NEW SHOPLIFTING MENACE NOW FACES SYDNEY SHOPKEEPERS

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6867, 23 March 1929, Page 18 (Supplement)

NEW SHOPLIFTING MENACE NOW FACES SYDNEY SHOPKEEPERS

MEN ENTER THE FIELD. SYDNEY, March 7. Sydney shopkeepers, already facing a loss of something like £20,000 a year through the operation of shoplifters, are now faced with a new menace in the same direction. Heretofore, the crime has been practised almost exclusively by women, but men have now entered the domain, and have taken with them a cunning exceeding that of women. Still, of every ten shopHfters in Sydney, eight are women, but the men are the more ingenious. Women keep to the old ; fashioned methods of concealing their activities. Tho most common is the coat or fur over the arm. With this hiding her hands from view the shoplifter transfers the articles from the counter practically under the very noses of the attendants. Anything suffices to cover the movement of the hands, and sometimes a newspaper is employed. It was left for man to introduce a little originality into the business. Men are generally the operators of the falsebottomed bags, or the innocent-looking parcel trick. Sydney shop detectives have unearthed many ingeious devices. In one man’s home they found a collection of boxes, neatly wrapped in brown paper, and each had an end removed. The plan was to have the false parcel under the arm, and when the coast was clear to slip articles into it through, the open end. Men generally display more effrontery and more novplty in their methods than women, ami seem to bo better organised. It is this development that has led to all the big stores appointing special staffs of detectives, for it was realised that the out-and-out criminal was turning his attention to shoplifting, perhaps often aided by women. Rarely does tho shoplifter work alone. Ho or she usually is associated with, “cockatoos,” who make it part of their duty to become acquainted with the shop detectives. The worst form of pilfering is the outsider who acts in conjunction with the dishonest employee. Such an organisation can make unlimited inroads into a firm’s stock, and city firms say that up to £IOO worth of goods have beeu obtained weekly by this means. It has only recently been recognised that some of the employees are really dishonest, and it is inevitable that the honest working girls should resent the special precautions that are now being taken to detect thieves. It is said to be an old trick of the dishonest shop girl to slip off her dress, don a new dress from the stock, and then cover it with her old one again. The flimsiness of modern dress lends itself to this form of pilfering. Silk stockings are also easy booty, for it is impossible to tell whether a girl is wearing more than one pair of stockings. What tho thieves do with their stolen goods is a mystery, and if the police could solve’it they would go a long way toward abolishing the crime altogether. It is believed that shop-lift-ers find a ready sale of tho goods for one-quarter their real value to unscrupulous traders, who ask no questions. Evidently it is not always an easy matter to dispose of the goods, for when the rooms of two girls were searched recently goods to the value of nearly £3OO were found to have accumulated.