who has written about the of scuttling gangs in Manchester and Salford in the later nineteenth century. Reporting escalated in London in the summer of 1898, when widespread press coverage of street violence in the metropolis brought the term hooligan into common usage. A report in put the number of crimes of The Times ‘unusual lawless violence in to the excessive heat to which our streets’, down the English were unused. In fact the problems with gang-related violence in London started much earlier than 1898. Indeed they had been the subject of some intense if sporadic reporting since the early 1880s. My research has focussed on 41 gang-related cases, involving 97 individuals, who were prosecuted at the Old Bailey and other London Police Courts between 1882 and 1912. crimes ‘Gang-related’ are defined as those involving a predominance of young men (aged from mid-teens to early twenties), who were engaged in fighting a targeted group or individual, and where there was some evidence (often from police and/or witnesses) of territorial identity. It is impossible to know how far the prosecuted crimes reflected street level incidence of disorder. These cases may represent the tip of an iceberg only the most violent confrontations ended up in the –
who has written about the of scuttling gangs in Manchester and Salford in the later nineteenth century. Reporting escalated in London in the summer of 1898, when widespread press coverage of street violence in the metropolis brought the term hooligan into common usage. A report in The Times put the ‘unusual number of crimes of lawless violence in our streets’, down to the excessive heat to which the English were unused. In fact the problems with gang-related violence in London started much earlier than 1898. Indeed they had been the subject of some intense if sporadic reporting since the early 1880s. My research has focussed on 41 gang-related cases, involving 97 individuals, who were prosecuted at the Old Bailey and other London Police Courts between 1882 and 1912. ‘Gang-related’ crimes are defined as those involving a predominance of young men (aged from mid-teens to early twenties), who were engaged in fighting a targeted group or individual, and where there was some evidence (often from police and/or witnesses) of territorial identity. It is impossible to know how far the prosecuted crimes reflected street level incidence of disorder. These cases may represent the tip of an iceberg – only the most violent confrontations ended up in the
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