POCKETS.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2603, 12 May 1877, Page 4

POCKETS.

A London magistrate lately told a woman whose pocket had been picked, that if women would change the position and plan of their pockets, they would not so frequently suffer from the depredations of light-fingered thieves. This was a judicial opinion of remarkable aouleness and exceptional value, in so far as it indicated the true reason why women are the favorite prey of pick-pockets. Still, it is one thing to point out an evil that deserves to be remedied, and quite another to designate the remedy. The court which denounced the present female substitute for a poclcet did not suggest any; i practicable improvement upon it. and, indeed, it is doubtful if any man who is not a professional scientific person is fullycapable of dealing with so difficult a question. Man is marsupial, 2nd herein he is broadly distinguished from women. Nature has provided him with pockets in his trousers, his waistcoat, and his coat. The number is not always the same;, some men having, in the aggregate, twelve distinct pockets, great and small, wlnle others have only eit<lit or nine ;_ bnt a man totally without pockets would be a hisus natures. It is remarkable that pockets are not congenital, but are slowly developed through childhood and youth. The trousers^pockets, which are earliest developed, seldom make their appearance before the fifth year, and one of them usually comes, to maturity ten or twelve months before its fellow. About the eighth year a male child develops two and sometimes three coat-pockets, and; two years later the lower vest-pockets appear. Nature then pauses ia her work, and it is not until the fourteenth year that the small fobpockets of the waistcoat and the watchpocket of the trousers are developed. The appearance oj;' the pistol-pocket and the two coat-tail-pockets are usually synchronous with the cutting.'of the wisdomteeth. When these have reached maturity, the normal development;,of pocket ceases —for comparatively recent discovery of isolated specimens of men with pockets in the sleeves of their overcoats, apparently designed for stowing away female hands, does not as yet warrant any change in the scientific classification and description of human pockets. : Of the uses of the pocket it is unnecessary to speak, since we are all familiar with them. It may, however, be safelyasserted that without pockets men would never have emerged, from barbarians. Handkerchiefs, pen-knives, • money, to- • bacco, latch-keys—those articles the presence of which is essential to civilisation, and the absence of which constitutes barbarism—manifestly could not exist in any useful form had not beneficent nature endowed us with pockets. It is a significant fact that tbe higher a man rises in the scale of civilisation, the more numerous ibecome his pockets. ! The red man has no pocket whatever ; the Turk has two pockets; the people of the South of Europe have rarely more ; tban five, while the Anglo-Saxon blood has nine, or counting those in his overcoat ;—ten well-defined pockets. Representative government, fine-cut tobacco, trial by jury, and revolving pistols are the highest inheritance of the nine-pocketed races*. Ignorance, superstition, and a general assortment of miseries are the lot of those-who have not developed more than^four or five p6cket.su- i . Why nature constructed woman without true pockets it does not become us to enquire, although the fact might easily be interpreted as an evidence that women are not designed to become the military or civil leaders of mankind. It is sufficient for us to know that the pocket, in the scientific sense of the term, is the | monopoly of the male sex, for it is not yet established that even Dr MaryWalker has developed a really masculine pocket. , Emulous of the more gifted sex, women; have'striven to supply-the deficiencies of nature by art, and boldly claim "that the mysterious and unseen bags which they carry concealed about their persons are virtually; pockets. On this point the distinguished anatomist i Cuvier says:—"The capacious- muslin j organ generally called the female pocket" j has none of the essential characteristics of the true pocket. It is situated a"j little lower than the placquet, and forms a cul de sac, to which the placquet serves"' as the entrance. It may .pc removed, by the knife without any •perceptible effect upon the health, and is plainly artificial j and extraneous." The same opinion is i held by all educated anatomists, and, though we may admit that the so-called female' pocket is capable of containing a large amount of handkerchiefs, candy, hair-pins, and other necessities of female existence, its real character as a commonplace bag ought not to be concealed under the pretentious title of pocket. : Front (he nature of its construction, this bag is so easy of access to the shame, less pickpocket that he looks upon it in the light of a storehouse, in\ which is laid up for his special benefit portable property of more or less value. No one will dispute the dictum of the London court, that women "who place -their purses in these psuedo-pockets invite pickpockets to steal them; but;what;6ther device can they substitute for the inefficient muslin bag? To require a woman to develop pockets without a basis of trousers, waistcoat, or coat, would be more cruel than was Pharaoh's request that the Hebrews would"."make bricks " without straw. Women who desire'•:■ artificial pockets are limited to the use of the treacherous muslin bag, and the "locality in which it is now worn is decjared-by competent comparative, anatomists to be the .only, one where such an 1 appendage could be securely placed,'and remain at the same time easily accessible. The only way out of the difficulty is for women to abandon the vain effort to emulate marsupial man, and to lay aside their muslin bags. Thus they will, remove temptation from the pickpocket, and prove themselves capable of accepting, without a murmur, the mysterious law of nature which lavishes pockets upon one sex and withholds them inexorably from the other.—New York "Times.. .-:„.,. :: -.■■■; •. ■■-. ■ ■• ■/ '; ■