Victorian Respectability, ‘Anti-social Behaviour’ and the Music Hall, 1880–1900

Abstract

‘Anti-social behaviour’ is often a label used for social regulation (Brown, 2004). Among other things, it participates in the construction of a ‘denigrated Other’, whom we can reject, but its specific content is determined by the society and the political forces which invented the term. There is no shortage of concepts which have been used to define who is valuable and who is less valuable in human society: chivalry, decorum, godliness, good taste and anti-social behaviour have all played this role in different periods and different social milieux. In nineteenth-century Britain, respectability was no doubt the most powerful of these ideas. But what did it mean for the Victorians?