ABSTRACT
Once the pride of a ‘nation of shopkeepers,’ English retailers found themselves in the new century increasingly accused of fraud. Although worried about the thieving small dealer or ‘cheap shopkeeper,’ commentators like Anthony Trollope were more concerned with the growing retail culture of ‘fraud’ typified by the large, discount, drapery emporiums. Newspapers, trade papers, and trade protection society circulars reveal that many dealers in London shops in the nineteenth century were either fraudulent, or perhaps formerly honest dealers forced into fraud by the threat of bankruptcy. Trade protection societies and trade papers provide numerous records of retail frauds who cheated their creditors, particularly the wholesalers, and set up their shops on false pretences. One of the most spectacular drapery frauds of the same period was a widowed woman, Madame Doodewaarde. Businessmen tried to separate themselves from this culture of retail fraud by claiming to respect older, honest, more traditional methods of business.
