Shoplifting in eighteenth-century London: a source for female retailing?

Abstract

The extent to which England's eighteenth-century ‘retail revolution’ brought opportunity to women has been a matter of prolonged debate, but most studies have relied on sources that indicate female business ownership. By contrast, a study of London shoplifting enables us to examine women's role in shopkeeping from a fresh perspective. Trial transcripts provide a wealth of information on the men and women who staffed the thousands of London shops that suffered this type of theft. Taking a sample of these cases between 1743 and 1807, the article explores what they can tell us about the proportion of stores that relied on female staff and reflects on how this finding relates to current understandings of women's retail activity in the period. Using the first-hand accounts given in court testimony, it discusses how the crime of shoplifting affected female shop workers at a personal and more strategic level, and the evidence presented of gender bias in the staffing of larger, more fashionable stores. It concludes that female-staffed shops had a higher relative risk of becoming victims of shoplifting crime and that in consequence this source, while yielding valuable new insights, is liable to over-represent the scale of women's participation in London retailing.