Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(UK Und.) the practice of cutting a hole in a shop’s window, then extracting such items as can be reached.

1812		Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang. in McLachlan (1964) 270: star: The star is a game chiefly practised by young boys, often under ten years of age, although the offence is capital. It consists of cutting a pane of glass in a shop-window, by a peculiar operation called starring the glaze, which is performed very effectually by a common penknife; the depredators then take out such articles of value as lie within reach of their arm, which if they are not interrupted, sometimes includes half the contents of the window. A person convicted of this offence is said to have been done for a star.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue [as cit. 1812].