Lady Isobel Barnett: Shoplifting and Sympathy—The Last Gasp of Presumptive Shame?

Abstract

This chapter examines how the phenomenon of shoplifting gives and insight into the esteem and shame issues of individuals at different points of the social spectrum. Using the tragic case of Lady Isobel Barnett, an individual driven to suicide by the twin spectres of betrayed duty and lasting shame, the chapter investigates how this occurrence and others opened up wider questions about who the law and justice should be targeted at. Members of Parliament and spokesmen for the psychiatric and medical professions as well as NGOs clamoured to declare that shoplifting laws were heavy handed and were ensnaring the genteel, the distressed and the unfortunate. These people, so such class inflected narratives argued, should be treated carefully and leniently leaving the full force of the law to deal with the more obviously miscreant and vicious.