Confronting the Criminal

This chapter examines civilian self-policing in the Victorian city, through a survey of self-defence and apprehension practices. Despite the formation of preventative police forces, victims of crime remained active in defending themselves and in tackling offenders on the streets, in shops, homes, and workplaces. Victims’ participation in this field was underpinned by the limited physical presence of the police, and by forms of legal duty and cultural obligation for civilians to assist the police in making arrests. The chapter demonstrates that the Victorian city crowd continued to play a major role in apprehension, by supporting victims and the police in dealing with criminals. Notwithstanding the diffusion of more restrained notions of masculinity in the nineteenth century, the chapter argues that confronting criminals afforded victims an outlet for more assertive (and violent) forms of manly conduct, which complemented the vigorous public culture of the Victorian street.

Apprehension · Assertiveness · Criminology · Duty · Obligation · Political science · Sociology · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology