Curing hooliganism: Moral panic, juvenile delinquency, and the political culture of moral reform in Britain, 1898--1908

The purpose and central question of my dissertation is to explain how the moral panic surrounding "hooliganism" affected social and political change in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My dissertation is an attempt to explain how and why movements, such as the Salvation Army, became increasingly interested in the manifestation and regulation of "deviant" behavior among working class juveniles in the wake of the "Hooligan craze," and how these movements came to have an impact on state policy. Beginning with the media outcry that surrounded a minor uptick in juvenile criminal activity in South London in the summer of 1898, and culminating with the creation of the juvenile court system with the Children's Act of 1908, my dissertation explores how violent juvenile crime was cast by the popular print media as a distinct threat to British civility, cultural and racial integrity, and the power of the state and local authorities to regulate public behavior. My research explores how the moral panic over hooliganism functioned as a crucial catalyst for moral reform movements, who used their considerable leverage in the civic arena to force change in the education, reform, and treatment of juvenile offenders, culminating in the 1908 Children's Act.