5 - The Impact on Retailers

Summary

On Saturday, 24 April 1784, William Mawhood, a London woollen draper with a shop in West Smithfield, recorded an eventful day in his diary:

Call'd on Sargeaunt. His clerk says they'll pay Bunting dividend of 10s. More next week. Lukin nor Rackett at home. See Mr Lamb and came to the Bank in his chariot. … Was meet by Mr Webb and others and told I had been robb'd. On arriving at my house found the[y] had taken the thief by the assistance of 2 blacksmiths, & likewise Mr Sargeaunts lad as an accomplice the witnesses having seen the lad come out of the shop and say to the two lurking fellows. viz I will do presently. The neighbours persuaded son Charles to let the Constable and Mr Brocklebank go with the 2 before a Magistrate, it happen'd to be Mr Aldm Hart who committed them both to Newgate. Self went to Mr Sargeaunt but he was from home but the clerk and a Mr Fawkes went to Newgate to see the lad and they think in Tuesday. The father and mother of the lad came, they say their son was always good till about a fortnight since

This is the only surviving example we have of an eighteenth-century shopkeeper's unmediated, contemporaneous reaction to a shoplifting incident which was subsequently tried at the Old Bailey. Perhaps surprisingly, there is no dwelling on the items stolen, or their value – later declared in court to be £5. The episode is portrayed as a minor neighbourhood drama; Mawhood's diary entry implies some regret that his son was persuaded to charge the perpetrators, some concern to keep on terms with a local business associate, and even some sympathy for a fellow parent. In financial terms, he is clearly more exercised by his earlier visit to the bank and the uncertainty of the forthcoming dividend.

William Mawhood may have been among London's wealthier traders. Joseph Collyer in 1761 estimated start-up costs for woollen drapers to be £1,000 to £5,000, the highest for any London retail trade.