxon, and Murray, I seem to be gratuitously pouring out in equal measure my versatile meditations; at this sign all customers may be suited; only, shop-lifters will be visited with the utmost rigour of that obnoxious monosyllable.
As a prominent Sixth-avenue gentleman once remarked, "If I should tell how much I annually lost through thieves, or suffered by shop-lifters, I would have the entire band occasionally paying me visits, thinking I had not provided myself with the usual safe-guards against them."
Before Christmas these stores carry enormous stocks of every kind of fancy goods, and their lavish display, added to their crowded condition at all times, renders theft easier than usual. So that, try as they may, the proprietors cannot prevent a certain amount of thieving, and thousands of dollars worth of goods are annually lost to each store by the depredations of shop-lifters.
The frequency with which thefts by shop-lifters occur, and the amount of valuable goods stolen, has rendered store-keepers more suspicious and cautious, probably, than any other class of men in the world.
Then, it is a shop always exposed, it is perfectly haunted with thieves and shop-lifters; they see nobody but raw boys in it, that mind nothing, and the diligent devils never fail to haunt them, so that there are more outcries of 'Stop thief! at their door, and more constables fetched to that shop, than to all the shops in the row.
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