Tarlton Law Library
Jamail Center for Legal Research

     Jane Austen's maternal uncle, James Leigh Perrot, possessed two of the status symbols of the respectable Englishman, as listed by Jane in her unfinished last novel Sanditon: "symptoms of gout and a winter at Bath." Uncle James had a touching (but unrewarded) faith in the therapeutic powers of the waters of Bath, and he and Aunt Jane Leigh Perrot spent almost as much time at that famous resort town and spa as at their home in Berkshire called Scarlets. In the winter of 1799-1800 Bath was particularly unkind to Uncle James's ailment, because, instead of conversing with his well-born friends at the Pump Room or the Assembly Rooms or promenading on the Royal Crescent, he spent the season with his wife at the rude home of the warden of Ilchester Gaol. For Aunt Jane had been arrested in Bath in August 1799 on the inelegant charge of filching a card of white lace from the William Smith millinery shop.
     In May and June 1799, Jane Austen and her mother had also visited Bath in the company of Jane's brother Edward and his wife. It was feared that Edward was following in his uncle's painful footsteps and was teetering on the verge of gout. Jane's letters from Bath to her sister Cassandra report on Edward's condition (she had no cause for worry since he lived until eighty-two), but for the most part they are given over to shopping notes, which serve as an ironic prelude to Aunt Jane's impending troubles.
     On June 2 Jane reported that she "saw some gauzes in a shop in Bath Street yesterday at only 4d. a yard, but they were not so good or so pretty as mine." She also compared the merits and prices of flowers and fruits as millinery ornaments and mentioned Aunt Jane's expert recommendation of a cheap shop: "Flowers are very much worn, and fruit is still more the thing. . . . A plum or greengage would cost three shillings; cherries and grapes about five, I believe, but this is at some of the dearest shops. My aunt has told me of a very cheap one, near Walcot Church, to which I shall go in quest of something for you." Jane concludes with a sketch of the fiercely competitive social conditions which sent the young Bath tourists in desperate search of embellishments: "I have never seen an old woman at the pump-room."
     In Bath Street, at the corner of Stall Street, was a "haberdasher and milliner's shop," which bore over its door the name "William Smith" but which had been kept for two years by Miss Elizabeth Gregory. The shop had previously been owned by William Smith and his wife, Miss Gregory's sister. Mr. Smith had apparently fallen into financial difficulty and conveyed the shop to William Gye and Lacon Lamb, as trustees for 

his creditors. Gye and Lamb gave up the shop to Miss Gregory, who had already been a shop employee for three years. It is tempting to speculate as to whether William Smith's was the Bath Street shop to which Jane Austen referred in her letter of June 2, since it was at this shop that Aunt Jane stumbled into the clumsy arms of eighteenth-century shoplifting law.
     On Thursday, August 8, Mrs. Leigh Perrot came to the Smith millinery shop between one and two o'clock in the afternoon. She asked Miss Gregory to let her look at some black lace that she had first seen the day before. She decided to buy the lace, which cost one pound nineteen shillings, and Miss Gregory asked her clerk Charles Filby to measure and wrap the trimming. Aunt Jane paid for the purchase with a five-pound banknote and was given her package and change.
     About a half hour later, the Leigh Perrots were passing the shop on the other side of the street when Miss Gregory crossed the street and addressed Mrs. Leigh Perrot: "Pray, ma'am, have not you a card of white lace as well as black?" Mrs. Leigh Perrot answered: "No, I have not a bit of white lace about me." Asked to "see" in her pocket, Aunt Jane gave a paper parcel to Miss Gregory, saying, "If I have, your young man must have put it up in mistake." Miss Gregory examined the parcel and found it contained not only the purchased black lace but also a card of white lace bearing her shop's private inventory marking. Aunt Jane insisted that the clerk had given her the white lace by mistake, but Miss Gregory replied: "'Tis no such thing, tis no such thing, you stole it, you are guilty."
     Miss Gregory took the white lace, leaving Aunt Jane with the black lace and the package. Within half an hour, she went with the clerk Filby to the Bath Town Hall to present a charge against Mrs. Leigh Perrot. The mayor was away, and they were told to come back the next day. Miss Gregory and Filby returned daily but were not successful in having their charges received until the following Wednesday, since the magistrates had their hands full making arrangements for the passage of a detachment of boisterous soldiers out of the town.
     On Wednesday Miss Gregory and Filby finally obtained a hearing before the magistrates. A prima facie case of shoplifting was found to have been made out, and Aunt Jane was committed to Ilchester Gaol to await trial at the next county assizes to be held in the spring at Taunton. The offense on which Aunt Jane was to be tried was far from trivial. Shoplifting of an item valued at five shillings or more was a capital crime, and the white lace was put down in the indictment at twenty shillings. For capital punishment the price was right. Although the penalty would likely have been commuted to transportation to Botany Bay in Australia, subjection to the rigors of the penal colony 

could be equivalent to a death sentence for convicts whose constitutions were not hardy.
     Aunt Jane's social position had not exempted her from commitment pending trial, but it did win her the privilege of lodging in the house of the warden, Mr. Scadding, rather than in the prison itself. She was joined by Uncle James, who bore bravely a new onslaught of gout as well as a quality of accommodations far below the most modest Michelin rating. Aunt Jane wrote of the indignities suffered by her fastidious husband: "Cleanliness has ever been his greatest delight, and yet he sees the greasy toast laid by the dirty children on his knees, and feels the small Beer trickle down his Sleeves on its way across the table unmoved." Aunt Jane declined the kind offer of her "sister Austen" to send her daughters Jane and Cassandra to stay with them. Aunt Jane had stated that she could not procure the girls accommodations in the warden's house with her, and that she could not let those "Elegant young Women" be inmates in a prison or be subject to the inconveniences she and her husband were obliged to put up with.
     Indeed, the Leigh Perrots were themselves looking for a change of scene. In September, they went to London to seek an order from a judge of the King's Bench releasing Aunt Jane on bail. However, the request was turned down and Aunt Jane was remanded to prison. She wrote in disgust that "others must determine" whether the judge's refusal to grant bail was due to "inexperience or profound Wisdom."
     The Leigh Perrots then had to accept the warden's hospitality until March when the trial would begin. What did they make of the strange charge that Aunt Jane faced? Her family has officially declared it to be the crude product of a blackmail conspiracy. William and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh wrote in Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters (1913):

There were also strong reasons for thinking that the accusation was the result of a deep-laid plot. Gye, the printer, who lived in the marketplace, was believed to be the chief instigator. His character was indifferent, and he had money invested in Gregory's shop; and the business was in so bad a way that there was a temptation to seek for some large haul by way of blackmail. Mrs. Leigh Perrot was selected as the victim, people thought, because her husband was so extremely devoted to her that he would be sure to do anything to save her from the least vexation.

wrote that she could not accept the offer of her nieces to attend -- "to have two Young Creatures gazed at in a public Court would cut me to the very heart." The cast of legal participants in the trial was impressive. The judge, Sir Soulden Lawrence, had sat on the King's Bench since 1794 and had been a great friend of Samuel Johnson. The lead counsel for the prosecution was a future attorney general, Vicary Gibbs, K.C. Four able counsel acted for the defense, including a member of Parliament, Joseph Jekyll.
     In his opening to the jury, Mr. Gibbs stated his anticipation that the defense would in all probability be either that Filby had by mistake enclosed the white lace in Mrs. Leigh Perrot's parcel, or that the case "was a malicious prosecution, set on foot for the purpose of extorting money from the Prisoner's husband." With respect to the latter possibility, Mr. Gibbs avowed: "If that be proved, there could not be a more infamous or wicked attempt. All the witnesses must, in that case, be perjured, and the crime would if possible be greater even than that where-with the prisoner was charged." But Mr. Gibbs submitted that conspiracy could not be inferred from the conduct of the complainants "who did not lie by to make the charge privately, but, on the contrary, immediately after the transaction, went to the Town-Hall, to lay information before the magistrates; and that, although many days elapsed . . . before the depositions could be taken, . . . yet they related all the circumstances to the town-clerk and deputy town-clerk, and to every person they met. It was then impossible to recall the report."
     Elizabeth Gregory was the first witness called by the prosecution. She testified as to the arrangement of the shop premises. The shop was in the shape of a triangle, with its right wall perpendicular to Bath Street. As one entered from Bath Street, there was a counter along the right wall and a desk a little beyond it at the truncated rear angle of the shop. On the left hand there was another counter (of crucial importance in the case) which ran diagonally in the direction of the desk and parallel to the shop's left wall. Over the greater part of the length of the left counter (the portion closer to the rear of the shop and the desk) ran a brass railing, on which veils and handkerchiefs were hung. The distance from the shop entrance to the beginning of the brass rail was about two and a half yards and the rail itself was about two and a half yards long.
     Miss Gregory recounted Mrs. Leigh Perrot's visit to the shop on August 8. When Mrs. Leigh Perrot asked to look again at the black lace she had examined the day before, Miss Gregory showed it to her. It was kept in a box on the left counter, in a space left clear by the rail at the end of the counter facing the back of the shop. Several veils and handkerchiefs hung down from the rail in such profusion as to obscure the 

Taken from John Pinchard, The Trial of Jane Leigh Perrot.

view of any person behind them. Miss Gregory stood behind the counter with the left wall of the shop at her back, and Mrs. Leigh Perrot was in front of the counter. Mrs. Leigh Perrot decided on one of the several black laces that were in the box. While Miss Gregory was waiting on her customer, the clerk Filby was behind the counter, towards the end nearest the front of the shop, measuring white lace. According to Miss Gregory's testimony, she told Filby to measure the black lace she had just sold to Mrs. Leigh Perrot. Filby came down to the back end of the counter to perform that task and Miss Gregory then went to the desk and called to Miss Sarah Raines, her apprentice, to clear away the black lace box. Shortly Filby came to the desk and asked Miss Gregory for change for Mrs. Leigh Perrot's note. She gave him the change and then went downstairs to dinner, leaving Miss Raines at the desk.
     Miss Gregory was in the downstairs kitchen when Filby came in and told her that he had observed Mrs. Leigh Perrot leaving the shop with a card of white lace. She testified that about ten minutes had passed between her having gone downstairs and her return to the shop floor. About a quarter of an hour later she spotted the Leigh Perrots on the street and accosted her customer, with the results already related. Miss Gregory stated that the paper parcel which Mrs. Leigh Perrot gave her at her request was "rumpled" and that the ends were both opened and not folded. She said that Mrs. Leigh Perrot "trembled very much, was much frightened, and coloured as red as scarlet." When Miss Gregory turned out a corner of the paper (in a manner she demonstrated to the Court) she saw a card of white lace, and the black lace over it. The black lace card was about an inch shorter than the white lace card beneath it. She saw her shop mark on the white lace card, and recognized that the mark was in Filby's handwriting.
     On cross-examination, Miss Gregory testified that nobody came into the shop during the entire time Mrs. Leigh Perrot was there. Filby, she stated, was about six or seven yards from Mrs. Leigh Perrot when he stood at the forward end of the counter and was about four yards away from her when he measured and packed the lace at the back end of the counter. The witness testified that her customer was wearing a "black cloak."
     The cross-examiner, Mr. Dallas, tried to probe the witness's testimony as to the timing of events following the alleged theft. Miss Gregory stated that she was in the kitchen for about ten minutes when Filby came to her with his story, and that she then immediately went up to the shop. This response was consistent with her testimony on direct examination, but she seemed to waver a bit as to the amount of time which then elapsed before she saw the Leigh Perrots on the street. Perhaps it was five minutes, but she could not exactly say how long it 

was, and, she added defensively, she never had since, at any moment, been able to say exactly what time had elapsed.
     On re-examination, Miss Gregory clarified her earlier testimony by stating that nobody had entered the shop while Mrs. Leigh Perrot was there, but that "an old lady" had been there when Mrs. Leigh Perrot came in, and stayed about three minutes.
     On a second cross-examination, Miss Gregory was questioned about her business relation with Mr. Gye and Mr. Lamb, the trustees for the creditors of her predecessor Mr. Smith, and she stated that she had purchased the shop from them on an installment basis and was carrying on business for her account. The cross-examiner was presumably hoping for testimony that Miss Gregory was in effect running the store for Smith or the trustees. However, it does not appear that she was asked a single question designed to elicit testimony in support of a claim that the trustee Mr. Gye was involved in a conspiracy against the Leigh Perrots.
     Then the principal witness for the prosecution, Charles Filby, was called to the stand. He said that he had "lived with Miss Gregory as a shopman" for about six months prior to August 8. He had no prior experience in the millinery trade, and had twice been a bankrupt.
     Filby remembered Mrs. Leigh Perrot's entering the shop. He could not recall that he had ever seen her before. When she came in, he was measuring white lace at the end of the left counter that was nearest the street. Standing behind the counter, he had the bottom part of the lace box on the right hand and the lid on his left. The lid contained the unmeasured lace folded on light blue cards. He took the lace from the cards, and having measured it put it on again, fixed a ticket to the lace noting the number of yards, and placed the measured lace in the bottom of the lace box on his right. Slightly contradicting Miss Gregory's testimony, he recalled that there was no other customer in the shop when Mrs. Leigh Perrot came in, but that a person came in afterwards, stayed four or five minutes, was served and went away.
     Filby confirmed that Mrs. Leigh Perrot asked to be shown the lace she had seen the day before, and that Miss Gregory took down the black lace box for her at the back end of the counter. However, since he stood about four yards away, he had not heard the conclusion of the purchase when Miss Gregory called him over to measure the black lace her customer had selected. He had already put six measured cards of white lace in the bottom of the box. He particularly remembered the sixth card, because the original card had been worn so that he rewound the lace on a new card. When Miss Gregory called him, he was working on the seventh card, which he placed on top of the unmeasured pieces in 

the lid. He moved the lid to the seat where he had been sitting, and the bottom of the box remained on the counter.
     Filby then went over to measure Mrs. Leigh Perrot's purchase at the farther end of the counter, while Sarah Raines put away the rest of the black lace. He wrapped Mrs. Leigh Perrot's lace round a small card. The witness showed how he then packed the lace in a piece of whited brown paper by holding it in the paper lengthwise, then turning inwards the two corners at each end to meet, and then doubling the ends down twice to make the parcel square. When he carried Mrs. Leigh Perrot's five-pound note to Miss Gregory at the desk four yards away, Filby said, his back was to the customer. As he turned around from the desk, he observed that Mrs. Leigh Perrot had moved from the place where he had left her to the other end of the counter and was facing the desk with her left hand towards the fatal box of white lace. As he was passing along the inside edge of the counter to deliver the change to her, his sight was obscured by the cascade of shawls and handkerchiefs, but when he emerged beyond the beginning of the railing, he saw Mrs. Leigh Perrot's "left hand come out of the box with a card of the lace in her hand." She drew her left hand under her cloak but Filby saw a corner of the blue card which the cloak did not conceal. Mrs. Leigh Perrot than took her departure as if she were one-armed. She held the purchased black lace in her right hand and then used the same hand to pick up the change which Filby had laid down on the counter.
     Filby stated that he conversed with the two other shop assistants, Miss Raines and Miss Leeson, for about two or three minutes after Mrs. Leigh Perrot had left the shop, and then went downstairs to make his report to Miss Gregory. Although Filby said he did not examine the white lace box at this time, he swore positively that he had seen the customer remove the lace from the box.
     After Miss Gregory recovered the lace, Filby went out to look for Mrs. Leigh Perrot and saw her and her husband turning the corner of the Abbey Churchyard. He asked Mr. Leigh Perrot's name, and was answered by that indignant husband "that he lived at No. 1, Paragon Buildings, and that his name was on the door." Filby went there directly and saw the name, and then went to Gye's, afterwards proceeding with Miss Gregory to the Town Hall in their first effort to present their complaint.
     At the beginning of the cross-examination of Filby, the examiner, Mr. Bond, attempted to attack the witness's credibility by questions about his past business dealings and failures. Filby denied having had any dealings with a pawnbroker picturesquely named Crouch, but admitted his partnership with another man named Crout. With such a name in the firm, we are not surprised to read that, like an earlier 

enterprise in which Filby had engaged, the business went sour. Mr. Bond then asked whether Filby knew of an incident after August 8 in which a customer of the shop, Miss Blagrave, on her arrival home, found two veils in her parcel instead of the one she purchased from Filby. Filby said he did not know whether Miss Blagrave in fact found two veils in her package but admitted that she returned a veil the next morning and told him that he "ought to be very careful, considering what had lately happened with Mrs. Leigh Perrot." Reminded of his testimony on direct examination that he never wrapped more things than were purchased, Filby began to equivocate about Miss Blagrave. He did not know she was right, he was not obliged to believe her, he did not believe that he wrapped her purchase. He also denied knowledge of a woman named Kent coming to the shop a few days before Mrs. Leigh Perrot to complain about having received more gloves than she bought.
     Mr. Bond then turned to the witness's testimony with respect to the alleged theft. Filby stated that, upon coming back and looking in the box of white lace, he found a vacancy in the left corner of the box where he had put the last measured card of lace (the new card). When he saw the defendant's left hand in the box, only Miss Raines and Miss Leeson were in the shop, Miss Raines busy with needlework at the rear of the shop and Miss Leeson behind some muslin at the rear of the shop with her back to the defendant.
     Counsel failed to shake Filby's testimony that he not only saw Mrs. Leigh Perrot's hand in the box but also saw the card in her hand under her cloak. He was quite certain she was wearing a cloak: "Prisoner had on a black mode cloak . . . it was not a long cloak, but one that reached just below her elbows. . . ."
     Filby testified that the distance from Paragon Buildings (where the Leigh Perrots lived) to the shop on Bath Street was about a quarter of a mile, and conceded that he "[did not] know but that there was time to have gone home if she had chosen to do so." He stated that he stayed in the downstairs kitchen about four or five minutes after he reported the theft to Miss Gregory, and when he came back up into the shop he met Miss Gregory with the recovered card of lace in her hand.
     On re-examination, Filby said he was certain that from the time he went to serve Mrs. Leigh Perrot at the back end of the counter he had never been nearer to the place where the white lace was left.
     Sarah Raines was then called to testify. She confirmed the prior testimony as to the places where the defendant, Miss Gregory, and Filby were during the transaction. She saw Filby measure the purchased black lace and wrap it in paper and that there was nothing else in the paper. She added that Filby did not move from her side while she was putting away the rest of the black lace, that he was not half a yard away 

from her, and that before she left Filby when he was about to deliver the parcel to the defendant, Filby and she were about four yards from the white lace box.
     On cross-examination by Mr. Jekyll, she admitted that "there was nothing particular to draw her attention in the manner of Filby's putting up the black lace, and that she sees him every day putting up parcels -- that she did not then pay any particular attention to him, nor did she observe particularly from whence he took the paper to wrap up the parcel in. . . ."
     Following these admissions, the Judge asked the witness his own questions to test her evidence that there was no white lace in the package:

     Q. You say he did not put any white lace in the parcel with the black; how could you know that not being particularly observant?
     A. I saw that he put in the black lace only.
     Q. Are you certain of that?
     A. Yes, my lord, I am.

     The prosecution closed its case, and it was now the turn of the defense. The opportunities for the defense were severely limited under the criminal procedure of the time. The defendant could not testify in her own behalf nor could her husband testify in her defense. The defendant was permitted to make an unsworn statement. Mrs. Leigh Perrot attempted to address the Court, but "after speaking a few sentences she became so much agitated that her voice failed her," and Mr. Jekyll was requested to repeat her address as dictated to him by his client. The address was brief and stressed Mrs. Leigh Perrot's lack of motive:
     "Placed in a situation the most eligible that any woman could desire, with supplies so ample that I was left rich after every wish was gratified -- blessed in the affections of the most generous man as a husband, what could induce me to commit such a crime? Depraved indeed must that mind be that under such circumstances could be so culpable."
     Mrs. Leigh Perrot's statement also advertised the evidence as to her conduct and character that would be given by her "noble and truly respectable friends," but asserted that she would make no comment on the evidence against her. She did permit herself one remark on what she believed to be a weakness in the prosecution's case: "I will only ask you whether to be found opposite to the Shop within the space of little more than half an hour, and with the Lace in my hand is like the conduct of a Guilty Person."

     The defense then put on its case. The pawnbroker Mr. Crouch had been located in Cripplegate, London. He testified that Filby and his brother had done business in haberdashery goods at his house six or seven years before, but believed that the witness Charles Filby "might not have been with him on business more than once."
     Miss Blagrave then gave her account of the superfluous veil as to which Filby had been questioned. She said that she had purchased and paid for one veil at Smith's shop on September 19, and received her package from a "tall shopman" whom she identified as Filby. When she opened the parcel at home she found a second veil which she returned to Filby the next day. He remembered waiting on her, took the veil and thanked her, saying that he had not missed it. On cross-examination, the witness said she did not know Mrs. Leigh Perrot and had never been accused of stealing the veil.
     Mrs. Mary Kent was put on the stand to testify as to another case of alleged negligent wrapping at the Smith shop. She had purchased four pairs of gloves at the shop in August and had found five in her parcel. She was not sure who served her but thought it was "Mrs. Smith's sister" (Miss Gregory).
     The defense then led on a procession of distinguished witnesses as to Mrs. Leigh Perrot's fine conduct, character, reputation and religious principles, and -- last but not least -- Mr. Leigh Perrot's reputation as a man of considerable property. The fourteen witnesses included George Vansittart and Francis Annesby, members of Parliament for Berkshire and Reading; Lord Braybroke; Rev. Mr. Nind, vicar of Wargrave, in Berkshire (the parish where the Leigh Perrots' house was situated); and Rev. Mr. Wake, curate of the Bath parish. A linen draper, a mercer, and a jeweler, all from Bath, testified unanimously as to Mrs. Leigh Perrot's honest dealings in three separate lines of commerce.
     The defense then rested, and the judge summed up the evidence for the jury. The jury then retired, and after fifteen minutes returned with a verdict of "not guilty."
     Despite the happy outcome, Mrs. Leigh Perrot was a severe critic of the trial. In a letter to a cousin on April 1, 1800, she gave mixed ratings to the judge and her counsel. She praised Mr. Justice Lawrence's politeness but opined that: "he did not let enough be said of Filby's Villainy -- he thought enough had been said to fully clear me, and was pretty sure that the winding up of his Charge to the Jury would put every doubt respecting my Innocence out of the Question; but I think it was a dangerous Experiment." She was disappointed in the performance of two of her counsel but thought one of them made up for forensic deficiencies by a real talent for sobbing. She regretted that neither her husband nor she was permitted to give evidence under oath, "else I could 

have disproved my having on any Cloak, tho the Villain swore he saw the lace under my black Cloak." She did not, however, explain why she made no mention of her attire in her unsworn statement to the court.
     What are we to make, with the hindsight of two centuries, of the merits of the case against Jane's aunt?
     Sir Frank Douglas MacKinnon, in his book on the case, Grand Larceny (1937), does not analyze the nature and quality of the evidence at the trial. He was content to reprint verbatim a contemporary account of the proceedings "taken in court" by John Pinchard, an attorney at Taunton, and to let that record speak for itself. MacKinnon's reticence is not surprising since his book drew in large part on previously unpublished correspondence to which he was given access by the Austen-Leigh family. For him to have suggested, even by pausing to weigh evidence, that there was any basis for doubting the tradition of conspiracy against Aunt Jane would not have been regarded by the family as an act of gratitude. Therefore, it may be worth an effort to take a closer look at the evidence on the principal issues of the case.
     Was there a conspiracy to extort money from the Leigh Perrots?
     It was the strong belief of the Leigh Perrots, which is accepted without question in Jane Austen biographies, that the case against Aunt Jane was trumped up in the belief that James Leigh Perrot could be induced to pay a large sum of money to spare his wife from imprisonment and trial. In fact, the tradition continues, the conspirators failed because the Leigh Perrots refused to yield to extortion and instead weathered the judicial ordeal together.
     The prosecutor in the trial pointed out one of the difficulties with the conspiracy theory. The parties who initiated the prosecution did not make the charge privately to the Leigh Perrots but, immediately after the recovery of the white lace, went to the Town Hall to lay their charge before the magistrates. Even though many days elapsed before their depositions could be taken, Miss Gregory and Filby gave the matter as much publicity as they could in the meantime, relating the circumstances to the town clerk and his deputy and to every person in town who was willing to listen to them. They would have found it very difficult to retract the charges if they had been motivated by blackmail or indeed even if they had believed themselves in the right but wished to leave the door open to financial redress.
     It is an assumption of the conspiracy theory that the ringleader, William Gye, had marked out the Leigh Perrots as victims in advance because James was known to be wealthy and deeply devoted to his wife. If this assumption is worthy of belief, then it is only reasonable to suppose that Gye and his confederates would have known the Leigh Perrots by sight and would also have known their home address. 

     However, it was the testimony of Filby, unchallenged on cross-examination, that after the occurrence at the store he had gone looking for the Leigh Perrots and had asked them their names. When an annoyed Mr. Leigh Perrot gave him his address and told him to look for his name on the door, Filby lost no time in doing precisely as he was told. He noted the name, went to Gye's, and afterwards went with Miss Gregory to the Town Hall. Unless Filby was engaged in some rather pointless playacting, it very much appears that he had made an effort to confirm the identity of the Leigh Perrots for the purpose of enabling Miss Gregory to provide proper information in laying her charge with the magistrates.
     In support of the family tradition of a blackmail plot, the Austen-Leighs showed Sir Frank Douglas MacKinnon certain anonymous letters purportedly sent to the Leigh Perrots by two people claiming to have overheard Gye and his confederates plotting their villainy. Although the two letters are signed with different initials and apparently are written in different hands, they have such strong stylistic similarities as to suggest that they were dictated by a single source. Both writers claim to have been employees of Gye. The first, who wrote on February 12, 1800 to Mr. Leigh Perrot, makes the self-serving statement that "had I the means of gaining Bread for my Family in any honest way I should gladly leave an employment under as malicious & vile a Man as ever existed" (emphasis added). The second writer, who sent his letter to Mr. Leigh Perrot on a date which looks like October 29, expressed similar discontent with the way he earned his "bread": "I am obliged to earn Bread for a large Family in any honest manner I can; and although it is my hard lot to get that Bread in the employment of one of the greatest Rascals that ever lived, I have the conscious pleasure of knowing that I have more than once been of service to those who might have suffered from his dishonesty" (emphasis added).
     In addition to these anonymous letters, the Leigh Perrots received another letter from a friend in Bath, Daniel Lysons, which indicates that there was talk of the Gye conspiracy in the higher social circles of Bath as well. Presumably these letters were shown by the Leigh Perrots to their lawyers, who would have had an opportunity to investigate the rumors and to focus their inquiries on the employees of Gye. We do not know whether any such investigation was undertaken, but we are left with this curious result, that the only reference in the trial, as recounted by Mr. Pinchard, to the possibility of a blackmail plot was made by the prosecutor in his opening statement to the jury. Of course, his effort was to induce the jury to discount that possibility, which might have been implanted in their minds by local gossip. However, absolutely no evidence was introduced by the defense to suggest the existence of a blackmail plot, and, instead, the defense was squarely based on the 

theory that the white lace was inadvertently enclosed in Mrs. Leigh Perrot's package through the negligence of the clerk Filby.
     In fact, one of the circumstances that was principally relied on by the defense to demonstrate Aunt Jane's innocence proves still more definitively that there was no conspiracy against her. I refer to her being found on the street across from Smith's with the white lace in her possession about a half hour after she left the shop. Surely, if the object of the plot had been to find her with the incriminating lace on her person, Filby or Miss Gregory would have immediately pursued her as she left the premises and recovered the lace as soon as she moved far enough to accomplish what the common-law experts with their "little Latin" liked to call "asportation" (carrying away). Such apprehensions were not uncommon in the eighteenth century, as evidenced by the following account:
     "We had not been long out of the shop but the mercer missed the piece of stuff, and sent his messengers, one one way, and one another, and they presently seized her that had the piece; as for me, I had very luckily stepped into a house . . . and had the satisfaction, or the terror, indeed, of looking out of the window, and seeing the poor creature dragged away to the justice, who immediately committed her to Newgate."
     In these words Daniel Defoe's famous shoplifter Moll Flanders describes the capture of her confederate.
     But the supposed conspirators of the William Smith millinery shop did not set out in hot pursuit of Aunt Jane. How did they know, then, that she would conveniently return to the neighborhood a half hour later with the missing lace still in the original package, however "rumpled"? They could not have known. The recovery of the lace was fortuitous, and the conspiracy theory is apparently a fantasy.
     Did Filby perjure himself in testifying that Mrs. Leigh Perrot hid the stolen lace under her black cloak?
     As noted, Mrs. Leigh Perrot complained bitterly that, due to her husband's legal incapacity to testify in her behalf, she had been unable to disprove the testimony of the clerk Filby that she had hidden the black lace under her "black cloak." She maintained that she was not wearing a cloak at all, and that Filby was lying. However, it would be hard to believe that the Leigh Perrots, promenading on one of the main streets of Bath where they were well known, did not come across a single friend or acquaintance on the day in question who could have testified that Mrs. Leigh Perrot was not wearing a cloak. No such testimony was introduced. Filby would have been taking a great risk in lying about Mrs. Leigh Perrot's apparel, since the possibility of the defense's 

producing a contradictory witness should have struck him as very great indeed.
     How persuasive was the evidence that Filby included the white lace in Mrs. Leigh Perrot's package through negligence?
     In support of its theory that Filby inadvertently wrapped the white lace in Mrs. Leigh Perrot's package, the defense tried to establish that both the Smith millinery shop and Filby were negligent wrappers. Evidence of two other instances of similar "mistakes" was introduced, Miss Blagrave's testimony as to the veils and Mrs. Mary Kent's as to the gloves. The judge, in his instructions to the jury, allowed Miss Blagrave's evidence to stand, since she identified Filby as the wrapper, but he instructed the jury to disregard Mary Kent's testimony since it appeared that she had been served by some woman in the shop.
     Although under Anglo-American evidentiary rules evidence of negligent "habits" can be introduced in support of an effort to show an act of negligence in a particular instance, one subsequent mistake in wrapping on Filby's part does not appear to go very far in dispelling the force of the prosecution's evidence against Mrs. Leigh Perrot. This appears with particular force when the physical circumstances of the Blagrave incident are contrasted with the uncontroverted testimony in the Leigh Perrot case. If Filby in fact packed two veils for Miss Blagrave instead of the one she bought, it is likely that he drew the second veil from the same box or counter area from which he took the veil she had selected. However, the white lace discovered in Mrs. Leigh Perrot's package had been wound on a card at a location approximately four yards away from the area where Filby packed Mrs. Leigh Perrot's purchased black lace. If Filby made the error in packing which the defense attributed to him, he would have had to carry a card of white lace for the distance of four yards and to place it on the counter before him or hold it in his hand while he proceeded to wind Mrs. Leigh Perrot's lace and prepare her package. This "mistake" would have involved a degree of somnambulism (and possibly manual dexterity) on the part of Filby that is hardly to be compared with the alleged miscounting of Miss Blagrave's veils.
     Do the circumstances of the discovery of the white lace in the possession of Mrs. Leigh Perrot support the negligence theory by proving her lack of consciousness of guilt?
     The judge seems to have been clearly correct in discounting the prosecution's evidence that Mrs. Leigh Perrot, when accosted in the street by Miss Gregory, was agitated and had "turned as red as scarlet," nor should we have been surprised had she turned white as lace. The court observed that the defendant's reaction should not "be construed by them [the jury] into an indication of guilt for that, if any person were to be 

suddenly stopped in the public street, and taxed with the commission of so heinous a crime, such a charge, however conscious of innocence the party might be, would, in all probability, be productive of effects similar to those described by the witness."
     I think, however, that some quarrel could be taken with his lordship's accentuation of the defense argument that Mrs. Leigh Perrot's "returning and passing by the shop, with the parcel containing the lace in her hand, so soon after she had left it, when it was proved by the witness Filby that sufficient time had elapsed for her to have gone home and concealed it, had she chosen so to do, certainly did not appear to be the conduct of a guilty person, for that thieves are wont to hide away and conceal the property they have stolen."
     I have already argued that the fortuitous reappearance of Aunt Jane tends to undermine the notion that the recovery of the lace was the result of a deep-laid conspiracy. But could the circumstances of the recovery by evidencing Aunt Jane's lack of guilty awareness tend to support the alternative theory (on which the defense in court was based) that the white lace was included in Aunt Jane s parcel by negligence? It was common ground that Aunt Jane's residence at 1 Paragon Buildings was only a quarter of a mile away from the shop and that she would have had time to return home to hide the incriminating white lace. This, however, is at best a very ambiguous factor. There is no evidence as to what Mrs. Leigh Perrot's destination was after her famous visit to the millinery shop. It is possible that she did not enter the shop with any theft in mind and had already arranged to meet her husband in town at a fixed hour and place that would not have permitted a prior return home. Why, then, could she not have said to the doting Uncle James when she met him that she desired to walk along home with him so that she could leave off a package? Perhaps it was because the package was small, and James, afflicted with gout, was a painful walker.
     As to Uncle James's sorry condition only two months earlier we can summon Jane Austen herself as witness. In her letter of June 2 she wrote to Cassandra, "My uncle overwalked himself at first, and can now only travel in a chair, but is otherwise very well."
     What weight is to be given to Mrs. Leigh Perrot's social position and character evidence?
     It appears quite likely that Mrs. Leigh Perrot's speedy acquittal was due less to defects in the prosecution's proof than to the great weight accorded by the court and the jury to Mrs. Leigh Perrot's social position and character evidence. The question ultimately came down to this: Is it believable that a woman of Mrs. Leigh Perrot's wealth and position with a fine character testified to by neighbors and friends of high birth and standing, by clergymen from two parishes, and by three merchants 

from Bath, would have committed a disgraceful shoplifting? Mr. Justice Lawrence in summing up the evidence to the jury laid heavy stress on the testimony as to Mrs. Leigh Perrot's good character. Before turning to that evidence, he observed to the jury that "the case on the part of the prosecution was fully proved, if they believed the testimony of the witnesses called in support of it." He commented that as to the good character of Filby "there hung some doubt," but he concluded that "the evidence given by him stood uncontradicted except in one point of trivial consequence, namely, his having sworn that he never had any dealings with Crouch, the pawnbroker, whereas it afterwards appears from Crouch's evidence that Filby was once or perhaps twice at his house on business, which was eight or nine years ago." He particularly pointed out the corroboration of Filby's evidence by the testimony of Miss Gregory and her apprentice Sarah Raines and pointed out that Miss Raines had sworn positively that she took particular notice of Filby's putting up a parcel of black lace and that there was nothing but the black lace put into it by him.
     The judge, however, thought it very persuasive that no person could have received a higher character from more distinguished witnesses than had Mrs. Leigh Perrot and concluded, "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." These were his lordship's concluding words. The jury must have been impressed by this instruction, which reinforced the point made by the defendant's counsel in the address he had read to the court at her dictation. It seems obvious, then, that despite the long-lived tradition that Mrs. Leigh Perrot was freed because conspirators clumsily failed to impose perjured testimony on the court and jury, the outcome turned instead on the jury's disbelief that a rich and respectable woman would have committed a minor theft.
     Unfortunately, lawyers who have had to struggle in modern days with the defense of retail establishments against shoplifting losses and false arrest charges know that rich and respectable women do commit thefts even of the most trivial kind, and that shoplifting is often an irrational crime. What the emotional roots of such crimes may be remains a puzzle. It is possible that one source of middle-class shoplifting may be a warped sense of economy, a revolt, conscious or unconscious, against high prices. Could such feelings as this have impelled the affluent Mrs. Leigh Perrot to steal the white lace? Since the biographical data about her have been in the hands of the family, we have very little insight into her foibles. However, the family biographers William and Richard 

Arthur Austen-Leigh confide that "she was not exactly open-handed." An intriguing possibility may be built on this hint. We will recall from Jane Austen's letters that millinery prices in Bath were high. We also know that Mrs. Leigh Perrot, on the day before the incident, had been in the Smith shop examining some black lace from London. Only on a second visit had she brought herself to conclude the purchase and perhaps she regarded the price as extravagant. It is therefore possible that when she saw the opportunity of taking the white lace, she acted, like the stock investors of our time, to "average down" her purchase price.
     Other affluent shoplifters appear to have been motivated by elements in their family relations that are not on public view. As an example I might cite the recent story, A Case of Shoplifting by Michael Gilbert (1976). I suspect that Michael Gilbert, as a lawyer, has more than a little familiarity with apparently inexplicable shopliftings. In his story, Gilbert tells of Mrs. Kent-Smith, the wife of a busy self-made business tycoon, who simulates a shoplifting (and an intentionally unsuccessful one at that) for the purpose of attracting her husband's attention. We are told that the Leigh Perrots were a devoted couple but a wife's notion of the degree of attention to which she is entitled does not necessarily coincide with the views of outside observers. Of course, since shoplifting was a capital offense it would have been a dangerous form of attention-getting. Nevertheless, in light of the enormous volume of shoplifting in eighteenth-century England, there is little reason to believe that capital punishment acted as more of a deterrent to this offense than it did to more serious crimes.
     It is risky to attempt to descend to lower levels of Mrs. Leigh Perrot's psyche since we know so little about her. Michael Gilbert, who could take greater liberties with his fictional Mrs. Kent-Smith, stressed her childlessness. Perhaps Mr. Gilbert was bowing in the direction of the theory espoused by Freudian psychiatrists that an adult female shoplifter acting from no apparent economic motive is often a childless woman who compensates for her deprivation of children by taking things belonging to others. Whether the childless Mrs. Leigh Perrot might have fit this pattern we cannot know.
     It is hard enough to convince a modern jury that shoplifting may have other than economic motives. It is possible that in Taunton in 1800 it would have been significantly harder to make the point that rich people not classically "mad" might be guilty of a petty theft. In the principal contemporary authority on crime and its prevention, P. Colquhoun's Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis, which was first published in London in 1795, a purely economic theory of the origin of petty theft is propounded. In Colquhoun's view, the principal explanation of theft was that the poor class was tempted to commit this crime because 

of the existence of specialized dealers in the various categories of stolen goods, ranging from metals to second-hand apparel. His proposed solution was the close supervision of these trading markets.
     Ironically, however, the files of the Austen-Leigh family themselves contain some evidence of contemporary insight into the possibility of irrational shoplifting. The source once again is an anonymous letter-writer. In a letter to Mrs. Leigh Perrot of April 20, 1800 the female writer offered to act as an intermediary "to prevent the publishing of a scandalous print which discovered by accident is now in a forward state the subject of which is the crest of Mr. Leigh Perrot with a card of lace in the bill of the Parrot with other things and an inscription referring to the late accusation which was made against you." The writer claimed to have been authorized by the printmakers (who merited prosecution not only for extortion but also for their execrable pun on the Perrot name) to offer the withdrawal of the print in exchange for a subscription of one hundred guineas to a city hospital which was in arrears. Professing a belief in Mrs. Leigh Perrot's innocence, the correspondent attributed to the publishers of the print a resolution "to lend their aid to punish you lest a sufficient impression should not yet be made on the mind of yourself & (as they were pleased to express themselves) other genteel shoplifters" (emphasis added).
     We do not have any direct record of Jane Austen's reactions to her aunt's trial. In her novels Jane Austen became the mistress of the art of piercing the veil of "first impressions," which enabled her, for example, to unmask the hidden immorality of two gentlemen, Mr. Wickham in Pride and Prejudice and Mr. Elliot in Persuasion. But Jane surely must have believed that her aunt was innocent. It is harder to have insight within the family.
     There is no direct translation of Mrs. Leigh Perrot's ordeal in Jane Austen's fiction. It is in keeping with the character of a writer whose novels reflect only obliquely the wars and public events of her time that she should not have chosen to work the raw materials of a family criminal trial. However, a close look at the two Bath novels of Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, may give us glimpses of Aunt Jane and memories of her day in court.
     In Northanger Abbey (which may have been first written in 1798 and revised about 1803) the heroine, seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland, is taken to Bath by Mr. and Mrs. Allen, a childless couple who are friends of her family. Although Jane Austen drew no characters wholly from life, there are a number of parallels between Jane and Catherine, and between the Leigh Perrots and the Allens. By the time of the composition of Northanger Abbey, Jane, who like Catherine Morland was a minister's daughter, had visited the childless Leigh Perrots in Bath. Mr. 

Allen like Mr. Leigh Perrot took the waters of Bath as a cure for his gout. Although Mrs. Leigh Perrot appears to have had a more dour personality than Mrs. Allen, it is possible that the acute young Jane saw in her aunt aspects of Mrs. Allen's dominant trait, a passion for clothes and a compulsive need to surpass all her acquaintances in finery. Mrs. Allen's deepest emotion on crossing the crowded floor of the Upper Assembly Rooms is self-congratulation on having preserved her gown from injury: "'It would have been very shocking to have it torn,' said she, would not it? It is such a delicate muslin. For my part, I have not seen anything I like so well in the whole room, I assure you.'" And she interrupts her expression of concern about her failure to get Catherine a partner with a comment on a dress in the crowd: "There goes a strange-looking woman! What an odd gown she has got on! How old-fashioned it is! Look at the back." When she meets her childhood friend Mrs. Thorpe, she is delighted to discover with her keen eyes that "the lace on Mrs. Thorpe's pelisse was not half so handsome as that on her own."
     Perhaps a passion such as this drove Mrs. Leigh Perrot into the millinery shops of Bath. She may have agreed with Mrs. Allen's judgment of the attractions of the town for shoppers: "Bath is a charming place, sir; there are so many good shops here. We are sadly off in the country. . . . Now, here one can step out of doors, and get a thing in five minutes."
     The concluding portion of Persuasion, Jane Austen's last completed novel (published in 1818) is also set in Bath. Here very clear imprints of Jane's memories of her aunt's trial appear. It may be mere accident that in this novel there are more references to law and lawyers than are customary in the Austen novels. The early chapters introduce Mr. Shepherd, "a civil, cautious lawyer," one of the few portraits drawn by Jane Austen from his profession. Later in the book, when Mrs. Smith reveals to Anne Elliot the evidence she has preserved of the treachery of Anne's unwanted suitor, the self-seeking Mr. Elliot, she speaks like a barrister addressing a jury: "I have shown you Mr. Elliot as he was a dozen years ago, and I will show him as he is now. I cannot produce written proof again, but I can give as authentic oral testimony as you can desire, of what he is now wanting, and what he is now doing."
     Whether or not these associations of law with the town of Bath are related to recollection of Mrs. Leigh Perrot's case, other allusions in the book are unmistakably connected with the trial. Mr. Shepherd receives an application for tenancy of Kellynch Hall from Admiral Croft "with whom he afterwards fell into company in attending the quarter sessions at Taunton," the town where Aunt Jane was tried. Later we learn that Mr. Musgrove "always attends the assizes, and I am so glad when they are over, and he is safe back again." Perhaps Anne Elliot's dislike of 

Bath mirrors Jane Austen's feelings toward a town that was associated with two family tragedies, the death of her father and the criminal charge against her aunt.
     The conclusion of Persuasion presents final proof that the trial of Aunt Jane left a lasting impression on the mind of her famous niece. Dissatisfied with chapter 10 of her original version of Persuasion, which reunited Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth in a rather tepid drawing room scene, Jane Austen expanded and relocated the final episodes of their reconciliation. In a key scene of the revised version, Anne's sister Mary, looking out of a window of the White Hart in Stall Street, sees a woman standing under the colonnade with a gentleman she identifies as Mr. Elliot. She "saw them turn the corner from Bath Street just now."
     On that very corner stood the shop where Aunt Jane had her unhappy encounter with a card of white lace.

     This essay is based on The Trial of Jane Leigh Perrot (Taunton, Printed by and for T. Norris 1800)(Taken in court by John Pinchard). Although I disagree strongly with his apparent belief in Aunt Jane's innocence, I have also drawn material on the background of the case and quotations from Austen-Leigh family papers from Frank Douglas MacKinnon's Grand Larceny: The Trial of Jane Leigh Perrot (London: Oxford University Press, 1937). Grand Larceny contains a facsimile of the Pinchard trial pamphlet.
     Biographical and critical works consulted include: G.L. Apperson, A Jane Austen Dictionary 11-17 (London: C. Palmer, 1932); James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1926); William Austen-Leigh, & Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh, Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters, A Family Record 126-140 (New York: Russell & Russell, 2nd ed., 1965)(reissue of 1913 edition); Elizabeth Jenkins, Jane Austen (New York: Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1949); Marghanita Laski, Jane Austen, and Her World 43-44 (New York: Viking Press, 1969); F.B. Pinion, A Jane Austen Companion (London: Macmillan, 1973).
     Michael Gilbert's "A Case of Shoplifting" appears in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May 1976, pp. 6-12.

* This article was previously published in Joan Kahn (ed.) Chilling and Killing 306-331 (New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1978) and in A Gallery of Sinister Perspectives pp. 89-110