The Washington times., 1901-11-03
CLEVER BOOK THIEVES.
Amateur and Professional PiIferers
who steal Literature.

With the advent of department stores
and the concentration and enlargement
of other shops the guild of shoplifte-s
has gradually developed its profession"
| into a high art in thievery, so that it is
not an easy matter to effectually stop
their pilfering. Perhaps the most difficult
to apprehend among this gentry are those
who make the large and fashionable book
shops along Fifth Avenue and the side
| streets their field of action.
These stores do not keep store detec-
tive, except around the holidays, and
hence 1t devolves on the clerks and even
the office boys to keep a sharp eye on all
customers.
In one of the large shops below Twenty
third Street the boy who attends to the
door has become very Gallagher in his
ability to detect suspicious characters. lie
has established a system OF simple sig
nails which he employs to warn the chief
salesman of the entrance of any person
whose appearance rouses his suspicious.
Many OF the book thieves are profess
SIGNALS of sufficient standing to have their
POI traits in the Rogues' Gallery, and with
these the boy as well as the clerks are
quite familiar. But there are many new
comers in the business as well, mere anna
teurS who steal books, not to sell them
but because they have fancy for such
things. and who are generally without, but
The time of the year when overcoats
are in order is the harvest time for the
book thief. A man who comes into the
store yith both coat and overcOat open in
front is watched closely by the employees,
on the supposition that he may not be
able to resist the temptation to put away
a biDk under each arm and walk out
without paying for them.
The weather, however, is not always
taken into cousidera ton by those who
Locks There is. among the professionals.
an old woman who wears a cape even on
the hottest days.
She approaches the stores with great
caution. invariably peering through the
glass and entering only when the clerks
are in the rear of the store. When any
one offers to assist her in looking over the
books she becomes angry. and does not
hesitate to express herself in very forci-
BILE language. thereby hoping to distract
the attention of the clerk. In some stores
she is invariably conducted to the door
as soon as her presence Is discovered.
A favorite trick of the book thief is to
enter the store and pick n book off the
front table where he knows he is not OBJ
served He then leisurely walks to the
rear counters with the book in plain view
and asks to have il exchanged for an
other claiming that he bought it the
day before. but does not like IT. As 1t is
generally impossible to diSprove the asser-
tion, his request has to be complied with
and he walks out with his spoil unmo-
Tested.
AS rule. the professional thief is hard
to catch He Is cool. collected. and quick,
and generally gets away with his booty.
IL is the beginner or amateur who usually
is caught He betrays himself frequently
by his hesitating demeanor. Picking uo
hook he nretends to read it, but his eyes
wander over the top of the pages on the
lookout for those who may be watchlGg
him man who does this is generally
caught.
Sometimes these persons are of very
good family In such cases the firm gen
orally either withdraws it's complaint, II
he has been arrested or permits the
would-be thief to go free after threaten
ing him with arrest and warning him
never to visit the store again.
Only Il few days since young men con-
nected with a large photographic establish
ment and whose previous record was
clean, was caught with the goods on
him" in a Fifth Avenue store. His fiancee.
who belonged to family of wealth and
social position went to see the firm. and
her pIeadings secured his release from the
police station, where he had spent the
night.
How extensive these pilferings are is
by the recent experience of
a firm ON Fifth Avenue. They had on ex-
hibition on Il table near one OF the win
dowS a dozen copies of an expensive book
on natural history, the study OF which So
cietv people are now making fad. At
6 o clock in the afternoon, when the store
closed. not single copy was left. yet not
a copy had been sold all day.-New York
Times.