'Naming and Shaming' in late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain

Wandsworth Borough in south London is no place for the owners of pets who foul the footpath. In November 1996 the Tory council introduced a policy of 'naming and shaming' any of its tenants found guilty of anti-social behaviour. The first batch of miscreants to have their crimes publicised included twenty-three such dog-owners, three residents guilty of noise pollution and four families who had been deemed to be 'bad neighbours'. A list of their names and addresses was displayed prominently in council literature and circulated to local newspapers. Margaret Mervis, chair of the housing committee, was happy enough with the decision remarking that 'This is what decent tenants want'. Others were less impressed. One dog-owner threatened the council with legal action, whilst the National Council for Civil Liberties was concerned that the policy infringed on civil liberties and could lead to vigilante attacks.

Notwithstanding the storm of controversy that followed the council's actions, there is little new in the idea of using publicity as a means of punishing criminal or anti-social behaviour. The disciplinary power of the stocks and pillories - medieval devices of punishment that managed to survive into the nineteenth century - relied heavily upon the presence of a hostile crowd willing to subject transgressors to a barrage of stones, rotten vegetables, dung and verbal abuse: shaming the criminal was an essential part of the process. The use of the pillory declined rapidly in the early years of the nineteenth century and it was finally abolished in 1837. A few magistrates continued to sentence drunks and other unfortunates to the sobering experience of a spell in the stocks, but by the mid-1860s this 'shaming machine' had also fallen into disuse. In a Britain that prided itself upon its modernity there seemed little room for such barbaric practices.

Nevertheless, if these particular technologies of shame had been declared obsolete, the principle of exposing wrong-doers to the withering gaze of the public remained in place. 'Publicity' was still seen as a means of both punishing and deterring; a way of regulating behaviour in the great towns and cities of the nineteenth century. Indeed, as sociologist Nikolas Rose has emphasised, all manner of new techniques and technologies were developed to further this end.

In the light of Wandsworth Council's decision to send its list of anti-social tenants to the editor of the Wandsworth Borough News, it is interesting to note that local newspapers began to take on the attributes of a shaming machine during the Victorian period. Two developments facilitated this transformation. Firstly, the local paper came to occupy an increasingly important position within the cultural life of British towns and cities. With the abolition of the 'newspaper tax' in 1855, the removal of the paper duty in 1862, and ever rising rates of literacy, the way was set fair for a massive expansion in the newspaper industry. The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed prodigious increases in both the numbers and the circulation figures of metropolitan and provincial papers.

There were no daily papers outside London in the mid-1840s: by the early 1880s there were almost 140. Weeklies experienced similar rates of growth. As a consequence, by the 1880s and 1890s every town in Britain worth its salt possessed a local paper; most boasted at least two or three. Secondly, this proliferation of papers occurred at a time when there was a decided shift in the content of the local newspaper. Instead of being primarily a vehicle for national and international news (often simply reprints of stories that had first appeared in the London journals), the late-Victorian provincial paper became much more a focus of truly local news. From the 1850s editors became more adept at gathering local information as enthusiastic amateur contributors were joined by a new breed of journalist, the professional local reporter. The obligatory reports of parliamentary affairs and trade news were now surrounded by columns dealing with 'local intelligence' in an in-depth manner. Editors began to write leaders that concentrated upon local political issues as much as national ones, and correspondence columns became a site in which town dwellers could voice their opinions on a diverse range of local matters. Finally, and notably, a column dealing with proceedings in the local police courts became a staple ingredient of all local papers.

A result of this increased concern with 'the local' was that the provincial newspaper was well-placed to become a piece of civilising technology. All urbanites were placed under its watchful eye whether they were holders of local office or the lowliest of public drunks. All were subjected to the possibility of having their misdemeanours brought to the attention of the reading public. As one observer, pondering the 'advantages of a local newspaper', put it in 1885:

The honest Journal has a healthy mission in any locality. Its principles are those of truth, reform, and progress. When occasionally called to the haunts of vice and slander, it brings forth some deeds of darkness to the gaze of society, to shrivel like the grass of cellars in the burning sun.

Publicity was the newspaper's greatest weapon.

The 'gaze of society' regularly fell upon a particular group of townspeople; those summoned to appear at the local police court. Aware of their readers' interest in the darker side of urban life, editors were keen to find space for accounts of the court proceedings. Especial attention was lavished upon any humorous, pathetic or violent interchanges between the accused and the magistrates, and anything out of the ordinary was guaranteed detailed treatment. For example, in 1909 inhabitants of a town in South Wales learned of a case in which a man tattooed his young daughters (one aged two-and-a-half, the other, six) with the intention of exhibiting them at the seaside the following summer. Not only did the reporter include a full description of the tattoos -an eagle's head on the chest of one of the girls, crossed flags, flowers on their upper arms and a butterfly between their shoulder blades - he also provided readers with excerpts of significant dialogue to help them decide upon the culpability of the accused. Hence, they were informed of the father's poor health and state of unemployment, as well as his plea that he was furthering his daughters' prospects: 'I thought it would make a future for them'. More common transgressions were rarely dealt with in such a comprehensive fashion. Public drunkenness was a case in point. The public drunks comprised by far the largest group of those summoned to appear before the magistrates. While some managed to distinguish themselves from their fellow inebriates by engaging in particularly noteworthy antics such as taking their clothes off in the street or assaulting a policeman during their arrest, the majority were both more bashful and more restrained. As a result they usually avoided attracting the full attention of the local reporter. Nevertheless, enough information was included in the reports to cause even the most self-effacing drunk no small degree of embarrassment. Names and addresses were invariably published along with a brief description of their wrong-doings.

Some indication of the effectiveness of this shaming process can be gleaned from an announcement made by the editor of a local paper in the industrial town of Merthyr Tydfil in February 1899. He went to the trouble of explaining to readers that all cases were published, and that his reporters were not open to bribes. This statement was deemed necessary because:

There seems to be a quite settled belief in this district that newspapers have a scale of fees that can be paid by delinquents who dislike the publicity of our police court reports... There is a preposterous notion abroad that Is. is the figure at which a common or garden drunk case can be 'kept out', and the sum rises in proportion to the seriousness of the offence or the quality of the offender's conscience. Times out of number a defendant has gone round to the press box at the Merthyr Police Court and laid a shilling on the desk with the same effrontery that he has planked down the fine, and with a knowing wink to the occupants, as much as to say 'that's all right'... Another class still more modest to approach us openly, send this style of missive to our weary scribes on the morning of the court.
'Dear Sir - i rite to arsk if you will keep out my case today -drunk and disorderly at Troedyrhiw. i am told the fee is a shilling, so enclose twelve stamps'.

If the shaming power of the local newspaper proved too much for some drunks, in 1903 they were confronted with yet another piece of civilising technology, the blacklister's photograph. Individuals repeatedly charged with public drunkenness offences could find themselves labelled 'habitual drunkards' and banned from public houses for a period of three years. In order to effect the ban, a photograph was taken of the offending drunk and circulated to all the local drinking places. A new offence -that of supplying a blacklister with alcohol - was introduced as a means of encouraging publicans to police the system.

Both the blacklister's photograph and the local newspaper had the effect of publicising behaviour considered to be anti-social. The newspaper's potential as a shaming machine was undoubtedly great. Not only was the reading public expanding during the late-Victorian and Edwardian years, it also appears that the columns detailing court proceedings were much read. Indeed, there were instances of people buying newspapers simply because they covered the local trials. It should be noted that not all were impressed by this fascination with the seedier side of life. One editor could not resist berating his crime-loving readers:

We have nothing but the strongest loathing for a thing, calling itself a man, who openly declares that he buys a paper only to read the revolting details of filthy crimes - that he expends his penny only to gloat over women's shame and man's abuse of trusting confidence.

The truly 'civilised' reader was supposed to be shocked by such 'filthy crimes', not titillated.

This highlights one of die limits imposed upon the effectiveness of these particular 'technologies of rule'. Some members of the reading public clearly failed to adopt a suitably judgemental position when digesting the latest local scandals. Far from condemning the accused, they were actually amused by their misbehaviour. Moreover, the attitudes of the transgressors could seriously impair the ability of these shaming machines to work their disciplinary magic. For all those urbanites who had been shamed as a result of unwanted publicity, there were others who enjoyed the notoriety. Blacklisters were particularly immune to the civilising power of the public gaze; often alcoholics, freed from the inhibitions of more sober citizens, they frequently displayed their contempt for any effort on the part of respectable society to reform them. One Nora Booth, making her fifty-sixth court appearance in Merthyr police court, responded in a feisty fashion to the threat that she would be placed on the blacklist. 'That's no good,' she informed the magistrate, 'Blacklisters get drunk more than anybody else, and if you put me on the list, the others will sneak beer out for me.'

After this declaration, Booth and her half-dozen female companions in crime were all sent to prison. As they were taken down the High Street, 'the women danced and shouted so noisily that a crowd collected, and on the way down the... street the prisoners lustily sang "Fall in and Follow me.'" This particular band of anti-socials craved publicity, a point that the councillors in Wandsworth may do well to remember.

• Andy Croll is a temporary lecturer in history at the University of Wales, Cardiff.