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The build-up of tension which exploded on Saturday evening in the heart of Brixton began on Friday afternoon, when a police car patrol spotted a young black wandering along Railton Road with a stab wound in his back.

An ambulance was called and police were bandaging the youth in the car when young blacks attacked it. The injured youth was taken to hospital. A second police car arrived as a crowd of black youths was building up. Bottles were thrown through the police vehicles' windscreens. This incident ended, but the build-up of police patrols in the area continued into Saturday.

One white woman who lives in Spenser Road said that at 6pm Dulwich Road was "filled with police and sirens and vehicles. There were so many I thought they were on some sort of exercise."

Mrs May Dan, a black woman who lives in Railton Road [said], "At 9am on Saturday morning, I thought there must be some trouble because the police were in twos all the way down Railton Road, Atlantic Road and Coldharbour Lane."

At 4.45 a young black was arrested outside a minicab office after a scuffle with a plain clothes police officer. The man was taken off in a van and missiles thrown broke some of its windows. Police reinforcements were called and the battle of Brixton had begun.

5pm: An abandoned police car is on fire, jewellery and clothing stores are broken into and several police officers are hurt by flying bricks.

5.30: Fighting continues in Atlantic Road and spreads. Police get riot shields and form cordons.

6.30: The first petrol bombs are thrown, setting fire to police and private cars.

6.40: Fire brigade unable to get through because their vehicles are stoned. By the end of the night, eight fire engines had been damaged. Thirteen firemen are injured by missiles.

7.40: Youths commandeered a fire engine which they drove.

7.45: A petrol bomb sets fire to the Windsor Castle pub which is destroyed. The George public house is petrol-bombed.

Throughout the night, 14 properties were destroyed or damaged by fire, gas mains were damaged and 22 vehicles were set alight.

Mr Declan Butler, fire brigade Divisional Officer, said, "We've never had this sort of disturbance before."

The director of the Abeng Centre, a West Indian venue, said, "It's been coming a long time, and no one has been paying attention."

Edward, a black youth, said, "We were fighting back."

Lindsay Mackie and Mike Phillips

From The Guardian archive > April 13 1981
How Brixton's tensions flamed up,
G, Republished 13.4.2007, p. 32,
http://digital.guardian.co.uk/guardian/2007/04/13/
pages/ber32.shtml

May 19 1964

Young and foolish by the seaside

From The Guardian archive

May 19 1964

The Guardian

Battles between adolescents, whose only point of difference appeared to be their dress, scared hundreds of holiday-makers at Brighton today while gaining the keen attention of hundreds more. Watching crowds obstructed police efforts to restore order.

Fifty-nine teenagers were arrested for throwing stones, for carrying offensive weapons (including a starting pistol, a leather belt with brass buckle, a cricket bat, a golf club, chains and stones), for obstructing the police, for damaging deck chairs, for using threatening behaviour and for using obscene language. A stone was thrown through the window of a police van, slightly injuring a policeman inside; five girls were taken to hospital after a skirmish.

The magistrates' court sat throughout the day, hearing 35 cases and passing maximum sentences of three months' imprisonment on defendants [aged] from 16 to 21. Several were fined £5 for obstructing the police.

The Mods and Rockers had their main pitched battle in the morning. After sleeping on the beach, the teenagers were being forced eastwards by the police when some hundreds broke away and reached the Aquarium Sun Terrace. Here a fight took place with deck chairs as weapons, until some 20 Rockers jumped clear. They continued to be the targets for litter, and some …litter baskets were thrown from above before the police took control.

In a crowd as dense as that at Brighton control could not be easily maintained, and fights and rowdiness continued sporadically. [But] most of [the teenagers] shared the desire to keep away from physical violence. The only boy who said he regretted that he had not yet been involved in a fight was speaking in front of several girls. The battles … came far short of total war.

The statement, widely believed, that any youth in a leather jacket would be in danger on the Brighton front was nonsense. Many wearing the Rocker outfit went unmolested. But any group of Rockers became a challenge which the Mods could not resist — particularly if there was a crowd nearby to watch.

By evening a corner of the beach, overlooked by the promenade and by the Palace Pier, had become a kind of jousting field. After several fights, the police surrounded the area and moved in force into the crowd on the beach. They thus stopped the fighting but did not remove the tension, nor the feeling that here, as in medieval tournaments, some young people liked to fight publicly for a formal cause, and older people liked to watch them.

The number of teenagers was estimated at between 2,000 and 3,000.

Brian Lapping

From The Guardian archive > May 19 1964 > Young and foolish by the seaside,
G, republished 19.5.2007, p. 38,
http://digital.guardian.co.uk/guardian/2007/05/19/
pages/ber38.shtml

Monday March 3, 1873

From the Guardian archive

They're not all drunk and incapable

Monday March 3, 1873

Guardian

It seems to be an axiom, with "the force" everywhere in England that every person found in the streets in a semi-conscious or wholly insensible condition is "drunk and incapable" in the police-sheet sense.

We have no wish to be hard upon the constable. Speaking generally, he is not, and cannot be expected to be, a man of discriminating mind, and he usually has a good deal of work on hand - work of a kind which, without any fault of character in himself, must tend to develop the cynical faculty.

It is his daily and nightly business to lift the helpless drunkard from the pavement and remove him to a place of safety, where he may sleep off his debauch, and whence he may be conveniently carried before the representative of outraged public decency.

Even a policeman, however, ought to know, or, if he does not know, ought to be taught, that men and women may fall powerless to the ground from other causes than excessive drinking.

Every large town in England has on its records one or more cases in which a perfectly sober person struck down by sudden illness has been carried away to the police station, there entered as drunk, and left in a cell to die without the medical assistance which might have explained and even saved all.

This is a subject on which every family must feel deeply; for it is a notorious and melancholy fact that these sudden collapses, owing to the increasing wear and tear of life, are every year coming less and less rare. These remarks are suggested by the sad fate of a constable whose death has excited much attention in Liverpool.

The man bore a high character for sobriety and steadiness. The other night he was found prostrate in the street, and his comrades, assuming in their usual fashion that he was drunk, removed him to the bridewell, where he was left for hours, as it was thought, to right himself.

It was at length suspected that this was no ordinary case and the poor fellow was taken to one of the infirmaries, where he soon afterwards died. The medical and other evidence at the inquest seems to prove with the greatest clearness that he had not been drinking, and that his death was due to injury to the brain "by a fall or otherwise".

It is doubtful whether the man's life could have been saved if he had properly attended to in the first instance; but the lesson is the same, and may be commended to the attention of every Watch Committee in the kingdom.

They're not all drunk and incapable,
G, 3.3.1873, Republished 3.3.2006,
https://www.theguardian.com/news/1873/mar/03/
mainsection.fromthearchive

On This Day - June 21, 1870

From The Times Archive

Margaret Waters bought
more than 40 unwanted babies
by placing press advertisements.

She planned to sell them to childless couples but,
unable to care for them, she abandoned them
at workhouses or on the streets.

She was found guilty of murder and executed

THE “Baby Farming” case at the Lambeth Police Court is a shocking revelation of another of our social sores. This year will be notorious for the horrors committed but we have heard of nothing so revolting as the story now disclosed. Within the last few weeks several bodies of infants were found in the south of London.

We leave the evidence to speak for itself so far as regards the specific accusation against the prisoners; it would be idle to evade the conclusion that an infamous system has been disclosed of making away with infants whose existence is a shame and a burden to those who have brought them into the world. The systematic adoption of children at 5/. [sic] a head can only be a transparent pretence for putting them out of the way as cheaply and secretly as possible.

The miserable creatures who are charged with this inhuman trade are not the only persons who deserve the reprobation it will evoke. It must also be visited on the parents, who, to relieve their own selfish instincts, deliberately paid for the disappearance of their infants, and on those who by inserting such advertisements abet this traffic in infanticide. No such traffic could be systematically conducted without the aid furnished by newspapers which admit objectionable advertisements into their columns.

From The Times Archives > On This Day - June 21, 1870, Times, 21.6.2005,
http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk/pages/main.asp

On This Day - June 15, 1855

From The Times Archive

A number of men were accused of stealing items, including 300 silk handkerchiefs, on trains travelling between London and Carlisle

THE Preston bench was occupied during a considerable portion of Wednesday in investigating the extensive railway robberies, notices of which have appeared in recent numbers of The Times.

There were six accused persons in custody, viz: John Butler, Joseph Birrell sen, Joseph Birrell jun, William Birrell, Edward Caton and John Parkinson.

Caton, late a brakeman in the employ of the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway Company, is the man who absconded on hearing that the police had searched his house and seized a quantity of goods; he then returned and was found concealed under the stairs.

Parkinson (brother-in-law to the prisoner Butler) was a warehouseman in the employ of a Preston grocer, and when he was apprehended, had in his possession a quantity of jewellery, including a valuable diamond pin, answering the description of one stolen from Dr Jardine, who, having seen an account of the robberies in The Times, wrote to the railway authorities respecting his loss.

The gentleman’s portmanteau had been forced open between London and Carlisle and the diamond pin abstracted.

John Butler, Joseph Birrell sen and William Birrell were charged with stealing 300 silk handkerchiefs. No fewer than 70 were found in the possession of Joseph Birrell sen. Almost a cartload of valuable property, taken from the prisoners, was produced in court. The cases excited great interest, the justice-room being crowded throughout the inquiry.

From The Times Archives > On This Day - June 15, 1855,
The Times, 15.6.2005,
http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk/pages/main.asp

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