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Forgery, smuggling, coining, passing bad coin, or forged notes, and shop-lifting; all were punishable by death. From a table published by Janssen, and quoted from Hepworth Dixon, we find that in twenty-three years, from 1749 to 1771, eleven hundred and twenty-one persons were condemned to death in London alone.
It often happens that store-keepers make mistakes and wrongfully accuse respectable ladies of shop-lifting, and in such cases the over-zealous vender suffers greatly, both in loss of custom and, oftentimes, in heavy damages in a court of law. All stores are provided with what are called examination rooms.
Still, her love of finery had never carried her so far as shop-lifting, or induced her to part with her honor for gewgaws irregularities which are so common nowadays, even among wives and mothers of families, that people are no longer astonished to hear of them. No Madame de Fondege was a faithful wife, in the strict and legal sense of the word. But how she revenged herself!
While engaged as police-court reporter for a Boston newspaper, the present writer saw a number of strange cases of the same kind. One was that of a quiet, refined, well educated lady, who was brought in for shop-lifting. Though her husband was well to do, and she did not sell or even use the things she took, she had made a regular business of stealing whenever she could.
'Under this act, the Shop-lifting Act, 'one Mary Jones was executed, whose case I shall just mention; it was at the time when press warrants were issued, on the alarm about Falkland Islands. The woman's husband was pressed, their goods seized for some debts of his, and she, with two small children, turned into the streets a-begging.
Guests at a country house do not as a rule steal their host's possessions, but then it is only an occasional customer at a store who goes in for shop-lifting. It was the principle of the thing, he thought: Be prepared against every emergency. With Sir Thomas Blunt, suspiciousness was almost a mania.
Sometimes, in his wild way of talking, he would say, that Gravity was an errant scoundrel, and he would add, of the most dangerous kind too, because a sly one; and that he verily believed, more honest, well-meaning people were bubbled out of their goods and money by it in one twelve-month, than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven.
"It's not shop-lifting. In fact it isn't anything that would be called really disgraceful." "That surprises me. I should hardly have thought Madame could have avoided but go on. "You know Scarsby?" said Dane-Latimer. "I know a Mrs. Scarsby, a woman who advertises herself and her parties and pushes hard to get into the smartest set. She's invited me to one of her shows next week.
And then she did come out, and before she had been free a fortnight, she began shop-lifting and going on the loose again and all to get money to drink with. So seeing I could do nothing with her and that she was just a-killing of me, I left her, and came up to London, and went into service again, and I did not know what had become of her till you and Mr Ernest here told me.
Marked and suspicious, he began to fear the solitude of the country; he left the horse-fair for the city, and sought in the budging-kens of Edinburgh the secrecy impossible on the hill-side. A clumsy experiment in shop-lifting doubled his danger, and more than once he saw the inside of the police-office.
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