Conclusion

Abstract

In 1930, a columnist writing in The Times ruminated on the challenge of the modern ‘underworld’:

There men and women devote themselves openly to battening upon other people’s sins and vices. They form a separate nation; and the author of ‘Sybil’ never dreamed of so sharp a cleavage between two nations in one country. They live under laws of their own, not the laws of the State; and the first of their laws is the law of force. Few though they are, they seem to have little to fear from the State. They openly defy or deride or suborn it; and now and then, at any rate, the bitterest enemies among these people of the underworld will combine against the authorized powers of the dwellers aboveground.¹