When stockings go walkabout
Your story on Nylon Pirates (June) prompted me to a revisit a little anecdote from the Montreal Gazette in April 1946. As a young lad, in 1914, Abe Raitt emigrated from Poland to America with his parents and they settled in Detroit. Life was probably pretty uneventful for him until one day in April 1946 when Abe, just turned 43, was the manager of a dress shop in Woodward Avenue, Detroit. According to the news item, on 15 April some 600 women were patiently waiting in line outside the shop to buy nylons when word got out that a non-paying customer had beat them to it. Abe reported to the police that a burglar had drilled 32 holes in the roof of the shop to enter during the night, and had walked off with 162 pairs of stockings and other items valued at $4,000 (or about $47,000 today). It doesn’t say whether the thief was wearing a stocking over the face to disguise himself (or perhaps herself)…
David Raitt, The Netherlands