With MacHeath – aka (probably) Knife, gangster, murderer, polygamist and businessman – on trial for the murder of a female employee which he did not commit (though much of the blame for the woman’s actual suicide could be laid at Mac’s feet), his spiel about how his bargain “B” shops are helping the poor to buy cheap goods and supporting the franchise owners in a trade, is swallowed and repeated by almost all of the newspapers who cover it. We hear that:

“Only a proletarian publication slung mud at the B. shop Napoleon. But they could not be taken seriously because, contrary to the sporting spirit, they denied their victim any redeeming qualities and devoted most of their space to an impassioned demand for the forcible liquidation of the existing social order.”