ABSTRACT
In retrospect the nineteenth-century obsession with consumer goods as well as the occasional sensation caused by a woman pilfering a handkerchief or a bit of lace seems trivial. Sometimes overlooked in the history of English capitalism, the development of a new kind of consumer culture laid the foundations for the later feminine world of materialist fantasy—emphasizing display and consumption— that enchanted fin de siècle shoppers. If England was once a nation of shopkeepers, by the 1860s, critics contended that the country had become a nation of frauds and shoplifters with women in the lead of those satisfied with the pursuit of selling without substance. Despite England’s lead in many aspects of consumer culture in the nineteenth century, most of the historical studies of women and retail crime have concentrated on France and the United States linking consumer crime to late nineteenth-century consumption.
