4 - What was Stolen

Summary

From fabrics to flat irons, shoplifters systematically sought items they valued. But did they privilege the same items that appealed to their middling and elite peers? Their choice can be of particular interest to historians who continue to debate what has been termed one of the conundrums of eighteenth-century consumption: how far down the social scale did the new goods and expanded consumption opportunities extend. By examining what items shoplifters stole we can observe whether their ‘alternative’ mode of consumption played a part in distributing novel and fashionable goods more widely throughout the eighteenth-century population. If, as some economic historians have suggested, the working incomes of the poor remained at too low a level for them to meaningfully participate in the century's reputed consumer boom, did shoplifting serve an enabling function?

However, suggesting that the crime brought unaffordable goods within financial reach begs a further and perhaps more interesting question: how actively did the poor avail themselves of this opportunity to acquire stylish attire and home embellishments? Historians have speculated that over the course of the century an appetite for consumer goods animated all levels of society. Jan de Vries has proposed that the desire for new home comforts was strong enough to encourage a greater industriousness in working households. Beverly Lemire has also been prominent in affirming the importance of fashion to such communities, albeit in a more democratised and popular guise. She contends that demand for this was widely met by the second-hand trade, supplied in part by shop theft, and asserts that ‘legal records abound with vivid depictions of the selectivity of … shoplifters, who in turn reflect the preferences of the wider market for stylish clothes’. But how sound is this conclusion? In its specific targeting of retail outlets, shoplifting was intriguingly different from other property theft. While burglars, housebreakers and pickpockets can rarely anticipate the exact content of their haul, this was a type of thieving in which perpetrators could very deliberately take their pick from the same range of new manufactured and imported goods on display to better-off shoppers.