Receivers had long been blamed for the levels of property crime in London:
it was an old saying that without receivers there would be no thieves. But
there was perhaps an intensified concern about receivers in the late seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries, as not only violent offences but more minor yet
pervasive property crimes seemed to become increasingly prevalent. The ease
with which small items could be sold in the city was blamed by one man for the
initiation of children into crime, for they could easily dispose of such things as
handkerchiefs to ‘brokers of old Goods (of whom there are many in all the
Out-Parts of the Town)’.^104 That was a common view, and there was a consider-
able effort in this period to encourage the successful prosecution of receivers
and to bring pawnbrokers under control. The massive powers given to the
courts in the Shoplifting Act were at least in part aimed at uncovering and pros-
ecuting receivers, and at limiting theft in shops by deterring those suspected of
encouraging it. And it may have been in part the battle against receivers that led
to the passage of an extraordinary statute in 1713 that made ‘theft from a house’
a capital offence ( 12 Anne, c. 7 ). The preamble of the statute made it clear that it
was aimed at servants’ theft, and its terms made it equally clear that its target
was something more than minor pilfering since the capital provisions of the
act were to apply to thefts of forty shillings or more. It was as savage a piece of
legislation as the Shoplifting Act and, of course, it could easily have applied
to a lone servant who stole money or a little silver. But by setting the non-
clergyable level at forty shillings—as opposed to five shillings in the case of
shoplifting—the sponsors of this legislation seem to have been targeting large-
scale thefts and perhaps servants who were in league with receivers. The act
also held out the promise of a pardon to accused servants who confessed, an
inducement to encourage them to name their perhaps more culpable
accomplices.^105
Apart from shoplifting and servants’ theft, other forms of larceny were regu-
larly tried at the Old Bailey though in smaller numbers. Some bore a resem-
blance to thefts from shops or by servants in that the accused offender had been
a customer, as in thefts from taverns, or had had access to goods in a house, as in
thefts from rented lodgings, or was otherwise known to the victim, as in the
charges brought against prostitutes for robbing their clients. In addition, a wide
range of other thefts came to court—thefts from warehouses, wagons and
coaches in the streets, from ships and lighters in the river, a medley of snatches
and grabs of all kinds. Such offenders were occasionally caught red-handed;
some were apprehended by the watch or through receivers or thief-takers. But
they were difficult to find and to identify, and thefts of this kind were clearly
much more common than the handful of indictments and the scattered
depositions and magistrates’ examinations suggest.Introduction: The Crime Problem 39(^104) [ J. D.,] Humble Proposal to Prevent the beginnings of Theft.
(^105) For the statute relating to servants’ theft, see below, Ch. 7.
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