Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 3, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 April 1860 — Sips of Punch [ARTICLE]

Sips of Punch

Under tho head of “Crinoline for Criminals,” Mr. Punch makes this alarming statement: “As an instance of how largely the large petticoats are used in the acts of petty larceny, we may mention a small fact which has come within our knowledge, and which it may be to the interest of shopkeepers to know. Concealed beneath the skirts of a fashionably-dressed female were, the other day, discovered by a vigilant detective, the following choice proofs of her propensity to plunder, viz: twenty-three shawls, eleven dozen handkerchiefs, sixteen pairs of boots, (fifteen of them made up with the military heel,) a case of eau-de- Cologne, a ditto of black hair-dye, thirty pairs stays, twenty-six chemises, five dozen cambric handkerchiefs, and eleven ditto silk, nineteen muslin collars and four-and-twenty crochet ones, a dressing-case, five hair brushes, (three of them made with tortoise-shell and .two with ivory gilt backs,) a pair of curling irons, eight bonnets without trimmings and nine-and-twenty with them, a hundred .rolls of ribbon, half a hundred of worsted, ten dozen white kid gloves and twenty dozen colored ones, forty balls of cotton, nine-and-ninety skeins of silk, a gridiron, two coal-scuttles, three packets of ham sandwiches, twentyfive mince pies, half a leg of mutton, six boxes of French plums, ten ditto bonbons, nine patet de foie gras, a dozen cakes’of chocolate and nine of portable hare soup, a warm-ing-pan, five bracelets, a brace of large brass bird cages, sixteen bowls of gold-fish, half a score of lap-dogs, fourteen dozen lever watches, and an eight-day kitchen clock. “After this discovery, who will venture to deny that Crinoline with shoplifters is comparable to charity, inasmuch as it may cover a multitude of sins.”