A purveyor of stolen goods

thegrandwazoo · 624549. Mon Oct 12, 2009 3:27 am

Does anybody have any idea where the term "fence" comes from in relation to a handler of stolen goods? Did the noun come first or the verb?
_________________
thegrandwazoo

masterfroggy · 624566. Mon Oct 12, 2009 7:29 am

exnihilo · 624607. Mon Oct 12, 2009 11:24 am

I'd have thought it was simpler even than that, the older sense of "fence" as any kind of barrier or defensive screen (as opposed to our modern sense of a specifically wooden thing) gives the thieves' fence an obvious analogy - the barrier or screen between the thief and other people. I suppose that's essentially the same thing, but in a marginally more direct way.

gruff5 · 624616. Mon Oct 12, 2009 11:37 am

Is all land ownership a "stolen good"?

Neotenic · 624626. Mon Oct 12, 2009 12:14 pm

I think you should put down that copy of Socialist Worker right now.

gruff5 · 624641. Mon Oct 12, 2009 12:40 pm

I suspect that SW would say that the highland clearances, the earlier enclosures in England, were theft of the common land from the people. And that anyone buying that land from the nobility thieves were handling stolen property. But would they be wrong to say that?

thegrandwazoo · 625176. Tue Oct 13, 2009 6:39 pm

Gosh, and there was I thinking I was asking and etymological question. Thanks mf for your link. I will leave the Marxists to tie themselves in knots over the morality of property ownership.
_________________
thegrandwazoo

Rudolph Hucker · 625211. Tue Oct 13, 2009 8:01 pm

The use of the word fence in the sense of a person handling stolen goods is dying out.

They are called Cash Converters now.
_________________
America currently has troops stationed in 153 of the 192 countries in the UN.
Last year without a US military intervention: 1959.