“QUITE A PROFESSION.”

Shannon News, 26 January 1926, Page 4

“QUITE A PROFESSION.”

Shoplifting has from isolated cases of kleptomania grown into a profession in Sydney. ■’ A leading Sydney retail house, one of the proprietors of which was interviewed last week, catches with its house detectives on an average 400 shoplifters each year. Over the last eighteen months they have been satisfied to take a confession and issue a warning themselves in 150 cases. The others, being second, third and fourth offenders in their establishment, they have sent before a magistrate. i In a recent case before the -court a woman, who had three previous convictions for shoplifting and five for other offences, was fined £2O or three months’ imprisonment. She decided to pay the fine and was given three months in which to find the money. The store in question cannor rvsess the - amount of stuff stolmi ••■act -ear b> shopN*lers. Bui Jh- ■ >: . v. ;;i ■ 1.;.f l ),, Oi 1 T i a pj Opt, ■ i.o those who take to it serf, ous-j that a gang of twelve women have been in the habit or making rea ' nlar raids oh their establishment While half the gang takes up ’ th< time of the assistants in one corner of the floor, the other half collects the loot. One of the women , was caught in the act one day. She had frocks worth £7O in her suit case. If three or four of the women working in that gang made a similar haul it would be a good day for the dozen. As many as six arrests have been made in that storß in one day, and it is not the largest retail house in the city. 'll is getting worse each day,” one of the members of the firm said, "but the magistrates seem to treat shoplightmg as a negligible thing, because in some cases the value of the stolen property is small.”