London's Shadows: The Dark Side of the Victorian City

by Gray, Drew D.

  The reality of the garroting crisis was that it was far from being the crime spree that police figures and press reports suggested. After Hugh Pilkington fell victim to highway robbers the reporting of incidents seems to have been fairly confused at best. In a sense this was as a result of increased sensitivity of the public to the supposed terror in their midst. This is how `moral panics, as Stanley Cohen has described them, unfold in the public consciousness.' At first a small number of incidents are thrown under the spotlight of the press who then exaggerate either their frequency or their severity. Then, by making the public, the Police and the authorities increasingly aware of a new crime threat the press increases the amount of such crime reported. Often events that were thought of as minor before the panic are blown up into major crimes. Others are literally created by the panic. This was the case in at least one incident from 1862. A man walking home on a foggy night believed he was being followed and feared he was about to be garroted (mugged). Instead of waiting for his pursuer to carry out his heinous crime he turned the tables on him and himself attacked - acting as he saw it in self-defence. However, the man behind him was himself merely walking home in the same direction quite innocently. Both men reported the incident as a garroting attack. Thus, we arrive at a situation where the true number of incidents becomes wildly exaggerated and the public is whipped up into such a frenzy of panic that individuals begin to take drastic action to avoid attacks. In the wake of the garroting panic of 1862 Londoners armed themselves or took advantage of the various anti-garroting devices and armour that canny entrepreneurs were advertising in the press.

  Cohen then suggests that the next stage of the panic is for the criminal justice system to enact tougher measures or procedures in response to the perceived crisis. This hopefully calms public fears and the panic subsides; the press will then move on to the next big story and everything returns to normal. However, there are consequences in the form of temporary or permanent changes to the justice system or to individuals caught up in it. In 1862 we have seen that one of the results was an increase in the number of arrests, and this was replicated in the courts by more severe sentences for those found guilty of garroting. Pickpockets, usually dealt with in magistrate courts (which had limited sentencing option - short periods of imprisonment and small fines) were now sent for jury trial where they might receive a much longer custodial sentence. The press called for even tougher sanctions - the return of flogging for felons (characterized in the press as `the Garrotter's Lunch'), which was sanctioned by legislation in 1863 with the Security Against Violence Act. We have already noted the new restrictions on released prisoners and this was accompanied by the Penal Servitude Act a year later, which took a stricter line on sentencing. Those convicted for a second offence could now expect a minimum of five years penal servitude while the Prison Act 1865 continued the path to severity. As we shall see in Chapter 7, for the first time all gaols in England and Wales, even old local ones, were to have uniformly harsh regimes - separate cells, silent regimes, work on the tread wheel or crank etc. The slogan of the prison authorities was `Hard Bed, Hard Board, Hard Labour'.

  The panic peaked in November 1862; in October there were 12 alleged robberies, in November there were 32. The trial of 23 alleged garrotters at the Old Bailey in November brought the main phase of the panic to a close. By December the sense that many offenders were now in prison and police measures and court actions had dampened anxieties meant it gradually subsided. In early 1863 public and press concern was still high but the crime wave was over, although its consequence echoed throughout penal policy for many years. Thus we can see that the garroting panic had been effectively used by the authorities to implement a much tougher criminal justice regime and to clamp down on criminal behaviour in a climate where fear of crime and a'criminal class' was on the increase.

  Stanley Cohen's original work on moral panics focused on the bank holiday beach fights of the mods and rockers in the 1960s. Historians have applied Cohen's thesis to attacks on elderly New Yorkers in the 1970s as well as the garroting panics of the nineteenth century (in the 1850s and 1860s) and to a series of highway robberies around Colchester in the 1760s.28 All of these share similar characteristics: a series of incidents that are highlighted by the press; the creation of `folk devils (whether they be youth gangs, garrotters, or men in white smocks - as around Colchester); the `panic' causes the authorities to act less leniently towards suspected groups, regardless of the real danger posed by the particular `crisis' The question that we might ask ourselves therefore is whether the Jack the Ripper murders constitute a moral panic using Cohen's model.

  There was certainly a panic on the streets of Whitechapel, the ripples of which were felt much more widely: even Queen Victoria commented on the failure of the police to catch the killer. The killings produced, or rather built upon, existing fears about outsiders and criminal elements within Victorian society: foreigners, Jews in particular, the mentally ill and doctors were all chased through the streets or presented to the police as suspects to be investigated. Thus, we could argue that the murders had their own folk devils even if these are not as neatly defined as they are in Cohen's paradigm. There were reported sightings of the Ripper and encounters with strange men who frightened those who met them before running off into the night. This is suggestive of a heightened sense of danger caused by a greater sensitivity to the murders brought about by the intense press coverage. The unprecedented public involvement in the police inquiry, well meant or otherwise, was also arguably a manifestation of a similar form of sensitivity that resulted in some Londoners arming themselves or dressing in ridiculous garb to prevent garrote attacks earlier in the century.

  However, I feel that overall we are in danger of stretching Cohen's model to breaking point if we wish it to cover the Ripper murders. There were a limited number of well-documented attacks and the press did not need to exaggerate their severity: the killer's actions were well beyond the imagination of the most frenzied journalist. They used the story for their own purposes, principally to sell newspapers and secondly to highlight social issues such as prostitution, poverty and the threat posed by internal unemployment and external immigration. But this was not a classic moral panic in that the events were very real and, apart from the resignation of the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police (an event that might have been prompted by any number of crises given his unpopularity in some quarters of the media and society) there was very little, if any, change in the process of the criminal justice system.

  CONCLUSION

  The Victorian press was a powerful force in the late nineteenth century, much more so than it had been at any period previously. It enjoyed a much wider readership and new technologies had enabled it to disseminate news, to comment and entertain faster and more cheaply than ever before. The style of news also began to change from the 1860s onwards as greater competition and new formats forced newspaper owners to innovate. The last quarter of the century saw the emergence of `new journalism, a style of writing and presentation that in many ways (the use of headlines and a greater emphasis on investigative reporting) foreshadowed the development of the modern press in the twentieth century. Indeed, it was the success of Alfred Harmsworth's Answers to Correspondents, established in 1888, and which achieved a circulation of 250,000, which gave him the necessary funds to launch the Daily Mail in 1896. The Daily Mail was followed by the Daily Mirror in 1903. The era of press barons such as Beaverbrook and Northcliffe was just around the corner.

  The newspapers drew upon the associated forms of popular culture of the period, notably melodrama and the emerging sensation novel, to present news as entertainment - a far cry from the tightly set columns of dry information that were the staple fare of earlier newspapers and, to some extent, remained true for The Times. In men such as William Stead the age also benefited from editors who believed that the fourth estate had an important role to play in society. Stead was a driven man, in many aspects of his life, fired by a deep reli
gious conviction but perhaps blinded by his sense of righteousness at times. His exposure of child prostitution resulted in a change in the age of consent - a tangible measure of success - but it also ruined his helper, Rebecca Jarrett, and to some degree curtailed Stead's own career in journalism. Stead's own paper, the Pall Mall Gazette, maintained a steady critique of the Metropolitan Police and the government throughout the Whitechapel murders. To some extent this was as a result of the actions (or inactions some might argue) in the years immediately preceding the murders. These events, and the desperate poverty of the area that was to some degree highlighted by the attentions of the press investigating the atrocities carried out there, are the subject of the next chapter.

  5

  The Bitter Cry of Outcast London:' Poverty,

  Charity and the Fear of Revolution

  In late July 1887 the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Charles Warren, received a number of communications from concerned members of the public and local vestry members. Their intention was to draw Sir Charles' attention to the large numbers of homeless people that had seemingly taken up residence in Trafalgar Square. One correspondent declared that it was, in his opinion, `about the most terrible sight of open-air human misery to be met with in Europe: and this under the eyes of the wealthiest visitors to London!'Z A week earlier the vestry of St Martin-in-the-Fields had complained about the `unseemly conduct of persons sleeping at night in Trafalgar Square', and had asked the Office of Works to `take such steps as may be necessary in order that the evils complained of maybe abated" The press soon took up the story, with the Daily News publishing the vestry's complaint and placing the blame firmly at the door of the police. The Morning Post, in late August, carried an interview with a woman who had been charged with being disorderly in Covent Garden. When the defendant was challenged as to where she lived a witness replied: `Nowhere' - she claimed to sleep in Trafalgar Square. Witness: `There's hundreds there sleeping on the seats or on the

  It was not just in Trafalgar Square that the homeless gathered: rough sleepers took up births in St James' Park with one young woman even occupying a makeshift tree house. The park was generally cleared at night and the Police were at pains to point out that in both locations they were powerless to act unless a crime was committed. Other park users were outraged at the presence of the `great unwashed' in one of London's green havens. According to a letter written to Notes and Proceedings these `tramps enjoy al fresco entertainment accompanied by conduct and language of the grossest description, to the scandal of the general public, and the depravement [sic] and detriment of the many children of the cleanly and industrious poor'.5 The police response, as expressed by Acting Superintendent Beard, was more sympathetic. Aware that the press were scrutinizing police activity Beard informed his superiors that:

  any wholesale clearing away of these people would in my opinion lead to a general outpouring against police action ... Many of these people are hardly pressed, if at the close of the day they find themselves penniless they are afraid to enter the casual ward, especially if they have been in it once during the month and thus seek the open spaces of the Metropolis for rest at night. The great majority of them are quite distinct from the rough and give no cause for Police interference.

  On the flyleaf of the report is a penciled comment, perhaps from Warren, which reads: `As this [the Notes and Proceedings article] has been answered, no action is required. I am bound to say that however much I may sympathize with the poor people, I am disposed to think that locating them in the streets, and in TS is a mistake which will give us trouble? At least one of the policemen on duty in Trafalgar Square that summer took exception to the occupation of his patch by the homeless: according to one contemporary observer he `adopted the practice of sousing the seats there with water "to keep them casuals off"'.'

  The police were certainly no strangers to trouble in the 1880s and their greatest criminal challenge was less than a year away. That they entered the late summer of 1888 as targets of press criticism - a criticism that grew to a crescendo by the time that Mary Kelly's eviscerated body was discovered - was a result of their mishandling of two important demonstrations in and around Trafalgar Square. This chapter will explore these events and address the social problems that blighted East London in the period. As we can see from the correspondence cited above, there were different views of the poor in late nineteenth-century London. The contrast between the `cleanly and industrious poor' and the idle and shiftless is a very common one in the rhetoric of Poor Law officials, charity workers, politicians, press and members of the public. The nineteenth century saw the full flowering of social investigation as armies of reformers, `slummers' and missionaries beat a heroic path to the heart of darkness that was the East End. Thus, this chapter will also analyse the housing conditions they found there, the claims of incest being `common' and the fear that existed among nice middle-class people that the so-called `residuum' was ready to throw off its deferential shackles and turn Victorian society on its head. To some degree the activities of philanthropists such as Helen Bosanquet, Octavia Hill and Beatrice Webb can be seen as important landmarks on the long journey to a welfare state. The investigations of men like Charles Booth, Jack London and Andrew Mearns highlighted the extent of misery in the capital of which the actions of political organizations, such as the Social Democratic Foundation, sought to exploit for their own purposes. The state of `outcast London' was therefore a matter of concern and debate for many different and sometimes discordant voices in late Victorian Britain, and ultimately contemporaries were seeing the end of one epoch and the gradual birth of the `modern.

  THE BITTER CRY AND THE HOMES OF THE POOR: MIDDLE-CLASS VISIONS OF THE UNDERCLASS

  In 1883 the Rev Andrew Mearns' expose of housing problems in London was promoted by the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, William Stead.' Mearns brought the attention of his readership to the problems affecting the poorer classes of the capital. The opening lines of The Bitter Cry of Outcast London bear scrutiny because they neatly illustrate the fears of the Victorian middle class.

  There is no more hopeful sign in the Christian Church of today than the increased attention which is being given by it to the poor and outcast classes of society. Of these it has never been wholly neglectful, if it had it would have ceased to be Christian. But it has, as yet, only imperfectly realised and fulfilled its mission to the poor. Until recently it has contented itself with sustaining some outside organizations, which have charged themselves with this special function, or what is worse, has left the matter to individuals or to little bands of Christians having no organisation. For the rest it has been satisfied with a superficial and inadequate district visitation, with the more or less indiscriminate distribution of material charities, and with opening a few rooms here and there into which the poorer people have been gathered, and by which a few have been rescued. All this is good in its way and has done good; but by all only the merest edge of the great dark region of poverty, misery, squalor and immorality has been touched.9

  Andrew Mearns' reference to the perils of `indiscriminate' charity; of `rescuing' the poor and to `immorality' are key themes that run through the rhetoric of those who undertook to study, reform and assist the poor in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The question of poverty and pauperism, and the more specific issue of the housing of the working classes, unveils an ideological battle at the end of the century between those who wished to maintain a `self-help' position and those who favoured a more interventionist approach. This brought into sharp contrast two of the foremost women of the late Victorian period: Beatrice Webb (nee Potter) and Helen Bosanquet (nee Dendy). Their story provides a commentary on the battle between collectivism and individualism that was fought out in parliamentary debates, newspaper columns and on the doorsteps of the East End - a conflict that has rumbled on into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At the heart of this debate is the question of how society deals with poverty. In 1898 Helen Bosanquet recognis
ed that the middle classes' relationship with the poverty of the working classes was complex. She maintained that a determined commitment to curing the underlying causes of poverty was required if sustainable changes were going to be made to the conditions of the poorest. She cautioned her readership against merely tinkering with the problem of poverty to assuage any guilt they might have at their own wealth and comfort.'° Beatrice Webb and her husband Sidney, as Fabians and early British socialists, would have agreed with her desire to affect change but not with her methods of doing so: for the Webbs the solutions to the problems of poverty lay in the intervention of the state.