ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the lived experiences of both individual men and male collectives, and how power could be wielded, manipulated and expressed in the city. It will be particularly attentive to the importance of the former, developing an integrated analysis of social and cultural histories of masculinity. As John Tosh has observed, by the mid-nineteenth century civic men argued that the ever-growing industrialised city presented dangers from which women were to be shielded within the domestic domain. The chapter explores how such ideologies were projected or reflected through the practice of the police courts, analysing which men and women could be victims of violence or were perceived to be its perpetrators. It argues that conceptualisations of those who were considered victims shaped the practices of the police courts in prosecuting violent behaviours. The chapter examines an additional discourse about legal, social and cultural meanings of violence which occurred through the media.
