ABSTRACT
Historians of white-collar crime are no more immune than anyone else to the ethical and evidential difficulties of distinguishing between explanation and exculpation. Historians and others interested in white-collar crime continue to stress that opportunity was often the catalyst for illegality. It will be recalled, for example, that opportunity comprises the central leg of Donald Cressey’s classic triangular explanation of fraudulent behaviour: pressure, opportunity and rationalisation. Opportunity and opportunism remain then staple ingredients of the historical analysis of fraud and embezzlement. Historians and contemporaries agree then on the importance of opportunity and opportunism in accounting for the fact that so many seemingly respectable Victorian and Edwardian white-collar workers turned to dishonest ways of making money. Jesse Varley’s criminal career does nothing at all to challenge this consensus. In Wolverhampton, he worked for an Education Committee whose financial management was so lax that it was virtually crying out to be robbed.
