lace work (dirty work)

[Paul Johnson]

Isn't there the possibility that "lace work" here is used in the sense
of embroidering the facts, as cheap hankies had  the type of lace that
could be bought by the yard added to them to make them look more valuable.

George Thompson wrote:

>        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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>
>
>

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