Social Control in Victorian Britain.

This article discusses issues related to social control in Great Britain during the 19th century. There is nothing particularly new about the observation that the social order in Britain was subjected to immense strains by the processes of urbanization and industrialization. It threatened at times to disintegrate into anarchy through the disruption of social ties and institutions, and the emergence of frighteningly large masses of apparently master-less men. In many ways this is a curious view, placing the working classes perpetually on the receiving end of outside forces and influences, and portraying them as so much putty in the hands of a masterful and scheming bourgeoisie, a remote and powerful state, and a set of technological imperatives. The history of the treatment of fairs is interesting in showing that there was a body of respectable, mainly middle-class, opinion expressing strong disapproval and pressing for suppression, which persisted from the eighteenth century at least until the 1880s, and which may be construed as seeking to impose a social control on one of the pleasures of the masses under the pretext of cleaning up petty crime and rather trivial disorders.