ABSTRACT
Victorian society was manifestly aware of the serious financial harm assailing it from many quarters. The exposure of the flawed railway boom of the early 1840s generated calls for legal responses which were distinct from Kostals hurricane of litigatione. Victorian responses to financial crime show also how concerns about risk-taking tapped into contemporary belief that respectable persons were indispensable partners for business. For understanding the Victorians own experiences of transformative understandings of crime, and for how that society would work through mapping misconduct onto the exigencies of business, it becomes plain that actual enforcement of financial misconduct as criminal misconduct was arguably the most important legacy of Victorian responses. In the search for the origins of the lexicon of financial crime, the role of enforcement in the shift from toleration to criminalisation dwarfs other illustrations of Victorian determination and willingness to provide criminal backing to moves to promote honesty and also propriety in business dealings.
