Georgian Rowdies

Present-day concerns about anti-social behaviour go right back to the eighteenth century if not even earlier, to rowdy apprentices causing mayhem. Contemporary historians have left us vivid, lively and often unflattering pictures of life on the streets of late eighteenth-century Liverpool, although it must be remembered that these views belong to the educated middle classes recording their distaste for the behaviour of their social inferiors. One chronicler, in 1795, described large numbers of girls and lower-class citizens entertaining themselves in the evening in the narrow streets, much to the annoyance of peace-loving residents: ‘even the squares are not exempt from this nuisance, where it is common to see boys and girls playing at ball, and other diversions, every Sunday afternoon’. According to Thomas Troughton the latest craze in the 1770s was for lower-class youths to snatch nosegays from the cleavages of ladies out walking. Some unfortunate victims received ‘violent blows on the breast’. Alehouse banter and the Liverpool sport of leg-pulling were very much alive: ‘It was a common practice for witlings in the public houses, to make some irritable individual the object of ridicule, for the amusement of the rest of the company.’ There was also the scandalous practice of impudent young men circulating handbills in which young ladies were offered for sale. Even wealthy youths were expected to get involved in brawls and other outrageous behaviour.