Enough.^33 They were inspired directly by an intervention from the City of Lon-
don, following the addition of several members to the original committee after
second reading, including City members and men with London connections.
The publication of a broadside addressed to members of parliament, entitled
‘The Case of Traders, relating to Shoplifters, for the Bill against House-
breakers, Shop-lifters etc. now depending in the Honourable House of Com-
mons’, seems to have had a decisive influence since it called for the kinds of mea-
sures subsequently added to the bill in committee.^34 Shoplifters deserved much
severer punishment, the authors of this ‘case’ argued, because shoplifting in
London had increased to such an extent that it exceeded in value ‘all other Rob-
beries within this Kingdom’. It was also well organized, backed by receiving
networks, by bullies to rescue thieves if they were apprehended, and solicitors to
help them if that failed. Theft from shops was also common, they thought—
anticipating in this, as in other aspects of their argument, the views oflater law
reformers—because victims failed to prosecute, preferring often to compound
for the return of their goods rather than bringing charges. But what was particu-
larly to be blamed, the authors argued, was the lightness of the punishment
suffered by the few who werecaught and convicted. Some offenders, they said,
were merely confined briefly in the house of correction without being in-
dicted.^35 Even if they were sent to trial at the Old Bailey and convicted of felony,
shoplifters were granted clergy, merely branded in the hand and then dis-
charged from the court to go back to their business with impunity. The authors
of the broadside left the solution to parliament. But it was surely criticism of this
kind that inspired the harsh additions to the bill as it made its way through the
House of Commons: the shifting of the brand of clergy from the thumb to the
cheek; and the removal of benefit of clergy altogether from the offence of theft
from shops over the value of five shillings.
The harshness of this statute is testimony to the sense of desperation in some
quarters about the extent of shoplifting and similar forms of theft. The threat of
hanging that it introduced was clearly real enough. But the statute was also in-
tended to pressure accused thieves into naming the receivers who disposed of
their stolen goods—the source and stimulus, the petitioning shopkeepers be-
lieved, of so many property offences. The capital provisions of the statute also
provided the authorities with another weapon. Section five laid it down that
anyone accused of shoplifting—or burglary, housebreaking, or horse-theft—
The Revolution, Crime, and Punishment in London 329(^33) Beattie, Crime and the Courts, 487 – 90.
(^34) The full title at the head of the one-page broadside is ‘The Great Grievance ofTraders and Shop-
keepers, by the Notorious Practice of Stealing the Goods out of their Shops and Warehouses, by Persons
commonly called Shoplifters; Humbly represented to the Consideration of the Honourable House of
Commons’. The title quoted in the text is on the reverse. The broadside is undated. The British Library
dates one copy 1700 and a second? 1720 ; internal evidence would place it in the spring of 1699.
(^35) This was a reference to the London magistrates’ practice of labelling men and women accused of
minor property offenses as ‘pilferers’ and sending them to a term in the house of correction rather than
committing them to gaol to stand trial for larceny. See above, pp. 24 – 30.