Mr. Gifford relates the preceding anecdote, in a note on his Juvenal, from Macrobius. He makes the poet draw the farthings from his “pocket:” but the pocket was unknown to the Greeks and Romans. Mr. Fosbroke says the men used the girdle, and the women their bosom; and that Strutt thinks the scrip, and purse, or bag, were succedanea. The Anglo-Saxon and Norman women wore pocketting sleeves; and sleeves with pockets in them, mentioned by DuCange, Matthew Paris, Malmesbury, and Knighton, were searched, before the wearers could be admitted to the royal presence. Sleeve pockets are still worn by the monks in Portugal.
POCKET HANDKERCHIEFS.
These useful appendages to dress were certainly not in use with the Greeks. The most ancient text wherein handkerchiefs are expressly mentioned, describes them as long cloths, called oraria, used and worn by senators “ad emungendum et exspuendum;” that use is said to have grown out of the convenience of the orarium, which is supposed to have been merely used at first to wave for applause in the public shows. Mr. Fosbroke presumes it to have been the “swat-cloth” of the Anglo-Saxons; for one called mappula and manipulus was then worn on the left side to wipe the nose. In subsequent ages there was the manuariolum, one carried in the hand during summer, on account of perspiration. Queen Elizabeth wore handkerchiefs of party-coloured silk, or cambric, edged with gold lace.
PICKPOCKETS.
The old robbers, in the “good old times,” when purses were carried in the hand or borne at the side, cut them away, and carried them off with the contents, and hence they were called “cut-purses.” In the scarce “History of Highwaymen,” by Smith, there is a story of a ludicrous private robbery, from “the person” of a man, mistakenly committed by one of these cut-purses. One of Shakspeare’s rogues, Autolycus, says, that “to have an open ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, is necessary for a cut-purse.” Of course, “pickpockets” are of modern origin; they “came up” with the wearing of pockets.
Garrick Plays
No. XXXI.
[From the “Triumphant Widow,” a Comedy, by the Duke of Newcastle, 1677.]