White-collar crime in modern England : financial fraud and business morality, 1845-1929

In the period between the 1840s and the 1920s the British economy was transformed, from small-scale capitalism dominated by individual traders and partnerships to a complex financial structure dominated by large, joint-stock companies. The tremendous growth of big business created a world of new opportunities for criminal exploitation. The promotion and management of public companies and the trading of commercial securities proved vulnerable to the white-collar crimes of fraud and embezzlement. Problems of financial fraud were exacerbated by a climate of laissez-faire which championed the most permissive commercial legislation in the world, and white-collar crime wreaked havoc on the modern British economy. This new book examines the spread of white-collar crime from the Victorian period to the early twentieth century and offers a new perspective on modern scandals. This is a vivid and lucid account of white-collar crime in England from the Victorian period to the early 20th century. It shows how the birth of big business and the lack of government regulation created new problems of fraud and embezzlement The extensive white-collar crimes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were born of the financial revolution that radically altered English finance during the early eighteenth century. This is the first full-scale treatment to have been written of white-collar crime in Victorian and Edwardian England, which provides a useful insight into the birth of 'middle-class' crime. A vivid and lucid account of white-collar crime, yielding new insights into modern scandals