Shadowing Practice: why did rich victorian women love to steal clothes? - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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"A lady belonging to one of the most respectable families in Baltimore, "a few days ago entered one of the markets in that city, "and after chaffering with a huckster woman about the price of a pair of chickens, "adroitly slipped one of them under her mantels and moved off.
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"A lady belonging to one of the most respectable families in Baltimore, "a few days ago entered one of the markets in that city, "and after chaffering with a huckster woman about the price of a pair of chickens, "adroitly slipped one of them under her mantels and moved off.
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"The owner of the chicken followed and caught her, "took the chicken from under her cloak and gave her a most unmerciful beating with it.
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"Her head, face and clothing are said to have been shockingly disfigured "by coming in contact with the greasy remains of the biped.
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"It is said that this lady, "though wealthy and in other respects accomplished, "has hitherto had an irresistible inclination to steal everything "she could lay her hands upon.
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"If this beating over the head with the dead chicken in the public market "does not cure her of her criminal propensity, "she is certainly incorrigible".
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Hello my beautiful doves!
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My name is Mina, and today we're going to be talking about...
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SHOPLIFTING.
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Specifically, shoplifting in the Victorian Era, because...
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- Not to worry, I have a permit.
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- This just says, "I can do what I want".
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"Shoplifting" is the act of stealing goods from a shop and because we live in a society, anything to do with petty theft is stereotyped as being a "poor person" tendency, because they can't afford anything because we...
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Live in a society.
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The interesting thing about shoplifting in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries is...
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There was actually a lot of middle class women who were getting caught for shoplifting.
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Even though they could technically afford all the things that they were stealing.
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So why do wealthy people shoplift?
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Barbara Staib, of the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention said that: "Research has revealed a direct correlation between depression and shoplifting".
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She explains that, similar to alcohol or binge eating.
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shoplifting can be a maladaptive behavior for some people.
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I want to talk about shoplifting during the Victorian Era because this was kind of like the first Era when the idea that rich people were shoplifting was a widespread popularized concept in the media.
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I do recognize that this problem hasn't gone away and, to this day, a ton of wealthy people shoplift all the time.
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Some celebrity headlines included: Lindsay Lohan, Winona Ryder, Farrah Fawcett, Hedy Lamarr, etc., etc.
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And, in 1961, Dean Martin actually shamelessly told the Saturday Evening Post: "Even today...
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"I steal a necktie or a pair of gloves or a pair of socks.
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"I'm sure that the owner knows it, "but I'm such a good customer they don't really care.
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"Everyone has a little larceny in them".
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And according to a 2008 study in the American Journal of Psychology, people with family incomes over $70,000 were 30% more likely to steal from any store than those who made ess than $20,000.
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There's a number of reasons for this, beyond the mental illness justification.
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Shoplifting is a pretty low risk endeavor, depending on your race and class.
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Rachel Shteir, author of "The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting", says: "If you're a middle class, white shoplifter, it's really hard to get a prison sentence.
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"Judges are just not that eager to send people to jail for this".
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Paul Piff, a professor at UC Berkeley, also said: "The more money you have, the higher in status you are, "the more self-focused you become "and are more prioritizing of your own self-interest".
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Piff conducted a study where he and a colleague asked 129 female undergraduate volunteers to rank themselves based on socioeconomic status.
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They then handed a jar of sweets to all the participants that contained about 40 pieces of candy.
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- We explicitly told participants: "This jar of candies are for children participating in a developmental lab nearby.
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"They're in studies. This is for them".
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And we just monitored how much candy participants took.
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Participants who felt rich took two times as much candy as participants who felt poor.
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Let's go back to the olden days to discover the roots of shoplifting.
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In April 1908, the New York Times published an article saying: "It seems impossible that these beautifully gowned, "gracefully moving creatures, all polish and delicacy and poise, "should harbor among them all one single thief.
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"The word seems absurd, "and affront to their well-bred faes "and their well-filled purses hanging on jeweled chains.
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"And yet it is indeed from this class that the army of shoplifters is largely made up".
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So, "middle class" is kind of like, a loosey-goosey term.
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In the late 19th Century, they were a class of people who were "comfortable", unlike the upper class, they weren't "stinking rich", and they were also susceptible to social mobility, either going upwards or downwards.
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They were urban, mostly native born protestant, and the men in the family tended to have white collar salary jobs.
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Middle class women were housewives, which is a job in and of itself.
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And part of the job was keeping the house, which included shopping for whatever necessities the house needed.
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In the late 1800s, we also see an increasing number of "dress codes", AKA, the act of wearing different clothes for different occasions.
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This increase in dress codes was a byproduct of the ready-made clothing industry.
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So I know-- When I say "ready-made clothing", I'm talking about mass-produced finished clothing that you would find at the store.
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Because of the invention of the sewing machine in the mid-1800s, clothing was more easily produced and way more accessible, so the downside is that your clothes were probably made in a factory by an immigrant child who was working 20 hours a day.
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So, like I said, it became the middle class housewife's job to know what dress you would need for...
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An afternoon tea party!
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Or an evening party.
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Or a sporting event.
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It was also her job to stylishly keep up with decorating trends, because a home was a reflection of a family's status.
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According to Tammy Whitlock, such "fripperies" had real significance in day-to-day life and maintaining or increasing status.
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The display of such items affected not only the status of the individual woman, but her family as well.
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And I want to reiterate that these women were middle class.
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So, yes, they had a lot more money than, you know, someone poor, but they still had a budget and a list that they had to stick to that their husbands or fathers made for them.
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As Kerry Segrave notes in "Shoplifting: A Social History": "So both rich women and poor were in the same position in a lavish store: "All the shiny things in the world, and no ability or latitude to buy them".
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Now, the nature of the department store was also EXTREMELY extravagant and overwhelming.
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English visitor Catherine Busby noted: "The amazing luxury of the decor, "the openings and promotions, "the special holiday and seasonal attractions, "the profuse displays of out-of-season flowers, "the colorful caged live birds, "the splashing electric fountains "and the free samples of food, "which all provided an 'unnatural tantalization' ".
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Like, I'm not talking about "Santa in the mall" kind of attractions.
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There was some shit in there that you could not find at any modern mall.
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For example, Siegel-Cooper department store kept an elephant on display for an entire month in their animal department.
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They also had a woman orchestra that would play popular music and it was reported that there was a consistent crowd of women just constantly circulating the performers.
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Some shoplifters claim that they became overexcited and overstimulated in large stores, surrounded with new sights, sounds and smells, and the lack of fixed boundaries.
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Shoppers complained that everything led to temptation.
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William Titan, a buyer for R.H. Macy and Company Grocery and Liquor Department, told an interviewer in the early 20th Century that: "The grocery department was purposely located on the fifth floor of the building".
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He says: "She (the customer) may need other things, "but she has to go to the fifth floor to get her groceries.
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"Do you see what I mean. It was very important.
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"She goes to the store, "she does other things before she goes to the fifth floor or vice versa".
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Of course, psychologists at the time, did criticize department stores for luring women in to these buildings and tempting them and...
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Making shopping into a pleasurable activity.
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While many women have always found joy in shopping, it was just that the department store was this locus oasis of excess consumerism.
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Like, you have all these different departments, you have your groceries department, you have your clothing department, you have your home decor department, etcetera, etcetera.
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And then, they have all these attractions on display...
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It's just TOO MUCH.
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And it made the effects of hyper consumerism way more visible, because it was all just in one place.
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So, you may ask: What was the public response to this shoplifting issue?
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Abelson says that newspapers, magazines and fiction, all suggest an intense curiosity about and a sentimental attachment to such "unfortunate women".
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In other words, these shoplifting women were not coded as "criminals", they were coded as "sick".
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"Mentally ill women".
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Surprise, surprise.
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Unlike the poor, who had simple motives for crime, because they couldn't afford anything, middle-class women were way more complex.
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They had the money.
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A lot of middle-class women who were caught stealing, had on them legitimate items of purchase, as well as extra money that they could have used to buy the things that they stole.
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And, of course, when these women were caught, they had all these excuses: "Oh, this ring got caught in my handkerchief and I...
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"Accidentally put it in my pocket with me".
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Or, "I have a headache and it just makes me...
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"Oh! So confused".
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Unfortunately, while a lot of these women use these excuses to get off the hook and not have to face severe punishment, it ended up reinforcing this narrative that women are "passive" and "incompetent" and "stupid".
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I'm not blaming any of these women, I would totally plead confusion if that got me out of having to do like, I don't know, hard labor in prison.
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But, yeah! It didn't help with the overall public opinion of women.
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One diagnosis erode in the 19th Century called "kleptomania", which I'm sure a lot of you have heard in kind of like, jokey circumstances.
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- We just saw your new video.
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Yeah, they had a screening over at Saks Fifth Avenue in the security office.
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[ Laughter ] A kleptomaniac!
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But kleptomania was apparently a type of insanity that led someone to steal things without any motive.
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It's also important to mention that kleptomania was, virtually.
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never used as a diagnosis for poor women.
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Professional and public opinion at the time both dictated that poor women had "stronger constitutions" than their "fragile" wealthy sisters, because they had to do hard labor a lot of the times in their work.
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One popular case dealing with kleptomania was that of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Castle, who were two wealthy American tourists visiting London.
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They were arrested in 1896 for shoplifting, and even though Mr. Castle was arrested in possession of shoplifted goods, it was only Mrs. Castle who was tried and put through the whole shebang, because, you know, men just don't steal things.
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Dr. Solis-Cohen, the physician who is responsible for treating Mrs. Castle, identified disordered menstruation, hemorrhoids and uterine irregularities as the cause of Mrs. Castle's kleptomania, because none of these scientists knew anything about vaginas.
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Similarly, in other cases kleptomania, was "caused" by pregnancy, post-pregnancy, pre-pregnancy, ovulation, lactation, menopause...
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Basically, the existence of a uterus made you prone to insanity.
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While kleptomania was heavily gendered, some psychiatrists like Isaac Ray, believed that everyone was susceptible to kleptomania.
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Ray stated that men could get it from suffering a head injury, similar to amnesia.
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But the framing here is very important: Men would get kleptomania if they suffered from an injury, or from head trauma.
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Women were just naturally prone to kleptomania, because they had a uterus.
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Yay, misogyny!
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Another interesting thing is that, before kleptomania kind of got out of hands and a lot of women started using this as an excuse, department stores, which kind of turned the other way, if a woman was caught and arrested, they wouldn't press charges for her stealing, because she was...
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You know, wealthy, and she was usually a returning or frequent customer.
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As Shteir says: "Today's kleptomaniac is tomorrow's big spender".
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Now, I kind of want to pivot and talk about a different category of shoplifters, because the sense I got when I was doing research for this is that "the existing literature" is really dominated by the whole middle-class woman kleptomania conversation, which is valid, because that was a thing that happened, I wouldn't make an entire video about this if it wasn't a thing that was prominent, but at the same time, there were women who stole with motivation.
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And I think it's important to shine light on them too, because women were not just like, passive people in history.
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There was a term called a "hoister", which is an occupational designation for a shoplifter.
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hoisters were usually highly trained, they had special techniques, they wore disguises, and all of their actions were premeditated, they were not impulsive.
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William M. Meier conducted a study analyzing shoplifting prosecutions between 1890 to 1940 as reported by The Times in London.
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The resulting number of cases reported was 284, only nine of which were men.
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There are a few possibilities for this gender gap.
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One is that department stores were stereotyped as being "women spaces".
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It was the "woman's job" to go shopping, so a man who was in the department store stuck out more like a sore thumb and so, it might not have been the most ideal place to conduct illicit behavior.
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Another reason is kind of like, the reverse of this, which is that: Over time, when kleptomania became a more widespread and known issue, police and detectives were kind of just identifying women and maybe just a lot of men just didn't get caught.
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Career shoplifters also tended to be working class, so they had another job as well as this job.
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Of the 284 cases analyzed, only 80 cases provided occupational information on the alleged criminals and, of the 80 cases, there were 52 women who came from the clothing trade and domestic service.
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We have to remember that, during the Victorian Era, as I said earlier, we see a rise of ready-made clothing.
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And the origins of mass production.
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Because of this new dependency on cheap factory labor, a lot of skilled labor such as like, seamstresses needle women, milliners, dressmakers...
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Like, all these people in these skilled trades suffered quite a lot.
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So I realized I really don't like the term "skilled labor" and its subsequent counterpart, "unskilled", because the term "skilled" and "unskilled" are used to segregate two groups of people.
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One group that deserves to be paid well and one group that doesn't.
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What I really mean when I say "skilled labor" is people who took on apprenticeships and who studied this craft for years before entering this profession.
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This economic incentive was a reason for some women to start stealing to sustain their livelihoods.
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Another reason for why women might steal is just the simple fact that...
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I don't know, you just want nice clothes!
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- I want to steal.
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According to a board of trade inquiry in 1899, domestic workers are regarded by other workers as belonging to a lower social status.
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The distinctive dress, which they are required to wear, marks them out as a class apart.
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The cap being generally resented.
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In the autobiography of Jean Rennie, a former domestic servant from 1924 to 1950, she writes about how disappointed she was when her employer gave her coarse cotton instead of velvet for Christmas.
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She writes: "There, in its hideous glory, "was the length of that awful pink cotton— "a length sufficient to make a morning dress— "for work.
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"Not a piece of material for a dress for the very rare times I was off and could dress up...
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"Just the one thing that mattered to her Ladyship— "work; "the nobility and privilege of working for her, "dressed in hideous pink, for about threepence".
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For the hoister, shoplifting was also in entrepreneurial activity.
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Many of them stole supplies in bulk, so that they could resell them on the black market for profit.
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On the other hand middle class women tended to focus on stealing small finished goods, like handkerchiefs, scarves, hat pins, gloves...
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Things that they could easily hide under their skirts or in their sleeves.
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In 1904, two career shoplifters, Joab and Greenberg, were reported to have stolen 55 yards of satin and over 34 yards of silk by hiding them in their skirts.
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How did they do it?
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There were a number of different garments like grafters, bloomers and shoplifter pockets, which were special garments that included hooks sewn to the petticoat, the corset and the inner surface of skirts, as well as large concealed pockets and belts around the waist; and slots even in their stockings.
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Shirley Pitts, known as "the queen of shoplifters", explained: "Good hoisting is all in the rolling...
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"Especially if you want to take fur or heavy items.
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"There's a certain way that you learn to take the stuff from the top and roll it small".
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I want to add that Shirley died in 1992 because of breast cancer and at her funeral, her friends put a six foot long flower arrangement together that said, "gone shopping".
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Hoisting was a skill trait.
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It involved apprenticeship and allowed women to take pride in their craft, which was something that was not really provided for women at the time, because usually women were kind of...
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Shoved, into these very undignified jobs.
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As Meyer says in his article: "The women dressed up to steal, and stole to dress up".
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Okay, everyone, that's all I have for today!
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Thank you so much for watching!
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Let me know in the comments what you think about all this.
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I hope you have a lovely rest of your day and...
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I'll see you next time!
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Context & Background
The topic of this video delves into an intriguing aspect of societal behavior during the Victorian Era, particularly the phenomenon of shoplifting among wealthy women. With a captivating blend of historical narrative and psychological insight, it explores why women from respectable, affluent families engaged in acts of theft, despite their financial ability to purchase items. This cultural exploration reveals underlying issues such as social mobility, mental health, and societal expectations, offering learners not just vocabulary, but also context to enhance their understanding of English in historical and modern settings.
Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication
- “Irresistible inclination” - Refers to a strong, often uncontrollable urge to do something.
- “Adroitly slipped” - Indicates the skillful, often stealthy, manner of doing something.
- “Criminal propensity” - Denotes a tendency or natural inclination towards committing crimes.
- “Affront to their well-bred faces” - Suggests an insult or offense against the polished image of the upper class.
- “Dress codes” - Refers to the expected attire appropriate for different situations, particularly in social contexts.
Step-by-step Shadowing Guide
To effectively improve your English pronunciation and understanding of the nuances discussed in the video, follow this shadowing guide:
- Listen Carefully: Play the video and focus on the speaker’s tone and pronunciation. Pay special attention to phrases like “irresistible inclination” and “adroitly slipped”.
- Chunk the Sentences: Break down the dialogue into manageable segments. This makes it easier to repeat and internalize the rhythm of the language.
- Repeat Aloud: Using the shadow speak technique, say the phrases after the speaker. Mimicking their intonation will help improve your English pronunciation.
- Record Yourself: To track your progress, record your voice as you shadow the speaker. Compare your pronunciation and intonation with the original video.
- Engage in Reflection: After your practice session, reflect on the historical and psychological aspects of the dialogue. Consider how these themes might relate to contemporary discussions on class and behavior, which can enhance your vocabulary and speaking prowess for IELTS speaking practice.
By following this guide on a dedicated shadowing site, you'll not only grasp the historical significance of the content but also enhance your speaking abilities in English.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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