How Jane’s Aunt Jane stole that lace — her premeditated petty shoplifting

Floor plan of William Smith’s millinery shop, Bath Street

Dear friends and readers,

About five years ago I wrote an essay for the Jane Austen Center Magazine on the issue of Mrs Jane Leigh-Perrot’s probable theft of a card of white lace valued at 20 shillings from William Smith’s millinery (or haberdashery) shop on Bath Street on Thursday, August 8th, 1799. I’m now engaged in rereading The Austen Papers as edited by Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh (first privately printed in 1942) as well as other documents by Austen’s close family members written during or just after Jane Austen’s life. Rereading the essay, there entitled “The Life and Times of Jane Leigh-Perrot,” I have discovered that 1) my first description of Mrs Leigh-Perrot’s departure from the shop and the initial accusation of her is inaccurate; 2) I don’t sufficiently explain the sources of the claim by the Leigh-Perrots that the shopkeeper intended to blackmail the woman; and 3) I don’t bring to bear all the parallel details which link the this first incident in petty shoplifting to one a few years later by Mrs Leigh-Perrot.

At the time I regretted the title the editor had given the brief essay, “The Life and Crimes of.” It now seems to me that the editor was right to suggest something serious in the plural.

First I invite my reader to read my essay to get the gist of what’s known and has been written: The Life and Crimes of Mrs Jane Leigh-Perrot (See comments for sources.)

The visit of Jane Austen to Bath in the company of her mother, brother Edward, Edward’s wife in May and June 1799 is recorded in Austen’s letters 19–22. They visited and were made welcome by Mrs Austen’s brother and his wife at 1 Paragon Buildings. Jane’s letters to Cassandra include her aunt’s advice as to where there are cheap shops (letter 20), and mention that Cassandra liked some lace that Jane had sent her (letter 21). It was later in the summer (August) that Austen’s aunt attempted theft.

I now add a brief description of the theft: Miss Gregory was at the end of the counter (see drawing) near the left wall of the shop. Mrs L-P asked her to measure out the black lace she had been to the shop to see the day before. Mr Filby was behind the counter near the front of the shop, measuring white lace. Filby was asked to measure the black lace, Miss Gregory went to get her assistant; when Mrs L-P gave Filby the 5£, he went to the back of the shop to get change. Only one older woman came into the shop while Mrs L-P was there. Later in court Mr Filby testified that when he turned around to come back Mrs L-P was at the part of the counter where the white lace was and through the railings and handkerchiefs he now thought he remembered he saw her “left hand” had come “out of the box with a card of the lace in her hand” and draw her left hand under her black cloak. After that she behaved as if she was one-armed as she left the shop.

The first correction: Mrs Leigh-Perrot was not accosted upon leaving if by that is understood just as she stepped outside the shop. Rather she came into the shop between 1 and 2 in the afternoon, looked at some black lace she had seen the day before when she was in the shop (1£ 19 shillings), paid with a 5£ note and left. A hour hour later when Mr and Mrs Leigh-Perrot were again walking by the shop on the other side of the street Miss Gregory, Mr Smith’s clerk, rushed out and suggested that under Mrs Leigh-Perrot’s black cloak she had white as well as black lace, and when this was found to be so and Mrs Leigh-Perrot insisted the clerk had put the white lace into the package by mistake, Miss Gregory replied: “‘Tis no such thing, ’tis no such thing. you stole it, you are guilty.”

Second, I mention in passing the Leigh-Perrot’s claim that the shop-owner and his assistant tried to blackmail the Leigh-Perrots with a letter, leaving the impression that they did this when they were frustated by the magistrate’s attempt to dissuade them from accusation by holding off a hearing and arrest for nearly a week, or the next Wednesday. I probably got that detail as insinuated in one of the sources descending from an Austen relative. Rereading Albert Borowitz and Sir Frank MacKinnon again and more carefully I see this accusation was false and there is no letter by the shop-owner showing any blackmail.

Sometime after the Mrs Leigh-Perrot was ordered into custody, she and her husband gave the defense lawyers three letters which they purported showed that the shopkeeper had planned the incident and deliberately planted the white lace on Mrs L-P to be able to blackmail her. Two of the letters are said to be by employees of the shop-keeper and are “signed with different initials and apparently written in different hands,” but they have “such strong stylistic similarities as to suggest they were written by a single source.” Both call the shop-keeper bad names (“dishonest,” “malicious & Vile,” “Rascals”) and say the person works for them only because they are “obliged to earn Bread for a large Family.” The repetition of this phrase (“obliged to earn bread”) is couched in terms of resentment and denigration. The defense lawyers never used these letters, never described or produced them in court. The implication is they are forgeries by the Leigh-Perrots.

A third letter can be ascertained to be by a genuine person, a friend of the Leigh-Perrots, Daniel Lysons, and he recounts gossip in higher circles in Bath to the effect that the shop-keeper conspired to black-mail the Leigh-Perrots. This last letter was described in court but by the prosecution and in order to discount the possibility of blackmail in the following way:

The pragmatic reason the shop-owner and his assistants could not have plotted to blackmail Mrs L-P is they immediately went to a magistrate. The magistrate put them off for more than a week, it seems hoping they would go away, but having gone to a magistrate they obviously could not blackmail the L-Ps by asking for money in return for silence.

Jane Cholmeley Leigh-Perrot

In her letters Mrs Leigh-Perrot wishes that Mr Filby and his associates could be hung or transported, or at least be driven into bankruptcy. Mrs L-P’s comments of this sort are usually taken to be empty rage and malignancy and linked to her statements sneering at the possible liaison between the male shop-keeper and his sister-in-law. She also complains about the judge who does not permit her to accuse them of a crime. But we see here that in fact she was conspiring to indite them for a crime she rather than they committed; “you will grieve with me that we cannot punish my Vile Antagonists” (p. 207). You could call her behavior here sinister. The dense woman does not see how her forged letters would be seen through because she remains remorseless, not at all guilty or ashamed, except insofar as she had to stay in a prison, was gossiped about, and despite her friends’ reiterated assertions they longed to come and stay near and support her, in fact no one came. She is convinced her rank and wealth gives her power and impunity.

Finally, I do not point out to the parallels between the two known incidents of theft or attempted theft. One of the details which Mrs Leigh-Perrot complained bitterly about was the testimony that she had hidden the black lace “under her black cloak.” She maintained she was not wearing any such cloak, but she could not produce anyone to say she did not have the cloak on and all three people giving evidence against her included the detail there was a cloak which she hid the white lace under. Mr Filby could not have packed the white lace with the black by mistake as it was on another place on the counter. She did not dispute that she had come to the shop the day before and attempted to buy the white lace at a much lower price (had been there “cheapening” it.)

Here is where there are a parallel detail with a later incident. In 1805 a woman who was familiar with Bath events recorded that at this time (probably 6 years later) Mrs Leigh-Perrot again attempted first to “cheapen” the price of something, this time a plant. When she could not get the shop-keeper to bring his price down, she attempted to steal it by hiding it under a cloth, but before she could leave the shop, she was spotted by another customer, a young girl whose father hauled her away (in order to avoid trouble) so the angry shopkeeper could do nothing to prosecute Mrs L.P.

I realize I mention some of the above in my first article, but I don’t bring the two incidents together in such a way as to show there really is a pattern.

Anna Massey as Mrs Norris listening with an innocent face to Sir Thomas’s complaints about her behavior during the time of the theatrics and readying herself for vigorous self-defense (1983 BBC Mansfield Park)

In my article I point out that Jane Austen did indeed in Mrs Norris’s characters portray her aunt’s character and her aunt’s penchant for “sponging” (as she might have called it, and Maria Bertram certainly does)

“’What else have you been spunging?’ said Maria, half-pleased that Sotherton should be so complimented. ‘Spunging, my dear! It is nothing but four of those beautiful pheasants’ eggs, which Mrs Whitaker would quite force upon me: she would not take a denial.’

The left-over green baize for the curtain for the Mansfield players’s stage disappears into Mrs Norris’s cottage too. She accuses Mr Jackson’s son of stealing a piece of wood because this is what she might have thought to do were she him.

I see now that I should have brought in Mrs Leigh-Perrot’s letters much more. Rereading them, I’ve come to the same conclusion that Albert Borowitz did, i.e., that Mrs L-P stole the lace thinking that the price of the black lace was too high and persuading herself she had the right to the white for the price she was paying. This is of course a deduction and not explicitly in the letters where she is rather indignant at the idea she did anything wrong, anything she did not have a right to do — as Mrs Norris feels she has a perfect right to the cheese at Sotherton and the piece of green curtain. She writes of the incident “believe me, Lace is not necessary to my happiness” (p. 207)

It’s also obvious that Mrs L-P in the letters really believes the two people meant to blackmail her and is almost expecting them to turn up with a demand any day. She assumes that’s why they accosted her in the street. She cannot conceive that they cared about the lace, were perhaps indignant at the way she had treated them the day before when she came to the shop to ask for it at a lower price (“cheapening it” is her right) and was refused.

She is not at all impressed by the idea that they had immediately gone to the magistrate and thus stopped all possibility of blackmail. Like many another person who has committed a crime, she persuades herself she is the person put upon, the victim of a multiple conspiracy. She simply repeats over and over that if they think they are going to get any money from her, they are much mistaken, e.g., “these wretches had marked me for somebody timid enough to be scared, and Rich enough to pay handsomely rather than go through a the terrible proceedings of a public Trial” (p. 214). She expects this demand continually (though it never comes).

From reading Jane Austen’s letters (as I have done since and described here in this blog) where Jane describes her aunt’s miserliness and carping on how much it cost her to accommodate her Austen relatives and ruined a good time or moment, I see that Jane Austen could have told the shop-keepers that her aunt was not timid, did not think herself rich, and resented strongly anyone trying to take any money from her. From reading The Austen Letters, including the section where James Leigh-Perrot discusses the Stoneleigh inheritance with his wife Jane (whom he calls Jenny) it is also clear to me that to present James L-P as something of a mild long-suffering and patient victim-husband is inaccurate; he is not under her thumb so much as has been supposed, but as pro-active and vigorous as she to prosecute his interests: he stands as ready and eager to act without compunction forestall any other claimant or get whatever money he can wrest by way of negotiation and compromise (p. 240)

Modern picturesque illustration for an 18th century Bath shop

Ellen Moody