The Monster Evil: Policing and Violence in Victorian Liverpool

Liverpool gained a unique and notorious reputation during the 19th century for being an abnormally violent and criminal place. ‘The Monster Evil’ intends to explore the historical foundations of this stigmatization: were the fears real or an invention of the Victorian newspapers? In answering such questions the book examines Liverpool’s violent crime and how effectively it was policed by the newly established constabulary through the use of local and national press reports, contemporary accounts and police records. In doing so issues relating to public acceptance and tolerance of violence and the police will be explored. All forms of criminal interpersonal violence are described and analysed in the context of the city; including notorious murders such as the Tithebarn-street kicking of 1874, the ‘wholesale poisonings’ by two sisters in 1883 and the killing of young children by other young children in 1855 and 1891. Everyday acts of violence in the home between family members, or in the street, whether as acts of robbery or as drunken unprovoked attacks on strangers or against the police, are also given prominence. An extract on police night shift duty by Liverpool’s foremost 19th-century journalist, Hugh Shimmin, is included. The book, which covers much of the Victorian period, is based on original and extensive research. Through an examination of a wide range of ‘typical’ case studies and news stories, which exemplify the various kinds of violent crime found in Liverpool, readers will find the book accessible, authoritative and surprising in its resonance with present day crime and its news coverage by the media.

Table of Contents:
List of illustrations, figures and tables Preface Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Street map of Liverpool in the 1880s Part I. Liverpool 1. Liverpool and the taint of criminality 2. Liverpool: 'The most immoral of all immoral places' Part II. Policing the borough 3. ‘An army to check barbarism’: the policing of Liverpool 4. The community and the police: evidence, lies and violence Part III. Violent crime in Liverpool 5. The fighting Irish 6. The fist, the boot and the knife: male-on-male violence 7. The Liverpool cornermen, gangs and garrotting 8. Female savages and tippling viragoes: violent women 9. Women as victims of domestic and sexual violence 10. ‘A constant state of strife’: family violence 11. ‘Boy brigands’ and ‘young savages’: juvenile criminals and their young victims 12. ‘A most unmerciful beating’: adult violence to children 13. A conclusion. ‘Giving a dog a bad name’: Liverpool and its criminal reputation in the nineteenth century Appendix. Saturday night and Sunday morning: Hugh Shimmin's account of the Rosehill night shift Notes Bibliography General index Index of people Index of street names and places

About the Author :
Dr John E. Archer is an Honorary Research Fellow, Edge Hill University and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Review :
Victorian Liverpool had an unenviable reputation for violence. This book sets out to assess both the scale and variety of Liverpool's violence, and the means by which it was policed. It has been exhaustively researched and is persuasively argued. It adds significantly to the wider knowledge of, and to the debates about the history of criminal violence and of policing. Finally, it might also be read usefully by contemporary politicians and media pundits. Police history is becoming a subject of interest to cultural as well as social historians. Integrating this history into broader frameworks such as modernisation, bureaucratisation, professionalisation and state building can lead to fascinating new insights into general history. Despite the outstanding studies in police history in the context of German historiography - for example the works of Alf Ludtke, Wolfram Siemann, Peter Nitschke and Ralph Jessen[1] - a lot remains to be researched in the field of German police history. The United States and Britain share a richer tradition of innovative and inspiring police histories, a topic frequently researched at least since the 1970s. Police history, in these studies, serves as a means to arrive at a better understanding of processes like industrialisation and urbanisation, the formation of the working class, but also in answering questions regarding the implementation of civic values and the reaffirmation of gender relations. The variety of approaches to and perspectives on police history in Britain is obvious from a look at the recent works on the topic that are portrayed in this review. Each book to be discussed below is tackling its own distinguished set of questions, discussing different periods, using different evidence and building up different, but often complementary arguments. John Archer's study "The Monster Evil" is not so much a police history in a narrow sense but rather a history of violence. Archer reconstructs Liverpool's reputation as the criminal capital of Britain during the nineteenth century. Of course, this includes the history of the Liverpool constabulary force that was established along the lines of the (London) Metropolitan Police in 1836. Archer examines the process of administrative integration that merged the privately organised dock police and the separate day and night police into a unified police body. But the most impressive chapters of his book and, clearly, its main concern deliver an in-depth analysis and typology of violence and violent behaviour. Archer discusses not only police and anti-police violence, but also fenian activities, sectarian tensions and riots resulting from the presence of a strong Irish migrant community in Liverpool. Beyond these highly politicised conflicts, one can learn a lot about the characteristics and performance of male-on-male violence in urban everyday life. Archer provides an outstanding analysis of the public debates on fighting styles, the use of weapons and the distinction between an acceptable "fair fight" and inacceptable "brutality". The chapter dealing with these aspects can be considered a masterpiece in the study of national and ethnic, social and gender stereotyping. Furthermore, drawing inspiration from the labelling approach in sociology, Archer analyses the social construction of the so called "Liverpool roughs" as "folk devils" and necessary evil to legitimize a certain style of policing and to reassure moral standards. Archer completes his study with thoughtful chapters on racist violence faced by Liverpool's early black community, on violent women, domestic and sexual violence and juvenile criminals. John Archer's study "The Monster Evil" is not so much a police history in a narrow sense but rather a history of violence. Archer reconstructs Liverpool's reputation as the criminal capital of Britain during the nineteenth century. Since John Tobias published his pioneering work on urban crime and policing almost forty-five years ago, historians have opened up the field considerably. In recent years, regional studies drawing on police and trial records, national and local archives, and newspaper accounts have proliferated. John Archer has presented a well-documented study of violent crime in Liverpool in the second half of the nineteenth century, making his account the most complete for any English city. He discusses male-on-male violence, gangs, women as victims and perpetrators, domestic violence, sexual violence, and violence by and against children. He is careful to put these in the context of time and place, with due regard for class, gender, religion, and even racial considerations. His concentration is on Liverpool's slum areas that were notorious for poverty, chronic underemployment, and poor housing conditions. Archer questions whether Liverpool's violent reputation, fed by the contemporary press, was deserved, and the answer is yes, but only in some poor parts that defied the general decline of violence in the latter part of the century. It would have been surprising if Liverpool had not been a violent place, given its status as Britain's main port, with a huge casual labor market and roughly 30,000 sailors ashore at any time looking for entertainment. As Britain's second largest city, its population doubled between 1841 and 1891, with 22 percent being Irish, the highest percentage in any English city. Anti-Catholic and anti-Irish sentiments (even in the police) were evident, and Orange marches in the city only exacerbated sectarian tensions. The murder figures reached their peak in the late 1860s with a rate of 5.65 (per 100,000), only slightly below that of New York City with 5.8. The rate for London was 0.41 in 1868. Thereafter, the rates in Liverpool and London declined. The high numbers had to do with the murder of infants and children who died by various means, as coroners' inquests show. In fact children under a year old were by far the largest group of homicide victims in Britain. Such crimes, often involving neglect or "accident," were hard to prosecute. Much of the book is given over to personal violence, which was usually fueled by heavy drinking. Male culture involved drinking and buying drinks for others. Dockworkers were often paid in pubs or beer houses, which were on practically every corner.When wages were high, the liquor flowed even more, resulting in an increase in drink-related violence and assaults on police. Wife and child beating were common, expressing the man's traditional right to chastise his family in the privacy of his own home. Police and neighbors were often reluctant to intervene into the "sanctity" of the Victorian family, a "mind your own business" ethic. Some of the most appalling domestic brutality that stopped just short of homicide drew surprisingly short prison sentences. Pedophilia did not occasion any moral panic, and a child molester might expect a year or two in prison at most. Rape was relatively infrequent, and there were ninety-nine cases reported between 1862 and 1892. Rape figures are always suspect, however, as a woman would have to establish her virtue and show proof of resistance to be a convincing rape victim. Still, the conviction rate of 29 percent is reasonable by our current standards. The "fair fight" with fists or feet was part of the male notion of manliness and honor, although sailors from other nations played by different rules, using knives, for example. The man-on-man violence increasingly clashed with the middle-class notions of self-restraint, nonviolence, keeping the Sabbath, and even temperance. Women too got drunk, were violent, and got into fights like men, but drunken and violent women were an affront to prevailing notions of femininity, traitors to their sex. The Liverpool police are a major part of the book. They were formed in 1836 as a consolidation of day and night constables and the dock police. Liverpool was the most heavily policed city in Britain. In 1858, 60 percent of the police were English, 24 percent Irish, 10 percent Scottish, and 6 percent Welsh. Many of the English constables were Protestant and Orange in their affiliations and were scarcely neutral when they policed Irish areas. Constables faced rough and dangerous working conditions and low pay with virtually no training, and so turnover was very high. Many in working-class areas saw the police as overbearing and an unwelcome presence. Assaults on police were common. Walking a drunken and violent prisoner back to a police station was dangerous business, only made easier with the introduction of police wagons in the 1890s. As recruitment standards were increased, and police behavior was more closely controlled, there was a greater public acceptance of the police. The civilizing process worked to some extent, and Liverpool started to lose its lawless image by the end of the century. Violent crimes and drunkenness declined as drinking moved out of the pub into the home. Male violence and juvenile gangs came under greater public disapproval, and statistics show a marked drop in reported crime, consistent with other cities. Some areas, however, remained as violent as they had been a half century before. Children too were increasingly protected, and Liverpool was one of the first cities to make this official with the Liverpool Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, formed in 1883. Children who broke the laws were thought to be redeemable, and sentences were often lenient. Archer ends his book with a fascinating account by the journalist Hugh Shimmon, who accompanied police on a night shift in the Rosehill area in 1857. The author draws on Shimmon's perceptive observations throughout the book. Overall, the book is well written and perceptive. The accounts are often grim, but nonetheless fascinating, and the book should appeal to a wide audience. ... the book is well written and perceptive. The accounts are often grim, but nonetheless fascinating, and the book should appeal to a wide audience. Historical research on interpersonal violence has expanded considerably in recent years, with much of this work centred on the nineteenth century. In particular, Clive Emsley, Martin Wiener and John Carter Wood have charted changing attitudes towards violence in this period, while situating sensibilities in the shifting contexts of accepted gender norms and ideas of Englishness. In The Monster Evil, John Archer builds on these national surveys through a local study of Liverpool. Lacking extensive police and court records from the mid-nineteenth century, this work is based predominantly on extensive sampling of the local press, producing an extremely rich and detailed account. One especially revealing series of articles - a narrative of policing on the busy Rosehill night shift - is even reproduced as an appendix. The opening chapters focus on Liverpool itself, and its notoriety as a hotbed of criminality and violence. Dominated by unskilled casual labour, and hosting a highly mobile population of young men, it is unsurprising that the city acquired such an inglorious reputation. Its image was reinforced by a series of shocking crime reports, notably the Tithebarn Street murder of 1874, in which a respectable working man was kicked to death by street roughs known as 'cornermen'. For most contemporaries, the criminal statistics confirmed Liverpool's position as the capital of violence, yet Archer remains advisedly sceptical of such evidence. Having demonstrated that even homicide figures were vulnerable to changing recording practices, he resists any extended comparison with statistical data from other towns. There follows a section on policing, in which Archer sketches the development of the police force and the persistent concern of inexperience in its ranks, a problem common to Victorian police forces. Pride of place, though, is given to a substantial discussion of violence between police and public. The analysis of police violence is especially welcome, illustrating both the ubiquity of violence on the beat, and the difficulty faced by civilians (especially 'roughs' of both sexes) seeking redress through the courts. A surprisingly large portion of assaults by policemen - some 54 per cent by Archer's reckoning - were 'unprovoked', with much of the remainder committed during arrest or at the station. In a rare account of middle-class disapproval of the police, Archer traces Hugh Shimmin's (journalist and editor of the Porcupine) gradual disillusionment with the force and its brutality. Despite the obvious appeal of such a frank and discontented commentator, however, Archer is right to warn that Shimmin gave voice to 'the opinion of a minority, albeit a substantial one, of the liberal radical middle classes' (45). This section concludes with the suggestion that the Liverpool constabulary's esprit de corps contributed to antagonistic relations with the working class in the mid-nineteenth century, fostering an '"us versus them" attitude when dealing with the public' (61). Just how cohesive the force was, especially given its high turnover of personnel, is surely open to question, yet this is nevertheless a welcome attempt to relate police culture and relations with the public. The remainder of the book - some two-thirds of it in fact - is devoted to a panoramic survey of various forms of violence in Victorian Liverpool. The breadth of Archer's interest is impressive, with four chapters centred on public and street violence between men and women, and a further four dealing with domestic violence of various kinds. The absence of the police is repeatedly highlighted, both in connection with the press panic surrounding 'cornermen' in the 1870s, and their reluctance to intervene in domestic assaults against wives and children. The analysis of men's and women's violence presents interesting contrasts, especially the greater propensity of men to attack strangers. Most consistently, this section examines the role of the press in stoking up fear of violent crime, and in drawing moral distinctions between rough and respectable violence, between dutiful wives and brutish husbands, and so on. The final chapters are probably the most original, dealing with violent children and child victims. Child-killers are sensitively explored, contrasting the measured reaction of Victorian press and courts with the hysteria which can surround such cases today. Archer's exploration of the ambiguities of violence against children, and the shifting line of acceptable chastisement, is similarly perceptive. The Monster Evil is the fruit of extensive research, and the first genuinely comprehensive treatment of violent crime in this period. Its contemporary significance is considerable, and especially in the discussion of child-killers, where the resonance of Liverpool's most famous crime of recent times - the killing of James Bulger - is obvious. He concludes that the police enjoyed a greater degree of acceptance by 1900 than previously, and that the 'civilising process' progressed unevenly, with customary fighting practices living on in rougher parts of the city into the twentieth century. While economical with its arguments, the book's clear structure and straightforward prose allow for easy navigation and sampling, though some specialists will still miss a sustained, critical engagement with the historiography. One avenue, in particular, which Archer neglects to explore fully is the connection between the two central themes of his work, policing and violence. Though dealing extensively with violence on the beat, the ambiguous position of violent crime as an object of nineteenth-century policing remains an under-developed theme in the current literature. A more searching enquiry into the assumptions which underpinned the preventative model may well have shed further light on why constables sometimes failed to recognise that assaults were really their business. It may also have helped to explain how Head Constable Greig could, in 1875, maintain an attitude towards street violence apparently 'bordering on the blase' (8). This book's greatest strength, however, lies in its local focus, and the examination of Liverpool's criminal reputation is Archer's most original contribution. Founded on an uncertain statistical basis, the city's notoriety was sustained in the national press by its constant association with acts of extreme violence, and selective reporting of particularly shocking murder cases. Archer reminds us that Liverpool was a violent place - what else would one expect of a bustling Victorian seaport ? - yet its criminal reputation took on a life of its own, and became something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. By making such a virtue of his geographical focus, Archer produces much more than a 'case study' of violence in Victorian England; The Monster Evil is a powerful account, the likes of which local historians of crime would do well to imitate. The Monster Evil is the fruit of extensive research, and the first genuinely comprehensive treatment of violent crime in this period. Archer produces much more than a 'case study' of violence in Victorian England; The Monster Evil is a powerful account, the likes of which local historians of crime would do well to imitate. A policeman's lot was not a happy one in Victorian Liverpool. It was by reputation the most violent city in Britain; in 1869 over 1,500 of its police officers were assaulted. In The Monster Evil, John E. Archer sets out to analyze whether Liverpool's reputation for brutality was deserved. Press accounts and court and police records provide insights into the city's culture of violence. Second only to London in the size of its police force, Liverpool was unique among British cities. Though it shared some characteristics with provincial urban areas-extensive poverty, poor housing, and a rapidly growing population-and, like London, its docks ensured the casualization of labor and overconsumption of alcohol, at the same time the city was significantly different on two related counts that connect the criminal behavior: a wave of immigrants, particularly from Ireland, and a history of sectarian conflict. Liverpool's reputation for violence arose from press reports of shocking crimes, which Archer recounts in grisly detail. But in fostering the notion of a criminal class, such episodes distracted contemporaries from more-important matters: Was there a culture of violence in Victorian Liverpool, and were the police effective in controlling or even diminishing it? Archer suggests law and order were sealed off from the police, so that, as in the case of domestic violence, "justice" was properly meted out by neighbors-not constables or courts. Much depends on perspective, however, for while middle-class Liverpudlians demanded safe streets, the working-class Irish Catholics who experienced policing at the hands of mostly working-class Protestant constables saw things differently. Hence a set of rules was held by the population regarding the concept of the "fair fight." Though most men carried knives, it was thought un-English and unmanly to use them in a fight; and it was acceptable to strike a wife but not a mother. National legislation only slowly changed attitudes. Were neighbors numbed by the frequency of violent acts in their locale, or was it custom that explains nonintervention? Like the rest of the country, children under the age of one represented the largest group of homicide victims. Liverpool was the first city in Britain to establish a society for the prevention of cruelty to children (in 1883), but if children were better protected by 1900 than in 1850, it remains unclear whether they were any less physically abused by parents. Organized gangs were less the case in Liverpool than groups of teenagers, or "cornermen," and their female equivalents who terrorized neighborhoods. That Liverpool had such a high rate of violence was due in part to female criminality, and that was related to heavy consumption of alcohol, which Archer, unconvincingly to this reader, attributes too simply to overcrowding, underemployment, poverty, and ill-behaved husbands. Other questionable interpretations include the relationship between drunkenness and assaults on police. Although Archer argues that "[a]s a consequence of increased drunkenness, convictions for assaults on policemen would also rise," this is not borne out by figures 1 and 2 (52-53). Finally, Archer might have made more of the fact that all sides were feeling their way through a new scenario, for the first generation of modern policing began only in the late 1820s.