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Christopher Breward
and occupational positions behind the frozen poses, producing a series of looks
differentiated enough to earn subcultural labels. Both Geoffrey Pearson and
Stephen Humphries in their investigations into late Victorian youth and criminality
provide useful examples of hooligans adapting the usual coster uniform of flat cap,
collarless shirt, reefer jacket, and flared trousers to communicate aggressive
intentions and gang membership, creating a mannered appearance that avoided
accusations of unmanly display by sending into higher relief the dandyism of
monkey parade celebrants. Pearson quotes the Daily Graphic of November 1900,
which stated that
the boys affect a kind of uniform. No hat, collar or tie is to be seen. All of them have a
peculiar muffler twisted around the neck, a cap set rakishly forward . . . and trousers set
very tight at the knee and very loose at the foot. The most characteristic part of their
uniform is the substantial leather belt heavily mounted with metal. It is not ornamental,
but then it is not intended to ornament. 55
Similarly, Humphries notes that the Napoo, a turn-of-the-century Manchester gang
“were recognised by the distinctive pink neckerchief they wore and the razor
blades that they displayed in waistcoat pockets or in slits in their cloth caps.” 56
Raphael Samuel’s East End Underworld, an oral history of street life in the slum
district of the Nichol, which straddled Whitechapel, Shoreditch, and South
Hackney, and based on interviews with Arthur Harding, a “retired” petty criminal
active from the years preceding World War I, is richly suggestive of those spatial
and visual networks which informed and supplied local gangs with their influences
and raw materials. Here was a smoky blend of public houses, shop windows, and
music hall that underpinned the wider circulation of the street rough as glamorous
anti-fashion stereotype. Harding remembered that
the high heaven of everything in the Nichol was Church Street where all the shops were.
The whole place was crooked, even those who kept shops . . . The White Horse Pub
stands on one corner and on the other corner was a big men’s and boy’s tailor shop known
as Lynn’s. Turk Street was at the top of Brick Lane . . . there was an old clothes market
on Sundays. The old girl, she had a shop in Turk Street, selling old clothes, next to the
Duke of York . . . On the corner of the next street, Camlet Street, was a wardrobe dealer’s
shop which sold second hand clothing of all kinds . . . You could say that Shoreditch High
Street was our Champs Elysees. It was a prosperous market place with stalls and shops
. . . and pubs and also the London Music Hall which had performances six days a week. 57
Descriptions of the varied dress codes adopted by East End youths prove the
importance of those retail options suggested by Harding. The second-hand markets
of Brick Lane offered the widest range of styles to those whose image was
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