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Violent crime in England in 1919: post-war anxieties and press narratives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2008

CLIVE EMSLEY
CLIVE EMSLEY
Affiliation:
Department of History, The Open University.
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Abstract

In the immediate aftermath of the First World War a variety of commentators in England expressed concern that men returning from the war had become so brutalized and inured to violence that their behaviour would continue to be violent at home. But, while the stage was set for a ‘moral panic’ with the brutalized veteran as the new folk devil, no such panic materialized. This essay makes a detailed study of two contrasting newspapers to assess how violent crime was assessed and interpreted after the war. It notes an increase in the use of the concept of the ‘unwritten law’ (the traditional ‘right’ claimed by many men to chastise a disrespectful wife or a man who despoiled or dishonoured a wife) in the courts and the press, probably as an element in re-establishing pre-war gender roles. It also describes how the idea of shell-shock was deployed as a defence in criminal cases, something that probably contributed to a popular recognition that men might suffer mental breakdowns as easily as women. In conclusion, it suggests some of the factors that may have inhibited the press in identifying the violent veteran as a new folk devil.

Les crimes de violence en angleterre en 1919: angoisses de l'après-guerre et articles de journaux

En 1919, dans l'immédiat après-guerre, nombre de commentateurs de l'actualité en Angleterre ont exprimé leur crainte qu'après une guerre où ils avaient à la fois subi et été incités à tant de violences, les hommes démobilisés continueraient à se comporter aussi violemment à leur retour chez eux. Cependant, alors que le décor d'une “panique morale” avait été dressé avec l'ancien soldat dans le rôle du diable, rien de ce genre ne s'est passé. Nous étudions ici en détail deux journaux de ton différent pour établir comment le crime avec violence a été reçu et interprété après la guerre. Nous relevons un usage croissant, dans la presse et devant les tribunaux, du concept de “loi non-écrite” (le “droit” traditionnel qu'invoquent nombre d'hommes pour châtier une épouse leur manquant de respect ou un homme qui leur a pris leur femme), et c'est là probablement une façon parmi d'autres de chercher à rétablir le jeu de rôles masculin/féminin d'avant-guerre. Nous décrivons aussi comment la notion de choc traumatique dÛ aux bombardements a été invoquée par les avocats de certains criminels – ce qui a probablement contribué à divulguer l'idée que l'homme est tout autant exposé à la crise nerveuse que la femme. En conclusion, nous suggérons quelles ont pu être certaines des raisons qui ont dissuadé la presse de présenter le démobilisé violent comme un diable nouveau.

Gewaltverbrechen in england im jahre 1919: nachkriegsängste und presseberichte

Unmittelbar nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg brachten zahlreiche Kommentatoren in England ihre Sorge darüber zum Ausdruck, dass Männer, die aus dem Kriege zurückkehrten, so brutalisiert seien und sich so sehr an Gewalt gewöhnt hätten, dass sie sich auch zu Hause weiterhin brutal verhalten würden. Doch während mit dem Bild des brutalisierten Veteranen als neuem Schreckgespenst alles für eine “moralische Panik” vorbereitet war, kam eine solche Panik nicht zustande. Dieser Aufsatz unternimmt eine detaillierte Auswertung zweier kontrastierender Zeitungen, um abzuschätzen, wie nach dem Krieg Gewaltverbrechen eingeschätzt und interpretiert wurden. Es zeigt sich, dass sowohl die Gerichte wie die Presse zunehmenden Gebrauch vom Begriff des “ungeschriebenen Gesetze” machten (das von vielen Männern beanspruchte traditionelle “Recht”, eine respektlose Ehefrau oder einen Mann, der die Ehefrau beraubt oder entehrt hatte, zu züchtigen), was wahrscheinlich dazu beitrug, die geschlechtsspezifischen Rollen der Vorkriegszeit wiederzubeleben. Der Artikel beschreibt ferner, wie das Argument der Kriegsneurose in Strafprozessen zur Verteidigung vorgebracht wurde, worin wohl auch einer der Gründe dafür liegt, dass man allgemein anerkannte, Männer könnten ebenso leicht von Nervenzusammenbrüchen heimgesucht werden wie Frauen. Zum Schluss werden einige der Faktoren genannt, die vermutlich die Presse davon abgehalten haben, den gewalttätigen Veteranen als neues Schreckgespenst hinzustellen.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 23 , Special Issue 1: SPECIAL ISSUE ON THE INSTITUTIONAL ORGANIZATION OF LAND MARKETS , May 2008 , pp. 173 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

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References

ENDNOTES

1 Stanley Cohen, Folk devils and moral panics: the creation of the Mods and Rockers (London, 1972).

2 Peter King, ‘Moral panics and violent street crime, 1750–2000: a comparative perspective’, in Barry Godfrey, Clive Emsley and Graeme Dunstall eds., Comparative histories of crime (Cullompton, 2003).

3 Waddington, P. A. J., ‘Mugging as a moral panic: a question of proportion’, British Journal of Sociology 37, 2 (1986), 245–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Wild, Jonathan, ‘“A merciful, heaven-sent release”? The clerk and the First World War in British literary culture’, Cultural and Social History 4, 1 (2007), 73–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Alan Ramsay Skelley, The Victorian army at home (London, 1977), 246–7; Edward M. Spiers, The army and society, 1815–1914 (London, 1980), 218–19.

6 Lawrence, Jon, ‘Forging a Peaceable kingdom: war, violence, and fear of brutalization in post-war Britain’, Journal of Modern History 75 (2003), 557–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 A remarkable article in The Times, 12 January 1920, p. 9, on ‘The Return of the Tramp’ is illustrative of the belief in the war's civilizing effects: ‘By all accounts the tramp has been changed by the war. He is still shiftless and homeless, but he is better clad than was the case formerly, and there is about him something of the air of what is called “respectability” … The war has established two things in his favour. The first is his patriotism. Those of his class who were physically fit served as combatants or in Labour Corps. The others “did their bit” – as they are ready to boast – “in work of national importance”. The second thing the war made clear in regard to the tramp is that his disappearance from his accustomed haunts proves that, contrary to the general opinion, he was willing to work if he got it.’

8 Times, 5 May 1919, p. 7.

9 Philip Gibbs, Realities of war (London, 1920), v, 447, 450 and 452. The book was published in the United States by Harper Brothers under the more arresting title of Now it can be told.

10 Daily Herald, 21 July 1919, p. 2.

11 Times, 21 January 1920, p. 13.

12 Sheffield Mail, 2 December 1920, p. 2, and see also 16 December p. 1.

13 Jennifer Davis, ‘The London garrotting panic of 1862: a moral panic and the creation of a criminal class in mid-Victorian England’, in V. A. C. Gatrell, Bruce Lenman and Geoffrey Parker eds., Crime and the law: The social history of crime in Western Europe since 1500 (London, 1980); Rob Sindall, Street violence in the nineteenth century: media panic or real danger? (Leicester, 1990).

14 See, in particular, Taylor, Howard, ‘Rationing crime: the political economy of criminal statistics since the 1850s’, Economic History Review 51, 3 (1998), 569–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 For contrasting arguments about cowardice, desertion and death sentences see, inter alia, Anthony Babington, For the sake of example: capital courts martial 1914–1918 (revised edn, London, 1993); Cathryn Corns and John Hughes-Wilson, Blindfold and alone: British military executions in the Great War (London, 2001); Gerard Christopher Oram, Military executions during World War I (London, 2003).

16 England, David and Osborne, James, ‘Jack, Tommy and Henry Dubb: the armed forces and the working class’, Historical Journal 21, 3 (1978), 593–621CrossRefGoogle Scholar, calculate (p. 595) the ratio of military police to soldiers as 1:3,306 in 1914; 1:339 in 1917; and 1:292 in 1918.

17 Eisner, Manuel, ‘Modernization, self-control and lethal violence: the long-term dynamics of European homicide rates in theoretical perspective’, British Journal of Criminology 41, 4 (2001), 618–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a challenge to the value of even the statistics of homicide, see Taylor, Howard, ‘Rationing crime: the political economy of criminal statistics since the 1850s’, Economic History Review 51, 3 (1998), 569–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 See, for example, Susan Kingsley Kent, Making Peace: the reconstruction of gender in interwar Britain (Princeton N.J., 1993), especially chapter 5.

19 See, for example, South London Press, 4 July 1919, p. 2, case of Pte William John Thompson, a 19-year-old member of the London Regiment; Bucks R.O. BC/5/1, Brill Police Station Occurrence Book, 1859–1932, case of Pte Alber Gunnel, a 20-year-old member of the Bucks Light Infantry. Thompson and Gunnel were of such an age that it is possible that neither had either left the country, let alone seen action. News of the World (hereafter NW), 18 May 1919, p. 5, and 1 June, p. 3, case of Lt George Barton, Royal Engineers. Barton, aged 20, had been commissioned at 17 and had been wounded in France. He was discharged on the grounds that he had received a wound such that ‘an assault [such] as he was charged with was physically impossible’.

20 For an interesting and important historical analysis of these issues in Australia over three wars (the Second World War and the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam) see Joy Damousi, Living with the aftermath: trauma, nostalgia and grief in post-war Australia (Cambridge, 2001), especially chapter 6. There is a growing literature in various psychology and therapy journals; see, inter alia, Galovski, Tara and Lyons, Judith A., ‘Psychological sequelae of combat violence: a review of the impact of PTSD on the veteran's family and possible interventions’, Aggression and Violent Behaviour 9, 5 (2004), 477–501CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sherman, Michelle D., Sautter, Fred, et al. ‘Domestic violence in veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder who seek couples therapy’, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 32, 4 (2006), 479–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

21 See, for example, the following cases. NW, 6 July 1919, p. 5, case of Richard Gibbs, Royal Engineers, who shot himself on returning from Egypt when his wife refused to live with him; the Wandsworth coroner declared: ‘A woman who can be unfaithful to a man fighting for his country is not worthy the name of woman.’ NW, 10 August, p. 8, case of William John Woodbury, a stoker on HMS Essex who threw himself under a train when his fiancée broke off their engagement; the coroner's jury in Wellington, Somerset, ‘found that, after the strain which naval men had been subjected to during the war, the man's mind became unhinged on being rejected by the girl.’ NW, 26 October, p. 5, case of Company Sergeant Major Arthur George Llewellyn Crouch of the Tank Regiment who shot himself alongside Cleopatra's Needle by the Thames after his wife refused to come back and live with him; he had left for France the day after their marriage and spent only one week's leave with her after that. The coroner's verdict was ‘death while of unsound mind’.

22 82nd report of the Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages in England and Wales, Cmd 1017 (1920), xcvii.

23 NW, 1 December 1918, p. 1.

24 Gibbs, Realities of war, p. 448.

25 Times, 21 August 1920, p. 11.

26 Adrian Bingham, Gender, modernity and the popular press in inter-war Britain (Oxford, 2004), pp. 60–3.

27 Report of the Commissioners of Prisons and the Directors of Convict Prisons for the Year 1919–20, Cmd 972, 6.

28 Orr, Neil Gordon, ‘Keep the home fires burning: Peace Day in Luton, 1919’, Family and Community History 2, 1 (1999), 17–31Google Scholar; Lawrence, ‘Forging a peaceable kingdom’, 567–8. There were similar, if less well-known disorders during peace celebrations in Bilston, Coventry, Doncaster and Swindon. The News of the World headlined the Luton Riot as ‘ATTRIBUTED TO ORGANISED BOLSHEVIK ATTACK’ and considered that the trouble in the trouble in the Midlands had ‘an unmistakable touch of Bolshevism’, but it produced no evidence to substantiate this. See NW, 27 July, p. 4.

29 Williams, Paul and Dickinson, Julie, ‘Fear of crime: read all about it? The relationship between newspaper crime reporting and fear of crime’, British Journal of Criminology 33 (1993), 33–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Esther Snell, ‘Discourses of criminality in the eighteenth-century press: the presentation of crime in The Kentish Post, 1717–1768’, and King, Peter, ‘Newspaper reporting and attitudes to crime and justice in late-eighteenth and early nineteenth-century London’, both in Continuity and Change 22, 1 (2007), 13–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 73–112.

30 NW, 16 August 1919, p. 6 and 9 March p. 6.

31 Times, 15 January 1919, p. 3, 25 January p. 3, 30 January p. 3, 9 April p. 6 and 10 April, p. 13;

32 Times, 2 May 1919, p. 9; 9 May, p. 10; and 22 May, p. 9; NW, 25 May 1919, p. 5.

33 Times, 15 Dec 1919, p. 9.

34 NW, 26 January 1919, p. 3.

35 The word ‘cases’ is used since, in a few instances, there were multiple killings, the most notorious instance being Henry Perry's murder of the Cornish family – husband, wife and two children. Perry, also known as Beckett, had been a lodger with the family.

36 Times, 17 May 1919, p. 7; 23 May, p. 7; and 23 October p. 5; see also NW, 18 May 1919, p. 4.

37 Times, 20 December 1919, p. 4.

38 Times, 6 March 1919, p. 7, and 5 July, p. 9; NW, 9 March 1919, p. 3; 16 March p. 4; and 6 July, p. 11.

39 NW, 18 May 1919, p. 3 and 6 July, p. 7.

40 Times, 17 June 1919, p. 16. For The Times's criticism of the crime passionnel see Clive Emsley, Hard men: the English and violence since 1750 (London, 2005), 80 and 88. For the case of Thomas Barker who, believing that his wife was having an affair with two Australian soldiers lodging with them, killed his wife and one of the soldiers and attempted to kill the other see Times, 29 July 1919, p. 9, and 20 August, p. 7.

41 NW, 20 April 1919, p. 4 (Swanson), and 8 June, 1919, p. 8 (Marshall). See also 5 January, p. 3; 6 April, p. 3; 18 May, p. 3; and 6 July, p. 7.

42 NW, 16 March 1919, p. 3.

43 Daily Herald, 1 April 1919, p. 5.

44 Martin J. Wiener, Men of blood: violence, manliness and criminal violence in Victorian England (Cambridge, 2004).

45 Times, 24 May 1919, p. 7.

46 Times, 9 June 1919, p. 7.

47 NW, 21 September 1919, p. 2, and 2 November 1919, p. 4.

48 See Jay Winter ed., Shell-shock, a special edition of the Journal of Contemporary History 31, 1 (2000), entirely devoted to the question.

49 Bogacz, Ted, in ‘War neurosis and cultural change in England, 1914–22: the work of the War Office Committee of Enquiry into “shell-shock”’, Journal of Contemporary History 24, 2 (1989), 227–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, cites (p. 235) the Morning Post of 6 September 1916 as giving one of the earliest examples of shell-shock being raised in a criminal court.

50 Elaine Showalter, The female malady: women, madness and English culture, 1830–1980 (London, 1987), 172.

51 Mathew Thomson, The problem of mental deficiency: eugenics, democracy, and social policy in Britain, c.1870–1959 (Oxford, 1998), 125.

52 Times, 10 April 1919, p. 13.

53 Times, 15 December 1919, p. 11 and 18 March 1920, p. 13.

54 Times, 28 May 1919, p. 7; 24 June 1919, p. 4; 25 June 1919, p. 4; and 11 July, p. 9; NW, 4 May 1919, p. 2, and 1 June 1919, p. 4.

55 Times, 16 January 1920, p. 5. During the war some senior officers had become concerned about the defence of ‘shell-shock’ in trials for desertion and cowardice. ‘How can we ever win if this plea is allowed?’, questioned Field Marshal Haig when presented with a recommendation for mercy during the battle of the Somme. See Oram, Military executions, 62.

56 See, inter alia, Davies, Andrew, ‘Youth, violence, and courtship in late-Victorian Birmingham: the case of James Harper and Emily Pimm’, History of the Family 11 (2006), 107–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 NW, 23 November 1919, p. 2.

58 Report of the Commissioners of Prisons … for the year 1919–20, Cmd 972, 21.

59 Times, 24 January 1918, p. 3; see also 14 January 1919, p. 5, and 25 April, p. 9 (assault); 6 May 1919, p. 14 and 25 October, p. 9 (bigamy); 6 February 1919, p. 5 (burglary); 15 July 1918, p. 8, 22 August, p. 3, and 30 October, p. 3; 8 February 1919, p. 3, 7 August p. 7, and 19 November p. 7 (fraud); 1 September 1919, p. 16 (loitering); 24 March 1919, p. 9, 31 December, p. 12, and 30 September 1920, p. 7 (theft); 28 October 1920, p. 9 (false pretences). The criminologist Hermann Mannheim noted that shell-shock continued to be ‘not seldom’ used as an excuse by offenders twenty years after the First World War. While he did not invoke the ‘brutal veteran’ as such, Mannheim considered the war to have had a significant impact on the growth and pattern of crime during the inter-war period. See his Social aspects of crime in England between the wars (London, 1940), 108–15.

60 NW (1 December 1918, p. 4) reported the case of Lieutenant Bourne tried at the Old Bailey for passing dud cheques. Bourne had been ‘blown up by a shell and gassed’ and a prison doctor declared him to be ‘neurasthenic’, but the weight of the evidence and testimony, and the emphasis in the paper, was that Bourne's problems stemmed from alcohol. But see 19 January 1919, p. 1, for the moderate sentence passed on a shell-shocked veteran with an ‘unsatisfactory past’ found guilty of fraud, and 18 May, p. 3, for a sentence on a man accused of trying to rob a cinema box-office brandishing a Mills bomb ‘postponed … indefinitely to see how he got on’.

61 See, for example, the comments on bigamy, NW, 9 February 1919, p. 6, 9 March, p. 8, and 6 April, p. 3, 6 July, p. 2, and on divorce 20 April, p. 1, 27 April, p. 1, and 12 October, p. 1.

62 NW, 3 Apr. 1919, p. 2.

63 NW, 21 December 1919, p. 7.

64 NW, 28 September 1919, p. 7.

65 NW, I June 1919, p. 4.

66 NW, 9 November 1919, p. 7.

67 Daily Herald, 10 October 1919, p. 6.