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Hey Sailor, Looking for Trouble? Violence, Drunkenness and Disorder in a Swedish Port Town: Gothenburg 1920

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Port Towns and Urban Cultures

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Abstract

Nilson’s study focusses on crimes committed by sailors in Gothenburg in 1920. Using Randall Collin’s sociological theory on violence and place, he describes what kind of offences sailors were guilty of, and where they took place. Drunkenness and violence were the most common misdemeanours among seafarers. Nilson divides violence into different categories, where ritual and performative uses were most common. The street and the tavern were the violent “hot spots” where sailors fought each other or the police. The ‘places of conflict’ that Collins sees as a condition for violence coincided with the geographical layout of Gothenburg’s sailortown, meaning that sailor violence was to a great extent caused by certain environmental and cultural milieus.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Gothenburg Police Chamber, Daily Records, Fourth Precinct, 13 September 1920.

  2. 2.

    By sailor I mean persons working on deck and below deck on commercial or naval vessels. In this specific study I have also included officers as they constituted such a small group among those perpetrating crimes. When I discuss sailors in more general terms, not connected to the result of this study, officers are excluded from the sailor category.

  3. 3.

    See Adler, J.S. (2003), ‘On the Border of Snakeland’: Evolutionary Psychology and Plebeian Violence in Industrial Chicago, 1875–1920’, Journal of Social History, 36: 3, 541–560; Adler, J.S. (1997), ‘My Mother-in Law is to Blame, but I’ll Walk her Neck Yet’: Homicide in Late Nineteenth-Century Chicago, Journal of Social History, 26:1, 253–276.

  4. 4.

    Connell, R.W. (1995), Masculinities (London, Polity). But already in the 1950s researchers had claimed that working-class violence was caused by insults not taken lightly; see Wolfgang M.E (1958) Patterns in Criminal Homicide (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania). Later studies point to the confrontational nature of working-class violence—that it was extremely extroverted and therefore spontaneous, unscripted, and driven primarily by rage. This deadly unrestricted violence among working-class men (assaults, stabbings and gun shootings) were all caused by insult. See Adler. (2003), for a thorough discussion of this.

  5. 5.

    See Archer, J.E. (2014), ‘Men Behaving Badly? Masculinity and the uses of violence, 1850–1900’ in S. D’Cruze (ed.), Everyday Violence in Britain 1850–1950, Gender and Class (London: Routledge), p. 99.

  6. 6.

    D’Cruze, S. (2014), ‘Introduction. Unguarded passions: Violence, History and the Everyday life’, in S. D’Cruze (ed.) Everyday Violence in Britain 1850–1950, Gender and Class,(London: Routledge), pp. 25–64. The idea that inner qualities were externally visible originally came from the Italian psychiatrist Cesare Lombroso. He meant that bodily characteristics—either natural physiognomy or marks like tattoos or scars—gave valuable insights to the moral standings of an individual. The upper classes and the authorities embraced such a view, and used it to categorise people into honest or dishonest persons. Sailors fell under the dishonest category. See Nilson, T. (2014) ‘Brottslingens blomma—sjömän, tatueringar och brottslighet’, in Svenska sjömänstatueringar (Stockholm: Medströms Bokförlag), pp. 54–57.

  7. 7.

    Archer, ‘Men Behaving Badly?’, pp. 97–99.

  8. 8.

    Rowbotham, J. (2014), ‘“Only When Drunk”: The Stereotyping of Violence in England, ca. 1850–1900’ in S. D’Cruze (ed.), Everyday Violence in Britain 1850–1950, Gender and Class (London; Routledge), pp. 288–289.

  9. 9.

    Collins, R. (2008), Violence: a Micro-Sociological Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press), p 1–3.

  10. 10.

    See Connell Masculinities, Archer, ‘Men Behaving Badly?’ and D’Cruze ‘Introduction: Unguarded passions’.

  11. 11.

    Collins, Violence: a Micro-Sociological Theory, pp. 337, 342.

  12. 12.

    Collins, Violence: a Micro-Sociological Theory, p. 338.

  13. 13.

    Collins, Violence: a Micro-Sociological Theory, p. 370. In general violence does not often occur. When it does flare up, it is carried out by a small hard-core minority of violent-driven younger males, the so called violent few, who have been exposed to violence through an early socialising process, like as members of street gangs Collins, Violence: a Micro-Sociological Theory, p. 373.

  14. 14.

    Archer, ‘Men Behaving Badly?’, p. 89. Of course violence also took place in domestic settings.

  15. 15.

    Originally, the first and third concepts were formulated by the Dutch historian Pieter Spierenburg as a way of making sense of everyday violence in Amsterdam during the seventeenth century. Spierenburg, P. (1998), ‘Masculinity, Violence and Honor: An Introduction’, in P. Spierenburg (ed.), Men and Violence. Gender; Honor and Rituals in Modern Europe and America (Ohio, Ohio State University Press), p 12–14.

  16. 16.

    For a description of the ‘fair fight’, see Archer, ‘Men Behaving Badly?’, pp. 93–94. Archer points out that no weapons, like knives, were allowed: that was viewed as cowardly and ‘foreign’, p. 95. Archer’s text is important because the empirical material he uses emanates from Liverpool, another port town.

  17. 17.

    Gallant, T.W. (2000), ‘Honor, Masculinity, and Ritual Knife Fighting in Nineteenth-Century Greece’, The American Historical Review, 105: 2, 359–382.

  18. 18.

    Boschi, D. (1998), ‘Homocide and Knife Fighting in Rome, 1845–1914’, in Spierenburg (1998), pp. 128–58.

  19. 19.

    Feldman, A. (1991), Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland (Chicago: University of Chicago). Feldman studies ways the Irish Republican Army turned violence into political protest acts.

  20. 20.

    Collins, R. (1982), Sociological Insight – An Introduction to Non-Obvious Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 109–110. In a stratified society, based on social classes, dominant groups use rituals of punishment (fines, imprisonment, death penalty) to strengthen internal solidarity and cement its hold on other social groups. Crime then becomes an integral part of social structures. Exactly what sort of crimes will be singled out and punished depends on which social group holds political power, pp. 113–115.

  21. 21.

    The Mashuggs quay 1900, the Stigbergs quay 1910, the New Quay 1915 and the Free Port 1922.

  22. 22.

    Fritz, M. (1996), Göteborgs historia – Från handelsstad till industristad 1820–1920, (Stockholm: Nerenius & Santérus), p. 248, 283.

  23. 23.

    Fritz, M. (1996), pp. 249–50.

  24. 24.

    Åberg, M. (1998), Samförståndets tid. Konflikt, samarbete och nätverk i svensk lokalpolitik (Lund: Historiska Media), pp. 70–91.

  25. 25.

    Olsson, K. (1996), Göteborgs historia – Från industristad till tjänstestad 1920–1995 (Stockholm: Nerenius & Santérus), pp. 159–60, 211. Swedish shipping was experiencing periods of great prosperity as well as enduring spells of low profitability during the interwar period. The number of ships in the merchant marine varied accordingly, as did the number of employed sailors.

  26. 26.

    For the number of sailors and dockers in Gothenburg, see Census material for Gothenburg 1900, 1910, 1920. Bidrag till Sveriges officiella statistik. A, Befolkningsstatistik (BiSOS A).

  27. 27.

    See Hallén, P. & Olsson, K. (2007), Majornas historia: krig och oxar, sill och socker (Göteborg: Landsarkivet i Göteborg).

  28. 28.

    Quoted in Bejbom, U. (1995), Mot löftets land. Den svenska emigrationen (Stockholm: LT Förlag), p. 75.

  29. 29.

    The name Iron Square emanates from its former function as the focal point for the Swedish export of iron.

  30. 30.

    Fredberg, C.R.A. (1923, 1977 edn), Det gamla Göteborg. Del I, (Lund: Ekstrand Förlag) p. 707. Fredberg was a local boy, born and raised in Majorna as the son of a sea captain. In 1923 he published his history of Gothenburg in three parts.

  31. 31.

    See Beaven’s chapter in this volume for the representation of British sailor recruits to steam ships.

  32. 32.

    Bergman, K. (1990), Poliser mellan klassförtryck och brottsbekämpning, (Göteborg: Etnologiska föreningen i Västsverige).

  33. 33.

    See Gatrell, V.A.C. (1990), ‘Crime, Authority and the Policeman-state’, in F.M.L. Thompson (ed.) The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

  34. 34.

    Bergman, Poliser, pp 135–37.

  35. 35.

    Lee, R. (2013), ‘The Seafarers’ Urban World: A Critical Review’, in International Journal of Maritime History 25:23. Lee’s point is that the rowdy sailor existed but that he is not the only type. There are plenty of examples of sailors visiting museums, botanical gardens, tea houses, and so forth.

  36. 36.

    See Bergman, Poliser, p. for such a discussion.

  37. 37.

    As I mentioned earlier, in this study officers perpetrating offences are included in the term sailor just because they are such a small group.

  38. 38.

    I have only noticed two incidents that involved weapons: first a sailor threatening a stoker with a knife (Gothenburg Police Chamber, Daily Records, Fourth Precinct, 20 July 1920). The other known incident that saw the use of weapons was when a sea captain fired his gun in the air to scare off an unwanted intruder from his vessel (Gothenburg Police Chamber, Daily Records, Fourth Precinct, 28 November 1920).

  39. 39.

    Gothenburg Police Chamber, Daily Records, Fourth Precinct, 3 December 1920.

  40. 40.

    Gothenburg Police Chamber, Daily Records, Fourth Precinct, 3 May 1920.

  41. 41.

    Gothenburg Police Chamber, Daily Records, Fourth Precinct, 28 August 1920.

  42. 42.

    Gothenburg Police Chamber, Daily Records, Fourth Precinct, 20 August 1920.

  43. 43.

    Gothenburg Police Chamber, Daily Records, Fourth Precinct, 22 December 1920.

  44. 44.

    Gothenburg Police Chamber, Daily Records, Fourth Precinct, 21 September 1920.

  45. 45.

    Gothenburg Police Chamber, Daily Records, Fourth Precinct, 14 January 1920.

  46. 46.

    Gothenburg Police Chamber, Daily Records, Fourth Precinct, 22 February 1920.

  47. 47.

    Gothenburg Police Chamber, Daily Records, Fourth Precinct, 8 May 1920.

  48. 48.

    Gothenburg Police Chamber, Daily Records, Fourth Precinct, 26 June 1920.

  49. 49.

    Gothenburg Police Chamber, Daily Records, Fourth Precinct, 31 August 1920.

  50. 50.

    Gothenburg Police Chamber, Daily Records, Fourth Precinct, 23 May 1920.

  51. 51.

    Der Velden, S. (2012), ‘A Unique Branch of the Working Class? Dutch Seamen 1900–1940’, in R. Gorski and B. Söderqvist (eds.), The Parallel Worlds of the Seafarer: Ashore, Afloat and Abroad, (Gothenburg: Gothenburg Maritime Museum & Aquarium), pp. 119–140.

  52. 52.

    In the police records those get the standardised notice of ‘no known address’.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Gothenburg University, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Tomas Nilson

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  1. Tomas Nilson
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  1. University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

    Brad Beaven

  2. School of Social, Historical and Literar, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

    Karl Bell

  3. School of Social, Historical and Literar, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

    Robert James

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Nilson, T. (2016). Hey Sailor, Looking for Trouble? Violence, Drunkenness and Disorder in a Swedish Port Town: Gothenburg 1920. In: Beaven, B., Bell, K., James, R. (eds) Port Towns and Urban Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48316-4_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48316-4_5

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