Hooliganism: Twenty Lashes the Answer?

How the Victorian press promised to eliminate crimes against the person in 1898

When I was researching my recent book, British Gangs, I was struck by changing attitudes to crime between the present day and the early twentieth century. Apart from the abolition of the death penalty, the difference I found most striking was that in the past, stealing property was punished far more harshly by the law than crimes against the person. It …