London—a picture not, of course, of the crime committed, but of the crime
prosecuted, of the offences that helped to shape the public understanding of the
nature of the ‘crime problem’. What the supplementary court evidence reveals
is that significant numbers of these charges were brought by shopkeepers or
merchants. Forty of the eighty-two identified victim/prosecutors were shop-
keepers or men in wholesale trades, including eight linendrapers, seven
mercers, two haberdashers, and a grocer, bookseller, poulterer, a hosier, and
fourteen other men in trade. Not all such men were wealthy, since not all seem
to have paid the poll tax, which fell only on households above a certain level of
wealth.^86 Nor is it absolutely certain in each case that the alleged offence had
taken place in the shop or other business premises of the prosecutor. But a high
proportion of alleged offences had done so, and in shops owned by men and
women who were at least reasonably well established. Closely related to those
offences were the twenty that had taken place in inns or alehouses, or other pub-
lic houses, in thirteen of which the charge was stealing a silver tankard of con-
siderable value, though the theft of pewter plates, clothes, and money was also
alleged. In addition, nine charges were laid by a variety of craftsmen, including
a weaver, a tailor, and a swordmaker. Two other types of offence were among
those prosecuted in 1694 , though, as in these other cases, one would not be able
to tell this from the indictment: seven of the accused were servants who had al-
legedly stolen from their masters or mistresses; and two were lodgers who had
left suddenly with goods taken from the house or their rented room.
The crucial consideration that this sample suggests in explaining the pattern
of cases brought to the Old Bailey (apart from the value of the theft) was the vul-
nerability of the offender to detection, arrest, and prosecution. Most of the cases
of simple theft that came to court were relatively straightforward in that the vic-
tims or their witnesses claimed to be able to identify the defendants, or even to
have observed them committing the offence. Some accused thieves were
reported by a pawnbroker or someone who had been offered the stolen goods
for sale. Other prosecutions resulted from the successful advertising of the
theft—often in this period by the distribution of handbills in the immediate
neighbourhood. In some cases, thief-takers had played some part in recovering
the goods and apprehending the suspect.^87 But for the most part the 1694 depos-
itions suggest that most of the accused were charged because they could be
placed by the victim or a witness at the scene of the crime.
That impression is largely confirmed by other evidence. The trial reports in
the late seventeenth century Sessions Papers are for the most part too brief to be
illuminating about minor cases. But the account of one session is much more
helpful. In December 1678 the publisher of the Old Bailey proceedings
departed radically from the four-page format of the early Sessions Papers. It
34 Introduction: The Crime Problem
(^86) For the poll taxes of the 1690 s, see below, Ch. 2 , n. 32.
(^87) For thief-takers, see below, Ch. 5.