WAR AGAINST KLEPTOMANIA.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9117, 9 April 1908, Page 7

WAR AGAINST KLEPTOMANIA.

NEW YORK SHOPKEEPERS ' TAKE ACTION. New York, February 18. The proprietors of big stores in New York met recently and estimated that their annual loss at the hands of well-to-do, fashionablydressed kleptomaniacs was over £IOO,OOO, and this despite the extensive and well-regulated system of private detection. The most re-spectable-looking lady, it was asserted, would snatch up a silk blouse, hide it in her muff, and leave the shop without any idea of paying. Storekeepers say they have comparatively little trouble with professional thieves, as their faces are known, and they are watched from the time they enter the door ; hut the combined loss per annum from welldressed women, with money in their purses, who cannot resist the temptation to lift a bit of costly lace, a pair of gloves, or a trinket, is enormous, and rapidly growing. Hitherto it has been easy enough for a woman caught stealing in a store to avoid exposure, as easy as for what President Roosevelt called “financial malefactors of great wealth” to escape indictment. But the store proprietors ate now united to suppress respectable kletpomania, and have decided forthwith to proscute offenders, instead of releasing them. They made a start to-day by arresting a tall, well-dressed lady-like girl, very respectably connected, who lifted a silk blouse. She became most indignant, and protested her innocence, but the goods were found upon her. Then she became hysterical, vowing that her arrest would kill her mother, also that her fiance would reject her. But despite her sobs and entreaties she was removed to the cells.