_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.