Definition
An archaic criminal law term for persons who purchased stolen cloth and then altered its color or appearance — typically by dyeing it — to prevent identification and recovery by the rightful owner. The offense was essentially a species of receiving stolen goods combined with active concealment through physical transformation of the stolen property. The redubber's conduct went beyond mere possession of stolen goods: the criminal character lay in the deliberate act of disguising the property to defeat its tracing. The term is found in early English law and is now entirely obsolete as a distinct legal category.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Plural of redubber." No meaningful common usage exists; the word does not appear in modern general English.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed. The term was already archaic by the nineteenth century.
The word has no living presence in either legal or general English. Researchers encountering it will find it only in early modern legal texts and the dictionaries that preserved those sources.
Common Confusion
Redubbers should not be confused with the broader category of receivers of stolen goods (see RECEIVING STOLEN GOODS). The distinction, such as it was, turned on active concealment by physical alteration: a receiver took and kept stolen property; a redubber took stolen property and transformed it to defeat identification. Whether early courts consistently maintained this distinction in practice is unclear from surviving sources. Modern receiving statutes subsume any conduct that redubbing would have constituted.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a navigational landmark, not a working legal concept. Its primary research value is as a pointer to the historical treatment of property crimes involving concealment and the early taxonomy of offenses ancillary to theft.
Three research traps to note:
First, the term appears in Coke's Third Institute (3 Inst. 134), which is the ultimate source for every historical dictionary entry on this term. Researchers who follow the citation chain will find all roads lead back to Coke. There is no independent elaboration in the historical dictionaries — they are uniformly copying or paraphrasing the same passage.
Second, Bouvier cross-references REDOBATORES, the Latin form of the same concept. Researchers working in medieval or early modern sources may encounter the Latin term rather than the English one; the entries should be consulted together.
Third, the term illuminates an early concern in English criminal law with the problem of tracing stolen property — a concern that later developed into modern doctrines of proceeds, tracing, and money laundering. For researchers tracing the conceptual lineage of concealment offenses or asset forfeiture doctrine, redubbers represents an early iteration of the legislative and judicial impulse to criminalize the transformation or laundering of criminally obtained property.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are in near-complete agreement, differing only in minor phrasing. All four cite Coke's Third Institute as the primary authority; Black's and Bouvier's also cite Cowell's legal dictionary as a secondary source. Rapalje & Lawrence follows the same substance while crediting only Coke.
None of the historical dictionaries add analytical content beyond the core definition. There is no discussion of penalty, procedure, or the relationship of this offense to the broader law of receiving stolen goods — a gap that reflects the term's status as a curiosity preserved from much earlier law rather than a living doctrine at the time these dictionaries were compiled. By the time of Black's first edition, redubbers had long since ceased to function as an operative legal category.
Bouvier's cross-reference to REDOBATORES is the only meaningful structural addition among the four sources and is worth following for researchers working in Latin legal texts or pre-modern sources.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Receiving Stolen Goods; Concealment of Stolen Property; History of Property Crimes.