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
Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - White-collar crime and the law in nineteenth-century Britain
AU - Taylor, James
N1 - 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
PY - 2018/9/1
Y1 - 2018/9/1
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Corporate fraud
KW - white-collar crime
KW - criminal law
KW - law enforcement
KW - regulation
U2 - 10.1080/00076791.2017.1339691
DO - 10.1080/00076791.2017.1339691
M3 - Journal article
VL - 60
SP - 343
EP - 360
JO - Business History
JF - Business History
SN - 0007-6791
IS - 3
ER -