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.

With the passing of the Shoplifting Act in 1699, the crime of shoplifting acquired a new prominence. Heightened alarm at retail losses and a pervading belief in the deterrent effect of harsher laws had converged to make shoplifting a capital offence, a notorious status that it retained for the next 120 years. The focus of this book has been how retailers and the wider population experienced and responded to customer theft within the cultural and economic context of the period. It has analysed the crime's social characteristics, its impact on commerce and its potential influence on the development of contemporary criminal justice and material culture, exhibiting the emblematic nature of the offence. The preceding chapters have examined in some detail the demography of those charged with shoplifting, their tactics and shopkeepers’ countermeasures, the nature and significance of what was stolen, and the economic effect of the crime on the retail sector. At the same time the book has followed the changes in retailers’ relationship to the law on shoplifting and concurrent shifts in public attitudes, arguing that in both of these there was a notable transformation in outlook and perception over time.

Shoplifting became an accustomed expedient for some of the most economically vulnerable in society, attracting both men and women. The nation's multiplying stores were increasingly available and the routine of shopping offered a plausible pretext for customers constrained to steal. Theft from neighbourhood shops and those with busy passing trade furnished some of the poorest, largely urban populace with a source of intermittent subsidy. Analysis of the occupational circumstances and times of theft of those prosecuted indicates that shoplifting was only a full-time occupation for a minority of these thieves, for most it was a casual and opportunist means to supplement low incomes or tide them over patches of unemployment. Few shoplifters from higher classes reached court, certainly in part due to retailers’ demonstrable reluctance to suspect or detain such customers. But while we cannot know the degree to which this disguised the scale of middling theft, there is no evidence to suggest it was substantial in this period.