The new middle class of the mid-nineteenth century were insecure in their status and eager to distinguish themselves from manual workers.They equated the lower classes with filth, disease, and crime, each a form of disorder.The conditions of their neighborhoods were attributed not to their poverty but to their depravity and perversity.Their rowdiness and roughness was a behavioral manifestation of their polluted nature.1 They were talked about in collective stereotypes, as nameless crowds, street gangs, tenement dwellers, and raucous and rioting theater audiences.The middle class identified the public and public space with this class and its disorder.