s occupation with less risk
of detection and capture. She is often either the wife of a gambler,
professional burglar, forger or other criminal; or she may be the wife
of some reputable mechanic whose income is insufficient to supply her
with the furbelows her vanity craves; or, again, she is one of those
women who, having a natural aversion to labor, seek to support
themselves by petty thefts.

The fact is notorious, and easily demonstrated by the records of the
police courts, that "a shop-lifter once, a shop-lifter always." It is a
lamentable psychological idiosyncrasy that, despite the most earnest and
apparently sincere resolutions to lead an honest life, the female
shop-lifter, intent on making a legitimate purchase, is incapable of
withstanding the temptation offered by a display of fancy articles. She
will usually attempt to purloin some trinket or other and be caught
again. Perhaps the leniency with which crimes of this character have
been treated by the authorities has tended to increase the number of
persons engaged in committing them. For, heartless as man is at times,
he detests the idea of prosecuting a woman for the commission of a petty
theft, when the end, for her, means the penitentiary. In very many,
perhaps the majority of, cases he will be satisfied if his goods are
recovered, and permit the thief to go unpunished. This is very
frequently the case with that class of shop-lifters called, by courtesy,
the "kleptomaniac,"--the wealthy lady who steals what she could easily
have purchased. This is a phase of female character only accounted for
upon the Christian hypothesis that her thieving propensities are a
disease, while they are really a manifestation of the same base desires
which actuate less fortunate women who expiate their misdemeanor in the
penitentiary.

Most of the rich kleptomaniacs are well known to the various
store-keepers. A woman of this kind is watched from the moment she
enters an establishment until she leaves it. Usually, a trusty employee
or detective follows her from counter to counter, unobserved, noting all
the articles purloined. When the fair and aristocratic thief enters her
carriage and is driven to her palatial residence a bill of the goods so
"lifted," addressed to the husband, follows her and, in nearly every
case, is paid upon presentation and without questioning. Thus the
transaction ends, until another visit from the lady occasions another
bill. If the "blue-blooded"