HER ANKLES

Evening Star, Issue 19616, 23 July 1927, Page 9

HER ANKLES

CUSTOMSHAN STARED in SKIERS The Sydney ‘ Sun ’ exposes |Bw methods of the modern Customs smuggler Any mention of “smuggling” conjures up visions of nitlianly-lookiiig men and hard-faced women slinking through the dark carrying bundles of contraband, in an endeavor to defeat the vigilance of coastguards. That form of smuggling has long been out of use in Australia. We hav» no coastguards now and no smugglers’ caves. Rut wo have smugglers all the same. They are mainly women of the typo that no one but a Customs officer—our. equivalent of a coastguard—would for a moment suspect of resorting to illegal acts. The heavy rate of duty on silk, wearing apparel, shawls, and furs, has made the smuggling of these articles well worth tho risk, and with the exception of an isolated member of the crew attempting to get a piece of silk or a shawl for his wife or sweetheart, or a male passenger taking a sporting chance of getting some little 1 item through .without adding anything to His Majesty’s revenue, the business, for such it is, is confined to women. GOODS FROM THE EAST.

Hardly a passenger steamer from the East comes to Sydney without the Customs’ searchers making a haul, for it is from the East that most of the contraband comes. Strict as the Customs officers arc, and big though their seizures may be, a considerable amount of valuable goods is got ashore, and finds its way into retail stores. This is fully borne out by the number of complaints which the Collector of Customs atSydney, Mr W. H. Markley, receives from retailers, who complain of the unfair advantage that dishonest traders who soil smuggled goods have. The ad valorem duty on dress materials, made-up frocks, lingerie, shawls, and furs, ranges up to 60 per cent., where a few years ago it was only 10 per cent. Thus it can readily bo seen what a distinct advantage the purveyor of duty less goods has over one who pays the Customs rate.

i WEAR IT ASHORE. The women smugglers rarely carry the contraband ashore. They wear it ashore. Within -the last fortnight a saloon passenger on an Eastern boat, who safely got"past the male examiners, was pulled -up when she was about to leave the ship by a female Customs inspector. She asked the passenger to step into a cabin for a minute or two with her. , , That was aH the time required by the woman official to ascertain that th® frocks ami underclothing that the passenger' was going to wear ashore was sufficient to provide lingerie lor the trousseau of half a dozen brides! The articles were seized by the Customs, and the following day she was fined-a sum greater than she paid tor her first-class passage from Hongkong to Sydney. Jn another case a woman passenger was very warmly greeted by a friend who went on board the steamer to meet her. The warmth was not all in the welcome. A keen-eyed Customs » man noted that the visitor to the vessel went on board without a fur coat, and came ashore wearing one worth many guineas. ' ' . More than one man. for that maw tor, has carried, away from a steamer, just to oblige a friend, articles on which heavy duty would have had to be paid if they had been declared as pasEe " S %OT BE ofMOPO E IION.

A little while ago on an Eastern; boat, which brought a lot of trippers back from the East, a young woman whom the '.Customs’ - officers had come to recognise as a regular traveller on the lino, opened her trunks for inspection with the easy nonchalance of ah old hand. There was nothing dutiable in them. But the officers noticed something very different about her. She had put on considerable weight—-., much more flesh than seemed reasonable for anyone to put on in a short period of two months, since they had seen her last. The trip had made her fat in everything but the ankles. Thia aroused the curiosity of the officers, ami one of them drew the attention of a female inspector to the young lady. She was taken into a cabin, whore tho, woman official discovered that tho passenger had under her light slip-on frock a number of valuable fine silk Chinese shawls, which, had she boon successful in getting ashore,'would have netted a sum over and above what she. gave for (hern, that would more than have paid for her tour. WORE EIGHT STOCKINGS. Another woman caught- recently had \ no lower than four pairs of silk stockings on, while in her trunks were a dozen other pairs. Another woman, who had dose on a score of pairs of stockings in her .travelling bag, declared that they were for her own personal use. fjhc would have got away wiiii it had not a Customs dfieor noticed that they ranged in sizes from n. tiny foot to an out-size for an Amazon. She lost the stockings, and paid a fine of £11) in addition. If it pays to successfully smuggle, ami it. certainly docs, it doesn’t pay to get caught. As instance two fines imposed upon women who bad the misfortune to be detected in the act. One was fined £IOO, and the other £2OO. ; The richest haul ever made in Syd-. ney from an individual was that in the case of a man, in the lining of whose overcoat was found a quantity of valuable jewellery. He was fined £2.000, and the Customs Department forwarded the jewellery to London for .sale, where it realised a little over£7,ooo. Tims (lie smugglers who arc caught m ako up iii revenue for those who get their contraband through—what the Customs “ lose on the swings, they make up on the boats.”