ABSTRACT

In 1905, journalist T. W. H. Crosland was amazed at the ubiquity of shopping. He wrote that the streets, especially of suburban towns:

more or less bristled with shops . . . to buy at a shop, or, in the chaste cant of the time, to go “shopping”, is a popular suburban amusement . . . All the shop-windows that ever were have been pranked, tricked out, decked, and dressed . . . There are gold rings, hall-marked, at five shillings apiece; there are fat gold watches, hall-marked, at thirty shillings apiece; there are gold sleeve-links at three and sixpence a pair, and guinea gold wedding-rings at half a guinea.1