lace work (dirty work)

[George Thompson]

        Divorces without Publicity.  The Divorce must be obtained at
all hazards.  Where the husband is a jolly, good-natured fellow, who
goes freely about town, all this evidence business is very much
easier.  It is here that the special divorce detective gets his lace-
work in.  [He follows the jolly fellow until "facts have been
accumulated that will bear but one significance, however skillfully
used by lawyers engaged to fight a dissolving decree".]
        National Police Gazette, November 22, 1879, p. 14, cols. 3-4;
reprinted in Samuel A. MacKeever, Glimpses of Gotham, (N. Y.: National
Police Gazette Office, 1880) pp. 21-23; reprinted by James D. McCabe,
New York by Gaslight, (1882, 1984 reprint) p. 286
        My father used to speak of a practice among prize-fighter of
rubbing the laces of their gloves across their opponent's face and in
his eyes.  I believe that current rules require that the laces be
covered with tape, to make this trick less effective.

        I don't see this sense in OED, nor the word in Jonatha/on's
dictionaries.

        My apologies for having missed "bracer" in Jonathon's
Cassell's.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

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