In Jane Austen at Home, Lucy Worsley recounts an incident of alleged shoplifting involving Jane Austen’s aunt Jane Leigh Perrot (née Cholmeley) (1706-1755). On 14 August 1799 Jane Leigh Perrot was charged with stealing some white lace from Miss Elizabeth Gregory’s millinery shop at no.1, Bath Street, Bath, from whom she had legitimately purchased some black lace only to be stopped after she had left the shop and accused of also taking some white lace for which she had not paid. The allegation of theft was serious and could have resulted in her transportation to the colonies, but in the meantime she was taken to Ilchester Gaol where, accompanied by her husband, they were able to buy accommodation in the warden’s house while they awaited the trial at Taunton on 29 March 1800. Although Jane Leigh Perrot was found not guilty, Lucy Worsley suggests that the publicity surrounding the trial may have indirectly encouraged Mr Cruttwell of the Bath Chronicle, who had produced a pamphlet about the trial, to recommend to the publisher Benjamin Crosby of London, for whom he acted as a literary agent, Jane’s novel Susan, written as it was by Jane Leigh Perrot’s niece.
The following article by David Pugsley, the Honorary Archivist of the Western Circuit and a legal historian with a special interest in famous west country trials, was published in SDNQ vol. 39 (September 2021), pp.163-273:
“The man is off and the shop I hear must be ruin’d”: Reflections on the trial of Jane Leigh Perrot.
Jane Austen’s aunt, Jane Leigh Perrot, was prosecuted at the Taunton Assizes on 29 March 1800 for shoplifting in no.1, Bath Street, Bath, on 8 August 1799. The witnesses for the prosecution were Elizabeth Gregory, the shopkeeper, Charles Filby, the shopman, and Sarah Raines, the apprentice. She was acquitted.[1] On 14 April 1800, she wrote a letter to her cousin, Montague Cholmeley, reflecting on the events of the previous year and the trial:
‘But now a public Court and an honorable acquittal is much more satisfactory to the whole World – and how can we blacken those people more than they have blackened themselves – the Man is off and the Shop I hear must be ruin’d.’[2]
It will be convenient to dispose of the man, Charles Filby, first. In his deposition he merely said that he had been twice a bankrupt. In cross-examination he said that he had been brought up in the haberdashery line in a shop in St Paul’s Churchyard, London. He was very intimate with a pawnbroker called Crouch but never had any dealings with him. Crouch was called as a witness by the defence and swore that he knew Filby and his brother; they had both done business at his house in 1793 and 1794; but Charles Filby might not have been with him on business more than once.
Filby and his brother then went into partnership as haberdashers with one Terry. After two years and three quarters they were all declared bankrupt, and their creditors received a dividend of five shillings and threepence in the pound.[3]
Five months after the first bankruptcy Charles Filby went into partnership with Richard Crout as haberdashers. Crout supplied all the money, and that business lasted 18 months, when, the money being all gone, Filby and Crout became bankrupts and were required to make ‘a full Discovery and Disclosure of their Estate and Effect’.[4] Richard Crout complied, and his certificate was allowed on 24 August 1799. Charles Filby did not, and he said that he had about £18 in his pocket as the time of his last examination. Nearly all this information was available to the jury and I have only added a few details from the London Gazette. The Bankruptcy Commissioners fixed their meeting for 29 April 1800,[5] one month after the Assizes. Filby disappeared. The Commissioners did not deal with his case again until 4 February 1809 and were still dealing with it on 17 January 1810.
We can now return to Aunt Jane’s words: “the Shop I hear must be ruin’d”. This seems to be the origin of the idea that the business was in such a bad state that Gregory and Filby were trying to make up for the loss by way of blackmail. That idea can be found in the books by the members of the Austen-Leigh family and in the reviews of MacKinnon’s book in 1937.[6] But it is wrong. Aunt Jane did not go to see for herself. It was in fact a very successful business from 1795 to 1807. It started as Gregory and Co. in the summer of 1795. There were advertisements in the Bath Chronicle on 14 May and 16 July. I presume that the company was run by the sisters, Mary and Elizabeth Gregory. In January 1796 William Smith moved in from no.13, Bath Street, to join his wife, Mary Gregory, and the business continued in his name. Mrs Smith appears for the first time in an advertisement on 11 May 1797, having just returned from London with an elegant assortment of millinery and fancy dresses, black and white veils, lace, cloths, etc. William Smith appears for the last time in an advertisement on 29 March 1798 to inform his friends and the public that Mrs Smith is just returned from Town with a large and fashionable assortment of goods for the spring season. Mrs Smith appears for the first time in her own name on 3 May 1798, having as usual just returned from Town with every article of the newest fashion now in demand. After that all the advertisements, nearly 100 altogether, are in the name of M. Smith, down to 26 March 1807, when she offered to her friends and the public the remaining part of her winter stock at very reduced prices (in order to make room for spring goods) to which (as Great Bargains) she begs the attention of her friends.[7] The shop was not ruined in April 1800.
There were no advertisements at all in the name of Elizabeth Gregory, and no evidence that she ever returned from London with a fashionable assortment of goods for the next season. At the trial she said in cross-examination that she had been in the shop nearly five years, which would be right if she was there at the beginning in May 1795.[8]
William Smith absconded sometime in early 1798. He had apparently fallen into financial difficulty. That was not because of the business, as we have seen, but because of the house. It was first advertised in April and May 1793 as
‘That large and commodious house, no.1, Bath Street, Five rooms upon a floor. The said house is let, to very responsible tenants, on a running lease, at the year rent of £168.’[9]
William Smith seems to have bought the whole of no.1, Bath Street, with the shop on the ground floor and tenants upstairs. That was financially viable as long as there were tenants upstairs and they paid the rent. But in January and June 1797 the last line of his advertisements said: ‘An Elegant Suit of Apartments to let, furnished’. In 1798 he absconded.
On 8 August 1799 he was said to be in London, with no further details. And that is all we know about him until 1803 when Mary Smith placed the following advertisement in the Bath Chronicle on 8 and 15 December:
GREAT BARGAINS!
To be SOLD OFF, at and under Prime Cost,
FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE ESTATE OF
W SMITH, DECEASED,
All the newly selected and valuable STOCK of LACES, etc.
At No.1, BATH STREET.
N.B. All person indebted to the above Estate are requested to pay the
same into the hands of M SMITH, the Administratrix, at No.1, Bath
Street: — and all the persons to whom the said Estate is indebted, are
desired to send in their accounts.
There were two accounts or sources of information about what happened after the disappearance of William Smith: the advertisements in the Bath Chronicle, and the evidence of Elizabeth Gregory in cross-examination at the trial.
On 9 August 1798 Mary Smith advertised a sale of stock ‘at very reduced and low prices, such as cannot fail giving great satisfaction’. After a list of the goods for sale, she added two more paragraphs:
‘MARY SMITH hopes those friends who have for several years past honoured her with their commands, will their encouragement as it shall be her particular care to provide a constant succession of new articles worthy their attention, and her greatest wish to merit by assiduity their favour. BATH, Aug. 4, 1798.
All persons who have any legal demands on the estate and effects of Wm SMITH are requested to send their accounts immediately; and those indebted to the said estate are desired to pay the same without further notice to Mr L Lambe, grocer and tea-dealer, Stall Street; Mr Gye, printer, Market Place; or to Mrs Smith aforesaid, who are duly authorised to receive the same.’[10]
Apparently the parties agreed that the building should pass into the ownership of Lambe and Gye, but that the business should continue to be run by Mary Smith in the same way as it had been for several years past. There is no mention of a transfer to Elizabeth Gregory, of whom there is no mention at all. The precise legal arrangements are not clear. They may not have been clear to the parties themselves. They were certainly not clear to the lawyers for the prosecution: the indictment contained four counts, varying the name of the owner of the goods alleged to have been stolen: (1) Elizabeth Gregory, (2) William Gye and Lacon Lambe, (3) William Smith, (4) Mary Smith.[11]
Lacon Lambe[12] owned an old-fashioned tea and grocery warehouse at the India House, no.36, Stall Street, adjoining no.1, Bath Street, in partnership with his mother, Mary Lambe. The partnership was dissolved in May 1799 and Mary Lambe carried on the business on her own, at least until April 1802. She later went into partnership with William Miller. When Mary Smith left no.1, Bath Street in March 1807, Lambe and Miller combined the two shops with the new address ‘Corner of Bath and Stall Streets’. The partnership was dissolved in October 1807 and William Miller carried on the business on his own. He went bankrupt in January 1811.[13]
William Gye was a printer and bookseller in Westgate Buildings and later at no.13 Market Place. He seems to have been a successful businessman. He had enough money to make a large investment in no.1, Bath Street. He was also very keen on charitable work, particularly on behalf of the insolvent debtors in Ilchester Prison. This interest went back to 1787[14] and continued until shortly before his death from an apoplectic seizure in 1802.[15] His obituary stated that ‘his strict integrity and unblemished reputation had secured a large portion of public esteem’.[16] His widow, Mary Gye, carried on the business and her husband’s interest in the insolvent debtors in Ilchester Prison at least until 1808. The public esteem is shown by his election in the Abbey Parish in July 1801 as a Commissioner for paving and lighting the city: “ Gye 97, T Jones 67.[17]
On 8 August 1788 when Charles Filby had seen James Leigh Perrot’s name on the door of no.1, Paragon Buildings, he went to William Gye’s and then to the Town Hall to lay his complaint (unsuccessfully because the magistrates had all gone). The following morning Elizabeth Gregory spent two or three hours waiting at Mr Gye’s, opposite the Town Hall, again without success. When two shop workers had caught a customer shoplifting it is not surprising that they went to see their landlord. They would need his financial support if they were to start a private prosecution against her. There is nothing suspicious in that. And the mention of Gye’s name may have helped them with the magistrates.
Mary Smith carried on the business at no.1, Bath Street, without her husband, with energy and success. On 8 November 1798 she most respectfully informed her ‘Friends and the Publick’ that she had just received from London a large assortment of the following articles, the ‘whole of which being purchased with ready money, she is enabled to sell them full 30% under the usual prices’.
‘M Smith returns her sincere thanks to those ladies who have for several years past honoured her with their commands; and hopes, by an unremitted attention to procure every article she sells of the newest fashion, best quality, and lowest prices, to merit a continuance of those favours.’[18]
On 31 January 1799 ‘M Smith, being about to lay in an assortment of goods for the spring season, has this day commenced selling the remainder of her winter stock under prime cost’.[19] And on 28 March and 4 April 1799 she informed the ladies and public in general that she had just returned from London, where she had selected very article that was new and fashionable in the haberdashery line.[20]
There is then a gap in the advertisements until 3 October 1799. On 1 August Wests, Milliners, announced that they were moving into no.3, Bath Street.[21] This may explain why a week later Charles Filby was stock-taking and adding the shop mark to the cards of lace, without which he could not prove that a stolen card of lace did not come from no.3. Competition in Bath must have been fierce. On 23 October 1800 Wests announced that they were moving to no.34, Milsom Street, ‘Millinery Rooms Up-stairs’.[22] The shop at no.1 was certainly not ruined.
On 8 August, as we all know, Jane Leigh Perrot was accused by Elizabeth Gregory and Charles Filby of shoplifting at no.1. In her examination in chief at the trial, going through her deposition before the magistrates on 14 August 1799, Gregory said that “in August last she kept a haberdasher and milliner’s shop in Bath Street, at Bath, and that the business was carried on by her”. She had an apprentice named Sarah Raines, a shopwoman of the name of Leeson, and a shopman whose name was Charles Filby; that Filby had been with her about six months, at the yearly wages of £50. Filby’s deposition confirmed those facts and added that he had been bankrupt twice but gave no further details. There was no deposition from Sarah Raines, nor any mention at all in their depositions of William and Mary Smith, or how long Elizabeth Gregory had been in the shop or how long she had kept it herself.
Her deposition did not say that she bought and sold on her own account or in her own name, or that she was the proprietor and it was her shop. It gives the impression that she was running the shop during the temporary absence of the proprietor in August. But apparently she sometimes allowed her customers to think that it was her own shop and she was trading on her own account, for when Mary Smith returned at the end of September or the beginning of October her first advertisement in the Bath Chronicle on 3 October speaks of the warehouse ‘usually carried on in the name of M Smith’. And on 21 November she made it clear that she was the proprietor of the above business.[23] On 6 February she advertised that she was selling off the remainder of her winter stock. This is probably the advertisement referred to in cross-examination, when Witness (Elizabeth Gregory) said “she knew of an advertisement having been made in Smith’s name for selling off the stock”.[24] She did not explain why Mary Smith was selling off Elizabeth Gregory’s stock.
The first reference to ‘Miss Gregory’s Shop’ appears at the trial on 29 March 1800, when counsel for the prosecution produced a plan of the shop to help the Court and the Jury to understand the layout of the premises. It was frequently referred to by the prosecution witnesses. The heading says ‘PLAN of Miss GREGORY’s SHOP. (Late William Smith’s.)’. All the advertisements in the Bath Chronicle refer to the shop as no.1, Bath Street, and then give the name of the shopkeeper. That could have been done here. We may wonder why it was not.
It is a question: What was the status of the plan? Was it evidence, evidence that it was Elizabeth Gregory’s shop? Answer: No, it could not be cross-examined.
Who prepared the plan? Probably Charles Filby. It has full details of the situation at his end of the left-hand counter. And that explains point A on the plan. Miss Gregory was there when Aunt Jane came in[25] and she crossed the shop to point G to serve her.[26] That was a clever way to give the impression that Gregory owned the shop, and therefore the goods, without actually having to prove it. Filby referred to “Miss Gregory’s shop” twice in cross-examination.[27]
After the trial Mary Smith wasted no time to advertise her recent return from London, where she had purchased a very large and elegant assortment of fashionable goods for the spring trade. Her advertisement and William Gye’s advertisement for the second edition of his pamphlet about the trial were published in adjoining columns of the Bath Chronicle, 10 April 1800, page 3, columns d and e:
‘M Smith assures her friends they may depend on having every article in the fancy way immediately on their being introduced in Town; as her connections are well established with the first Manufacturers in London, Dunstable, etc. etc.
M Smith returns her most grateful thanks to those numerous friends who have hitherto honoured her with their favours; and assures them every exertion in her power shall be made to merit a continuance of the same.’
Her shop (she always called it a warehouse) was certainly not ruined. It continued successfully until March 1807.
Elizabeth Gregory disappeared.[28] On 14 September 1815 there is a report in the Bath Chronicle of a coroner’s inquest on Elizabeth Gregory, found dead in a wood at Luckham, or perhaps Lucknam. That may or may not be the same person. But both Charles Filby and Elizabeth Gregory deserved to end badly.
We can now return to Elizabeth Gregory’s evidence on oath in cross-examination at the trial. It is very different from the picture that emerges from the Bath Chronicle advertisements, with its gap between April and October 1799 into which Elizabeth Gregory’s temporary appearance as shopkeeper in August fits so neatly:
‘When Smith left the shop, Mr Gye and Mr Lambe were trustees of the property for the creditors of Smith; the trustees gave it up to Witness, who was to pay them the amount by instalments, and they were to be answerable to the creditors for fifteen shillings in the pound; since then she had bought and sold on her own account and in her own name.’[29]
In the only modern legal analysis of the trial, by Albert Borowitz, this account is accepted without question.[30] It is very different from the account in her deposition seven or eight months previously. Then she kept the shop in August 1799. Now it had been her own business for two years. How are we to explain that?
The evidence in court is not a carefully drafted document, prepared by, or with the approval of, the witness’s lawyer. It is an oral re-action to a question without notice from the cross-examiner, without any possibility of a pause for reflection or for seeking help and advice. Giving any evidence at the assizes, especially for the first time, must have been a daunting experience for an ordinary witness like Elizabeth Gregory. Answering questions from defence counsel must have been terrifying.
She started badly. In reply to some innocuous opening question like, how long have you been in Bath Street?[31] She replied, “nearly five years”,[32] “two years”,[33] “it appeared that witness had been in the shop some years”.[34] I do not think that the reason for the different versions is that the reporters were half asleep and not paying attention properly. It was because she was stuttering nervously, not speaking calmly and clearly.
Counsel passed on to the arrangements between the two sisters. If Elizabeth Gregory was running the business and Mary Smith was going up to London frequently to buy new stock, how much did she pay her? “She said Mrs Smith was not entitled to more of the profits than witness chose to give her”.[35] It is not clear what the jury would make of that. Was it really her shop? How did it become Miss Gregory’s Shop? And on the spur of the moment she produced an answer. Anything was better than nothing, and she hoped the jury would not notice. Later on, when Charles Filby was cross-examined he said that he was hired by Mrs Smith six months before August. Now if Elizabeth Gregory was running the business, why was Charles Filby hired by Mary Smith? Counsel for the defence could not address the jury to point out these inconsistencies, but the judge’s instructions to the jury were clear:
“If the jury were satisfied with the evidence and believed the witnesses for the prosecution, they were bound to pronounce her guilty… If upon taking all the circumstances of the case into consideration, the jury should see any reason to disbelieve the witnesses for the prosecution, or which led them to doubt of the prisoner’s guilt, they should recollect the very excellent character which had been given her, and in that case it ought to have great weight with them towards an acquittal.”[36]
The jury did not take long to return a verdict of Not Guilty.
Footnotes:
[1] See D. Pugsley, ‘Was Aunt Jane a Shoplifter?’ in Fundamina, 24:2 (2018), 45-62.
[2] Somerset & Dorset Notes & Queries (SDNQ), 18 (1925), 137.
[3] London Gazette, 1 July 1797.
[4] London Gazette, 11 September 1798.
[5] London Gazette, 11 February 1800.
[6] F. MacKinnon, Grand larceny, being the trial of Jane Leigh Perrot, aunt of Jane Austen (1937).
[7] From 18 March 1802 her advertisements are addressed to the ladies of Bath and its vicinity, which suggests an expanding reputation.
[8] J. Pinchard, The trial of Jane Leigh Perrot (1800), 10.
[9] Bath Chronicle, 17 October and 18 December 1793. Similar arrangements for nos.5 and 6, 11 April 1793. In the same year Joseph Gawen bought no.12, Bath Street, and opened a commodious shop for goods in the Linen-Drapery line. N.B. The greater part of the house to let, unfurnished, with a drawing room and large kitchen.
[10] Bath Chronicle, 9 August 1798.
[11] J. Pinchard, The trial of Jane Leigh Perrot (1800), 2.
[12] This is the correct spelling. John Pinchard was wrong to leave off the final ‘e’.
[13] London Gazette, 26 January 1811.
[14] Bath Chronicle, 18 January 1787.
[15] Bath Chronicle, 29 April 1802.
[16] See also Bath Chronicle, 5 January 1893, 25 March 1933, 5 June 1937 and 6 April 1940.
[17] Bath Chronicle, 30 July 1801.
[18] Bath Chronicle, 8 November 1798.
[19] Bath Chronicle, 31 January 1799.
[20] Bath Chronicle, 28 March and 4 April 1799.
[21] Bath Chronicle, 1 August 1799.
[22] Bath Chronicle, 23 October 1800.
[23] Bath Chronicle, 21 November 1799.
[24] J. Pinchard, The trial of Jane Leigh Perrot (1800), 11.
[25] W. Gye, Trial of Jane Leigh Perrot (Bath, 1800), 10.
[26] J. Pinchard, The trial of Jane Leigh Perrot (1800), 13-14.
[27] J. Pinchard, The trial of Jane Leigh Perrot (1800), 21, 22.
[28] S. Fullerton, Jane Austen and Crime (2005), 42, states that ‘The haberdashers remained open on Bath Street and Miss Gregory continued to serve at the counter there’. She gives no authority for that, and I know of none.
[29] J. Pinchard, The trial of Jane Leigh Perrot (1800), 12.
[30] A. Borowitz, ‘The trial of Jane’s Aunt’, Crimes Gone By (2016), 300.
[31] Apart from two short passages the reports do not give the questions separately. They have to be reconstructed from the answers.
[32] J. Pinchard, The trial of Jane Leigh Perrot (1800), 10.
[33] W. Gye, Trial of Jane Leigh Perrot (Bath, 1800), 8.
[34] Anon, The trial of Mrs Leigh Perrot (1800), 12.
[35] J. Pinchard, The trial of Jane Leigh Perrot (1800), 12.
[36] J. Pinchard, The trial of Jane Leigh Perrot (1800), 41-42.
Further reading:
David Pugsley, Albert Borowitz v. Jane Leigh Perrot (Jane Austen Society of North America website)
Lucy Worsley, Jane Austen at Home (Hodder & Stoughton, 2017)
Rachel Hassall, The Knight brothers, Jane Austen’s great-nephews & Sherborne School (Old Shirburnian Society website)
Jane Austen Centre, Bath
Jane Austen’s House, Steventon
Jane Austen Society UK
Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA)
Jane Austen’s World
Chawton House: Home to Early Women’s Writing
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