Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > White-collar crime and the law in nineteenth-ce...

Associated organisational unit

Electronic data

  • White-Collar Crime AAM

    Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Business History on 20/06/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00076791.2017.1339691

    Accepted author manuscript, 435 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

White-collar crime and the law in nineteenth-century Britain

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>1/09/2018
<mark>Journal</mark>Business History
Issue number3
Volume60
Number of pages18
Pages (from-to)343-360
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date20/06/17
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Rapid commercial development in Britain by 1800 inspired legislation rendering ‘white-collar’ crimes such as forgery, embezzlement, and obtaining money by false pretences criminally punishable. However, it was unclear how far this legislation applied to the managers and directors of companies, with the result that in practice, they could only be reached by actions in the civil courts. As the corporate economy grew, whether the criminal law should be extended to company managements became a pressing issue. This article explores these debates and examines the complex and tentative process of legal change which, though contested and controversial, resulted by 1900 in the effective criminalisation of a host of ‘white-collar’ offences.

Bibliographic note

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Business History on 20/06/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00076791.2017.1339691