STORY OF EDWARDIAN SHOPKEEPERS: Beatrix Potter's Ginger ...

A STORY OF EDWARDIAN SHOPKEEPERS: Beatrix Potter's Ginger and Pickles

Alice Belcher* and Sally Wheeler*"

lntroduction The centre point of this article is a Beatrix Potter story, Ginger and Pzikles.' It is one of her less well-known stories. Potter's stories broadly divide into descriptions of the scrapes that baby animals get into and pictures of farm- yard life. Ginger and Pickles is one of the exceptions to this in placing animal characters in a business environment and confronting them with the questions of commerce and law that inevitably arise in that type of environment.

Potter was born in 1866 in London and died in the Lake District in 1943. Ginger and Pickles was written in the middle of her active writing period which spanned the years 1903 to 1913, thus forming a relatively short period of her life. Our aim in this article is to offer two complementary readings of this story. In one reading, we examine the story's plot and set its themes against their contemporary background context as they may have appeared to Potter. We describe the plot of Ginger and Pickles in the following paragraphs and we identify the themes that we have selected for this examination. In our second reading, we compare Beatrix Potter's rhetoric of commercial prudence with the current rhetoric of 'stakeholding'. This consideration forms our conclusion.

Using a particular piece of literature as a reportage sketch on which to comment on past and present legal structures requires some engagement with the ambitions of literary criticism. As we are dealing with a piece of children's literature, this involves a further layer of analysis, as we have to relate these ambitions to that genre of literature. In the middle section of this article, we look at the various positions which can be taken on, issues such as the place given to the author in constructing a meaning of a text and the educative ambitions of children's literature. This inquiry in turn draws us into a brief consideration of Potter's family background, her upbringing and her adult life. We ponder what, if any, influence the various readings of her biography may have on her approach to children's literature. More generally, we raise the question of how genres of biography might produce an account of commercial and legal prudence in terms of character and action.

* Department of Law, University of Dundee ** Department of Law, Leeds University 1 B Potter (1987) Ginger and Pickles, orig 1909, Frederick Warne, p 12 (hereafter

Ginger and Pickles). For the 1987 edition, modern electronic scanning methods were employed to achieve better quality reproduction of the pictures. At the same time, the text was rearranged to cover fewer pages than in earlier editions.

Potter was well known for skills of observation and her attention to detail; as Sir John Millais, the artist, once said to her 'plenty of people can draw, but you and my son John have observation'.' Millais was probably commentating on her abilities as an artist but it is our contention that Ginger and Pickles is evidence of this skill in observation being extended across a much broader area.

She originally wrote Ginger and Pickles in 1908 as a Christmas present for Louie, daughter of Harold Warne, her publisher. It was rewritten and extended during 1909 and published in October 1909.' I t is based on a real village shop in Smithy Lane, Sawrey, in the Lake District. The story begins with the shop. I t was a small shop but it sold 'nearly everything'.' It was kept by Ginger, a yellow tom-cat and Pickles, a terrier. Two-thirds of the book is about how Ginger and Pickles conducted their trade in competition with the other local shop, run by Tabitha Twichit. Eventually, they acknowledge the failure of their shop and close it. The final third of the book is about how their customers managed without the shop. The happy ending is provided when Sally Henny Penny re-opens the shop; she lays in a 'remarkable assortment of bargains. There is something to please every- body'.5

An account of everyday commercial relations rarely forms the centre point of a fictional account even in adult literature for the obvious reasons of the lack of accessibility to and familiarity with these sorts of settings for most readerships. This setting was a radical departure for Potter and one she did not repeat. However, her portrayal of the simplicity of the commercial transactions in which Ginger and Pickles are engaged gives the story a lasting appeal. In books about Potter and her work, discussion of Ginger and Pickle? invariably concentrates on its locality and the appearance of so many of Potter's animal characters.- However, the contemporary contextual reading of Ginger and Pickles we wish to pursue focuses on the commentary it appears to provide on contemporary issues of law, political economy and ~ u l t u r e . ~ Within the story, some themes are more explicit than others. Ones -

2 The Journal of Beatrk Potter from I881 to 1897, transcribed from her code writing by L Linder (1966) Frederick Warne, p 418, hereafter The Journal.

3 See L Linder (1971) A Hktory of the Writings of Bealrix Potter Including Unpublished Work, Frederick Warne, pp 197-9.

4 Ginger and Pickles, p 1. 5 Ibid, p 60. 6 See M Crouch (1960) Beatriz Potter, Bodley Head, pp 42-4; M Lane (1946) The

Tale ofBeatriz Potter: A Biography, Frederick Warne, pp 101-2; M Lane (1978) The Magic Years ofBeatrk Potter, Frederick Warne, pp 180-4; Linder (1971) pp 197-204; RK MacDonald (1986) Beatrix Potter, Twayne, pp 114-18.

7 Linder (1971) identifies the following: Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin and his brother Twinkleberry, Lucinda and Jane, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Jeremy Fisher, Samuel Whiskers and Anna Maria, Jemima Puddle-Duck, Tom Kitten, Moppet and Mittens. Benjamin Bunny and Peter Rabbit's sister Flopsy can also be seen in the picture on p 13.

8 Although most of the critical discussion of Potter is about her use of location

that we identify and explore are the importance of competition and credit for shopkeepers in the period 1890 to 1914.' Ginger and Pickles experience local competition for trade but they also come into contact with a German doll which we suggest is used by Potter as a symbol of the problems caused by international competition. The political fight between the free traders and those in favour of tariff reform is therefore the second theme which is discussed. The story centres on the failure of the business. The anatomy of the failure is one which is repeated in marly business failures of the 1990s. However, by examining what is essentially a non-forensic account of failure, we are able to see factors such as the contributory role in this failure of the business7 customers, something which is normally obscured from view. The account of the failure provides an obvious third area to be analysed.

A further thematic aspect of the book is the role played by the shop's customers and this is the fourth theme which is explored in more detail below. We argue that Ginger and Pickles is an accurate observation of small shopkeeping in 1909 or at least of the contemporary issues of the time as they appeared to small shopkeepers and observers of retail practices. The response to the failure of the shop is situated by Potter in an allusion to the rise of the co-operative movement. She concludes the story at that point and it is this conclusion that we use to weave together our two readings of the story. We conclude by pointing out that Potter's representation of the failure of the shop and the response to that failure in the language of commercial prudence is instructive of some of the problems encountered in the representation of economic, political and social problems with which present-day society is confronted. We see the support that Sally Henny Penny's co-operative is given by the shop's customers as relating to the obligations and exchanges of trust and involvement that are being addressed by stakeholders in current business activity. Finally, we suggest that the prudential language of commerce that Potter uses might be more able to encapsulate what is important in such obligations and exchanges than an analysis based or1 'group interests' or 'stakeholding'.

The Literary Context of Beatrix Potter Readings of Literature Using a piece of literature as a commentary in a sense separates it from the debates about the value of the text and the role of the author, debates in which literary criticism and the law and literature movement are intimately bound up. There is a long tradition of accepting such texts simply as reportage and, once historical accuracy is established, they can be analysed for background contemporary material which is not given the same primacy in

and illustration, there is some discussion of the impact of her political views and social background on her stories in S Rahn, 'Tailpiece: The Tail of Two Bad Mice' (1984) 12 Children's Lit 78.

9 MJ Winstanley suggests that for small private shopkeepers, this period was one of fighting for survival: MJ Wins~anley (1983) The Shopkeeper's World 1830- 1914, Manchester University Press, p 51.

more academic accounts.'' However, that approach qualifies us only to comment on the fact that some authors felt that certain events, influenced by the presence of particular legal structures, were worthy of comment. T o say anything more substantial, we need to engage with these questions of textual analysis.

Schools of thought in contemporary literary criticism vacillate between the two extreme positions of the existence of a literary canon and its con- tents and the importance of considering a text in its own terms, free of any authorial imprint on its meaning. The idea of canon in this sense is a judg- mental one. It is used to reflect the idea that some literature is considered 'better' than other literature. The subjective nature of this type of assess- ment which champions not only the role of the author at the expense of the reader but also the values of those who purport to select the canon has led to demands for the text to receive primacy." In order for this to happen, the author has to be removed from consideration in the search for the text's meaning, leaving the reader free to make their own interpretation.'' The text becomes independent of authorial constraint." A path between these two extremes is offered by Eco, among others, who sees authors as constructing their texts for model readers." Readers return the compliment of model construction to the author when reading and so a discourse begins between the two. This idea of model readers and model authors with authorial intent present in a text but not necessarily needing to be identified for the reader's interpretation to be a valid one is particularly attractive for texts which deal wholly or in part with legal phenomena, since it emphasises the functional and symbolic importance of networks of communicative exchange. It is into this critical framework we see our readings of Potter's story fitting.

10 For commentary in the tradition referred to see B Weiss (1986) The Hell ofthe English, Bucknall University Press; T Alborn, 'The Moral of the Failed Bank: Professional Plots in the Victorian Money Market' (1995) 38 Vict Stud 198; and A Miller, 'Subjectivity Ltd: The Discourse of Liability in the Joint Stock Companies Act of 1856 and Gaskell's Cranford' (1994) 61 ELH139.

11 See the view of Bloom, a proponent of the canonisation of literature. Bloom describes those opposed to canonisation as the 'School of Resentment' and the selection criteria for the canon thus:

[tlhe issue is the mortality or immortality of literary works. Where they have become canonical they have survived an immense struggle with social relations, but those relations have little to do with class struggle .... Very few working class readers ever matter in determining the survival of texts, and left-wing critics cannot do the working class's reading for it.

H Bloom (1994) The Western Canon, Macmillan, p 38. 12 See, for example, the work of Terry Eagleton, for whom this is a central theme.

A particularly accessible account is found in T Eagleton (1983) Literary Theory, Blackwell, especially pp 1-16, 200-2.

13 For an overview of the development of these positions, see I Ward (1995) Law and Literature, Cambridge University Press, ch 2.

14 U Eco (1992) Interpretation and Overinterpretation, Cambridge University Press.

Readings of Children 3 Literature There are difficulties, however, with transferring this critical framework to children's literature. The emphasis on the role of the reader is problematic because there is an obvious power inequality between the inexperienced child reader and the exverienced adult author.I5 This leads some theorists to conclude that children's literature is replete with double meanings: - meanings for its child readership and meanings for its adult supporters. Supporters in this sense are adults who supervise the selection of literature and, in the case of younger children, its dissemination. The use of humour is an example of this; children's books often contain jokes or a joke that will appeal more to an adult than a child.

Other difficulties with fitting children's literature into the schemata of contemporary literary criticism are tied to the changing perceptions of the place of the child in society. One way of viewing children's literature is to put genres into their particular historical context and tie this to the position of the child in that historical context. For example Briggs sees the years 1880-1914 as the 'Golden Age' of children's fictional literature.'Votter wrote the vast majority of her stories between 1903 and 1913. Briggs ex- plains that literature produced in these years was characterised by the extent to which it entered the world of the child from a variety of different angles while conveying values that were part of the moral terminology of their day. The idea that there has to be a connection with improving moral frameworks to be considered as children's literature is one which is shared by current commentators.'- However, we are more likely to demand that 1990s children's literature convey strategies for constructing self-awareness and expression than regimenting children into partaking of a particular moral framework."

One way of overcoming the difficulty of concentrating on the inexperienced child as reader has been to look at children's literature in terms of its educative ambitions and, in particular, its place in the psychology of education: the process whereby children learn and the ages at which children become amenable to different levels of sophistication in the construction of moral arguments. The work of Nicholas Tucker provides a link between these ideas and the work of Potter. Tucker uses Piaget's work to assess children's responses to texts and much of his analysis is based on empirical evidence. In The Child and the Book," Tucker describes Potter's

-

15 See P Hunt (1992) Literaturefor Children: Contemporary Criticism, Routledge. 16 J Briggs 'Reading Children's Books' (1989) 39 Essays in Criticism 1, p 7. 17 See J Morison (1996) 'Stories for Good Children' in J Morison and C Bell (eds)

Tall Stories? ReadingLaw and Literature, Dartmouth, p 113. 18 For the development of critical theory in application to children's literature,

see Hunt (1992); J May (1992) Children's Literature and Critical Theory, Oxford University Press; and K Lesnik-Oberstein (1994) Children's Literature: Criticism and The Fictional Child, Oxford University Press. The latter also has an extremely good introductory chapter dealing with the development of critical approaches to children's literature.

19 N Tucker (1990) The Child and the Book: A Psychological and Literary

fiction enthusiastically as part of the range 'of the best story books' for younger children. H e sees her work as belonging in the literature for the under-sevens, at which age, according to Tucker, children have a sense of justice which is subordinated to adult authority. H e cornmends her prose style as being 'simple, direct and memorable' and her use of language for employing expressive phrases in a general context which renders them clear.'"

For Tucker, Potter passes the test for the child as reader set by expo- nents of educational psychology. H e bases much of his discussion on the role of authority and justice within children's cognitive development. H e sees Potter's fiction as appealing to the importance for children of adult authority. This almost returns us to the position of children's literature as conveying the author's moral framework now understood in terms of educative value. While this has the advantage of displacing the dichotomy of authorship or readerships models of textual analysis, such accounts are not without their problems. As critics of Piaget and Kohlberg have pointed out, it is precisely in the discussion of authorship and authority that their cognitive psychology is least satisfying. Bernard Jackson outlines one kind of difficulty in the context of making sense of social experience: the distinctly 'rationalist' (and Kantian) natural law flavour to Piaget's understanding of the primacy of moral sense and authority." Like many natural law accounts, Piaget's account of moral developnient produces a very particular account of moral value. It has little to say about how authority may be understood differently in terms context, genre (representation) or even gender. However, Tucker's use of Piaget serves as a reminder of the ways in which traditions of rhetoric and psychology have been used to construct models of authors and readers, and the conditions in which they are said to relate.

Beatrix Potter as a Nursery Subversive? If we accept the idea that children can take their own meaning from a text but that an author can have a model reader in mind and an ideal message for that reader, we need to consider what sort of child Potter seeks as a reader. Does she only appeal to children in their desire for stability or does she set out to convey additional or contrary positions? Opinions on this differ.

Possibly the harshest view of Potter comes from Patrick Richardson." His view of her is almost entirely negative; the stories themselves are thin, there is n o character development and the pictures are overrated. Hunt, in his illustrated history of children's literature, hints at a school of thought that sees Potter's stories simply as a vehicle for her illustrations, in other words, outside the canon of 'children's literature'." However, as an

Exploration, Cambridge University Press. 20 Ibid, pp 57-8. 21 B Jackson (1996) Making Sense ofirkprudence, Deborah Charles, pp 19-25. 22 P Richardson, 'Miss Potter and the Little Rubbish' (1966) New Society, 7 July,

extracted in N Tucker (ed) (1978) Suitable for Children: Controversies in Children's Literature, Sussex University Press, p 173.

23 P Hunt (ed) (1995) Children's Literature, Oxford University Press, p 186.

alternative to this approach, there is the view that sees Potter as offering something radically new and refreshing for children." Far from appealing to the idea of the security offered by adult authority, she is actually subverting that idea. She is, in effect, saying that 'disobedience and exploration are more fun than good behaviour and not really all that dangerous'."

These two different views of Potter (on the one hand, a supporter of authority; on the other, a subversive presence in the Edwardian nursery) lead us into a consideration of the tvDe of influences that Potter was subiected to , L as part of her biographical inheritance. The idea of Potter conveying subversive ideas to the world of the nursery is based in the main on a reading of Potter's first story Peter Rabbit '6 and on a view of her upbringing as lonely and repressed. Much of the information about Potter's life comes from her journal and her letters. The journal was kept sporadically from some time in 1881 when she was 15 to the end of January 1897 when she was 30, 11 years before the writing of Ginger and Pickles. The entries were long and detailed and written in code. In addition, many of her letters survive and although some are in private hands, a collection of 400 was published in 1989.'- From these sources, it seems that she enjoyed an upbringing that was similar to many other children of upper-middle class families; she was educated at home, her parents were aloof, distant figures and she did not undertake paid employment. Despite eventual financial independence and a disagreement with her parents over her initial choice of suitor, she remained devoted to them and nursed them through their final i l l n e s s e s . ' ~ ~ our discussion below of her use of gender shows, she gave her characters stereotypical roles. They had concerns that would draw on the experiences of her readers and, indeed, her own: the pursuit of domestic tasks such as baking and cleaning and the gathering of food carried out by adults while children made their own amusements. It seems that she did not pursue a radical political agenda on this point nor, indeed, on the issues of free trade and the co-o~erative movement. as will become clear from our discussion below.

Peter Rabbit is an attractive story with which to illustrate the 'Beatrix Potter as subversive' argument. Peter Rabbit does exactly as his mother tells him not to. H e enters Mr McGregor's garden, where his father had met an untimely end, and after a series of narrow escapes during which he loses his clothes, he is reunited with his mother and sisters. His sisters in the mean- time have done as they were told and enjoyed a rather nicer tea of milk, bread and blackberries than Peter Rabbit ultimately gets. Nevertheless,

24 See A Lurie (1990) Don't Tell the Grown-Ups, Bloomsbury, p 94. Lurie bases this view not only on the content of Potter's fiction but also on its physical characteristics such as its small size, its layout with a picture opposite text and its relatively cheap price of one shilling or so for each book.

25 Ibid, p 95. 26 (1902) Frederick Warne. 27 J Taylor (1989) Beatrtx Potter's Letters, Frederick Warne, (hereafter Letters) 28 Letters to Harold Warne, her English pblisher, 9 May 1914 (Letters, p 217);

and to Alexander McKay, an American ~ublisher, 18 December 1932 (Letters, p 352).

Peter Rabbit is accepted back into the family fold and as we know from The Tale of Benjamin Bunny," this was not the last occasion on which he visited Mr McGregor's garden. However, there is no sense that Peter Rabbit had fun while being pursued around the garden or that he was anything but terrified. This would seem to suggest that what Potter is saying is in fact that adults will forgive children who transgress and not that transgression is a recommended course of action.

Peter Rabbit's loss of his clothes is read by some commentators, particularly Tucker," as a sign that he is moving from the ordered world of adults into the more marginal, less ordered world of small children and animals. However, it is quitipossible that the loss of clothes had no more significance to Potter than a serious 'nursery' crime, as indeed most of her readers would have seen it. Other clothes losses in Potter's books occur in The Tale of Tom Kitted' but here the kittens are not engaged in a potentially dangerous escapade; they are simply naughty. According to Tucker, this is primarily a device of plot development necessary so as not to frighten children; when animals are portrayed as animals, they become more resourceful and resilient and children would distinguish them from themselves. Interestingly, Ward uses this distinction as a way of fitting the moral to Peter Rabbit that 'if you enter other people's property and you take things then you are removed from the familiar adult world and placed in a more dangerous one. Trespass and theft are offences that should not be committed either by adults or by small children'." This analysis allows him to label Peter Rabbit as 'the first jurisprudential text that a young child will ever encounter'." The difficulty with this description is that Ward is heavily dependent on Tucker for his analytical framework for children's literature and Tucker's principal point is that children between the ages of three and seven know no sense of justice other than that dictated by adults. Either they are unlikely to identify issues of theft and trespass in moral terms of justice or another account of authority and its transgression is being invoked.

Other Potter stories which have been read as Potter questioning the values of her upbringing or commenting on her own situation are The Tale of Two Bad Mic2 and Pigling Bland." Rahn sees both as autobiographi~al.~~ In The Tale of Two Bad Mice, the dolls' house with its elegant furniture and plastic food represented Potter's 'genteel upper-middle-class existence, all surface and no substance which Potter had been borne into and stifled by'.'.

(1904) Frederick Warne. Tucker (1990) p 63. (1907) Frederick Warne. Ward (1995) p 100. Ibid. (1904) Frederick Warne. (1913a) Frederick Warne. S Rahn (1984). This view is shared by Lurie (1990). Rahn (1984) p 82.

The two mice, Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca, railing against the plastic food they find there, ransack the dolls house and steal from it. However, the mice thereafter experience a change of heart and Hunca Munca returns to the dolls' house to clean it. Rahn feels that this can be read as Potter settling her inner conflict between her desire to escape and marry the suitor of her choice, Norman Warne, and her duty to her parents. Warne was the youngest brother in the publishing firm which published her books. H e had built the dolls house, which served as a model for the one in this book, for his niece. There is a certain attraction in the neatness of the socio-economic biographical reading but an equally plausible reading is that Potter was playing on the emotions of children coming to terms with the fact that their toys are not real and using a real life setting on which to base her drawings.%

Pigling Bland is almost her last book in the Tales series and was written in the year of her marriage. The principal character, Pigling Bland, a model of sobriety and seriousness, elopes with Pigwig and escapes to the hills, leaving behind the possibility of being fattened up for curing. This is seen as Potter finally escaping into another life. This too is an attractive reading but it must be tempered with the fact that it is clear from her letters that she tried to produce more books but her efforts were hampered by the demands of her Lake District farm and her failing eyesight.

In Ginger and Pickles, the issue which could be seen as Potter reacting against the values transmitted in her upbringing is her use of gender. The successful business ventures described in the story are both run by female animal characters; Tabitha Twichit and Sally Henny Penny. One reading may be that Potter is deliberately gendering success or perhaps even using gender in a more subtle way to pass comment on women's socio-economic position. Potter generally confers a gender on her principal characters which is clear either from the title she gives them or the clothes they are represented as wearing. Ginger and Picklesis very much the exception to her other stories, which see male and female characters pursuing stereotypical gendered occupations. Female characters adopt the roles of cleaning," bakinga and laundering of clothes." Male characters are portrayed as hunter- gatherers or in traditional male occupations, such as tailoring." We know from her letters that Potter controlled her own financial affairs, certainly to the extent that she monitored the flow of her royalty payments" and

38 Letter to Norman Warne, 20 April 1904 (Letters, p 93) thanks him for the photographs of the dolls house and goes on:

I have got an idea from the staircase and topfloor. The inside view is amusing, - the kind of house where one cannot sit down without upsetting something, I know the sort! I prefer a more severe style ...'

39 (1910) The Tale ofMrs. Tittlemouse, Frederick Warne. 40 Tabitha Twichit in B Potter (1908~) The Tale of Samuel Whkkers or the R o b Pob

Pudding, Frederick Warne, p 46. 41 (1908b) The Tale ofMrs. Tiggy- Winkle, Frederick Warne. 42 (1903) The Tailor of Gloucater, Frederick Warne. 43 There are numerous example of this, see for example the letter to Harold

arranged her own land purchases." Perhaps in Ginger and Pickles she was making the plea for more women to be allowed financial independence and to rely on their own business acumen. However, given her apparent desire in her other stories to preserve the status quo in terms of the conventionality of occupations and her ascription of the role of trusting naive female to Jemima Puddle-Duck" rescued from the fox by Kep the Collie, her knight in shining armour, this seems a somewhat strained interpretation.

Her point may have been a more subtle one: that men were profligate in a way that women could not afford to be, in the sense that men in general had access to capital accumulation opportunities to replenish what was lost in speculation in a way that women did not. Women in the higher socio- economic groups traditionally did not work and received income through inheritance or marriage settlement. In lower socio-economic groups, female employment was structured around the demands of child raising" and for single women, the pursuit of low status and low-waged occupations such as domestic service. Again, this seems an unlikely position for her to adopt, given the position that is taken on poverty and female employment in other stories. Peter Rabbit's mother is a lone parent (a widow) without any visible means of support. Perhaps given the extended family network which is revealed in later stories," Potter's point is rather that Peter Rabbit's family were provided for by the spirit of community which was to be found in the rabbit warren.

It seems then that Potter as an author was not suggesting either in Ginger and Picklesor in her other works a radical alternative political agenda to her nursery reader. Rather, she was offering no more than simple stories woven around incidents to which they could relate. She constructed her stories with reference to the topical issues around at the time, particularly if they affected her personally. It is also doubtful whether these accounts of conduct and the possible ways they might be understood can be neatly sub- jected to an account of moral development.

In our conclusion, we choose to draw out particular moral indices from Ginger and Pickles and identify them with contemporary debates within modern society. These moral indices would not ~lecessarily have been

Warne (13 September 1913: Letters, p 210) inquiring when her royalties for 1912 will be paid in full and when the first installment lor 1913 will arrive.

44 For example, her letter to Harold Warne (11 September 1909: Letters, p 170) arranging for cheques to go to various different banks in order to pay off loans taken out to purchase farm land in the Lake District.

45 B Potter (1908) The Tale oflemima Puddle-Duck, Frederick Warne. 46 See S Atkins and B Hoggett (1984) Women and the Law, Blackwell, pp 12-20.

Atkins and Hoggett point to the census return pre-1914 which showed that only 10% of married women were recorded as working while between 30-40% of the workforce in the same period was made up of women. Obviously, employment patterns changed dramatically both during and after the First World War.

47 The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (Potter (1 904b)), The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies (Potter (1905)) and The Tale ofMr. Tod (Potter (1913b)).

within Potter's frame of reference or, if they were, they would not necessarily have been understood by her in this way.

An Alternative Biography for Potter One of the attractions of Ginger and Pickles is its apparent accuracy in describing the context of retail trading in Edwardian England. As explained above, Potter's literature has been analysed through a particular reading of her life. Omitted from this reading is the commercial background to her upbringing which provides a context for her account of retail trading in Ginger and Pickles." Potter's interest in the making of money is revealed in her journal entries. Whilst staying in Scotland in 1892, she made observations about a small shop once run by an old lady, then kept for her for a few weeks by one of Potter's acquaintances and finally closed." These descriptions show not only a desire to gain rather than lose in the transactions but also an awareness of the difference between paper profits and realised gains. References to the origin of her family's fortune also appear in the journal. Her grandfather was a Lancashire mill owner who had sufficient money for her parents to enjoy a high standard of living with numerous servants. She says of the mill or 'the works7:

The works are only equalled in one other firm in the world. Pride is a bad thing, and this family has made more than enough money out of them (not that some people [meaning herself] are likely to see over much of it).'

This indicates something of an ambivalent, if interested, attitude to business and trade. Later she records the story of 'a certain sanctimonious and hypocritical board of directors who, when they met to transact business, used to solemnly say 'let us pray' - with an 2.l' However, she recognised that her grandfather's money brought her privileges which she enjoyed. The source of the family fortune in manufacturing was one of the reasons for parental disapproval of her proposed marriage to Norman Warne." After a struggle with her conscience over her own wishes and her perception of the role of dutiful daughter, she decided to proceed with the marriage. She declared to a cousin 'publishing books is as clean a trade as spinning ~ o t t o n ' . ~ ' This period of her life ended in tragedy. Potter wore Warne's ring and

48 An example of these conflicting biographies is the position taken by Rahn (1984). Rahn refers to Potter as 'shy and sheltered'. While it is certainly true that Potter shunned publicity, this description is inaccurate in other respects. From her journal and letters, it would seem that she read newspapers, formed political views and, perhaps more importantly, negotiated with her publishers in relation to the merchandising of her characters.

49 The Journal, pp 264,279, 290. 50 Ibid, p 43. 51 Ibid, p 103. 52 See the text accompanying n 38. 53 Lane (1946) p 82.

considered herself to be engaged. A few months later, Warne became ill and died. From then on, Potter travelled frequently to the Lake District and wrote and illustrated her books there.

We follow this biography of this author (no doubt implied by her readers) in our reading of Ginger and Pickles.

The Substantive Themes of Ginger and Pickles Competition and Credit In his book on shopkeeping in the period 1830-1914 Michael Winstanley gives the following description of small, rurally situated retail trading.

The only characteristic common to all village shops, however, was their rural setting. They ranged from the pathetic display of goods in a front-room window to the thriving business not unlike a primitive department store, appealing to broad spectrum of local society, offering personal attention and an impressive selection of goods .... Such business called for considerable skill and tact to succeed.%

111 the story, Ginger and Pickles run a well-stocked shop which sells 'nearly everything'." Items which are mentioned as for sale include red spotty pocket-handkerchiefs, sugar, snuff, galoshes, soap, toffee, peppermints, biscuits, dried haddock, bacon, cream crackers, butter, sealing wax, matches and t rea~le . '~ The selection of the names 'Ginger' and 'Pickles' for the main characters suggests further goods stocked, as these were popular condiments at the time. For the small shopkeeper, it was considered essen- tial to their survival that they stock the widest possible range of goods in order to ensure customer loyalty.'- This list of goods marks the shop out as a general 'domestic' shop as opposed to a principal 'specialist' shop. This is a distinction which appears to have become more marked in the early years of the 201h century as 'principal' shopkeepers moved towards creating trade associations." The trade associations were designed to enable practical co- operation between traders, such as bulk purchasing, to keep prices down and also to ensure the passing on of skills and the provision of training. The ultimate intention was to forge an identity for retail traders. Domestic shopkeepers such as Ginger and Pickles would have found themselves outside these structures. Their major concern would have been a struggle for survival with very poor customers and narrow profit margins. Potter's account ignores such distinctions and treats shopkeepers as a homogeneity; this may well have been how the retail trade appeared to those outside it.

54 Winstanley (1983). 55 Ginger and Pickles, p 1. 56 These items appear in the text; further items can be identified in the pictures. 57 See F Bullen (1908) Confessions o f a Tradesman, London, p 121, and also the

Retail Trader, 27 September 1910. 58 C Hosgood, 'A "Brave and Daring Folkn: Shopkeepers and Trade

Associational Life in Victorian and Edwardian England' (1992) 25JSoc Hkt 285.

A characteristic of shopkeeping in the food trade in the late l Y h and early 20h centuries was ease of entry." Entry required little capital, as premises could be rented on a monthly basis and goods could be acquired on three months7 creditM with little security." Once set up in business, however, skill in managing the granting of credit and collection of debt could be crucial. Policies on credit were often a response to the competitive environment. A contemporary source stated that: '[a] discreetly managed credit system, with its consideration for the customer's convenience, is one of the weapons wherewith the retailer may best defend himself in competition ...'." For many traders at the time, competition was not simply a nearby shop but was either a 'multiple' storeh3 or co-operatives." Small shops could not compete with either of these forms of organisation on price" and so resorted to credit extension as a way of retaining goodwill" and emphasising the delivery of quality and service in the quality and service versus price equation." There is a contemporary ring to this struggle, as the small corner shop, an institution in both the UK and Australia, fought the end of resale price maintenance with an 'open all hours' policy and the advantage of convenient location only to be defeated in these strategies by legislation

See J Benson (1983) The Petty Capitalists: A Study of Nineteenth Century Working Class Entrepreneurs, Gill and Macmillan. The disadvantage of buying on credit was the loss of discounts offered by suppliers for cash transactions; see Winstanley (1983) p 56. MS Moss and JR Hume, 'Business Failure in Scotland 1839-1913: A Research Note' (1983) 25 Bus Hist 7. Simmonds, Practical GrocerI, p 102, quoted in Winstanley (1983) p 55. Indeed, in a letter many years after the publication of Ginger and Pickles to an American friend, Bertha Mahony Miller (24 November 1941), Potter mentions that 'Ginger and Pickles [ie the shop that the story was based on] is no more. Multiple stores had almost killed village shops before the war' (Letters, p 432). See also H Macrosty (1968) The Trust Movement in British Industry, Agathorn Press. Macrosty, whose original study was published in 1907, makes the point that the days of the small shopkeeper were effectively over: 'against such large masses of capital the small trader struggles in vain' (p 245). . .

Winstanley (1983) ch 3. See, for example, the editorial in Shop magazine for March 1905: 'The Price Cutter', p 22, which counsels against price-cutting per se and ernphasises the role of quality. Price-cutting, it says, is not what it seems:

[I]f you go deeper into the secrets of their success you will find that success has been achieved by system and not by price-cutting. These men have figured out the minimum profit on which business can be made to pay .... [s]o that in this way they get the advantage over the retailer who never knows just where he stands.

See M Rittenberg (1911) Selling Schemes for Retailers, Routledge, where the pressure to give credit to retain customer goodwill and compete with the bonus schemes offered by co-operatives is graphically described. See the advice given to retailers in C Beeching (1930) The Retail Shop, London, pp 33-5 on the pros and cons of the credit system.

permitting hypermarkets and supermarkets to trade on Sundays and the growth of out-of-town retail parks.

Debates about the credit system were an issue for both commentators in and correspondents to the popular trade journals of the time such as The GroceP and The Grocer's Journal." For the poor, a small shopkeeper willing to give credit could be the buffer between them and destitution or reliance on poor law relief.'" We know from the illustrations to Ginger and Pickles that other affluent Potter characters were their customers (for example, the dolls Lucinda and Jane from The Tale of the Two Bad Mice who lived in a wonderful dolls' house) but the majority of the customers were probably very poor. Hosgood points out the significant role that small shopkeepers played in acting as bankers to the poor. The judicioususe of credit could not only extend the family budget but also bring considerable authority and respect for shopkeepers in the local community.-'

For Ginger and Pickles, competition was the shop run by Tabitha Twichit.-' Tabitha Twichit did not give credit, whereas Ginger and Pickles gave unlimited credit. They were conscious of the need to behave well towards their customers. As a dog and cat with rats and mice as customers, they were often tempted but Pickles says: 'it would never do to eat our customers: they would leave us and go to Tabitha Twichit's'.-3 Ginger, displaying rather more business acumen, pointed out that in fact they would go nowhere. In the short term, their efforts were successful; Ginger and Pickles' sales were 'enormous, ten times as large as Tabitha Twichit's'." In the longer term, the result was that, for Ginger and Pickles, 'there was always no money' because their customers 'never paid for as much as a pennyworth of peppermints'.-' Ultimately, Tabitha Twichit's business survives in the competitive struggle and Ginger and Pickles' fails.

Free Trade Potter appears to have read any newspaper which came into the house." There are references throughout her journal to what the newspapers say and to the political issues of the day. It is likely that Potter had been exposed to

The Grocer, 23 February 1895, editorial comment on the evils of granting credit. The Grocer's Journal, 28 September 1902, quoted correspondence from other trade journals in support of the credit system. Winstanley (1983) p 57. C Hosgood '"The Pigmies of Commercen and the Working-Class Community: Small Shopkeepers in England 1870-1914' (1989) 22 JSoc Hkt439. Ginger and Pickles, p 16. Ibid, p 17. Ibid, p 23. Ibid, p 24. The following appear in The Journal: The Perthshire Advertiser (p 68); The Times (pp 37, 69, 84, 116, 143, 153, 156, 169, 240, 277, 283, 303, 382); The Daily News (pp 129, 163); The Standard (pp 169, 186, 426); The Scotsman (pp 189, 239, 268, 277,294); St James Gazette (p 404); and Leeds Mercury (p 189).

the issue of free trade from an early age, as her grandfather, Edmund Potter, had been the Radical MP for Carlisle and a supporter of free trade policy. A close associate of Edmund Potter's was John Bright, the lYh-century Quaker orator and one of the architects of the free trade movement. Beatrix Potter considered Bright to have been a 'fine man' but she wondered in a letter to Joe Moscrop what Bright's ultimate view on free trade would have been, as his own business 'was completely ruined by foreign competition'.'' Her own personal conversion to the need for tariff reform came in the months before the 1910 general election, very close to the time when Ginger and Pickles was written. Free trade versus tariff reform was one of the key issues in the 1910 election. As early as 1892, Potter had been aware of the problem of German competition. In that year, she had visited a frame shop in Perth and while cardboard mounts were being cut for her, she discussed with the workshop foreman 'the misfortunes of German omp petition'.^^ Later, she wished to take advantage of the success of Peter Rabbit and have him made as a doll but:

The policy of Free Trade had for years been filling the British market with cheap toys from Germany .... German dolls had successfully undercut the native product, and wherever Miss Potter went in her search for a live toy factory to undertake Peter Rabbit, she found despondency and ~nemployment. '~

A German doll features in the story of Ginger and Pickles as a policeman. The lack of income from the shop means that Ginger and Pickles are obliged to eat their own goods. Then Pickles finds that he has no money for a dog licence and he cannot obtain one on credit. He fears a summons and declares the village to be 'full of policemen'." The picture opposite this part of the story is of Pickles meeting two children who are holding the hands of a long thin doll which is dressed as a policeman. Later, when Ginger and Pickles are making up accounts in the back parlour, they hear a noise in the shop. They emerge to discover 'an envelope lying on the counter, and a policeman writing in a note-book'." In the illustrations, this is the same doll policeman.

Pickles nearly had a fit ... 'Bite him, Pickles! Bite him!' spluttered Ginger behind a sugar barrel, 'he's only a German d~l l ! '~ '

But the policeman takes no notice of Pickles because 'he had bead eyes, and his helmet was sewed on with stitches':' Once again, there is a double

77 31 January 1933: Letters, p 353. Moscrop was a shepherd hired for 16 consecutive lambing seasons from 1926.

78 The Journal, p 263. 79 Lane (1946) p 104. 80 Ginger and Pickles, p 28. 81 Ibid, p 35. 82 Ibid, p 36.

meaning here. For children, this emphasises that the policeman is only a doll but for the more enlightened reader, the message is that German dolls are constructed with inferior work mans hi^. Eventuallv. the doll ~ol iceman , , disappears. This may reflect Potter's wish for all German dolls to disappear from the British market. The demise of the doll industry meant that the Peter Rabbit doll had to be made in a German factory. This generated in Potter strong enough feelings for her to join in the tariff reform campaign in which the Liberal government was being defied by rebellious Tories." She helped in the campaign by swelling the volume of tariff reform propaganda.

Fear of the German naval build-up and anti-German feeling was rife in the UK from the level of popular mythology" to the city." It is perhaps no accident that Potter portrays the policeman as a rather sinister figure who suddenly appears in the village and acts in a potentially threatening manner; he takes no notice of anyone and carries on writing in his notebook. H e puts his pencil in his mouth twice and slowly and deliberately dips it in the treacle." This would have reflected popular sentiment at the time: the population should be ever vigilant; a Germany spy could be lurking any- where." While Potter probably shared popular concerns at German military intentions, it is possible to overstate the role that anti-German sentiments and the fear of war play in her fiction.

Potter had great hopes for the 1910 election but the result was a disap- pointment. The Liberals were returned to power but without a working majority. Later, national political issues that Potter was involved in included protesting against a horse census undertaken by the Liberal Government with the object of listine all horses available as armv remounts in a time of

'3

war" and joining a campaign to get copyright protection overseas."'

83 Ibid. 84 See Lane (1946) p 105. 85 See, for example, the letter page of The Times for 17 July 1908 and 3 March

1909. Trade journals such as The Grocer and The Drapery Times were concerned with the arrangements for the expansion of the Territorial Army and how this could be done without taking manpower away from the pursuit of commerce. See, for example, The Drapery Times, 5 September 1908, editorial comment, 'The Responsibility of the War Office', p 99.

86 See D Knyaston (1996) The City ofLondon: The Golden Years, Pimlico, pp 491- 3 for an account of the German loan crisis of 1908.

87 Ginger and Pickles, p 36. 88 For an account of the development of popular feeling and the government's

response see D French, 'Spy Fever in Britain, 1900-1915' (1978) 21 Historical J 355.

89 Letter to E Wilfred Evans of Racquet Court Press, dated 8 March 1910: Letters, p 178.

90 Potter had problems with unauthorised copying of her characters throughout her career. Frederick Warne failed to register the copyright for Peter Rabbit in America and an unauthorised version was produced: letter to Frederick Warne, dated 30 April 30 1903: Letters, p 74. Around 1909, an unauthorised Peter Rabbit doll, made in a German factory, appeared on the market. Potter took an active part in the agreements that her publishers made for the merchandising

In Ginger and Pickles, the symbolism surrounding the doll policeman is clear: Potter feared the conseauences of free trade and Gineer and Pickles " feared the consequences of the policeman's visit: a summons. It seems that in this one respect, we should question the accuracy of Potter's storytelling. As Winstanley points out, many shopkeepers were in fact supporters of free trade because '[tlariffs on imports reduced access to cheap supplies, especially groceries, and raised prices in the shops ... not surprisingly retailers were ardent free traders'." However, this support was not unqualified because with it went concerns about the competition that would result from a free market.92

Elements of Business Failure Ginger and Pickles so mismanage their affairs that it is a surprise that they keep trading as long as they do. The consequence of their customers never paying for anything was that they never had any money and they were obliged to eat their own goods." They also had a problem of pilfering; Pickles says he is 'sure that Anna Maria pockets thing^'.^' Anna Maria is a rat and the wife of Samuel Whiskers who owes 22 shillings and 9 pence for bacon and 'has run up a bill as long as his tail'.95 This is characteristic behaviour for Potter's rats. In The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, Samuel and Anna Maria catch Tom Kitten and tie hini up.96 When John Joiner arrives to rescue Tom Kitten, he is being made into a roly-poly pudding by the rats.

The rats dropped the rolling-pin, and listened attentively. 'We are discovered and interrupted, Anna Maria; let us collect our property - and other people's - and depart at once.'"

Ginger and Pickles' suppliers do not appear in the story. The shop could have been opened by buying the initial stock for cash but this would have required capital and it is unlikely that the stock could have been replenished if the customers 'never paid for as much as a pennyworth of pepperrnints'.'The alternative is that the goods were acquired on credit, in which case pressure from creditors might have been expected after three months. Contemporary sources such as Frank Bullen's Conjessions of a Tradesman indicate that much shopkeeping was done on this basis. 'Later I

of her story characters in the form of china and nursery wallpaper; see, for example, letter to Norman Warne, 14 February 1905: Letters, p113; and letter to Harold Warne, 18 January 1908: Letters, p 157. Winstanley (1983) p 27. Ibid, p 30. Ginger and Pickles, p 25. Ibid, p 30. Ibid, p 32. Potter (1908~) p 46. Ibid, p 60, said by Samuel Whiskers. Ibid, p 23.

learned to my sorrow that the obtaining of credit was easy in almost inverse ratio to the difficulty of meeting the bills when they came in.'"

Slatter has identified several stages of crisis development in modern organisations. In the first stage, the crisis is hidden and management are unaware of the problem. When, in the next stage, the problem becomes visible, management look for reasons to explain it away. Finally, the stage is reached when some action must be taken but at this point there is increasing time pressure and any action taken tends to be inappropriate or insufficient. The expectation of failure increases and becomes self-f~lfilling."~'

These stages can also be identified in the story of Ginger and Pickles' business failure. The first indication of trouble is that they have to eat their own goods but the crisis which is apparent to the reader is not recognised by Ginger and Pickles. The severe cashflow problem becomes visible when on January 1st Pickles needs to buy a dog licence and he cannot obtain one on credit from the post office. The first response to the problem is to explain it away. Ginger says 'It is your own fault for being a terrier; I do not require a licence and neither does Kep, the Collie dog.""' Potter skilfully switches her audience here between their conception of a dog as a pet and so an object likely to be lower in the hierarchy of an Edwardian household than its nursery inhabitants to that of a dog as an autonomous individual purchasing for himself the very device by which he was regulated.

The second response is the hurried doing of accounts and preparation of bills. Re-calculating the figures repeatedly in the hope of a more encouraging result is another common element in business decline. Ginger and Pickles 'did accounts. They added up sums and sums, and s~ms ' . '~ ' A contemporary commentator, Berry, refers to the lack of basic accounting skills in the retail trade and the link between this and insolvency. 'It leads to business beginning in a muddle .... and therefore ending in a muddle."" Ginger and Pickles appear to lack any knowledge of how the retail trade operates"" nor do they have any business experience before they begin trading. Yet they begin as traders without any difficulty. The ease with which it is possible to

99 Bullen (1908) p 105. 100 These stages are more fully described by S Slatter (1984) Corporate Recovery,

Penguin, pp 68-71. 101 Ginger and Pickles, p 27. This is an accurate summary of the contemporary

position with regard to dog licenses. Under the Dog Licenses Act 1867 (Eng) s 3: dogs of 6 months and over require a licence of 7s 6d. The fine for not having a licence was £5 (sec 8). Shepherds' dogs and dogs used for tending shccp and cattle did not require a licence as they were exempted by the Customs and Inland Revenue Act 1878(Eng) s 22 on application to the Petty Sessional Court.

102 Ginger and Pickles, p 32. 103 0 Berry (1913)The Grocer and his Trade, London, p 116. 104 It seems that Ginger and Pickles were not alone in this. The Drapers Times

quotes His Hon Judge Granger in dealing with a shop failure: 'the small shop craze was disastrous. People all over the country with no business experience whatever thought that a small shop was the road to affluence and the result was always the same': The Drapers Times, 29 August 1908, p 54.

begin trading, often with limited liability or in complete disregard of personal bankruptcy and in ignorance of legislation such as the Company Directors' Disqualification Act 1986 (Eng)'" are issues of current interest.lu6 The only action that the pair can think of seems totally inadequate. Ginger's response is to suggest that the bills are sent again with compliment^.^^^ Both he and Pickles hold the forlorn hope that being polite to customers will produce results. This final meeting has a feeling of fear and pessimism. Pickles fears a summons for not having a dog licence and they are both worried about the cashflow crisis. The expectation of impending doom is fulfilled with the arrival of a policeman who leaves an envelope.

'I'm afraid it is a summons,' said Pickles. 'No,' replied Ginger, who had opened the envelope, 'it is the rates and taxes, £3 19 11 3/4.' 'This is the last straw,' said Pickles, 'let us close the shop.'""

The use of rates and taxes as an instrument of financial oppression is wholly appropriate. Rates were a perennial political issue of the Edwardian era and were especially influential at the local level. Winstanley describes 1908, the year when Ginger and Pickles was written, as 'the high-water mark of the ratepayers' rebellion .... Local politics reflected voters' real and material concern over the burning issue of rates7."" This concern was seen as justified, as rates had risen sharply from the late 1890s onwards. According to Winstanley, 'rates throughout London rose by between thirty and fifty per cent between 1891 and 1906 .... Nationally revenue from rates doubled between 1895 and 1908'."O

The failure of a small shop which is the main incident in the book is certainly an accurate reflection of business activity at that time. In the period 1839 to 1913, shopkeepers dealing in the food and drink industry constituted the largest single category of failed businesses in Scotland."' Moss and Hume argue that ease of entry could itself explain the numbers of failures in this category. In England and Wales, bankruptcy reports reveal

-

105 A report by the National Audit Office on the working of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986 (Eng) found that 58% of the sample of directors consulted for the report had no knowledge of the legislation. As a result, the report recommended that the Insolvency Service should take steps to promote awareness of the legislation: National Audit Office (1993) The Insolvency Service Executive Agency: Company Director Disqualification, HMSO 907, HMSO.

106 See C Williams and A McGee (1992) Company Directors' Liabilityfor Wrongful Trading, ACCA Research Report no 30, ACCA.

107 Ginger and Pickles, p 32. 108 Ibid, pp 39-40. 109 Winstanley (1983). 110 Ibid. 111 Moss and Hume (1983) p 7. Some caution is, however, needed in the

interpretation of the statistics for this period; see RG Rodger, 'Business Failure in Scotland, 1878-1913' (1985) 27 Bus Hist 75.

grocers to be the largest single category of bankrupt traders in every year from 1885 to 1912."' The large number of business failures does not neces- sarilv indicate that the total number of small s h o ~ k e e ~ e r s was in decline.

L ' New entrants could have been replacing failed businesses. Using Winstanley once again as a source, it seems that there were 607,300 retail outlets included in the 1911 census. This he calculated to equate to one retail outlet for every 59 members of the population in England and Wales.")

When Ginger and Pickles acknowledged failure, closed the shop and ceased to trade, they simply put up the shutters and left. They seemed to have no trouble in walking away from the business. Nothing is said about selling the remaining stock or paying any creditors. There is, however, a hint that thev continue to chase their customers - literallv. The story says , , that Ginger pursues an unknown occupation but there is a picture of him apparently near some rabbit burrows setting traps. H e is said to look '.stout and ~omfortable'.~" Pickles becomes a namekee~er. There is a ~ i c t u r e of

'3

him carrying a gun, obviously in pursuit of the vermin who were previously his customers. The customers are doubly inconvenienced by the closing of the shop. The shop itself is gone and they are in fear of their lives from its proprietors. Thus, Potter includes a 'pursuit7 theme which is common to so many of her stories, such as Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle-Duck and Mr. Tod, with varying degrees of explicitness."'

Customers The customers play a very important role in the story. As a literary device, they provide a link with previous Potter stories. Some characters are mentioned by name, others appear in the pictures and are easily recognis- able. We know from previous stories that some of the customers (the rats) are petty thieves and pilferers. In Ginger and Pickles, Ginger states that he does not believe Samuel Whiskers intends to pay at all for the purchases that have been recorded and that Anna Maria steals cream crackers."& There is a relationship of inter-dependence between Ginger and Pickles and their customers. Ginger and Pickles want to retain their custom so they give them unlimited credit and refrain from eating them. They do not use the legal structures available for collecting debts or prosecuting thieves. The customers hold the power in the first part of the story. However, the story does not overtly set shopkeepers and customers against each other. Ginger and Pickles are not portrayed as foolish in their business dealings or as pursuing business policies that were uncommon at the time and the customers, perhaps with the exception of Samuel Whiskers and Anna Maria, are portrayed as opportunistic rather than calculating.

112 See VM Lester (1995) Victorian Bankruptcy, Clarendon Press, Table 9A, pp 314-5

113 Winstanley (1983) pp 40-1. 114 Ginger and Pickles, p 42. 115 Richardson (1966). 116 Ginger and Pickles, p 24.

Most small businesses, then as now, expected to have to write off some debts as bad. Under the pseudonym 'A County Court Judge' in The Times, Judge Greenhow wrote in 1892: 'Even under the present law, the trade creditor, the small grocer, provision dealer, baker and so forth foregoes and for the most part foregoes cheerfully and kindly a large proportion of actual claims'."- If debtors were extremely poor, legal action may not have resulted in payment of the debt. The legal machinery of the time favoured the first creditor to take action."Vf the debt remained unpaid, the summoning creditor could, by proving that the debtor had the means to pay, obtain a judgment committing the debtor to prison under section 5(2) of the Debtors Act 1869 (Eng) entitled 'An Act for the Abolition of Imprisonment for Debt...'. This Act rather ironically enacted a saving power of committal for small debts. In proving means to pay, the creditor did not have to reveal the existence of any other debts which the defendant owed. 'A premium was, therefore, put on a creditor's ability to get his [sic] claim into court first, unlike the arrangements intended to achieve equality among creditors under bankruptcy law."" Small debts were defined as those under £50. As Markham Lester points out, the one constant argument made by creditors and their representative organisations throughout the 19'h-century evolution of bankruptcy law was the need to be able to imprison marginal debtors, marginal debtors being those without assets.""

The rejection by Ginger and Pickles of this machinery was possibly because they did not think it would produce results or perhaps because it was costly and slow or they may even have not been aware of the possible remedies. Complaints about cost and time were widely endorsed sentiments at the time. Some trade protection society members giving evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on Debtors (Imprisonment) in 190912' stated that they did not make use of the county court on the grounds that its methods were 'costly, uncertain and profoundly slow'. The threat of being eaten by Ginger or Pickles is perhaps being used by Potter as a sanction which would appear more real to her readership than a description of debt recovery legislation. It may have signalled some resort to dark structures of debt recovery through personal extra-legal pressure which was perhaps more common than a resort to formal legal structures. Customers and shopkeepers are both treated sympathetically in this book. This is characteristic of Potter. In The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, which immediately precedes Ginger and Pickles, Benjamin Bunny and his cousin Flopsy marry, have a large family and are very cheerful and improvident. The only person who seems harsh but unremittingly sensible is Tabitha Twitchit. The fact that

117 The Times, 27 December 1892. 118 See GR Rubin (1984) 'Law, Poverty and Imprisonment for Debt, 1869-1914' in

GR Rubin and D Sugarman, Law, Economy and Society, 1750-1914: Essays in the History ofEnglish Law, Professional Books, p 259.

119 Ibid. 120 Lester (1995) pp 120-2. 121 BPPi1909 (239) VII.

Ginger and Pickles is written in such a non-judgemental way is perhaps indicative of the complexity of the choices being made and the environment in which decisions were taken.

The customers lose their position of power once the shop closes. They fear Ginger and Pickles as predators but they are also greatly inconvenienced as customers. There appears to be no appreciation on their part of their responsibility for the failure of the shop. We discuss the relevance of this issue in more detail in the final section. O n the closing of the shop, Tabitha Twichit 'immediately raised the price of everything a half-penny; and she continued to refuse to give credit'."' The closing of the shop not only makes goods more expensive, it also restricts consumer choice, even allowing for the tradesmen's carts: 'the butcher, the fishman and Timothy Baker'.'"

The Co-operative Movement The re-opening of the shop provides a happy ending to the story. Sally Henny Penny, the new shopkeeper, operates in a rather different style to her predecessors. She advertises her shop as a 'grand co-operative jumble"" and she insists on being paid cash. Potter's allusion here, it seems, is to the rise of the co-operative movement. Sally Henny Penny's refusal to grant credit was in line with general co-operative policies for retail trading. The basic idea behind co-operative stores was that although retail prices were charged to the customer, the difference between the retail price and the wholesale price was refunded to the customer in the form of a membership dividend. Retail trading in the co-operative movement could not be more different from the retail trading practices described above. In his evidence to the Select Committee on Co-operative Stores, Holyoake offered this summary of their practices:

Our ambition is that Co-operatives shall signify genuineness in food and honest workmanship in articles of use. We take no fees; we give no commission; we accept no credit; and we permit no debt among our members .... We make a profit by our methods of b~siness."~

The delight with which the village inhabitants greet Sally Henny Penny's decision to open the shop is presumably a reflection on their experiences at the hands of Tabitha Twichit. Retail traders on the other hand were appalled by the threat to their livelihoods posed by the co- operative movement. As Hosgood points out, this danger was a perceived one rather than a real one;Iz6 nevertheless, much space was devoted in trade

122 Ginger and Pickles, p 47. 123 Ibid, p 48. 124 Ibid, p 57. 125 Co-operative Stores, Select Committee Report; Minutes of Evidence (1878-79)

344 vol IX. 126 C Hosgood (1987) 'Shopkeepers and Society: Domestic and Principal

Shopkeepers in Leicester 1860-1914', PhD dissertation, University of Manitoba, p 96ff. Hosgood's assertion is based on the fact that bankruptcy

journals to discussion of the prospects for independent traders in this sort of commercial climate." For many advocates of the co-operative movement, its rise was a response to the tactics of capitalists in general which were concerned not with 'making ... [alrticles better or cheaper but in ruining their business competitors by superior salesmanship, or in finding out some insidious method of lowering the quality of the wares ...'.'la

Potter ends Ginger and Pickles with Sally Henny Penny's success. We know nothing about the long-term success of this particular co-operative, as it does not feature in any later Potter stories. Nor do we have any further indication of Potter's attitudes towards them. She spent the years after 1913, which marked the end of her most productive and successful writing period, organising the sale of vegetable and meat produce from her Lake District farm. Retail co-operatives were particularly strong in the north during this period'" and this may have encouraged her practical support of them without creating in her a feeling of affinity towards the broader political ambitions of the group. The co-operative political movement ultimately failed in its struggle to maintain independence from the Labour PartylW but as a retail trading group, it was more successful. By 1920, 18-20% of grocery sales were achieved through co-operatives.'" The opposition of shopkeepers manifested itself in demands for the extension of resale price maintenance and the bringing of co-operatives within the taxation system. These were both battles that continued well into the 1930s."'

rates among shopkeepers did not alter significantly between 1860 and 1914, the years which saw the rise of the co-operative movement.

127 See, for example, MC Moore (1915j Fighting the Enemies of the Shopketper, The Drapers Record. This is a typical example of a tract published by a trade journal devoted to attacking the perceived enemies of shopkeepers. The first enemy discussed by Moore is the co-operative movement.

128 Mrs S Webb (1928) The Birth of the Consumer, Ernest Benn, p 17. This particular statement in support of co-operatives comes from Mrs Sidney Webb, whose maiden name was Beatrice Potter as opposed to Beatrix Potter. Apparently, there was often confusion between the two of them. One instance of this confusion tells us that Potter was unlikely to have felt any political commitment to the co-operative movement. In a letter to her publishers, she writes 'even the insult of being mistaken for Mrs Sidney Webb is preferable to publicity .... I do not think that nice old fashioned people who like my books would like them quite so much if they believed them to be of socialist origin': Letter to Fruing Warne, dated 22 January 1924: Letters, p 285.

129 A Bonner (1961) British Co-Operation, Co-Operative Union, pp 96-136. 130 B Carberry (1969) Consumers in Politics, Manchester University Press; G Cole

(1944) A Century ofCo-operation, Allen & Unwin. 131 JB Jeffreys (1954) ~ e t a i l Trading in Britain 1850-1950, Cambridge University

Press. 132 An account of these events is provided in N Killingbeck (1988) 'Limits to

Mutuality: Economic and Political Attacks on Co-operation During the 1920's and 1930's' in S Yeo (ed) New Views of Co-operation, Routledge, p 207. Any more detailed study of this area falls outside the scope of this piece.

From our reading of Ginger and Pickles in its contemporary context, it would appear that Potter provides a commentary on the everyday life experience of Edwardian shopkeepers. It is likely to have engaged children with the realities of running a shop while not demanding that they grapple with the sort of issues that we have identified. Ginger and Pickles is not a story which lends itself to questions of adult authority versus children's desires for exploration nor indeed does it appear to be importing particular moral frameworks. T o read it in this way is to miss the importance of the exchanges between the characters of the story and the presuppositions made about the appropriate behaviour of animals, shopkeepers and customers etc. It would also miss the sly authority of the storyteller.

Far from producing an account of a just business practice, Ginger and Pickles plays on the demands of commercial prudence. These demands lie more in the domain of appropriate conduct than any evaluation of morally perfectible acts. In this respect, our reading resists reliance on the psychology of moral development as a guide to interpreting Beatrix Potter. This is so not because such psychologies are bad psychology but because they measure the wrong kind of development. (This of course may be to point out nothing more than the moral and prudential world of Ginger and Pickles is not the Kantian one of Piaget.) Its message for children would appear to be one of creating accessibility to the pressures of life in business and to the types of choices that have to be made.

The statement of claim made in Ginger and Pickles is not of the conditions of morality. Eco's emphasis on the modes of communication allows for an account that pays attention to the variety of stories told and the register of their address."' Rather than fix attention solely on the motives and (upper middle class) morality of Beatrix Potter, this approach allows the statement of claim to be played out as a matter of character and prudential choice for the parties concerned.

Conclusion: A Reading of Ginger and Pickles for 1997 Our second reading of Ginger and Pickles continues the business theme and endeavours to shape the story around the current debate concerning the appropriate response to the current strictures of capitalism. The story of Ginger and Pickles makes a significant appeal to community responsibility for adopting and successfully maintaining what we term 'non-adversarial' capitalism or, put in more familiar jargon, stakeholder responsibility. Potter looks to explain Ginger and Pickles' failure in the conventional discourse of business failure: incompetence, inexperience and an inability to distinguish personal welfare from the welfare of the business. However, that is not the only reason for failure. Ginger and Pickles employ generous credit policies which benefit their customers. It is apparent from the story that these sort of policies can only work on the basis of partnership; the customers have to accept that they have obligations to deal fairly with the business and admit

133 Eco (1992).

what they owe or the business will fail. Ginger and Pickles did not receive co-operation and trust from their customers and their shop failed. The failure is made more poignant by the fact that the customers suffer from its demise more than its former proprietors. Within the confines of the story, we can only speculate what the effect of the customers' behaviour was on the financial well-being of the shop's suppliers.

We can contrast the approach of Ginger and Pickles to business with the strategies of adversarial or conventional capitalism pursued by Tabitha Twichit. Her policy of opportunism and exploitation1% reflects the approach to business practice that was taken in the 1980s' the years of the Enterprise C ~ l t u r e . ' ~ ' The Enterprise Culture was a response to the decline of Fordist work practices and consumption cultures. As technology advanced making global markets and leaner production processes possible, so new markets opened up in competition. Products became customised rather than mass produced and the structure of the market began to dictate the production process - a complete reversal of previous experience.Is6 The policies of the 1980s of downsizing and relentless pursuit of profit failed to produce sustainable economic growth. The consequence of this has been an apparently voluntary reorientation by business of capitalism towards inclu- siveness and away from hierarchies and privileged participation.

Non-adversarial capitalism through stakeholding and partnership has become the lingua franca of the 1990s. Earlier proponents of Anglo- American versions of the free market such as Fukuyama are now pointing towards the high growth network based economy of Japan as an example of the structures of trust that are necessary for survival."^ Contemporary management texts all draw attention for the need for a new settlement between business and its stakeholders based on trust and openness ."The term 'stakeholder' has slipped into common usage as a way of describing any

134 See K Thompson (1992) 'Individual and community in religious critiques of the enterprise culture' in P Heelas and P Morris (eds) The Values of the Enterprise Culture, Routledge, pp 257-62, 267-70.

135 This is not incontentious, as some commentators see the years of the Enterprise Culture as giving birth to the 'Enterprising Consumer' and marking the start of a downwards slide for producer control of the market; see N Abercrombie (1991) 'The Privilege of the Producer' in R Keat and N Abercrombie (eds) Enterprise Culture, Routledge. However, the years of the Enterprise Culture were marked by growing divides between social classes, a rhetoric which emphasised self-reliance and advancement for those in a position to do this but little assistance for those that were not and spectacular corporate collapses and scandals as the regulatory system failed to check the illegitimate pursuit of profit.

136 See J Gee et a1 (1996) The New Work Order, Allen & Unwin, pp 26-7. 137 See the contrast between the positions adopted in F Fukuyama (1992) The End

ofHktory and the Last Man, Penguin, and his later work: (1995) Trwt, Penguin. 138 See, for example, T Peters (1992) Liberation Management: Necessary

Disorganisation for the Nanosecond Nineties, Fawcett; and M Hammer and J Champy (1993) Reengineering the Corporation: A manifesto for bwiness revolution, Harper Row.

sort of interest that exists within a larger whole. It has been used in the policy formulation process within higher education and the welfare state, for example, but on a more micro level in business practice, it broadly equates to shareholders, suppliers, employees, customers and the wider community, including the environment."' The position of shareholders is tied into their proprietary relationship with businesses and so developnients in the shape of corporate governance reforms that iniprove their position are not terribly instructive for a stakeholding agenda. Ironically for the Ginger and Pickles story, trust and openness do not equate to the preservation or enhancement of mutual trading societies. The same period has seen the corporate recreation of building societies as banks and attacks on the viability of the Co-operative Wholesale Society itself.

Non-adversarial capitalism has been developed through the moves towards partnerships between different groups. Partnership is the opera- tional praxis of stakeholdi~ig. The language of partnership underpinned the model of corporate culture advocated in the Tomorrow's Company report.'"' Businesses were to adopt 'a licence to operate' based on partnership with their various stakeholder groups. For example, in relation to employees, the partnership included a com~nitnierit by the business to provide a reward system, a framework for learning and a mentoring system in return for a commitment frorn the employees to develop self-reliance, flexibility and a sense of the realities of global conlpetition. There are examples of corporate sponsorship of computer provision in schools and provision for the arts.

However, the matrix of conimercial prudence and character that informs Ginger and Pickles illustrates a different account of the way commerce can be understood. The delight of the customers at the arrival of Sally Henny Penny's co-operative and their newfound willingness to pursue a partnership agenda is something that is not really present yet in the stakeholder/partnership discourse: the genuineness of reciprocity that is needed for non-adversarial capitalism to succeed. T o date, partnership and stakeholding have been about the reorientation of business-by-business away from simply disgorging profits to owners and remunerating managers to recognising wider responsibilities. Business has selected and prioritised these responsibilities and other stakeholders have accepted gratefully the benefits on offer. This might be a model which works well for large-scale business and their stakeholders; indeed, much of the stakeholding discourse has been directed at and then operationalised by large-scale business. This contrasts with the reality of the situation in the UK that the overwhelming majority of business enterprises employ less than 50 people.141

139 This is something of a generalisation, as not even the most ardent supporters of stakeholding agree on its constituent groups in this context. See W Evan and RE Freeman (1988) 'Stakeholder Theory of the Modern Corporation: Kantian Capitalism' in T Beauchamp and N Bowie (eds) Ethical Theory and Bwiness, 2"" edn, Prentice-Hall, pp 100-2.

- -

140 Royal Society of Arts (1994) Tomorrow's Company, Executive Summary, Royal Society of Arts.

141 Department of Trade and Industry (1996) Small Firms in Britain, Department

Finally, it might be suggested, not entirely mischievously, that Ginger and Pickles offers a level of descriptive account that allows for a public consideration of the level of interaction required for something like 'non- adversarial' capitalism to operate. Ginger and Pickles captures two aspects of public discourse that have proved elusive to modern commentators. The first is the appropriate genre, the description and analysis of participation in commerce as a public activity; the second is the mode of authorship. If it does not stretch interpretation too far, it is possible to relate Ginger and Pickles back to the 18'h-century debates about the values and virtues of commerce and the relations between virtue, manners and rights."' The understanding of commerce is a civil and prudential matter. Unlike modern understandings, however, civility and manners were seen as fundamental elements in sustaining o r undermining the political ~ r d e r . " ~ Unlike the Enlightenment philosophes, however, Beatrix Potter has a very practical concern with the prudential management of commerce.

The second point follows on from the first. If commerce is to be explained in terms of human conduct and participation, the story of Ginger and Pickles pitches its level of explanation at the level of human practices. In its evangelism and formalism, 'stakeholder' rhetoric leaves the position of the receiver of the non-adversarial message empty. The receiver of the message is simply meant to be empowered. Like most formalisms based on autonomy, this message has proved remarkably unconvincing in providing details of how commercial relations might be narrated differently. That all this is the stuff of children's literature may carry its own message.

References Abercrombie, N (1991) 'The Privilege of the Producer' in R Keat and N

Abercrombie (eds) Enterprise Culture, Routledge. Alborn, T, 'The Moral of the Failed Bank: Professional Plots in the Victorian

Money Market' (1995) 38 Vict Stud 198. Atkins, S and B Hoggett (1984) Women and the Law, Blackwell. Beeching, C (1930) The Retail Shop, London. Benson, J (1983) The Petty Capitalists: A Studjl of Nineteenth Century Working C l m

Entrepreneurs, Gill and Macmillan. Berry, 0 (1913) The Grocer and his Trade, London. Bloom, H (1994) The Western Canon, Macmillan. Bonner, A (1961) British Co-operation, Co-Operative Union. Commons Select Committee on Debtors (Imprisonment), BPP 1909 (239) VII. Briggs, J, 'Reading Children's Books' (1989) 39 Essays in Criticism 1. Bullen, F (1908) Confestions ofa Tradesman, London.

of Trade and Industry Publications. 142 See JGA Pocock (1985) Virtue, Commerce and History, Cambridge University

Press. 143 For example, D Hume (1963) 'On Commerce' in Essays Moral, Political and

Literary', Oxford University Press.

Carberry, B (1969) Consumers in Politics, Manchester University Press. Cole, G (1944) A Century of Co-operation, Allen & Unwin. Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986 (Eng). Co-operative Stores, Select Committee Report; Minutes of Evidence (1878-79) 344

vol IX. Crouch, M (1960) Beatrix Potter, Bodley Head. Custom and Inland Revenue Act 1878 (Eng). Department of Trade and Industry (1996) Small Firm in Britain, DTI Publications. Dog Licenses Act 1867 (Eng). The Drapers Times, 29 August 1908. Eagleton, T (1983) Literary Theory, Blackwell. Eco, U (1992) Interpretation and Overinterpretation, Cambridge University Press. Evan, W and RE Freeman (1988) 'Stakeholder Theory of the Modern Corporation:

Kantian Capitalism' in T Beauchamp and N Bowie (eds) Ethical Theory and Businm, Pd edn, Prentice-Hall.

French, D, 'Spy Fever in Britain, 1900-1915' (1978) 21 Historical J355. Fukuyama, F (1992) The End of History and the Last Man, Penguin. Fukuyama, F (1995) Trust, Penguin. Gee, J et a1 (1996) The New Work Order, Allen & Unwin. The Grocer, 23 February 1895. The Grocer's Journal, 28 September 1902. Hammer, M and J Champy (1993) Reengineering the Corporation: A manifesto for

busines revolution, Harper Row. Hosgood, C (1987) 'Shopkeepers and Society: Domestic and Principal Shopkeepers

in Leicester 1860-1914', PhD dissertation, University of Manitoba. Hosgood, C , '"The Pigmies of Commercen and the Working-Class Community:

Small Shopkeepers in England 1870-1914' (1989) 22 JSoc Hist439. Hosgood, C, 'A "Brave and Daring Folkn: Shopkeepers and Trade Associational

Life in Victorian and Edwardian England' (1992) 25JSoc Hist285. Hume, D (1963) 'On Commercc' in Essays Moral, Political and Literary', Oxford

University Press Hunt, P (1992) Literaturefor Children: Contemporary Criticism, Routledge. Hunt, P (ed) (1995) Children's Literature, Oxford University Press. The Insolvency Service Executive Agency: Company Director Disqual$cation (1993)

HMSO 907, HMSO. Jackson, B (1996) Making Sense ofJurisprudence, Deborah Charles. Jeffreys, JB (1954) Retail Trading in Britain 1850-1950, Cambridge University Press. Killingbeck, N (1988) 'Limits to Mutuality: Economic and Political Attacks on CO-

operation During the 1920's and 1930's' in S Yeo (ed) New V h s of Co- operation, Routledge.

Knyaston, D (1996) The City ofLondon: The Golden Years, Pimlico. Lane, M (1946) The Tale ofBeatrix Potter: A Biography, Frederick Warne. Lane, M (1978) The Magic Years ofBeatriz Potter, Frederick Warne. Lesnik-Oberstein, K (1994) Children's Literature: Criticism and The Fictional Child,

Oxford University Press. Lester, VM (1995) Victorian Bankruptcy, Clarendon Press.

Linder, L (transcr) (1966) The Journal ofBeatrix Potterfrom 1881 to 1897, Frederick Warne.

Linder, L (1971) A History of the Writings of Beatrix Potter Including Unpublkhed Work, Frederick Warne.

Lurie, A (1990) Don't Tell the Grown-Ups, Bloomsbury. MacDonald, RK (1986) Beatrk Potter, Twayne. Macrosty, H (1968) The Trwt Movement in British Industry, Agathorn Press. May, J (1992) Children's Literature and Critical Theory, Oxford University Press. Miller, A, 'Subjectivity Ltd: The Discourse of Liability in the Joint Stock Compa-

nies Act of 1856 and Gaskell's Cranford' (1994) 61 ELH139. Moore, MC (1915) Fighting the Enemies ofthe Shopkeeper, The Drapers Record. Morison J (1996) 'Stories for Good Children' in J Morison and C Bell (eds) Tall

Stories Reading Law and Literature, Dart mouth. Moss, MS and JR Hume, 'Business Failure in Scotland 1839-1913: A Research Note'

(1983) 25 B w Hist 7. Peters, T (1992) Liberation Management: Necessary Disorganisationfor the Nanosecond

Nineties, Fawcett. Pocock, JGA (1985) Virtue, Commerce and Hitory, Cambridge University Press. Potter, B (1902) Peter Rabbit, Frederick Warne. Potter, B (1903) The Tailor of Gloucester, Frederick Warne. Potter, B (1904a) The Tale ofBenjamin Bunny, Frederick Warne. Potter, B (1904b) The Tale of Two Bad Mice, Frederick Warne. Potter, B (1905) The Tale ofthe Flopsy Bunnies, Frederick Warne. Potter, B (1907) The Tale of Tom Kitten, Frederick Warne. Potter, B (1908a) The Tale ofJemima Puddle-Duck, Frederick Warne. Potter, B (1908b) The Tale ofMrs. Tiggy- Winkle, Frederick Warne. Potter, B (1908~) The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or the Roly Pob Pudding, Frederick

Warne. Potter, B (1910) The Tale ofMrs. Tittlemouse, Frederick Warne. Potter, B (1913a) Pigling Bland, Frederick Warne. Potter, B (1913b) The Tale ofMr. Tod, Frederick Warne. Potter, B (1987) Ginger and Pickles, orig 1909, Frederick Warne. 'The Price Cutter', Shop, March 1905, p 22. Rahn, S, 'Tailpiece: The Tail of Two Bad Mice' (1984) 12 Children's Lit78. 'The Responsibility of the War Office', The Drapery Times, 5 September 1908, p 99. Retail Trader, 27 September 1910. Richardson, P, 'Miss Potter and the Little Rubbish' (1966) New Society, 7 July,

extracted in N Tucker (ed) (1978) Suitablefor Children: Controversies in Chil- dren's Literature, Sussex University Press, p 173.

Rittenberg, M (1911) Selling Schemesfor Retailers, Routledge. Rodger, RG, 'Business Failure in Scotland, 1878-1913' (1985) 27 Bus H i t 75. Royal Society of Arts (1994) Tomorrow's Company, Executive Summary, Royal

Society of Arts. Rubin, GR (1984) 'Law, Poverty and Imprisonment for Debt, 1869-1914' in GR

Rubin and D Sugarman, Law, Economy and Society, 1750-1914: Essays in the History ofEnglish Law, Professional Books.

Simmonds, Practical Grocer, I, quoted in MJ Winstanley (1983) The Shop-'s World 1830-1914, Manchester University Press, p 55.

Slatter, S (1984) Corporate Recovery, Penguin. Taylor, J (1989) Beatriz Potter's Letters, Frederick Warne. Thompson, K (1992) 'Individual and community in religious critiques of the enter-

prise culture' in P Heelas and P Morris (eds) The Values of the Enterprice Culture, Routledge.

The Times, 17 July 1908, letters page. The Times, 27 December 1892, letters page. The Times, 3 March 1909, letters page. Tucker, N (1990) The Child and the Book: A Psychological and Literary Exploration,

Cambridge University Press. Ward, I (1995) Law and Literature, Cambridge University Press. Webb, Mrs S (1928) The Birth ofthe Consumer, Ernest Benn. Weiss, B (1986) The Hell ofthe Englkh, Bucknall University Press. Williams, C and A McGee (1992) Company Directors'Liabilityfor Wrongful Trading,

ACCA Research Report no 30, ACCA. Winstanley, MJ (1983) The Shopkeeper's World 1830-1914, Manchester University

Press.

STORY OF EDWARDIAN SHOPKEEPERS: Beatrix Potter's Ginger ...

Documents

Transcript of STORY OF EDWARDIAN SHOPKEEPERS: Beatrix Potter's Ginger ...