TATTOO CRAZE

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4363, 3 May 1938, Page 1

TATTOO CRAZE

WOMEN'S STRANGE WHIMS NEEDLE EXPERT SPEAKS Professor Burchett talked of tattooing in a 8.8.C. address recently, says the ‘Listener.’ “My best customers,” he said, “ are not sailors and dock laborers—as they were in my old days nearly half-a-century ago—but women. Only yesterday I had as a client a middle-aged lady who wanted to have brought to her pale cheeks a permanent ruddy complexion—one that wouldn’t wash off—and I made her lips bloom once again. That lady can throw her cosmetic box away at once, thanks to the tatooist’s needle. I do a great deal of tinting to make women’s complexions as schoolgirlish as possible. And to these ladies too, J can say: ‘ You want the best eyebrows. 1 have them.’ 41 A short time ago a wealthy woman came to my place and said she wanted me to make her look as much like Cleopatra as possible. She wished to be tattooed on the legs, arms and back with long green snakes, and her orders were obeyed. Yet another woman instructed me to make a picture on her arm of her favorite poodle with its name inscribed underneath. Then there are feminine clients who want the favorite hymn of their late husbands, or a picture of the church at which they were married, inscribed. Some women make requests which no tattoist could comply with. Most of the designs I tattoo refer to love, and next in order comes war, and then religion. Recently you heard of a man who had his will tattooed on his back. I was the man who did it. What keeps me most busy is inscribing figures of a heart with the name of a girl underneath, but, alas! a large number of my clients who have this done come to me soon afterwards to have the name of the lady changed. One such customer has now made the change 31 times. A woman who had been jilted paid me a return visit to have one of these love inscriptions in the form of a heart changed from red to black. A job of tattooing may take anything from two minutes, which is the usual speed, to 100 hours, this being the biggest job I ever had. It meant painting a mermaid scene almost entirely across a client’s body. During coronation time, I was kept busy almost night and day using my electric needles to engrave crowns, Union Jacks, and the letters G.R., chiefly on the iriu. of visitors from abroad, many < ' whom had been my clients dr- 1' -me war 2( -odd years ago. The kjD l T ve~ever’”had to tattoo a man’s head and most of nis body like a zebra. It, was for show j purposes, and he was very pleased with himself when he looked at the glass. Once the relative of a murdered man asked me to tattoo the word 4 Revenge ’ and a bullet mark on his skin.”