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 still surprises me now, as I plan a sequel to the book. One possibility is to go a little further back in time, to the late Victorian era, where attitudes were similar in this respect.

London’s Globe newspaper carried a short editorial piece on 23rd August 1898. This short extract is from a piece entitled simply “Hooliganism”:-

“…with the best will in the world, the powers at the disposal of the magistrates are miserably inadequate. Let a poor starving wretch steal twopence from your pocket, and he shall be sent for trial, convicted of felony, and, as likely as not, taste the sweets of penal servitude. But a hulking ruffian may get together a gang of scoundrels and all but murder you, and the helpless law can do nothing more with him than keep him in gaol for a month or two at the outside, if, indeed, it is not obliged to let him off with a forty-shilling fine. The Englishman's purse is sacred, but anybody is free to hammer his face out of all semblance to humanity for the moderate sum of two pounds sterling, provided he does not at the same time offend his ears with any unchaste espression.”

The newspaper comes to the conclusion that the “young ruffian” would be seen as a hero by his peers within his gang after serving a short prison sentence. No, the answer is not longer prison sentences but corporal punishment: “If he had been triced-up to receive twenty lashes well laid on, we fancy that the respect of his friends for law and order would soon show a most gratifying increase. The harmless, necessary cat [o’ nine tails, a vicious type of whip] would break up all the gangs of Hooligans and the like within a fortnight, and we devoutly trust, if the epidemic of London ruffianism does not abate, that Parliament will sanction its application at the first convenient opportunity.”

It became clear in researching British Gangs that capital and corporal punishment theories, while popular at various times, would never solve crime, much less “break up all the gangs of Hooligans within a fortnight.” The causes of gang formation and violence were many, complicated and intertwined, but the formation of social clubs, including football clubs, for teenagers and young men had a much more significant and lasting impact on lowering the crime rate. You can get hold of British Gangs with free delivery at Amazon.