On Saturday, 24 April 1784, William Mawhood, a London woollen draper with a shop in West Smithfield, recorded an eventful day in his diary:

This is the only surviving example we have of an eighteenth-century shopkeeper's unmediated, contemporaneous reaction to a shoplifting incident which was subsequently tried at the Old Bailey. Perhaps surprisingly, there is no dwelling on the items stolen, or their value – later declared in court to be £5. The episode is portrayed as a minor neighbourhood drama; Mawhood's diary entry implies some regret that his son was persuaded to charge the perpetrators, some concern to keep on terms with a local business associate, and even some sympathy for a fellow parent. In financial terms, he is clearly more exercised by his earlier visit to the bank and the uncertainty of the forthcoming dividend.

William Mawhood may have been among London's wealthier traders. Joseph Collyer in 1761 estimated start-up costs for woollen drapers to be £1,000 to £5,000, the highest for any London retail trade.