A Shot of Beer History #5 - Tankard Theft

In May 1913 the following report appeared in a Dublin newspaper as a warning to the city's publicans:

It is now some time ago since the licensed trade suffered great loss by the disappearance of pewter tankards, and now the tankard thieves have again made their appearance. They re-started on the North side of the city on Wednesday, and confined their unwelcome attentions to Upper Dorset street. The modus operandi is as follows:- Generally a man and a woman enter the "snug." the man calls for a tankard of porter, and the woman a bottle of stout. They occupy the "snug" for some time, and then leave, the woman having hid away the empty tankard, and leaving a pint tumbler in its place, the assistant in his rush forgetting, when he sees the two glasses, that he supplied a tankard.

The tankards are melted down along with the tops of soda water syphons and made into counterfeit coin, which is generally freely circulated after a tankard raid. the coins are very neatly turned out, and have a very good ring, but the bright colour will be detected if closely examined.

As alluded to in the report, this was a relatively common practice but it is interesting to see the 'modus operandi' here in print. So, it appears that the theft of drinkware from pubs isn't a new phenomena - not that we really thought it was - although the reasons for said theft appears to have changed through the years to one of collecting.  Although there is no mention of where the ladies mentioned in the report hid their soon-to-be-swapped tumblers and stolen tankards, it is possible they were tucked neatly into the folds of a dress but it is probably more likely a bag of some description was used. Anecdotally, that practice still exists, with glassware generally disappearing into a handbag these days - often at the gentleman's prompting - but without the switcheroo. (That's not to say that women don't steal glassware for their own use of course!)

It's 'nice' to see that there is equality and partnership when it comes to this exercise, although it must also be said that then - as like now - the gentleman can have plausible deniability as to the theft, as the stolen item is in the possession of the lady, and therefore perhaps the alliance is not quite what it seems ..?!

Liam K

PS. Don't steal stuff from pubs!

Please note, all written content and the research involved in publishing it here is my own unless otherwise stated and cannot be reproduced elsewhere without permission, full credit to its sources, and a link back to this post. Newspaper research was thanks to The British Newspaper Archive, who have kindly let me share the above image from The Freeman's Journal of the 16th May 1913. DO NOT STEAL THIS CONTENT!