ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on a cluster of cases, recognized as the first large-scale trials of fraud and related crimes of commercial dishonesty, which occurred throughout the 1850s and into and beyond the 1870s. During these sensitive times, Victorian society believed also that it discovered, through the revelation of financial crime, a type of criminal activity which was not confined to the lower 'dangerous' classes. Firstly, that the impact of financial crime, and the ambiguous position of respectability exposed by its discovery, provide a most suitable front from which historians can question how 'golden' these times really were. The rhetoric of 'less criminal' which is often closely associated with financial crime, and white-collar crime more broadly, suggests that over time, these difficulties have become more acute. Some notable occasions, even defense counsel were prepared to acknowledge the existence of 'high art' crime, and that in some circumstances respectable people would be criminals.
