THE HOOLIGANISM OF THE POOR
Present-day excitements have killed the "hooligan" scare. Good nervous
people now sleep comfortably in their beds, for the cry of "The
hooligans! the hooligans!" is no longer heard in our land. Yet, truth to
tell, the evil is greater now than when sensational writers boomed it.
It grows, and will continue to grow, until the conditions that produce
it are seriously tackled by the State. I must confine myself to the
hooliganism of the poor. Of the hooliganism of undergraduates, medical
students, stockbrockers, and politicians I say nothing. Of Tommy Atkins
on furlough or of Jack ashore I wish to be equally silent. But of the
class, born and bred in London slums, who do no regular work, but who
seem to live on idleness and disorder, I desire to speak
plainly--plainly, too, as to the conditions that are largely responsible
for the disorderly conduct of the rising youth.
A large number of undoubtedly good people think it is easy to cure by
punitive methods. I do not. "A policeman behind every lamp-post and the
lash--the lash!" cried a notable divine during a never-to-be-forgotten
week when he edited an evening paper. Such was his recipe! For months
the cat with nine tails was a favourite theme, and all sorts of people
caught the infection, and there was a great cry and commotion raised and
sustained by a sensational but altogether inaccurate press. Every
assault committed by a labouring man, every bit of disorder in the
streets, if caused by the poor and ignorant, was a signal for the cry
"The hooligan again!" Rubbish! But the people believed it, and so to
some extent our level-headed and kind-hearted magistrates caught the
spirit of the thing, and proceeded to impose heavier sentences on boys
charged with disorderly conduct in the streets. But this was not enough,
for the Home Secretary (Mr. Ritchie) in the House of Commons, in reply
to a question about youthful hooligans, said it was thought that the
magistrates had been too lenient with them, and stated that the police
had orders to charge those young gentlemen on indictment, so that they
might not be dealt with summarily, but committed for trial. In other
words, they were to take from the magistrates the power of so-called
lenient punishment, and have them tried by judge and jury. Very good,
but what good longer terms of imprisonment would do, the Home Secretary
did not say; and as to the magistrates, they can be severe enough,
though they do know when to be lenient, and in aggravated cases they
already commit for trial.
Profoundly I wish that all Home Secretaries would exercise their minds
on the causes that lead to youthful hooliganism, and do something to
remove them. It were better far than taking steps to secure more severe
punishment. Such talk to me seems callous and cruel, for punitive
methods will never eradicate the instincts that lead to disorderly
conduct in the streets among the "young gentry" of the poor. I must
confess to a feeling of discomfort when I see a boy of sixteen sent to a
month's imprisonment for disorderly conduct in the streets. It is true
that he has been a nuisance to his elders, and has bumped against them
in running after his pals. Equally true that he uses language repulsive
to ears polite; but to him it is ordinary language, to which he has been
accustomed his life through. But I am afraid it is equally true that
similar offences committed by others in a better position would be more
leniently dealt with. Would anyone suggest that a public-school boy, or
a soldier on furlough, or a young doctor, or an enthusiastic patriot,
should be committed for trial on a like charge? I trow not. Allowances
are made, and it is right they should be made. I claim these allowances
for the poor and the children of the poor.
Moreover, if these "young gentry" are to be consigned in wholesale
fashion to prison, will it lessen the evil? I think not. On the
contrary, it will largely increase it. Some of them will have lost the
moderate respectability that stood for them in place of character; many
of them will lose their work, and will join the increasing army of
loafers; but all of them will lose their fear of prison, that fear of
the unknown that is the greatest deterrent from crime and disorder.
Familiarize these "young gentry" with prison, and it is all over with
them. The sense of fear will depart, and to a dead certainty more
serious disorder and grosser crime will follow. Undoubtedly many of them
will find prison quarters preferable to their own homes, and though they
may resent the loss of liberty, they will find some comfort in the fact
that they do not have to share with four others an apology for a bed,
fixed in an apology for a room, of which the door cannot be opened fully
because the bedstead prevents it.
If our law-makers, our notable divines, and our good but nervous people
had to live under such conditions, I venture to say they would rush into
the streets for change of air; and if any steam were left in them, who
can doubt but that they would let it off somehow? Under present
conditions, the "young gentry" have the choice of two evils--either to
stay in their insufferable homes or to kick up their heels in the
streets. But this includes two other contingencies--either to become
dull-eyed, weak-chested, slow-witted degenerates, or hooligans. Of the
two, I prefer the latter. The streets are the playgrounds of the poor,
and the State has need to be thankful, in spite of the drawback in
disorder and crime, for the strength and manhood developed in them. It
will be a sorry day for England when the children of the poor, after
being dragooned to school, are dragooned from the streets into the
overcrowded tenements called home. Multiply large towns, run the
"blocks" for the poor up to the skies, increase the pains and penalties
for youthful disorder, and omit to make provision for healthy, vigorous,
competitive play: then we may write "Ichabod" over England, for its
glory and strength will be doomed. Wealth may accumulate, but men will
decay. Robust play, even though it be rough, is an absolute condition of
physical and moral health.
Consider briefly how the poor live. Thousands of families with three
small rooms for each family, tens of thousands with two small rooms, a
hundred thousand with one room. And such rooms! Better call them boxes.
Dining-room and bedroom, kitchen and scullery, coal-house and
drawing-room, workshop and wash-house, all in one. Here, one after
another, the children are born; here, one after another, many of them
die. I went into one of these "combines," and saw an infant but a few
days old with its mother on a little bed; in another corner, in a box,
lay the body of another child of less than two years, cold and still. I
felt ill, but I also felt hot. I protest it is no wonder that our boys
and girls seek the excitement of the streets, or that they find comfort
in "dustbins." What can big lads of this description do in such
surroundings? Curl up and die, or go out and kick somebody. The pity of
it is that they always kick the wrong person, but that's no wonder.
Tread our narrow streets, where two-storied houses stand flush with the
pavements; explore our courts, alleys, and places; climb skyward in our
much-belauded dwellings; or come even into our streets that look snugly
respectable. You will find them teeming with juvenile life that has
learned its first steps in the streets, got its first idea of play in
the gutter, and picked up its knowledge of the vulgar tongue from those
who have graduated in a gutter school. Is it any wonder that young
people developed under these conditions look upon the streets as their
natural right, and become oblivious to the rights of others? They are
but paying back what they have received. Neither is it to be wondered at
that as they grow older they grow more disorderly and violent, but
altogether less scrupulous. It is absurd to suppose that boys who have
grown into young men under these conditions will, on reaching manhood,
develop staid and orderly ways, and equally absurd to suppose that by
sending them for "trial" they will be made orderly.
Let us have less talk of punishment and more of remedy; and the remedy
lies, not with private individuals, but with the community. The
community must bear the cost or pay the penalty. Oxford and Cambridge
contend in healthy rivalry on the river, and the world is excited. Eton
plays Harrow at cricket, and society is greatly moved. A few horses race
at Epsom, and the people generally go wild. But when the Hackney boys
contend with the boys of Bethnal Green, why, that's another tale. But
they cannot go to Lord's or to Putney, so perforce they meet in the
places natural to them--the streets. "But they use belts!" Well, they
have no boxing-gloves, and it may comfort some folks to know that
generally they use the belts upon each other. The major part of
so-called youthful hooliganism is but the natural instinct of English
boys finding for itself an outlet--a bad outlet it may be, but, mind
you, the only outlet possible, though it is bound to grow into
lawlessness if suitable provision is not made for its legitimate
exercise.
At the close of one of my prison lectures, among the prisoners that
asked for a private interview was an undersized youth of nineteen, a
typical Cockney, sharp and cheeky as a London sparrow. He put out his
hand and said, "How do you do, Mr. Holmes?" looking up at me. I shook
hands with him, and said: "What are you doing here?" "Burglary, Mr.
Holmes," he said. "Burglary?" I said--"burglary? I am sure God never
intended you for a burglar." Looking up sharply, he said: "No, He would
have made me bigger, wouldn't He? But I have had enough of prison," he
said--"I've had enough. I'm going straight when I get out, and I shall
be out in three weeks. It is very good of you to come and talk to us,
and I am glad to know about all those men you have told us of; but I've
come to see you because I want you to tell me how I am to spend my spare
time when I am out. I am going back home to live. I've got a job to go
to--not much wages, though. I shall live in Hoxton, and I want to go
straight. If I get some books and read about those fellows you talked
of, I can't read at home--there's no room. If I go to the library I feel
a bit sleepy when I've been in a bit, and the caretaker comes along and
he gives me a nudge, and he says: 'Waken up! This ain't a
lodging-house.' We have no cricket or football. There's the streets for
me in my spare time, and then I'm in mischief. Now, you tell me what to
do, and I'll do it."
Municipal playgrounds are absolutely necessary if our young people are
to be healthy and law-abiding. Of parks we have enough at present. Our
so-called recreation-grounds are a delusion and a snare, though to some
they are doubtless a boon, with their asphalted walks, a few seats, and
a drinking-fountain. They are very good for the very old and the very
young; but if Tom, Dick, and Harry essayed a game of rounders, tip-cat,
leap-frog, or skittles, why, then they would soon find themselves before
the magistrate, and be the cause of many paragraphs on youthful
hooliganism in the next day's papers. Now, private philanthropy and
individual effort is not equal to the task--and, in spite of increasing
effort and enlarged funds, never will be equal to the task--of finding
suitable recreation for our growing youth. I know well the great good
done by our public-school and other missions, with their boys' clubs,
etc.; but they scarcely touch the evil, and they certainly have not the
means of providing winter and summer outdoor competitive games. Every
parish must have its public playground, under proper supervision, lit up
with electric light in the evening, and open till 10 p.m. Here such
inexpensive games as rounders, skittles, tip-cat, tug-of-war, might be
organized, and Hackney might have a series of competitions with Bethnal
Green, for the competitive element must be provided for. A series of
contests of this sort would soon empty our streets of the lads who are
now so troublesome. I venture to say that a tournament, even at "coddem"
or "shove-ha'penny" alone, would attract hundreds of them, and certainly
an organized competition of "pitch-and-toss" would attract thousands.
Counters might be used instead of coins, and they would last for ever.
The fact is, that these youths are easily pleased, if we go the right
way to work; but we must take them as they are, and must not expect them
all to play chess, billiards, and cricket. Football, I think, I would
certainly add, for it is a game which any healthy boy can play, and it
gives him robust exercise. Give the lads of our slums and congested
dwellings a chance of healthy rivalry and vigorous competition, and, my
word for it, they won't want to crack the heads either of their
companions or the public. The public are not aware of the intense
longing of the slum youth for active, robust play. During last year more
than fifty boys were summoned at one court for playing football in the
streets and fined, though in some cases their footballs were old
newspapers tied round with string. Hundreds of youths are charged every
year at each of our London police-courts with gambling by playing a game
with bronze coins called "pitch-and-toss." Now, these youths do not want
and long for each other's coins, but they do want a game, and if they
could play all day and win nothing they would consider it an ideal game.
Organized games in public playgrounds, creating local and friendly
rivalry, are absolutely essential. The same feeling, developed but a
trifle further, becomes national, and we call it patriotism. Play they
must, or become loafers; and the round-shouldered, dull-eyed loafer is
altogether more hopeless than the hooligan.
It will be an inestimable blessing to the country, and will inaugurate
quite a new era for us, when the minimum age for leaving school is
raised to sixteen. The increase of intelligence, physique and morality,
and order arising from such a course would astonish the nation.
Supposing this were done, and for boys and girls of over twelve two
hours in the afternoon were set apart for games--in separate
playgrounds, of course--and that the evenings were devoted to
school-work. The younger children going to school in the afternoon might
easily have their turn in the public playgrounds from five to seven.
This would allow the youths over sixteen to have the playgrounds for the
rest of the evening. But, having provided for play, I would go one step
further, and not allow any boy to leave school till he produced
satisfactory evidence that he was really commencing work. Hundreds of
boys leave school having no immediate prospect of regular work. A few
weeks' idleness and the enjoyment of the streets follow, and they are
then in that state of mind and body that renders them completely
indifferent to work of any kind. For good or for evil, the old system of
apprenticing boys has gone. It had many faults, but it had some virtues,
for, at any rate, it ensured a boy's continuity of work in those years
when undisciplined idleness is certain to be demoralizing. Once let boys
from the homes I have described--or, indeed, from working men's homes
generally--be released from the discipline of school, and the discipline
of reasonable and continuous work not be substituted, and it is all over
with them and honest aspirations. Now, this difficulty of finding decent
and prospective employment for boys is another great factor in the
production of youthful hooligans, but a factor that would be largely
eliminated if the age for leaving school were raised to sixteen. The
work of errand-boys, van-boys, or "cock-horse" boys is not progressive;
neither is it good training for growing boys. To the boys of fourteen
such work has its allurements, and the wages offered seem fairly good;
but when the boy of fourteen has become the youth of sixteen or
seventeen, the work seems childish, and the pay becomes mean. When he
requires better wages, his services are dispensed with, and another lad
of fourteen is taken on. This procedure alone accounts for thousands of
youths being idle upon the streets of London. What can such youths do?
Too big for their previous occupation, no skilled training or aptitude
for better work, not big or strong enough for ordinary labouring, they
become the despair of their parents and pests to society. Very soon the
door of the parental home is closed upon them; the cheap lodging-houses
become their shelter, and the rest can easily be imagined--but it lasts
for life. By raising the school age, the great bulk of this
demoralization would be prevented. Technical training in their school
years would give these youths a certain amount of aptitude and taste
that would enable them to commence life under more favourable
conditions, and though many of them would necessarily become errand-boys
or van-boys, still, the age at which they would leave those occupations
would find them nearer manhood, and in possession of greater strength
and more judgment than they can claim at the present age of leaving such
work. The step I am advocating would also remove another great cause of
lifelong misery and its accompanying hooliganism. Look again, if you
please, at the homes of the poor. Is it any wonder that when a youth
finds himself earning twelve shillings a week, and has arrived at the
mature age of eighteen, he enters into a certain relationship with a
girl of seventeen, who has a weekly income of six shillings? This
relationship may or may not be sanctioned by the law and blessed by the
Church; in either case it is equally immoral, and the effects are
equally blighting. How can healthy, virtuous, and orderly children come
from such unions?
Give the youth of our large towns a lengthened school-training, but at
the same time remember that athletic and technical training must form
part of that life; let healthy rivalry have a chance of animating them
and a feeling of manly joy sometimes pervade them, and these horrible,
wicked juvenile unions will be heard of no more; for at present their
only chances of enjoyment are the streets, sexuality, or the
public-house.
This last word leads me to another cause of hooliganism. The
public-house is bound up with the lives of the poor. To many it stands,
doubtless, for enjoyment and relaxation, for forgetfulness of misery and
discomfort, and for sociability. To many others it stands for poverty,
suffering, unspeakable sorrow, and gross neglect. Where our streets are
the narrowest, where the sanitary arrangements are of the most execrable
description, there the public-house thrives, and thrives with disastrous
effects. The home-life of the poor and the public-house act and react
on each other. The more miserable the home and the greater the dirt, the
more the public-house attracts; the more it attracts, the viler the
home-life and the greater misery and dirt. It is no marvel that people
who live thus demand fiery drinks; nor is it any great marvel that all
the tricks of science and all the resources of civilization are brought
to bear in manufacturing drinks for them. No wonder, when "the vitriol
madness flushes in the ruffian's head," that "the filthy by-lane rings
with the yell of the trampled wife." But the State shares the profits
and the State shares the guilt. Long ago Cowper wrote:
"Drink and be mad, then--'tis your country bids:
Ye all can swallow, and she asks no more."
The State does not care very much what compounds are served to the poor
so long as the sacred revenue is not defrauded. But the State cannot
escape the penalties. What of the offspring that issue from these homes
and these neighbourhoods? They have daily seen women with battered
faces; they have frequently seen the brutal kick, and heard the
frightful curse; they have been used to the public-house from their
infancy; whilst boys and girls have been allowed to join openly, and as
a matter of course, in the carousals, and stand shoulder to shoulder in
the bar and drink with seasoned topers. In the evening, when half drunk,
they patrol the streets or stand together at some congested corner. They
are not amenable to the influence of the police; they are locked up, and
the cry "The hooligans! the hooligans!" is heard in the land; and there
is a demand for more punishment, instead of a feeling of shame at the
conditions that produce such young people and at the temptations that
prevail amongst them. Can it be right--is it decent or wise?--that boys
and girls of sixteen should be allowed free access to public-houses,
with free liberty to drink at will? What can be expected but ribaldry,
indecency, disorder, and violence? A wise Government would protect these
young people against temptation and against themselves. No improvement
in the morals and conduct of the young is possible until this question
is tackled, and there ought to be no difficulty about tackling it. Let
the Home Secretary bring in a Bill, and pass it, making it illegal for
boys and girls under twenty to drink on licensed premises, and he will
do more good for public order than if he committed the whole of the
young gentry for trial.
But I would put in also a plea for their parents. It is evident that we
must have public-houses; it is also certain that the public have a taste
for, and demand, malt liquors and other alcoholic drinks. Now, the State
reaps many millions of its revenue from this demand. It is therefore the
duty of the State to see that these drinks are as harmless as possible.
Let the State, then, insist upon the absolute purity of malt liquors,
and also upon a reduction in their alcoholic strength; for, after all,
this is the cause of the mischief. In this direction lies the true path
of temperance reform. Supposing the alcoholic strength of malt
liquors--really malt liquors--was fixed by imperial statute at 2½ per
cent. by volume, who would be a penny the worse? The brewer and the
publican would get their profits, the Exchequer would get its pound of
flesh, the Englishman would get his beer--his "glorious beer!" No vested
interests would be attacked, and no disorganization of trade would be
caused; everybody concerned would be the better, for everybody would be
the happier. It may be thought that I am getting wide of my subject, but
even a superficial inquiry will soon lead anyone to the knowledge that
the public-house is intimately connected with, and a direct cause of,
what is termed "hooliganism."
Alcohol, not the house, is really the cause. To leave the house still
popular, while largely taking away its dangerous element, would be a
wise course; but this should be followed by a much higher duty on
spirits and a law fixing the maximum of their alcoholic strength when
offered for public sale. Fifty per cent. under proof for spirits and an
alcoholic strength of 2½ per cent. for malt liquors would usher in the
millennium.
To sum up what I conceive to be the reforms necessary to the abatement
and cure of hooliganism:
1. Fair rents for the poor, and a fair chance of cleanliness and
decency.
2. Municipal playgrounds and organized competitive games.
3. Extension of school-life till sixteen.
4. Prohibition to young people of alcoholic drinks for consumption on
the premises.
5. Limitation by law of the alcoholic strength of malt liquor to 2½ per
cent. and of spirits to 50 per cent. under proof, with higher duty.
Give us reforms on these lines, and there will be no "complaining in our
streets." The poorest of the poor, though lacking riches, will know
something of the wealth of the mind, for chivalry and manhood,
gentleness and true womanhood, will be their characteristics. The
rounded limbs and happy hearts of "glorious childhood" will be no longer
a dream or a fiction. No longer will the bitter cry be raised of "too
old" when the fortieth birthday has passed, for men will be in their
full manhood at sixty. Give us these reforms, and enable the poor to
live in clean and sweet content, then their sons shall be strong in body
and mind to fight our battles, to people our colonies, and to hand down
to future ages a goodly heritage. But there is a content born of
indifference, of apathy, of despair. There is the possibility that the
wretched may become so perfect in their misery that a wish for better
things and aspirations after a higher life may die a death from which
there is no resurrection. From apathetic content may God deliver the
poor! from such possibilities may wise laws protect them!
"Righteousness"--right doing--"exalteth a nation;" and a nation whose
poor are content because they can live in cleanliness, decency, and
virtue, where brave boyhood and sweet girlhood can bud, blossom, and
mature, is a nation that will dwell long in the land, and among whom the
doings of the hooligans will be no longer remembered.