CHAP. XXXIII.
To pull off any Person’s Shirt, without undressing him, or having Occasion for a Confederate.
This trick requires only dexterity; and nevertheless, when I performed it at the Theatre-Royal in the Hay-Market, every body imagined that the person whom I had tricked out of his shirt was in a confederacy with me.
The means of performing this trick are the following; only observing that the cloaths of the person whose shirt is to be pulled off be wide and easy.
Begin by making him pull off his stock, and unbuttoning his shirt at the neck and sleeves, afterwards tye a little string in the button-hole of the left sleeve; then, passing your hand behind his back, pull the shirt out of his breeches, and slip it over his head; then pulling it out before in the same manner, you will leave it on his stomach; after that, go to the right hand, and pull the sleeve down, so as to have it all out of the arm: the shirt being then all of a heap, as well in the right sleeve as before the stomach, you are to make use of the little string fastened to the button-hole of the left sleeve, to get back the sleeve that must have slipt up, and to pull the whole shirt out that way.
To hide your way of operating from the person whom you unshirt, and from the assembly, you may cover his head with a lady’s cloak, holding a corner of it in your teeth.
In order to be more at your ease, you may mount on a chair, and do the whole operation under the cloak. Such are the means I used when I performed publicly this trick.