Tattooers.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 43, 29 March 1884, Page 3

Tattooers.

It appears that the great iattooers among European people are French soldiers and French criminals. The idler and more disreputable the man, the more time he passes under arrest, the more is he likely to be tattooed. The long vacuous leisure of pris ons, barracks, and guardrooms is relieved by the art of tattooing. Vermilion and china ink are chiefly used, and a vast number of emblems are engraved on the human frame, Mere fastastic pictures are the mosc common, then come amatory devices, hearts, clasped hands, and the like, patriotic and religious and professional symbols, etc. One man was decorated with the picture of a carriage, coronet and all, in which a lady sat and watched the efforts of two grooms to control her fiery horses. Sometimes the caricature of Prince Bismarck is tattooed. Shoemakers and carpenters decorate themselves with the pictures emblematic of their trades. Two foils and a mask are the " moko," as the New Zealanderssay, or, tattooed crest of a fence ; a gunmaker marked his arm with a picture of a pistol. A man's body sometimes becomes his dossier, a record of his career, and may be of considei'able use to the police. Ciiminals often proclaim their bad luck in the tattooed inscriptions on their arms. Some write "No luck" (pas de chance), some proclaim more poetically that they are " Born under an evil star." One philosopher has been known to tattoo himself thus (he was a pessimistic gaolbird) : " The past disappointed me, the present torments me, the future appals me !' — a bitter experience of life.