"lush workers"

[George Thompson]

The NYTimes has an article on villains who rob drunks who doze off/pass out
on the subway.  It makes a great deal out of the term "lush worker" to
describe this sort of criminal and quotes a NYTimes story from the mid
1920s which uses it and describes it as a new term.  HDAS and Jonathon
Green's new dictionary trace it to 1911.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/05/nyregion/lush-workers-cut-wallets-from-pockets-of-drunk-train-riders.html?scp=1&sq=lush%20worker&st=cse

It seems that there are now only a few more than 100 practitioners of the
art now working, all old.  Yet another example of the failure of American
high schools to offer vocational training.

GAT

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

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