The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-07-18
THE TOUCHS OF LONDON
Many Gangs That Came Before
the Police.
MAGISTRATES HARDLYFAIR
Some Striking Rowdies to Be Found in
Various Well-Kuown Parts
OF the Big Me-
tropolis

for a condition Of affairs which has
been brought about partly by the lax
ity of British law in one particular re-
spect, and largely by the long neglect
which educating and civilizing Eng
land has bestowed upon her own sons
and daughters. In America we know
perfectly well what the corner loafer"
and the tough gang" mean. In Lon
don they are just beginning to find
Sydney, especially, the 'larrikin' is as
much an institution as is our tough
hobo" and the gangs" that are known
either by the name of their leader, the
locality they most frequent or the pecu-
liar devilment for which they are ia
nous. But the gang" is only a new
institution in the ''metrolopus," as Mrs.
Malaprop would have called Thacke-
rays mighty village" And the gang
appears to be having its own sweet way
in London at the present moment, just
as 1t used to have in the good old
days in Philadelphia and New York.
And what is worse, the London police
and the London magistrates do not
know, apparently, how to handle them,
and one magistrate, sitting in the
Southwark police court, actually had
liC tciicllty d lew udSS dSO 10 utCldIe
that the gang system is an importa-
ton from the United States!"
There are probably good many
gangs" in London which have not yet
come prominently before the public-in
the police courts: but there are three
such bands of ruffians whose doings
during the past month have stirred
public Indignation to such pitch that
the police have been obliged to take
summary action, and the magistrates
of Islington, Southwark, Lambeth,
Chelsea and Marylebone have had their
hands full dealing out justice.
The districts just named are not the
most savory in reputation in London by
any means, for besides being among the
oldest of the many villages which have
been swallowed in the Unsuitable NAV
of the giant metropolis, they are full
of thickly populated slums, whose in
habitants are mostly of what may be
called the semi-criminal class. That is
to say, perpetrators of petty thefts, as
saults with violence, owing chiefly to
drink; drunkenness and kindred vici-
BUSINESS. The neighborhoods are them
selves so closely built up, the forward
march which improves these places off
the face of the earth not yet having
set in, that the opportunities for at
least temporary escape from arrest are
many and inviting.
When the districts of the Minories,
the Seven Dials, Drury Lane and
Clerkenwell, all lying closely contigu-
GUS to the main thoroughfares and
business centers of London, were wiped
out by the approach of such avenues
as the Tower Bridge road Shaftes-
bury avenue, Charing Cross road and
Theobald's road their denizens had
perforce to migrate and find for them
selves homes, or holes, further afield.
tnx
the newly built UP districts of Wands-
worth and Battersea, on the south side
of the Thames. But a great many,
actuated doubtless by the spirit which
causes the foreign immigrant to the
United States to remain in the eastern
seaboard cities instead of going West
and growing up with the country"
namely, the discovery or kindred and
kindred natures, a great many of these
exiles from the central slums merely
stepped into the next circle beyond,
where they found rookeries and dens
like those they had been for generations
accustomed to and jewellers in such
places of congenial dispositions VINO
welcomed them.
Thus the purlieus of Edgeware road,
Marylebone, Canningtown, Brondes-
bury, lslington, Highgate, Highbury, in
the north, and Southwark, Newington
CauseWay, kensington Lambeth on the
south, always noted for a certain rough
ness in the character of their inhabi
tants, have of late years become con-
gested with the outpouringsof the CEN
trail slums. They have taken unto
themselves seventy times seven devils,
all worse than their original devil, and
the last state of those districts is worse
than the first.
1t is not the "Arries" and "Arriets
of the costermonger and small trades
man class who form tine tough element
of London Their outbursts are Of a
periodical bank 'oliday'" nature, and
are due more to an exuberance of ami
NAL spirits than a criminal desire to
interfere with the rights or privileges
of others. They have to work far too
hard for their own living to wish to
detract from the pleasures and delights
of their occasional bursts of rough
and-tumble gaiety by coming into con-
tact with the law. For the most part
they are a law-abiding and by no means
unintelligent, though uneducated,
crowd. The tough element would be
tough, no matter where it dwelt or
what it's surroundings. But it natural
ly chooses the darkness, both for its
practices and for its abode. And it as
of this class that the "Hooligan gang"
the "Girdle gang and the Wyatt
gang" are composed. From the former
new and euphonious word, ''Holigan-
ISM" has been introduced into the Eng
lish language.
The methods of these gangs do not
greatly differ from those of the Ameri-
can gangs nor from the gangs of 'yoy-
Gus" of Paris. Their first object is
money to spend in drink and to gamble
with. In order to obtain it they prefer
ITO Waylay woman, Weakly-loOking
man or a small child who has been sent
sent to the neighboring store by it's
mother. But in any event, where their
numbers do not at once inspire fear
and cause the immediate delivery of
the requested funds, they do not hes.-
tate to resort to the cruelest and most
brutal violence, and in the case of
women, they WILL when possible, in
clude the vilest and most bestial as
saults.
Until quite recently the appearance
of a policeman upon the scene was al
ways sufficient to disperse a mob OF
| these "Hooligans," but during the last
year they have become outrageous and
| desperate. On at least two occasions
| policemen have been kicked to death
and respectable citizens who have en-