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Going on the Hoist: Women, Work, and Shoplifting in London, ca. 1890–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2011

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References

1 “Theft by Shoplifters: Liability of a Tradesman; Mitchell v. Davis,” The Times, 30 October 1920; Case of Maggie Hughes and Diana Black, 7, 16, 23 January 1920, Records of Marylebone Police Court, London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter cited as LMA), PS/MAR/A/01/062.

2 The Times, 7 February 1920.

3 The Times, 30 October 1920.

4 The Times, 7 February 1920.

5 Quoted in Parr, Eric, Grafters All: A Guide to the Art of Robbery (London, 1964), 110Google Scholar.

6 Wyles, Lilian, A Woman at Scotland Yard (London, 1952), 174–75Google Scholar.

7 On the “modern” woman and women’s leisure, see Weinbaum, Alys E., ed., The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization (Durham, NC, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roberts, Mary Louise, Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-de-Siècle France (Chicago, 2002)Google Scholar; Parratt, Catriona, More than Mere Amusement: Working-Class Women’s Leisure in England, 1750–1914 (Boston, 2001)Google Scholar; Langhamer, Claire, Women’s Leisure in England, 1920–60 (Manchester, 2000)Google Scholar; Ledger, Sally, The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin de Siècle (Manchester, 1997)Google Scholar; Mitchell, Sally, The New Girl: Girls’ Culture in England, 1890–1915 (New York, 1995)Google Scholar; Alexander, Sally, “Becoming a Woman in London in the 1920s and 1930s,” in Metropolis London: Histories and Representations since 1800, ed. Feldman, David and Jones, Gareth Stedman (London, 1989), 245–71Google Scholar; Melman, Billie, Women and the Popular Imagination in the Twenties (New York, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnson, Paul, “Conspicuous Consumption and Working-Class Culture in Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 38 (1988): 2742Google Scholar. On women’s work more generally during this period, see Todd, Selina, Young Women, Work, and Family in England, 1918–1950 (Oxford, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holloway, Gerry, Women and Work in Britain since 1840 (London, 2005)Google Scholar; Purvis, June, Women’s History: Britain, 1850–1945 (New York, 2004)Google Scholar; McKibbin, Ross, Classes and Cultures: England, 1918–1951 (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar; Bourke, Joanna, Working-Class Cultures in Britain, 1890–1960: Gender, Class, and Ethnicity (London, 1994)Google Scholar; Pyecroft, Susan, “British Working Women and the First World War,” Historian 56, no. 4 (Summer 1994): 699710CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ross, Ellen, Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast London, 1870–1918 (Oxford, 1993)Google Scholar; John, Angela, ed., Unequal Opportunities: Women’s Employment in England, 1800–1918 (London, 1986)Google Scholar; Vicinus, Martha, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850–1920 (Chicago, 1985)Google Scholar; Tilly, Louise and Scott, Joan, Women, Work, and Family (New York, 1978)Google Scholar.

8 For discourses about gender, see Shapiro, Ann-Louise, Breaking the Codes: Female Criminality in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (Stanford, CA, 1996)Google Scholar, and “Disordered Bodies/Disorderly Acts: Medical Discourse and the Female Criminal in Nineteenth-Century Paris,” Genders 4 (March 1989): 68–86; Camhi, Leslie, “Stealing Femininity: Department Store Kleptomania as Sexual Disorder,” Differences 5, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 2650Google Scholar. For discourses about consumption, see O’Brien, Patricia, “The Kleptomania Diagnosis: Bourgeois Women and Theft in Late Nineteenth-Century France,” Journal of Social History 17, no. 1 (Fall 1983): 6578CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Breckman, Warren G., “Disciplining Consumption: The Debate about Luxury in Wilhelmine Germany, 1890–1914,” Journal of Social History 24, no. 3 (Spring 1991): 485506CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abelson, Elaine S., When Ladies Go A-Thieving: Middle-Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar; and Whitlock, Tammy C., Crime, Gender, and Consumer Culture in Nineteenth-Century England (Burlington, VT, 2005)Google Scholar. For discourses about the role of medical professionals in the courtroom, see Whitlock, Tammy, “Gender, Medicine, and Consumer Culture in Victorian England: Creating the Kleptomaniac,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 31, no. 3 (Autumn 1999): 413–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 By contrast, scholars of early modern England have more readily adopted sociological approaches: Kermode, Jennifer and Walker, Garthine, eds., Women, Crime, and the Courts in Early Modern England (Chapel Hill, 1994)Google Scholar; King, Peter, “Female Offenders, Work, and Life-Cycle Change in Late Eighteenth-Century London,” Continuity and Change 11, no. 1 (May 1996): 6190CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mackay, Lynn, “Why They Stole: Women in the Old Bailey, 1779–1789,” Journal of Social History 32, no. 3 (Spring 1999): 623–39CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

10 Nor does social-scientific scholarship on shoplifting provide a broader perspective on women’s criminality; criminologists have been more interested in prescribing policies for crime prevention than in investigating the offenders themselves. See Walsh, D. P., Shoplifting: Controlling a Major Crime (London, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Murphy, Daniel J. I., Customers and Thieves: An Ethnography of Shoplifting (Aldershot, 1986)Google Scholar; Poyner, Barry and Woodall, Ruth, Preventing Shoplifting: A Study in Oxford Street (London, 1987)Google Scholar; and Gibbens, T. C. N. and Prince, Joyce, Shoplifting: A Report on Research Carried out under the Auspices of the I. S. T. D. (London, 1962), 5, 31Google Scholar. Gibbens and Prince explored the educational, ethnic, occupational, and personal backgrounds of several samples of offenders, but their data concern the post–Second World War period. Furthermore, the authors studied women exclusively, and did so at a time when shoplifting was being undertaken by men and children in greater numbers.

11 Key texts include Thomas, Donald, Villains’ Paradise: A History of Britain’s Underworld (New York, 2006)Google Scholar; Campbell, Duncan, The Underworld (London, 1994)Google Scholar; Murphy, Robert, Smash and Grab: Gangsters in the London Underworld, 1920–60 (London, 1993)Google Scholar; Morton, James, Gangland: London’s Underworld (London, 1992)Google Scholar; Hobbs, Dick, Doing the Business: Entrepreneurship, the Working Class, and Detectives in the East End of London (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar; Samuel, Raphael, East End Underworld: Chapters in the Life of Arthur Harding (London, 1981)Google Scholar; Charles George Gordon, Crooks of the Underworld (London, n.d.).

12 Lee Adam, Hargrave, Police Work from Within: With Some Reflections upon Women, the Law and Lawyers (London, 1913), 1920Google Scholar, and Woman and Crime (London, 1912), 411, 15–18Google Scholar.

13 Feeley, Malcolm and Little, Deborah, “The Vanishing Female: The Decline of Women in the Criminal Process, 1687–1912,” Law & Society Review 25, no. 4 (1991): 719–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Kermode and Walker, Women, Crime, and the Courts in Early Modern England, 4.

15 Beattie, J. M., “The Criminality of Women in Eighteenth-Century England,” Journal of Social History 8, no. 4 (Summer 1975): 93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Reportage of information such as age, occupation, and personal history of the defendants is uneven. Of the 284 defendants, 80 were described as having working-class occupations, 41 were described simply as “married,” and 16 were said to be widows. In the remaining cases no occupational or other identifier was specified. The police court records in the LMA pose similar problems: selective factors of the victims and the police played a part in determining which cases were heard; in some cases, information about the specific offense and its location is omitted; and there is little or no background given about the offenders. Still, a more systematic analysis of the LMA records than is attempted here would repay study.

17 At least four of the nine men acted in concert with women: John Brunn thieved with his wife, Mary, at Whiteley’s (The Times, 11 January 1892); Ray Wright, a 25-year-old cook, accompanied three women to Selfridge’s (The Times, 29 December 1932); Alfred Watson assisted two women in stealing eight silk nightdresses (The Times, 24 August 1934); and Reginald Merrefield went stealing with his wife, Ivy, at Selfridges (The Times, 6 June 1936).

18 Lombroso, Cesare and Ferrero, William, The Female Offender (New York, 1895), 206CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Bishop, Cecil, Women and Crime (London, 1931), 6Google Scholar.

20 Old Bailey Proceedings Online (http://www.oldbaileyonline.org [hereafter cited as OBP], 1 May 2009), 22 November 1897, trial of Sheena Suck and Rose Greenbaum (t18971122–22); The Times, 24 November 1897.

21 Jenny Morris, “The Characteristics of Sweating: The Late Nineteenth-Century London and Leeds Tailoring Trade,” in John, Unequal Opportunities, 95–121.

22 Royal Commission on Labour, The Employment of Women: Report on the Conditions of Work in London, Command 6894-XXIII, House of Commons (hereafter H.C.) (1893–94), xxxvii:545, quote on 10; Apprenticeship and Skilled Employment Association, Trades for London Girls and How to Enter Them (London, 1909)Google Scholar.

23 Appendix Volume XXXVI: Some Industries Employing Women Paupers, Cd. 5200, H.C. (1910), lv:563, quote on vii.

24 Labour Research Department, Wages and Profits in the Clothing Trades (London, 1933), 7Google Scholar.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid., 6; Morris, “The Characteristics of Sweating.”

27 Hutchins, B. L., Women in Modern Industry (London, 1915), 80Google Scholar.

28 On working women and the family life cycle, see Rose, Sonya O., Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century England (Berkeley, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bourke, Working-Class Cultures, 99–112, 124–28; Todd, Selina, “Young Women, Work and Leisure in Interwar England,” Historical Journal 48, no. 3 (September 2005): 789809CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Poverty and Aspiration: Young Women’s Entry to Employment in Interwar England,” Twentieth Century British History 15, no. 2 (June 2004): 119–42Google Scholar; Tilly and Scott, Women, Work, and Family, 154–62; McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, 133–34; Roberts, Elizabeth, Women’s Work, 1840–1940 (Basingstoke, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and A Woman’s Place: An Oral History of Working-Class Women, 1890–1940 (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar; Black, Clementina, ed., Married Women’s Work: Being the Report of an Enquiry Undertaken by the Women’s Industrial Council (London, 1915)Google Scholar. There are parallels here to Peter King’s interpretation of how women’s life cycles changed their opportunities for work and crime: King, “Female Offenders.” For the prevalence of married and widowed women in laundry work and “homework,” see Papworth, Lucy Wyatt, Clothing and Textile Trades: Summary Tables (London, 1912), 3Google Scholar; and Malcolmson, Patricia E., English Laundresses: A Social History, 1850–1930 (Chicago, 1986), xiixiiiGoogle Scholar; de Vesselitsky, V., The Homeworker and the Outlook: A Descriptive Study of Tailoresses and Boxmakers (London, 1916), 4, 13, 18–19Google Scholar.

29 Black, Clementina and Mrs.Meyer, Carl, Makers of Our Clothes: A Case for Trade Boards (London, 1909), 143–53Google Scholar.

30 Accounts of Expenditure of Wage-Earning Women and Girls, Cd. 5963, H.C. (1911), lxxxix:531.

31 Todd, “Young Women, Work and Leisure,” and “Poverty and Aspiration.”

32 The Times, 13 May 1931.

33 The Times, 22 January 1909. Other cases of tailoresses and dressmakers who shoplifted include Marie Augart, 22, who stole chiffon and other dress material (The Times, 25 March 1909); Elizabeth Mann, who stole handbags (The Times, 19 July 1919); Gertrude Skelton, 22, who stole dresses (The Times, 18 March 1922); Margaret Aves (The Times, 12 October 1910); and Julia Donovan, who pled guilty to stealing eight yards of velvet (16 January 1920, LMA PS/MAR/A/01/062).

34 The Times, 24 July 1930.

35 The Times, 3 August 1899.

36 The Times, 25 July 1912.

37 Wilkins, W. H., The Bitter Cry of the Voteless Toilers, with Special Reference to the Seamstresses of East London (Manchester, 1893)Google Scholar.

38 The Times, 9 July 1914.

39 The Times, 28 July 1919.

40 Case of Lucy Iron, 27 January 1921, LMA LJ/SR/604; The Times, 10 February 1921.

41 Employment of Women, 22; Malcolmson, English Laundresses, xii–xiii.

42 The Times, 27 January 1921. See also some of her previous convictions: The Times, 17 January 1900, 15 September 1910.

43 The Times, 14 August 1908. Bolton had one previous conviction and Smith had four previous convictions. The women were sentenced to seven and fifteen months in prison, respectively.

44 The Times, 22 January 1909.

45 Report on the Money Wages of Indoor Domestic Servants, C. 9346, H.C. (1899), xcii:1, esp. iii.

46 Ibid., 2–4.

47 Ibid., 13.

48 Ibid., 34.

49 On the shift from service to clerical employment, and its relationship to social mobility and leisure, see Todd, “Young Women,” 803–4.

50 Report on Money Wages, 22.

51 Rennie, Jean, Every Other Sunday (New York, 1955), 18, 80Google Scholar. The title of Rennie’s autobiography refers to the restricted independence given to servants—she was given time off on every other Sunday.

52 The Times, 10 June 1892.

53 The Times, 23 October 1909.

54 The Times, 27 March 1919.

55 For further examples, see the case of Irene Papworth (4 January 1929, LMA PS/MS/A/01/091); and the case of Doris Kirkham (The Times, 4 January 1929).

56 The Times, 30 November 1904.

57 The Times, 9 January 1913.

58 Case of Florrie Martin and Mary Liversuch, 3 January 1929, LMA PS/MS/A/01/091.

59 The Times, 9 October 1933.

60 Rappaport, Erika, Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London’s West End (Princeton, NJ, 2000)Google Scholar, and The Halls of Temptation: Gender, Politics, and the Construction of the Department Store in Late Victorian London,” Journal of British Studies 35, no. 1 (January 1996): 5883CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the gendered nature of public space in London, see also Walkowitz, Judith, “Going Public: Shopping, Street Harassment, and Streetwalking in Late Victorian London,” Representations 62 (Spring 1998): 130CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Quoted in Gamman, Lorraine, Gone Shopping: The Story of Shirley Pitts—Queen of Thieves (London, 1994), 83Google Scholar.

62 Ibid., 81.

63 The Times, 9 October 1933. See also the cases in The Times of Lady Edith Simmons (21 December 1923); Angela Bond (23 August 1924); Alice Brown (23 March 1927); Annie Pilley (13 July 1929); Kathleen Peat (25 July 1929); and Mildred Wilson O’Neill (6 August 1936).

64 The Times, 24 January 1896.

65 The Times, 30 December 1918.

66 See the case of Sarah Jones, Sarah Johnson, and Beatrice Wilson (The Times, 19 August 1897); and of Eleanor Finkelstein and Fanny Rosenbaum (The Times, 22 July 1898).

67 Wensley, Frederick Porter, Detective Days: The Record of Forty-Two Years’ Service in the Criminal Investigation Department (London, 1931), 145Google Scholar; OBP (http://www.oldbaileyonline.org, 1 May 2009), November 1904, trial of Esther Joab, Matilda Greenberg, and Rebecca Hollander (t19041114–19); The Times, 5 November 1904.

68 The Times, 18 December 1937. For other “impulse” pleas, see the cases in The Times of Mary Ann Edgeley (3 July 1891), Ethel Brown (18 July, 8 November 1893), Rose Heckshaer (20 January 1894), and Hannah Burns (10 October 1933).

69 See the cases of “a highly respectable Belgian lady” (The Times, 9 May 1918), and of Florence Robinson (The Times, 10 October 1918).

70 For examples of these health-related pleas, see the following cases: On alcoholism, see the cases of Alice Hughes (The Times, 14 January 1914) and Alfreda Newman (The Times, 12 April 1919; and 11 April 1919, LMA PS/MAR/A/01/057). On high blood pressure, see the case of 60-year-old Annie Pilley, who was fined (The Times, 13 July 1929). For impulses, see the case of Meryl Irene Shove (The Times, 24 December 1927). For fits, see the case of Lydia Hirschfeld (The Times, 30 December 1918). For work-related stress, see the case of Kate Beddowe, a schoolteacher (The Times, 4 February 1919). For “neurasthenia,” see the case of Clara Neilding (The Times, 7 August 1919). For strung nerves, see the case of Emily Caldecott, a 45-year-old married woman (The Times, 18 January 1922). On estrangement from a spouse, see the case of Angela Bond, age 29, after she had been caught stealing frocks and a brooch from Whiteley’s (The Times, 23 August 1924). On too many aspirin pills, see the case of Olive Lilian Ocuneff, a 26-year-old married woman, who said that she had taken too many aspirin pills to know what she was doing when she stole handbags and gloves from Selfridge’s (The Times, 4 January 1929). On insomnia, see the case of Grace Chandler, age 18, a dancing instructor, who stole from Bourne & Hollingsworth (The Times, 3 April 1929). On the plea of a brainstorm, see the case of Ella Ford (The Times, 12 July 1929); and on the plea of tropical disease, see case of Marie Cooper (The Times, 20 November 1931).

71 The Times, 10 June 1892.

72 The Times, 25 February 1899.

73 OBP, November 1904, Esther Joab, Matilda Greenberg, and Rebecca Hollander (t19041114–19).

74 The Times, 28 July 1910.

75 The Times, 25 July 1912.

76 Twenty-one of the seventy-nine professional shoplifters in this sample were under the age of twenty-five, and another twenty-one women were between twenty-six and thirty-five. Occupational designations (other than “widow” or “married”) were available for only thirty-one of these seventy-nine women, including eleven laundresses, six servants, six dressmakers, two needlewomen, two flower sellers, one waitress, one typist, one cashier, and one boxmaker.

77 The concept of London’s “underworld” has a long genesis, as is excellently examined by Shore, Heather, “‘Undiscovered Country’: Towards a History of the Criminal ‘Underworld,’Crimes and Misdemeanours 1, no. 1 (April 2007): 4168Google Scholar. The social investigations of Henry Mayhew in the mid-nineteenth century identified Whitechapel and the Elephant & Castle as breeding grounds for crime: London Labour and the London Poor Vol. IV: Those That Will Not Work (London, 1861–62)Google Scholar. Other key works on the underworld in the period surveyed here include White, Jerry, Campbell Bunk: The Worst Street in North London between the Wars (London, 2003)Google Scholar; Murphy, Robert, Smash and Grab: Gangsters in the London Underworld, 1920–60 (London, 1993)Google Scholar; and Samuel, Raphael, East End Underworld: Chapters in the Life of Arthur Harding (London, 1981)Google Scholar.

78 Sharpe, Frederick Dew, Sharpe of the Flying Squad (London, 1938), 154Google Scholar.

79 Greeno, Edward, War on the Underworld (London, 1960), 21Google Scholar.

80 The Times, 8 July 1921.

81 Capstick, John with Thomas, Jack, Given in Evidence (London, 1960), 114Google Scholar.

82 Hill, Billy, Boss of Britain’s Underworld (London, 1955), 15Google Scholar. For other references to the “Forty Elephants,” see McDonald, Brian, Elephant Boys: Tales of London and Los Angeles Underworlds (Edinburgh, 2005), 63Google Scholar; and The Times, 19 July 1939.

83 In addition to Ada Wellman, Diana Black, and Maggie Hughes, other likely members of the Forty Thieves include Margaret Smith, Gertrude Skelton, Marie Butler, and Laura McLean (The Times, 18 March 1922); Ellen Mead (The Times, 21 November 1923); Ivy Arbuckle (The Times, 11 October 1933); Ellen Dodd (The Times, 24 December 1938); and Marie Webb (The Times, 26 April 1939).

84 Lloyd’s Sunday News, 11 March 1923.

85 Gamman, Gone Shopping, 81.

86 Wensley, Detective Days, 144.

87 Capstick, Given in Evidence, 112–14.

88 Moore, Maurice C., Frauds & Swindles: A Cautionary Handbook (London, 1947), 72Google Scholar.

89 The Times, 14 August 1908.

90 The Times, 26 January 1894, 19 August 1897, 5 November 1904, and 17 May 1919; Pall Mall Gazette, 9 February 1923.

91 Parr, Grafters All, 113–14.

92 Gamman, Gone Shopping, 85–86.

93 The Times, 13 July 1929. Similar cases include those of Sarah Jones (age 41) with two women (ages 26 and 22); Eleanor Finkenstein (age 27) and Fanny Rosenbaum (age 17); Annie Harris (age 39) and Polly Miller (age 25); Elizabeth West (age 40), Margaret Smith (age 40), and Mary Morris (age 28); Jane Bullock (age 59), Elizabeth Cooper (age 39), Amelia Evans (age 26), and Florence Roberts (age 22); Hannah Kelly (age 68) and Rebecca Morris (age 26); Ellen Webb (age 49) and Alice Slym (age 25). See The Times, 19 August 1897, 22 July 1898, 9 March 1899, 22 January 1909, 11 November 1911, 9 July 1914, 29 July 1919.

94 Gamman, Gone Shopping, 274.

95 Ibid., 83.

96 Eric Parr, “Teamwork on the Hoist,” New Statesman, 3 May 1963, 670.

97 Todd, “Poverty and Aspiration,” 137–42.

98 Alexander, “Becoming a Woman,” 247.

99 Wisbey, Marilyn, Gangster’s Moll (London, 2001), 7, 209–10Google Scholar. Wisbey also names other professional shoplifters: Colleen Warner, Alice Gilder, and Eva Brindle.

100 Swain, John, Being Informed (London, 1995), 115–16Google Scholar.

101 “A Shopping Spree with the Hoisters,” The Times, 26 June 1984.

102 Shoemaker, Robert B., “Print and the Female Voice: Representations of Women’s Crime in London, 1690–1735,” Gender & History 22, no. 1 (April 2010): 7591CrossRefGoogle Scholar; King, “Female Offenders.”

103 Reynolds, Bruce, The Autobiography of a Thief (London, 1995)Google Scholar.

104 On the “English miracle,” see Gatrell, V. A. C., “The Decline of Theft and Violence in Victorian and Edwardian England,” in Crime and the Law: The Social History of Crime in Western Europe since 1500, ed. Gatrell, V. A. C., Lenman, Bruce, and Parker, Geoffrey (London, 1980), 238337Google Scholar; Radzinowicz, Leon and Hood, Roger, A History of English Criminal Law and Its Administration from 1750, vol. 5: The Emergence of Penal Policy in Victorian and Edwardian England (Oxford, 1990), 113–24Google Scholar. For a comparative look at Britain as a high-crime country, see van Dijk, Jan, Manchin, Robert, van Kesteren, John, Nevala, Sami, and Hideg, Gergely, The Burden of Crime in the EU: A Comparative Analysis of the European Crime and Safety Survey (EU ICS), 2005 (Freiburg, 2007)Google Scholar.