Stranglehold on Victorian Society
‘Garotting’, or the strangulation of a victim in the course of a robbery, haunted the British public in the 1850s. Emelyne Godfrey describes the measures taken to prevent it and the range of gruesome self-defence devices that were often of greater danger to the wearer than to the assailant.
Walking the streets at night, a Victorian man about town knowingly ran the risk of being subjected to assault and robbery. In the mid-19th century, the public was panicked by the presence of a particular form of violent robbery: 'garotting' (or 'garrotting'), a technique of partial strangulation influenced by Spanish and Indian practices. According to contemporary newspapers, this dastardly crime demanded a gallant and hands-on 'British' response from ordinary citizens.
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