lace work (dirty work)

[James Smith]

Seems to me that lacework could be another expression
for what flatfoots and gumshoes do; use their feet a
lot.  The National Police Gazette passage makes sense
with this meaning ["...the special divorce detective
gets his lace-work in.  He follows the jolly
fellow..."].




--- George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU> 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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> The American Dialect Society -
> http://www.americandialect.org
>


James D. SMITH                 |If history teaches anything
South SLC, UT                  |it is that we will be sued
jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com     |whether we act quickly and decisively
                               |or slowly and cautiously.



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