London garrotting panics
They laid the blame at the recent cessation of transportation to Australia as a punishment for offenders and the subsequent adoption of the ticket of leave system of release on licence.
The panic saw some Londoners wearing anti-garrotting clothing such as studded leather collars and cravats with razor blades sewn in, a move which was parodied by Punch.
It came to refer to a particular type of street robbery in which the victim was strangled with a cord or by the attacker's arm to incapacitate them, often whilst an accomplice relieved them of their valuables.
[1] The press reports laid the blame at a supposedly "soft" penal system and for the increasing numbers of prisoners released on parole under the ticket of leave scheme.
This had been caused by the cessation, in most cases, of transportation to Australia as a punishment and its replacement with penal servitude (imprisonment with hard labour), of a minimum sentence of three years.
[6] Newspapers reported that violent crime, previously considered a problem only in working class areas of the city, was spreading to middle-class neighbourhoods.
[3][5] The increased publicity for garrotting crimes led to judges and magistrates imposing harsher sentences on those convicted for violent robbery offences.
[5] Under the Penal Servitude Act 1857 criminals would continue to be released on a ticket of leave by prisons at the earliest opportunity though the minimum sentence for offences previously punished by transportation was increased from four years to seven.
[8] Crime had continued to fall through the 1850s, though the police figures for Middlesex (which included much of London north of the Thames) show a slight increase in robberies in the early part of 1862.
[10] The Daily News described London as "a lair of footpads and assassins by night" while the Quarterly Review claimed that "the streets of the metropolis are not safe even in the daytime".
[8][11] The increase might be attributed to greater reporting of robbery following the publicity of the Pilkington case or to the concentration of police resources in this area as a result of the panic.
[8][11] The Middlesex quarter sessions saw an unprecedented 27 garrotters tried, which Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Richard Mayne claimed were almost all of the violent street robbers in London.
It continued to blame the legal system, claiming that "the whole of this great and most expensive judicial hierarchy seems to be established solely to catch thieves and let them go again"; the home secretary (Grey) and prison chaplains were singled out for particular criticism.
[9] Newspaper coverage of the panic declined significantly in December as it was displaced by other stories, including the replacement of Otto of Greece, the capture of Giuseppe Garibaldi in Italy, the Lancashire Cotton Famine and developments in the ongoing American Civil War.
[9] Some Londoners took measures towards self-defence including the purchase of personal weapons and the adoption of bizarre anti-garrotting devices such as spiked collars and cravats with razor blades sewn into them.
[13][7][2] These were lampooned by cartoons in Punch which included clothing with oversized spikes and overcoats with umbrella-like tails to prevent garrotters approaching the wearer.
[14] Hard labour was defined as time spent on the penal treadmill, crank machine, capstan or on shot drill (passing cannonballs along a line); deliberately monotonous and pointless work.
[13] The move towards self-defence measures marks the last major attempt by the citizenry to take the lead in self-protection, reversing the general trend at the time to allow the police to adopt this role.
