This book illuminates the origins and development of violence as a social issue by examining a critical period in the evolution of attitudes towards violence. It explores the meaning of violence through an accessible mixture of detailed empirical research and a broad survey of cutting-edge historical theory.

The author discusses topics such as street fighting, policing, sports, community discipline and domestic violence and shows how the nineteenth century established enduring patterns in views of violence.

Violence and Crime in Nineteenth-Century England will be essential reading for advanced students and researchers of modern British history, social and cultural history and criminology.

Why does violence seem to haunt modern civilization? Can violence speak, and if so, what can it tell us? Where do our attitudes toward violence come from? This book examines these questions by considering a critical period in the evolution of attitudes toward violence. Using the English experience, it explores the meanings of violence through an accessible mixture of detailed empirical research and a broad survey of cutting-edge historical theory. It critically investigates the concept of the civilizing process and asks readers to rethink their own views of violence. Nineteenth-century social upheaval changed attitudes toward class, gender, suffering, public space and state power, leading to new understandings of violence. Adherents of emerging civilized views confronted a customary mentality with different views of violent behaviour. That encounter saw the invention of violence as a social problem that was seen to threaten a nascent culture of refinement. The author critically examines this process, and the customary mentality of violence is given particularly close attention. The complex and dynamic interactions between civilization and custom are revealed through topic