1 - Customer Thieves

Summary

The prisoners came into our shop, in Chandois Street, Covent Garden, and looked upon some striped thread sattins and at last bought 14 yards. I heard a piece fall, and one of them took it up and laid it on the counter. I observed that they were shuffling something under their riding-hoods, and I told Mr Young, that I suspected they had stole a piece, upon which he presently follow'd them, and found this piece of satin upon Ward … They were both carried to Covent-Garden Round-house: and the same day examined before Justice Hilder, who granted a warrant for committing them to the Gatehouse, but in their way thither, with two constables with them in a coach and the Beadle behind, they were rescued, by several men.

This account of the trial of Ann Ward and Sarah Bream in 1735 only served to fuel contemporary suspicion that shoplifting was a form of organised crime. Pleading some years earlier for harsher laws, London retailers had complained bitterly that shoplifters ‘personate all degrees of buyers, in all their respective qualifications, having their several societies and walks, their cabals, receivers, solicitors and even their bullies to rescue them if taken’. While we may question the sincerity of their conviction, shopkeepers sought to convey a message that professional thieves, masquerading as customers, were plundering their businesses. By design or through ignorance they promoted a false understanding of a crime that, from the evidence of this study, was principally an intermittent form of makeshift for the poor. As this chapter discloses, those brought to court were more often amateur than professional, occasional than full-time, and opportunist than conspiring. This book begins by examining who within society became a shoplifter and why they stole. While offending behaviour formed a spectrum that stretched from recurrent through intermittent offending to the occasional bravado act, it was predominantly an economic resource for those struggling to make a living. So, let us review the evidence.