Wars among savages: Homicide and ethnicity in the Victorian United Kingdom

Journal of British Studies

Volumn 44, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 775-795

  Conley, Carolyn A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33845257055     PISSN: 00219371     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/431941     Document Type: Article

References (76)

1. Most of the work on the making of the British national identity focuses on earlier periods than the one covered here. The leading work is Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven, CT, 1992)
2. The Times, 11 December 1877, 9e
3. Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (London, 1864-65), chap. 11
4. quoted in Gordon B. Haight, ed., The Portable Victorian Reader (New York, 1976), 147
5. Regarding English identity in the late nineteenth century, see Robert Colls and Philip Dodd, eds., Englishness: Politics and Culture, 1880-1920 (London, 1986)
6. The Times, 20 December 1876, 10d
7. J. Carter Wood, Violence and Crime in Nineteenth-Century England: The Shadow of Our Refinement (London, 2004)
8. John Archer, "'Men Behaving Badly'? Masculinity and the Uses of Violence, 1850-1900," in Everyday Violence in Britain, 1850-1950, ed. Shani D'Cruze (London, 2000), 41-54
9. Carolyn Conley, The Unwritten Law: Criminal Justice in Victorian Kent (New York, 1991), chap. 2
10. On this point in another context, see Martin Weiner, "The Sad Story of George Hall: Adultery, Murder and the Politics of Mercy in Mid-Victorian England," Social History 24: (May 1999): 173-95
11. and Catherine Hall, "The Nation Within and Without," in Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the Reform Act of 1867, ed. Catherine Hall, Keith McClelland, and Jane Rendall (Cambridge, 2000)
12. The Times, 21 December 1872, 9e-f
13. Quoted in The Times, 11 August 1874, 4f
14. On the idea of the working classes as aliens, also see Philip Dodd, "Englishness and the National Culture," in Colls and Dodd, Englishness, 8-11
15. The Times, 4 October 1888, 10d
16. The Times, 17 August 1867, 11a
17. The Times, 14 January 1875, 7c
18. Kilkenny Journal, 12 March 1879
19. Herald of Wales, 6 February 1892
20. The Times, 17 November 1879, 11f
21. The Times, 22 August 1882, 7b-c
22. The Times, 21 March 1887, 6e
23. See Roger Swift and Sheridan Gilley, eds., The Irish in the Victorian City (London, 1985), The Irish in Britain, 1815-1939 (Savage, MD, 1989)
24. Donald M. MacRaild, Irish Migrants in Modern Britain, 1750-1922 (New York, 1999)
25. Lynn Hollen Lees, Exiles of Erin: Irish Migrants in Victorian London (Ithaca, NY, 1979)
26. Frances Finnegan, Poverty and Prejudice: A Study of Irish Immigrants in York, 1840-1875 (Cork, 1982)
27. The Times, 6 February 1873, 11c
28. The Times, 3 March 1870, 11c
29. The Times, 16 January 1869, 11f
30. Regarding Irish immigrants and their relationships with law enforcement in the mid-Victorian period, see Roger Swift, '"Another Stafford-Street Row': Law, Order and the Irish in Mid-Victorian Wolverhampton," in Swift and Gilley, Irish in the Victorian City, 181-206
31. and "Crime and the Irish in Nineteenth-Century Britain," in Swift and Gilley, Irish in Britain, 163-82
32. The Times, 6 May 6 1868, 14f
33. On Scottish national identity, see T. M. Devine, The Scottish Nation (New York, 1999)
34. Michael Lynch, Scotland, a New History (London, 1991)
35. Ian Donnachie and Christopher Whatley, The Manufacture of Scottish History (Edinburgh, 1992)
36. Christopher Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism: Scottish Society and Politics, 1707 to the Present, 3rd ed. (New York, 1998)
37. The Times, 3 January 1889, 13a
38. The Times, 24 May 1871, 12c
39. Regarding British, English, and Welsh identities and their interworkings, see John S. Ellis, "Reconciling the Celt: British National Identity, Empire, and the 1911 Investiture of the Prince of Wales," Journal of British Studies 37 (October 1998): 391-418
40. Camarthen Weekly Reporter, 31 August 1877
41. The Times, 18 October 1870, 5d, and 20 July 1871, 10f
42. The Times, 29 July 1878, 4c
43. For example, see the London Standard, 29 December 1869
44. On this point also see L. P. Curtis, Anglo-Saxons and Celts: A Study of Anti-Irish Prejudice in Victorian England (Bridgeport, CT, 1968), 53
45. Carolyn A. Conley, The Unwritten Law: Criminal Justice in Victorian Kent (New York, 1991), 161
46. On faction fights, see Patrick O' Donnell, The Irish Faction Fighters of the Nineteenth Century (Dublin, 1965)
47. and Carolyn Conley, Melancholy Accidents: The Meaning of Violence in Post-famine Ireland (New York, 1999), 20-24
48. On the general decline in homicides, see V. A. C. Gatrell, "The Decline of Theft and Violence in Victorian and Edwardian England," in Crime and the Law: The Social History of Crime in Western Europe since 1500, ed. V. A. C. Gatrell, Bruce Lenman, and Geoffrey Parker (London, 1980)
49. and more recently, Weiner, Men of Blood. On the reduction in ethnic violence see Swift, "Crime and the Irish."
50. In his study of youth gangs in Manchester in the late nineteenth century, Andrew Davies noted that ethnic rivalries were not part of gang definitions. Andrew Davies, "Youth Gangs, Masculinity and Violence in Late Victorian Manchester and Salford," Journal of Social History 32, no. 2 (Winter 1998): 352
51. Pieter Spieren burg has suggested that studies of collective fights in America have focused on ethnicity rather than honor. Pieter Spierenburg, ed., Men and Violence: Gender, Honor; and Rituals in Modern Europe and America, (Columbus, OH, 1998), 99
52. The distinction may be overstated, as honor and ethnic bonds would seem to be closely linked. Regarding multidimensional violence, see Kimberle Crenshaw, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color," Stanford Law Review 43 (July 1991): 1241-99
53. Swift, "Stafford Street Row," 199
54. Scotsman, 2 January 1868
55. Scotsman, 21 February 1877
56. See Bernard Aspinwall and John McCaffrey, "A Comparative View of the Irish in Edinburgh," in Swift and Gilley, Irish in the Victorian City, 130-57
57. Thomas Smout, A Century of the Scottish People, 1830-1950 (New Haven, CT, 1986), 91
58. Glasgow Herald, 17 September 1875
59. Glasgow Herald, 11 January 1870
60. For more on the treatment of Irish offenders in Scotland, see Carolyn Conley, "Homicide in Late-Victorian Ireland and Scotland," New Hibernia Review 5, no. 3 (Autumn 2001): 66-86
61. Scotsman, 9 January 1869
62. Scotsman, 27 November 1882
63. Carmarthen Weekly Reporter, November 18, 1871
64. Carmarthen Weekly Reporter, 4 December 1869
65. Carmarthen Journal, 12 March 1875
66. Carmarthen Weekly Reporter, 29 January 1870
67. North Wales Chronicle, 10 December 1881
68. Carmarthen Weekly Reporter, 25 August 1876
69. Llanelly Guardian, 19 July 1877
70. Carmarthen Weekly Reporter, 4 September 1869
71. Cardiff Times, 27 July 1872
72. The Tunes, 9 September 1874, 8c
73. also see Colls and Dodd, Englishness, 3-19
74. For a discussion of ethnicity, race, and character i a slightly earlier time period, see Hall, McClelland, and Rendall, Defining the Victorian Nation
75. Scotsman, 28 June 1870
76. North Wales Guardian, 13 November 1880