Crime, Gender and Consumer Culture in Nineteenth-Century England.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- General Editor's Preface -- List of Figures -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- PART I: DESTROYING THE 'NATION OF SHOPKEEPERS' -- 1 Ready Money Only: Small Shops and New Retail Methods -- 2 Vanity Fairs: The Growth of Bazaars and Fancy Fairs -- 3 'Mothers Beware!': Fraud by the Retailer -- 4 The Culture of Fraud and the Female Consumer -- PART II: CRIMINAL CONSUMPTION -- 5 Shoplifting in Early Nineteenth-Century England -- 6 Mrs. McGregor's Sealskin Jacket: Female Frauds and the Art of Buying Without Paying -- 7 Solving the Problem of the Criminal Consumer: Women and Kleptomania -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, this book traces the expansion of commodity culture and a mass consumer orientated market, and explores the wider social and cultural implications this had for society. The author emphasizes the key role women played in this evolution and, through a focus on retail crime and individual cases of middle-class shoplifting and fraud, provides the first detailed history of the "kleptomaniac" woman in 19th c. England.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.