Introduction

Summary

In the summer of 1719 William Marvell entered a shop in the City of London and ‘cheapened’ the price of some silk handkerchiefs with the owner. Cheapening or bargaining for goods was standard practice in an age before fixed pricing. He then took the handkerchiefs to the door to show a female companion. Again, this desire to see goods in daylight was not unusual: early-eighteenth-century shop interiors were invariably dim or poorly candlelit. Marvell declined to purchase at the offered price of 12 shillings, but no sooner had he left than the handkerchiefs were found to be missing. Only then, too late, did the shopkeeper realise that his customer was a shoplifter. Sending his daughter fruitlessly after the thief, she returned shortly with the information that he had been seen by a neighbour who had recognised him as London's former hangman. There was to be no escape from justice for such an infamous figure. Six weeks later Marvell was captured in farmland on London's outskirts and taken to a local alehouse where he was identified by the shopkeeper's wife and daughter. His initial offer of recompense and claim he had been drunk at the time rejected, Marvell was swiftly charged with shoplifting and committed to appear at the next session of the Old Bailey. Within a fortnight he was found guilty and facing a sentence of death. Only witnesses to his character as ‘an honest and industrious man’ narrowly earned him the reprieve of transportation.

Marvell's celebrity appearance in the dock focused public attention on this newly capital crime, but it also highlighted many of its paradoxes. Was his theft driven by need? It was common knowledge that he had lost his executioner post two years earlier through debt. Or could it be the compulsion of greed? This period was witnessing a relaxing of older moral constraints on consumption, and social commentators were swift to predict the criminal implications of the poor coveting luxury. The silk handkerchief, worn as a neck adornment, had become the quintessential fashion accessory for working Londoners.