The English and Violence since 1750

The garrotters who terrified London in 1862, the Irish Fenians who carried our terrorist bombings in London and the gangs who dominated parts of the East End in the early years of the twentieth century all used violence to achieve their ends. Hard Men is a survey of the changing pattern of violent behaviour, public and private, in England over two hundred and fifty years. People in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were certainly more tolerant of domestic violence and rough communal s...