Text-Content
„The Cornhill Magazine stated, in 1863, in terms which could have been transposed, without a single change, to 1972: ‘Once more the streets of London are unsafe by day or night. The public dread has almost become a panic’. The outbreak in London was followed by reports of similar events in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Nottingham, Chester: ‘Credulity became a social obligation’ as ‘the garrotters, lurking in the shadow of the wall, quickening step behind one on the lonely footpath, became something like a national bogey ... Men of coarse appearance but blameless intentions were attacked ... under suspicion of being garrotters.’Anti-garrotting societies flourished. Then the reaction began. More people were hanged in 1863 ‘than in any year since the end of the bloody code’“ (Hall et al., 2013, p. 8);„The Cornhill Magazine stated, in 1863, in terms which could have been transposed, without a single change, to 1972: ‘Once more the streets of London are unsafe by day or night. The public dread has almost become a panic’. The outbreak in London was followed by reports of similar events in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Nottingham, Chester: ‘Credulity became a social obligation’ as ‘the garrotters, lurking in the shadow of the wall, quickening step behind one on the lonely footpath, became something like a national bogey ... Men of coarse appearance but blameless intentions were attacked ... under suspicion of being garrotters.’Anti-garrotting societies flourished. Then the reaction began. More people were hanged in 1863 ‘than in any year since the end of the bloody code’“ (Hall et al., 2013, p. 8)