Have you ever spent a blissful afternoon browsing, touching everything, and buying absolutely nothing? It turns out the 18th century had a name for you: the ‘Day Goblin’.

Drawn from a complaint letter in an 1712 edition of ‘The Spectator’, the “Day Goblin” was the name given to the idle ladies of fashion who treated London’s shops like their personal playground. They would demand to see every item, disordering the shopkeeper’s displays and causing chaos, only to leave without spending a single shilling.

This video dives into the birth of ‘browsing’ and the panic it created for retailers. And we’ll explore what this tells us about the changing role of women in the public sphere.

Music: Epidemic Sound
IG: @dressing.history

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