6 - Retailers’ Recourse to Law

Summary

England's law and criminal justice system were commonly accepted to be the primary means by which retailers could discourage theft of their stock, protect it from depredation and obtain a measure of legal redress for losses suffered. But prior to 1699 there was no specific law on shoplifting. It was the accession of William III and Mary II in February 1689 that heralded a period of more active parliamentary government and the fresh possibility of tackling perceived criminal ills legislatively. Beattie asserts that the ensuing momentum to extend the law was driven not by any formal programme or campaign, but by a pervasive national anxiety. In the wake of the Glorious Revolution England had entered a period of war and financial instability, intensifying a public suspicion that society was becoming increasingly immoral; crime, particularly that committed by women, was viewed with new alarm as a serious and growing problem. The institution of regular parliamentary sessions provided back-bench MPs with an unprecedented opportunity to confront these fears by lobbying for change. They, rather than the state, were the proposers of repeated Bills over the following two decades designed to address what was conceived to be the threat to life and property presented by an increasingly vicious working populace. The overall intention of these parliamentarians and their supporters was to strengthen the punitive impact of the criminal law. However, one of their first Acts, passed in 1691, carried a clause that sought to remedy an apparent unfairness by extending ‘benefit of clergy’ to women on the same terms as men. As a result, women were no longer subject to the death penalty for the theft of goods over 10 shillings. It was in part the adverse impact of this on London retailing that culminated in the passing of the discrete Shoplifting Act in 1699 by which the theft of goods with a value exceeding 5 shillings became a capital offence.

In this chapter we explore retailers’ engagement with the law on shoplifting, from their formative role in the genesis of the Shoplifting Act to their more equivocal part in its repeal some 120 years later.