there was such anxiety about crime in London in general and about shoplifting
in particular by the last years of the century that pressure from London
merchants induced parliament to make shoplifting a capital offence in 1699.^95
Another concern reflected in the cases dealt with in 1678 and 1694 , and
strongly confirmed in the depositions taken by London magistrates in this
period, was theft by servants. Many complaints about servants’ pilfering
were almost certainly disposed of by magistrates summarily by sending minor
offenders to the house of correction where they would be held briefly and pun-
ished. None the less, sufficient charges of a more serious kind were made to en-
sure that a significant proportion of the indictments tried at the Old Bailey
involved servants. And to judge by the surviving depositions, it was a problem
that from the point of view of the London authorities only worsened over the
period. By 1711 and 1712 a quarter of the surviving depositions in the City of
London sessions papers are concerned with an alleged theft by a servant.
Two circumstances surrounding servants’ theft aroused particular anxiety.
The first was the danger posed by a servant who might be willing or be induced
to allow strangers into the house to steal, especially at night; the second, the pos-
sible relationship between servants and receivers. Behind both was the familiar
concern about the untrustworthiness of servants and the difficulty at the point
of hiring of learning about their character and previous employment. Even
more than the reported trials, depositions reveal why servants’ theft raised such
concerns. In 1692 , for example, Judith Rose, a widow, confessed to a London
magistrate to having engaged herself as a servant to a victualler under a false
name (and with a phony reference) and to have stolen 160 pounds from him and
leaving four days after going to work for him; and four years later Mary Dipley
confessed to a magistrate that Mary Butterfield had let her and another woman
into the house where she worked as a laundry maid and they took away a large
quantity of linen.^96 Such complaints were common, but they were particularly
numerous in the middle and late years of Anne’s reign. Grace Trippe was con-
demned at the Old Bailey in 1710 , for example, for allowing ‘her sweetheart’,
James Peters, into the Earl ofTorrington’s house at night three days after being
engaged as a servant; Peters killed the housekeeper and they escaped with a
large quantity of plate.^97 Jane Roberts, similarly, allowed John Dayley (‘who pre-
tended love to her’) into her mistress’s house at night, where he and another
man broke into a cabinet and took plate and clothing.^98 And in another case, of
many that came forward in these years, a man confessed in April 1712 that he
had gone early in the morning to the house of a cheesemonger where Elizabeth
Stiles, ‘an acquaintance’, had been recently hired as a servant, and carried away
a number of silver plates, spoons, candlesticks and other objects, and some
Introduction: The Crime Problem 37(^9510) & 11 Wm III, c. 23 ( 1699 ). For the circumstances surrounding this and other legislation in this
period, see below, Ch. 7.
(^96) CLRO: London Sess. Papers, August 1692 ( Judith Rose); April 1696 (Mary Dipley).
(^97) Ordinary’s Account, 17 March 1710. (^98) CLRO: London Sess. Papers, February 1713.