Anti-Social Behaviour in Britain

Victorian and Contemporary Perspectives

Sarah Pickard

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137399311
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This comprehensive, interdisciplinary collection examines diverse forms of anti-social behaviour in Victorian and contemporary Britain, providing a unique comparison of the methods which have been employed by governments to control it.

Part I

Anti-social Behaviour, the Urban Environment and Public Spaces

1

A Less than Polite People? Incivility, Ruffianism and Anti-Social Behaviour in Urban England, 1830–1900

Neil Davie

Introduction

During the period from the late eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century, a wide range of behaviours, hitherto sanctioned or at least tolerated in British society, attracted widespread scrutiny, and in some cases, criticism. Some would subsequently become the targets of official intervention at the national or local levels. New laws were passed and bye-laws voted; existing legislation was resurrected or revised, while certain older statutes, no longer considered suited to the exigencies of the new century, were repealed or allowed to fall into abeyance. The reasons for these changes are complex. Earlier studies tended to highlight the key role played by a tight-knit group of London-based modernizers, reforming politicians, philanthropists and jurists, fired by that particularly British cocktail of Enlightenment philosophy and evangelical Christianity (Spierenburg, 2013: 281). More recent work has emphasized rather how new concepts of ‘sensibility’, ‘humanity’ and ‘politeness’, together with new attitudes to pain and suffering, mobilized a much broader swathe of elite opinion. In this context, successive campaigns to impose these new ideas have been seen as part of an attempt on the part of the emerging middle classes to recast the world in their image (Sharpe, 2000; McGowen, 2007).

In particular, it is suggested, vigorous efforts were made to ‘civilize’ the lower orders. A series of reform campaigns mounted by MPs, charities and moralists, and egged on by certain sections of the press, aimed at tackling previously tolerated forms of behaviour that might not be illegal as such (though something could perhaps be done about that, it was often pointed out), but which were now considered as socially corrosive and/or immoral. Thus, particular practices linked, for example, to popular sports and entertainments, sexual mores or street vending were widely blamed for being the direct or indirect cause of public disorder and immorality. Or, as modern parlance would have it, of anti-social behaviour.

By the end of the 1980s, a consensus had emerged among social historians, as Rosalind Crone has pointed out (2012: 2), that:

a more disciplined and restrained society emerged during the early decades of the nineteenth century as change was imposed from the top downwards. New values and behaviour adopted by the higher classes slowly trickled down, influencing the lifestyles of those below. In addition, public order necessary for economic progress was enforced by new structures of authority and the extension of the law. Thus, by the Victorian period, society had been largely ‘tamed’.

This paradigm, drawing on Michel Foucault’s pioneering work from the late 1960s and 1970s, as well as a parallel interest in the concept of social control, has tended to present efforts to regulate plebeian behaviour as part of a more or less hidden agenda (though not of course hidden to historians) on the part of the country’s ruling elite to create an obedient, subservient workforce of the kind needed for the emerging capitalist economy, with the ‘new’ police given a pivotal role (Forsythe, 1995; Spierenburg, 2004; Lawrence, 2004: 210–11). It would be naïve to suggest that the discipline and control of the lower orders did not enter into the equation, but as Martin Wiener has noted, there is a danger here of replacing a one-dimensional, Whiggish account of criminal justice reform (disinterested, forward-thinking humanists leading their reluctant countrymen into the modern age) with an equally simplistic one invoking the inexorable forward march of top-down surveillance and control, masterminded by an omniscient ‘policeman-state’ (Wiener, 1990: 8; Gatrell, 1990). In this latter account, the only possible outcome seems to be a society rendered ever more ‘docile’ in Foucault’s terms by the unchallenged – and indeed unchallengeable – disciplinary machinery put in place in the Victorian period via such institutions as the police, the prison and the workhouse (Foucault, 1977; 1980).

This chapter argues that the assault on disorderly and immoral behaviour in Victorian England was real enough, but less pervasive, less effective and, crucially, less socially exclusive, than the foregoing account may imply. In order to impose new standards of public order and civility, the efforts of reformers, whether in Parliament, the press or among those self-appointed guardians of the nation’s morals who gathered in the country’s charities and pressure groups, were aimed not only at ‘disorderly’ elements within the working class, but also at insufficiently zealous public servants and more generally at those within the middle and upper ranks of society felt not to be setting a good example. Indeed, in certain contexts and at certain periods, such elite wrongdoers were singled out for particularly vehement condemnation and vigorous action.

Attention will be focused principally on the regulation of disorderly public conduct in England’s larger towns and cities during the 70-year period from 1830 to 1900. It is important to be clear exactly what kinds of behaviour I am talking about here. There is a danger that the ‘anti-social behaviour’ tag with its modern legislative manifestations and media-fed associations with working-class loutism (what the Victorians would have called ‘ruffianism’ or ‘rowdyism’), may function to restrict attention to certain kinds of public behaviour in the past, while leaving others largely unexplored. It is not just a question of recognizing that loutish behaviour then as now was not the prerogative of the working class – the mid-Victorian radical press gleefully hunted down examples of ‘aristocratic rowdyism’ and provided readers with a (sometimes literally) blow-by-blow account of blue-blooded misdemeanours – but of broadening our focus to encompass a category of other attitudes and behaviours which prompted moral censure for reasons which do not relate to violent crime in the sense the law understood the term (see Sindall, 1990: 9–10).

The foregoing remarks are not intended to minimize the impact of socially discriminatory official intervention in this area. On the ground, the Victorian police customarily interpreted flexible legal terms like ‘disorderly conduct’, ‘obstruction’, ‘breach of the peace’ or the marvellously imprecise ‘loitering with intent’ in ways which meant that surveillance and intervention fell disproportionately on working-class commercial and leisure activities, as well as crime (Storch, 1976). Indeed, as Victor Gatrell (1990: 271) points out, ‘Poorer law-breakers were the only ones the [Victorian] policeman could usually see, or was inclined to see’. The reasons for this tunnel vision are various, and cannot be explored in detail here, but the important point for us is that while the Victorian policeman’s eyes may have been ‘usually’ blind to infractions committed by anyone other than those he associated with the ‘criminal class’, there were other eyes abroad. Moreover, the gaze of those other eyes was not confined, or at least not entirely confined, to the inhabitants of the rookeries, the back-alleys and low courts of the Victorian city. Usual suspects there might have been, but suspicion evidently did not stop there.

To understand the range of passions unleashed by ‘inappropriate’ public behaviour in urban England in the nineteenth century, it will be argued in this chapter that it is crucial to have a clear idea about just how respectable Victorians were expected to behave on the city streets. This means drawing on a body of historical research which has hitherto been little concerned with crime, and at the same time drawing on sources that have generally been of little interest to historians of crime. In short, to understand attitudes to incivility, we need to know about civility, which means knowing about manners, and even about etiquette.

Reading the face in the crowd

The history of elite attitudes to violence and disorder in the last two centuries has been described by Geoffrey Pearson, an early researcher in the field, as ‘a seamless tapestry of fears and complaints about the deteriorated present’; and ‘each era has been sure of the truthfulness of its claim that things were getting steadily worse and equally confident in the tranquillity of the past’ (Pearson, 1983: 207, 209–10). However, to observe the perennity of handwringing appeals to a golden age of public order and harmonious social relations, though a valid enough point, can only take us so far. It does not explain why particular forms of behaviour came under scrutiny at particular historical moments, nor why certain solutions among the range on offer were put forward, rather than others. To explore such issues, what is needed, as John Carter Wood has argued (2004: 15), is a recognition that ‘attitudes towards violence are inextricably connected to issues of identity, class hierarchy, institutional development, codes of behaviour, views of recreation, the nature of public and private spaces, and societal arrangements’. Once we begin to examine such factors, Pearson’s ‘seamless tapestry’ begins to unravel somewhat.

It is no accident that a veritable deluge of books and articles on etiquette and manners accompanied the emergence of a self-conscious and self-confident urban middle class in Britain in the first third of the nineteenth century. As historian John Kasson observes, much more was at stake here than how best to eat asparagus. It was about establishing and maintaining standards of order and authority in a restless, highly mobile, rapidly urbanizing society (Kasson, 1990: 62). Apart from the sheer scale of production in these years – an indication of a flourishing market among middle-class readers – what is also striking is the broadening scope of the advice on offer (Morgan, 1994; Nead, 2000: 72–3). Guidance on entertaining and visiting continued to take centre stage, but chapters on ‘street manners’ began to make their appearance, offering readers advice on how to behave in the new public spaces of the industrial town. With the small-scale, face-to-face society a thing of the past, at least for inhabitants of the larger Victorian towns and cities, there arose the question of how, as it were, to manage anonymity; what rules to observe with strangers whose precise social position, not to mention their intentions, were often frustratingly opaque (Sennett, 1977).

Some turned to phrenology in these years, reassured by the apparent ability of this ‘infallible oracle’ as one enthusiast called it, to take the risk out of vetting a servant, a tradesman or a future son-in-law (Lundie, 1844; see Cooter, 1984). Others pored over conduct books, which purported to explain how the minutest detail of a stranger’s appearance – a polished coat button perhaps, or an untrimmed moustache – was sufficient to ‘read the illegible man of the crowd’ (Kasson, 1990: ch.3; Sennett, 1977: 161–8). But would this social radar be sufficient? Should it, for example, have alerted William Corder’s new metropolitan wife to her husband’s sinister provincial past in the months leading up to his arrest in 1828? Much was made at the time of the scene of bourgeois domestic bliss which greeted the arresting officers when they arrived at the Corder home, with the dressing-gownclad Red Barn murderer busy boiling an egg for his newly pregnant wife

(Pedley, 2004: 35). Could there be other William Corders leading apparently respectable lives, hidden in plain sight amid the teeming millions of the Victorian city? The question did not bear thinking about.

Civility and incivility

Whatever their efficacy for the identification of potential murderers, street manners were considered of vital importance for those unaccompanied, respectable women who were now a ‘routine presence’ on the streets of the Victorian city (Nead, 2000: 62–7). Women were warned that they would inevitably be exposed, as one 1884 article put it, ‘to the observation and coarser comments of a mixed crowd of spectators’ when out of doors (Caulfield, 1884). Another authority warned its female readership to ‘avoid contact in trams and omnibuses as far as possible with her neighbours, and not lean up against them or behave with disagreeable familiarity’. However, it was made clear that any olfactory ‘aversion’ which readers might feel towards their neighbours and surroundings while travelling should be tactfully concealed, so as not to cause offence (Hearth and Home, 1897).

The emphasis, then, was on self-restraint, tact and discretion, even selfeffacement, in public, and not just for women (Davetian, 2009: 169–74; Kasson, 1990: ch.4). Men were regularly advised to ‘cultivate the glorious power of Bearing in Silence’ and reminded that ‘politeness is the art of disguising our feelings and passions’ (Chambers’, 1853: 290; London Society, 1864: 397). Spontaneous outbursts of emotion and passion were to be regarded with the utmost suspicion and avoided at all costs (Wiener, 1990: 11; Wood, 2004: 31). As if to ram the point home, frequent references were made to the unbridled ‘sensuality’ and ‘savagery’ of ‘the lowest portion of the labouring classes’, that ‘race of barbarians, ignorant alike of their duty to God and man, and stimulating the most ferocious passions by the most brutal excesses’ (Leicester Chronicle, 1852). For those considered by birth or education to be free of such base instincts, ‘civility’ was vaunted as the key to meaningful social relationships, including that between man and wife. It promised, moreover, to oil the wheels of business and held out the prospect of prosperity, even conquest and power, to those who embraced it (Manchester Times, 1893; Reynold’s Miscellany, 1855: 359). While some accepted the need for artifice in one’s public dealings with others, many were at pains to point out that, on the contrary, the ‘mere politesse’ of earlier etiquette manuals was insufficient (Nichols, 1873: 68; Eclectic Review, 1860: 293. See Morgan, 1994: 120–31). Conduct was increasingly expected to ‘proceed from an inner fount of humanity and honour’ (Blackwood’s, 1861: 164). Indeed, to behave otherwise was a sign of barbarism. As an 1866 article from the penny weekly Bow Bells, entitled ‘Etiquette for Gentlemen’, put it, ‘No man has a right to consider himself entitled, as a unit in the millions which constitute a society, to act entirely for himself and by himself. [ . . . T]here must be certain laws and regulations to keep us in order and promote our civilization’ (Bow Bells, 1866: 330). In this way, the public space of the Victorian city could be rendered more harmonious and predictable, and thereby less threatening (Morgan, 1994: 97).

It was clear to many observers, however, that the ‘laws and regulations’ intended to promote such harmonious co-existence were being honoured more in the breach than the observance on the streets of Britain’s towns and cities; a state of affairs which called into question the ‘civilized’ status of Victorian urban existence (Croll, 1999: 252). The following extract from an 1890 article by Cornish Congregational minister J.F. Hooper reveals the kind of petty incivilities which attracted repeated comment, and is worth quoting at some length:

Street Etiquette.– Some people would narrow it down to the graceful lifting of the hat and the cordial handshake and the sang froid greeting to the passing acquaintance, but it is much more comprehensive than this. To-day in my walk to Malpas I overtook a group of young misses, well-dressed and of comely appearance, but they talked loud, and as I passed them they broke into a silly gigle [sic]. There was a suggestion of rudeness and loudness, unbecoming in girls who evidently came from the respectable homes of Truro. Again, the side-walks of our small city are narrow and it is often necessary for groups to spring out and proceed tandem fashion. We cannot always walk four abreast without shoving some people in the gutter. I have felt rude thrusts of men’s elbows several times since I have been in Truro and my lady friends have been subject to similar jostling. This needless dash is not confined to men alone [ . . . ] Not long ago, a young man well-dressed and wearing a tidy moustache, met a young lady and with becoming ease and grace, he raised his hat and beamed a most gracious and expansive smile, – adjusting the muscles of his face, he leaned forward and expectorated on the side-walk. Ah! well, I thought, you have pretty wings, but you are a foul bird nevertheless. (Hooper, 1890)

Giggling, jostling, elbowing and spitting. Clearly, ‘respectable’ young women – a favourite target of the anonymous ‘disciplinary gaze’ in the letter pages of Victorian newspapers (Croll, 1999: 263) – could not be relied upon to behave with decorum on the sidewalk. Neither was the possession of a ‘tidy moustache’ a guarantee of refined conduct, whatever the etiquette manuals might say. This was a deeply troubling state of affairs, for it confounded a firmly-held Victorian belief in behavioural consistency; that the roughs were always rough, and the respectables always respectable (Croll and Johnes, 2004: 154). This helps explain why wrongdoing, which might appear trivial to the modern eye, could provoke such ire in certain sections of the Victorian middle class; whether it be monopolizing the pavement with a ‘perambulator’ for example, wearing a wide-brimmed ‘tea-tray’ hat or simply ‘standing on the footpath gossiping’. In each of these cases, it was made clear that culprits included those from the refined classes, who, it was implied, should have known better (Morning Post, 1856; Cheshire Observer, 1860). Clearly, what Wood terms the ‘shadow of middle-class refinement’ (2004: 21) was not limited to the ‘savagery’ and ‘brutality’ of certain sections of the working class (Davetian, 2009: 206–7).

‘Social rowdyism’

Unsurprisingly perhaps, particular opprobrium was heaped on the actions of those above the middle class in the social hierarchy, and on those struggling to join it from below. This took many forms. It included, as I have noted, often politically-charged criticism of aristocratic ‘rowdyism’ or ‘ruffianism’; of that class’s alleged penchant for pugilism and gambling, together with disapproving reports of the exploits of rowdy students, drunken lords and boorish army officers (Reynold’s Newspaper, 1851a, 1851b, 1859, 1869; Bradford Observer, 1871; Sheffield & Rotherham Independent, 1878; Pall Mall Gazette, 1882; The Era, 1884; Daily News, 1887). There were also concerns expressed from the 1870s onwards about lower-middle-class encroachment on traditional middle-class preserves, notably in the field of leisure; part of a broader concern with a perceived ‘moral vulnerability’ among those aspiring to respectability from below (Bailey, 1998: 26–9; Roberts, 2004: 148).

An episode on Folkestone Pier in 1877 provides a case in point. According to a report in the Saturday Review, a crowd composed of ‘a certain class of well-to-do’ took to jeering at a group of sea-sick passengers disembarking from a cross-Channel steamer; the former ‘amus[ing] themselves in a very low and disreputable manner’. The article went on to list other manifestations of what it called ‘social rowdyism’, including river-hogging steam-launches and punts, together with ‘reckless’ cyclists, accused of ‘coming along in the dark without a light or bells’ or riding several abreast, ‘frightening and scattering everybody before them’ (Saturday Review, 1877; The Times, 1877). Lower-middle-class rowdyism was also the subject of a letter addressed to Reynold’s Newspaper in 1900 following celebrations in the capital to mark the relief of Mafeking. Those at fault, described significantly as ‘London clerks and counterjumpers’, were clearly not felt to have respected middle-class standards of public refinement. Their unacceptable behaviour reportedly included ‘embracing’, ‘squealing’ and ‘staring with a vacant expression of incipient idiocy’ (Reynold’s Newspaper, 1900).

Only rarely was it openly admitted that representatives of mainstream middle-class culture were capable of such disorderly behaviour. One such case, studied by historian John Pinfold, was that of James Maybrick, a prominent Liverpool cotton merchant, who died in suspicious circumstances in 1889. Poisoning was suspected, and his American wife Florence was charged with, and subsequently convicted of, his murder. In the trial, the unorthodox lifestyle of the couple, which included lovers, drugs and racecourse gambling, came under the microscope, and was widely reported in both the local and national press (Pinfold, 2004: 74–8. See also Knelman, 1998: 118–20). In reality, certain elements at least of that lifestyle were relatively commonplace in Liverpool’s business community in the late Victorian period. Indeed, as far as horse racing is concerned, Pinfold argues that many, perhaps a majority, of Liverpool’s middle class were involved as owners, spectators and, especially, as punters. In fact, the city’s racecourses enjoyed a de facto special status in this period. By common consent, normal rules of middle-class respectability were effectively suspended, and drunkenness, prostitution, pugilism, cock-fighting and, most controversially of all, gambling, were tolerated. Pinfold notes that Liverpool’s close-knit business community generally made sure that any misdemeanours that did occur on or around the racecourse did not become public knowledge. In Maybrick’s case, such damage control was of course out of the question (64–6).

What the Maybrick case reveals is something that was sometimes lost in the early work on policing and the reform of popular culture, namely the heterogeneous character of middle-class culture in nineteenth-century England. My earlier point about the tendency of many Victorians to divide their compatriots into two hermetic categories of the ‘respectable’ and ‘rough’ should not blind us to the fact that not everyone drew the boundaries in quite the same way. The result was that there was consensus among middling groups neither on the nature of the problem of street disorder, nor on the solutions to be adopted. I shall examine this heterogenei...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Introduction
• Part I: Anti-social Behaviour, the Urban Environment and Public Spaces
• Part II: Anti-social Behaviour, the Vulnerable and the Marginalized
• Part III: Anti-social Behaviour, Recreation and Leisure
• Conclusions
• References
• Index