The Theatre of the Street: Public Violence in Antwerp During the First Half of the Twentieth Century [1 ed.] 9789004416932, 9789004416925

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The Theatre of the Street

Crime and City in History Series Editors Manon van der Heijden (Leiden University) Margo de Koster (VU University Amsterdam/​Free University of Brussels)

VOLUME 2

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/​cch

The Theatre of the Street Public Violence in Antwerp during the First Half of the Twentieth Century

By

Antoon Vrints

Translated by

Michael Lomax

LEIDEN | BOSTON

This is a translation of Het theater van de straat (AUP, 2011). Translation by Michael Lomax. Cover illustration: ‘Eugeen Van Mieghem, Scandal in the street’, ca. 1896 (Collection Erwin Joos). The Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data is available online at http://​catalog.loc.gov LC record available at http://​lccn.loc.gov/2019954231​

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/​brill-​typeface. issn 2468-​2 268 isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 1692-​5 (hardback) isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 1693-​2 (e-​book) Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-​free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents List of Figure and Tables vii List of Abbreviations x

1



Introduction 1 1 A Controversial Issue 1 2 Violence as a Significant Social Phenomenon 5 3 The Empirical Basis 19 4 Structure of This Book 41 Life on a Stage 43 1.1 Introduction 43 1.2 A Public Existence 45 1.3 Openness, Reputation and Reciprocity 52 1.4 Honour Fights 68 1.5 Between Self-​Regulation and Disciplination by an Outside Agency 84 1.6 Revenge, Social Standing and Violence 103 1.7 Violence as a Means of Social Control? 115 1.8 Domestic Squabbles and Respectability 122 1.9 Sexual Violence, Shame and Discretion 131 1.10 Conclusion 143

2 The Rules of the Game 145 2.1 Ritual Interaction 145 2.2 The Power of Language 150 2.3 Expressive Body Language 156 2.4 Violation and Defilement 163 2.5 Territorial Strategies 172 2.6 The Rules of the Duel 200 2.7 Conclusion 219 3 Men’s and Women’s Roles 221 3 .1 Introduction 221 3 .2 Men and Women in Battle 223 3 .3 Men’s and Women’s Language 237 3 .4 Men’s and Women’s Places? 249 3 .5 Conclusion 257

vi Contents 4 Repertoires of Respectability 259 4 .1 Introduction 259 4 .2 Group-​Specific Behavioural Patterns 260 4 .3 Shifts over Time? 265 4 .4 Possible Explanations for Behavioural Shifts 275 4 .5 Conclusion 286 5 Values behind Words 288 5.1 Insults, Values and Identification 288 5.2 The Sexual Reputation of Men and Women 294 5.3 Purity and Respectability 327 5.4 The Established and the Outsiders 337 5.5 About “coward”, “thief” and Other Insults 343 5.6 Conclusion: Substantive Stability? 361



General Conclusion 367 1 Public Violence and Social Ties: a Theatre with a Message and an Audience 368 2 Public Violence and Social Stratification: Theatre of the Common People 370 3 Public Violence and Social Meaning: Honour and Shame at Stake 371 4 Epilogue: Public Violence, from Theatre to Misunderstood Spectacle 373 Sources and Bibliography 377 Subjects 402 Modern Authors 403

Figure and Tables Figure 1

Police districts Antwerpen 2, 5 and 7 (main office) 28

Tables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Number of selected police reports per year 29 Number of selected police reports by district 30 Percentage of complaints and accounts per sample year 30 Percentage of complaints and accounts (A and B) per sample year 31 Percentual distribution of locations of registered violence 47 Mutual relationship of actors involved in violence for all sample years together in absolute and relative terms 53 Percentage distribution of male accused persons (globally and by relational category) by occupational category 58 Percentage distribution of female accused persons (globally and by relational category) by occupational category 59 Average number of residents per house at district level in 1912 61 Percentual distribution of the location of the recorded violence by relational category 82 Percentage distribution of male complainants by occupational category (globally and classified by relational category) 86 Percentage distribution of female complainants by occupational category (globally and classified by relational category) 87 Withdrawn complaints as share of total number of complaints per sample year 91 Percentage distribution of injuries per part of the body by sex 166 Percentage distribution of the accused by sex and by relational category 226 Complaints classified according to the sex of the actors involved in violence 227 Percentage distribution of the complainants by sex and by relational category 228 Accounts classified according to the sex of the actors involved in violence 232 Complaints and accounts classified according to the sex of the actors involved in violence 234

viii  20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Figure and Tables Complaints and accounts classified according to the sex of the actors involved in violence, excluding partner violence 234 Cases of gossip forming the basis for a recorded violent conflict, classified by the sex of the speaker and the recipient 240 Insults, cited in the corpus registered violent conflicts, in absolute numbers per year, classified according to the gender of giver and receiver 241 Percentage distribution of the inter-​female conflicts by location 250 Percentage distribution of the inter-​male conflicts by location 251 Ratio per 1,000 residents of the number of persons over 21 years arrested by the City Police for crimes and offences of an aggressive nature in 1950, 1951 and 1952 by district 263 Percentage distribution of locations of registered violence 264 Mutual relationship of actors involved in violence per sample year in absolute and relative terms 266 The locations of registered violence per sample year in absolute and relative terms 266 Violent conflicts according to the sex of the actors per sample year in absolute and relative terms 267 Percentage distribution of male complainants per professional category per sample year 271 Percentage distribution of female complainants per professional category per sample year 271 Percentage distribution of male complainees per professional category per sample year 272 Percentage distribution of female complainees per professional category per sample year 272 Location of family violence per sample year in absolute and relative terms 274 Average number of residents per house at district level in 1949 283 Percentage distribution of recorded insults (total) by thematic category 295 Percentage distribution of recorded insults (towards men by both sexes) by thematic category 296 Percentage distribution of recorded insults (towards women by both sexes) by thematic category 297 Percentage distribution of recorded insults (total) by thematic category per sample year 359 Percentage distribution of recorded insults (towards men) by thematic category per sample year 360 Percentage distribution of recorded insults (towards women) by thematic category per sample year 361

Figure and Tables 42 43 44 45

ix

Percentage distribution of recorded insults (towards men by men) by thematic category per sample year 362 Percentage distribution of recorded insults (towards men by women) by thematic category per sample year 363 Percentage distribution of recorded insults (towards women by men) by thematic category per sample year 364 Percentage distribution of recorded insults (towards women by women) by thematic category per sample year 365

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Abbreviations MA saa

Modern Archief Stadsarchief Antwerpen

Introduction 1

A Controversial Issue

Violence troubles us. Violence disturbs us. Violence gets people moving. In reaction to violent incidents, silent marches regularly pass through the streets of Belgian cities. Many times, thousands of people participate in these protest marches against violence. The large number of participants in them indicates that it is not just the immediate social environment of the victim of violence that comes out onto the street to air its understandable feelings of mourning, sorrow and anger. In essence, aversion to violence engages people so strongly as to mobilize also those who have nothing whatsoever to do with the victim. This points to a particularly large degree of discomfort towards violence across broad sections of the population. The great attraction exerted by these marches can be explained only by their appealing to a deeper malaise. Their success is not accidental. Rather, it fits into a wider social discomfort towards violence that has grown strongly over the past two decades. The malaise at violence and the associated collective actions are by no means specific Belgian phenomena, but are part of a much wider Western European pattern. It may be no exaggeration to state that violence affects minds and spirits in contemporary Western European societies more strongly than ever before. The concern about violence not only produces collective action, but is also expressed in a powerful discourse that clearly dominates the political and social debate in this area. This discourse has various facets. To start with, the public at large usually qualifies violence as “senseless” or “blind”. In other words, violence is equated with completely arbitrary acts or with uncontrolled, impulsive, irrational forms of aggression. Notwithstanding all the rhetoric of “civilization” and “control”, mankind appears to be intrinsically aggressive, ready to be carried away by “animalistic” passion at the smallest incitation. Alternatively, to use a widely used image: when for one reason or another the fragile layer of varnish called “civilization” is stripped away, humans savagely assault their fellow human beings. The stubborn tendency of using terms derived from nature like “bursts”, “spirals” and “explosions” to qualify this violence fits into the same picture. The violence that expresses itself in these cases can logically only be “blind”. The now widely accepted term “senseless violence” expresses, in the first place, moral misunderstanding and disapproval towards acts viewed as reprehensible. This concept, originally meant to qualify disproportionate violence, violence with apparently little to no rationale, was soon extended to almost any form of violence. The moral charge of the term “senseless

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004416932_002

2 Introduction violence” proved so powerful that it eventually became a pleonasm. Is violence not by definition senseless? Is there such a thing as “meaningful” violence? Such discourse represents first of all the absolute nature of moral intolerance against violence. The discourse about “senseless violence” is not only moralistic but also pronouncedly nostalgic. In the collective imagination, the violent present is often contrasted with a more peaceful recent past. Alarmed cries about increasing aggressiveness in society do not come from nowhere. In the past, life was safer, is the general feeling, and things are continuing in the wrong direction. Commonly used terms such as “brutalization” give the message clearly. Strikingly, certain forms of violence generate much more discomfort than others. In the dominant discourse, violence in the public space especially, whether on the street, during nightlife or on the bus, is perceived as much more problematic and threatening than violence perpetrated in the private sphere between relatives and partners. The feeling of insecurity does not drive people outdoors, but rather keeps them shut in behind closed doors and shutters. Today, the danger of violence is seen not only in the public sphere, but also expressly in an urban environment. In particular, a large portion of the population strongly associates public violence with impoverished urban areas such as the Antwerp Seefhoek or Molenbeek (Brussels). These are said to have grown into no-​go areas for outsiders like the police and respectable citizens. Thus, the alleged “brutalization” of society is supposedly felt especially in the urban public space. For many, the explanation is clear. Processes of social (and thus moral) disintegration have reached an advanced stage in the city. The interaction of diverse, mutually reinforcing processes such as scale enlargement, individualization, privatization and increased mobility have, it is said, led to a dismantling of informal social networks, of local community life. The close-​ knit neighbourhoods of the old days have been exchanged for anonymous neighbourhoods, with all the ensuing negative consequences. In the discourse about “senseless violence”, the connection between the supposed weakness of informal social networks in contemporary cities and the occurrence of violence in the public sphere is undisputed. In the absence of strong social control, external inhibition of the use of violence has been largely lost, with the law of the strongest prevailing on the streets. The loss of community life is said to have led to a situation in which people no longer know what to hold on to and therefore let fly at each other. The remedy for the alleged increase of “senseless violence” in the urban public space is therefore quickly found: the “restoration” of local social networks with a view to strengthening informal social control. All kinds of policy initiatives, ranging from subsidizing street barbecues to organizing a neighbourhood watch, are ultimately aimed at this.

Introduction

3

Thus, the dominant discourse about violence has three components. Out of moral indignation, violence is first declared “senseless”. This is accompanied by the nostalgic feeling that society has become more violent than in the recent past. Finally, in the absence of informal social control, this is seen as the result of the dismantling of neighbourhood life, in particular in the urban, public sphere. However much sympathy one can muster for the moral indignation that speaks of “senseless violence”, it does not lead, however, to a better understanding of violence. By reducing violence to “senseless” expressions of aggression, indignation also leads to blindness. The fact of viewing violence as “beastly” and hence outside the domain of human culture, disqualifies it as a socially meaningful practice. If violence is reduced to bursts of aggressive impulses, it is not a valid object of social scientific study and analysis. The recognition of violence as a social phenomenon is, however, precisely a precondition for a proper and thorough analysis of violence. Violence cannot be studied detached from the society in which it takes place. It cannot be reduced to the way people manage their impulses. A proper understanding of violence requires us to study its social functions and cultural meanings within a particular social context. This means swapping our moralistic spectacles for analytical ones. It is precisely the growing social malaise on the subject of violence that makes sober research urgently needed. The moral tension and intensity of the public debate should not be an excuse for the scholar to avoid the subject, rather the contrary. In view of the pronouncedly nostalgic tone of the dominant discourse, historians have a particular role to play here. By bringing the time dimension into the debate, they can test a number of assumptions from contemporary social discourse against historical reality. The subject of this study is precisely the form of violence that causes the most commotion in the current public debate:  public violence in an urban context. However, this choice of subject is not guided solely by the public commotion of recent years; it also connects in with the current state of scientific research. This book lies at the intersection of three research fields that have attracted considerable attention in the last decade, namely the study of i) violence, ii) social control and iii) informal social networks. Historians, sociologists and anthropologists have discussed with great zeal the diverse and evolving functions, appearances and significances of these phenomena and the interplay between them. In so doing, they have spotlighted the differing contexts, and certainly have not dodged the question of the role of the urban factor. Strikingly, in all these fields, studies about the Middle Ages, the early modern period, and to a lesser extent, the nineteenth century, are many times more numerous than studies about the twentieth century. For each of the three themes, empirically substantiated research about the twentieth century is

4 Introduction relatively scarce. The inaccessibility of twentieth-​century sources is undoubtedly largely responsible for this gap in research. As a result, for the twentieth century general pronouncements are made on the topics concerned without sufficient empirical substantiation. The starting point, in many cases, is a distinctive modernization perspective. The message taken from this research is that processes that gradually defined themselves in earlier centuries were (almost) complete in the twentieth century. The state has at last almost completely monopolized the legitimate use of violence. Partly as a result of this, it is suggested, the formalization of social control has reached an advanced stage. The expansion of a state repression apparatus (mainly police and the courts) has greatly weakened the role of informal social control through associations, church communities and neighbourhood networks. Self-​regulation has given way to regulation from above. This has fundamentally limited the autonomy of neighbourhood networks. A contributing factor to the far-​reaching disintegration of such informal networks has been the progress of the privatization process. As a consequence, by the twentieth century, large sections of the population have withdrawn from neighbourhood life out of a concern for social respectability. This presumed end of neighbourhood life is held responsible by many for the alleged increase in violence. Whether all this is wholly or partly true is another matter. Only the study of twentieth century cases where the existing thinking is confronted with original research, based on solid sources, can bring clarification here. This is what this book attempts to do. In concrete terms, the spotlight falls on the city of Antwerp in the first half of the twentieth century. Central to the statement of the problem is the question of the functions and meanings of violence as a social phenomenon in the urban public sphere. A  number of hot potatoes are discussed here. Is there indeed a connection between violence in the urban public space and processes of social disintegration, especially the dismantling of neighbourhood life? Can the connection frequently put forward between anonymity of life in the city, the lack of informal social control and the appearance of public violence be substantiated? In other words, is public violence a crisis phenomenon or is this already too reductionist? Or is the often assumed basic assumption that informal social networks have largely disintegrated in twentieth-​century cities perhaps over-​exaggerated? In other words, if this is not a crisis phenomenon, what then are the functions of public violence within informal social networks in the city? Does this public violence fit into strategies of informal conflict regulation as it did in early modern cities? If such regulatory strategies had a place in the mechanisms of informal social control, should the view of the relationship between public violence and social control not then be reversed? If, as in the early centuries, what we have is informal social control by violence,

Introduction

5

then how does this rhyme with the thesis of the formalization of social control or the construction of the state’s monopoly on violence? In this case, how did informal and formal regulatory mechanisms relate to each other? It is also important to examine not only the functions but also the forms of public violence. How did the formal language of public violence contribute to its possible social functions? Does the Antwerp case confirm the idea that twentieth century societies were poor in rituals? The social and gender dimensions of public violence also come to the fore. Were all social groups involved in public violence without distinction or was it only the poorest that were affected, as is often posited? If there is indeed a link between social structure and action, how can this be explained? Were both sexes involved with similar intensity in violence and to what can possible differences be attributed? Was there a continuity in the practice of public violence during the period under study, or did structural changes occur? To what are any shifts attributable? This series of questions is central to this book. However, before one can start to examine these in detail, it is necessary to clarify first and foremost the basics and the structure of this book. To begin with, an introduction to the scientific debate on the definition of violence clarifies the starting points of this study. The intention here is not so much to provide exhaustive overview, as to take a clear position on the existing thinking. This is followed by a critical discussion of the source material used, the empirical building blocks of this book. Not only are the choice and selection of the sources legitimized, but also their conceptual context and itreliability are examined. Finally, we take a brief look at the ‘site map’ of the book. 2

Violence as a Significant Social Phenomenon

Violence has a history. At first sight, this statement seems to be in breach of common sense. Is violence, in fact, not present in all human societies: those of today, yesterday and possibly also tomorrow? Does the finding that the human species does not differ fundamentally from other primates in this respect not point to the fact that violence originates simply in the aggressive drives that are contained in the human genetic heritage? Is the inability of humans to completely eliminate violence not evidence of the stronger power of human drives when compared with well-​intentioned attempts at “self-​control” (i.e. suppression or channelling of aggressive drives)? The outbursts of “senseless violence” on the streets, in the pub or in the family at the slightest cause, would seem to indicate that human beings, despite everything bleated about civilization, are governed by ancestral aggressive drives. Is violence a socially meaningful act

6 Introduction at all when it is traceable to the impulses that lie in the emotions and drives of each individual? If aggression is rooted in the human genome and violence is therefore a constant in all societies, what can social scientists then contribute to the knowledge about violence? In this case, it would be logical to leave this field of research to biologists and ethologists. Does not the evolutionary-​ biological paradigm, with its emphasis on the struggle for survival, status and reproduction, make any social science analysis of violence superfluous? A historical analysis of the phenomenon of “violence” does indeed make sense because the basic premise of the above-​cited logic is based on shifting sand. The equating of aggression and violence does not work.1 It is true that aggression is part of mankind’s biological foundations, but it is clearly reductionist to state that the perpetrator of violence is unidimensionally driven by aggressive impulses. The relationship between aggression and violence is a lot more complex.2 Aggressive impulses do not lead only to violence, but also translate into other forms of behaviour. Many other motives can also be the basis of violence (such as fear, sense of duty or conformism). Nor is the way people air emotions and impulses (including aggression) universal and unchangeable. Cultural factors determine the boundary conditions, forms and symbolic charge of the expression of these. The framework in which emotions and impulses take concrete form is a cultural construct. Physical aggression in particular is transformed into “violence” through a process of granting significance in the light of the values, norms and conventions of the society in question. Violence therefore relates to aggression as gender does to sex. Violence is a cultural product, a social construct.3 Human violence is not just a derivative of the biological heritage, but transcends this heritage as a cultural product. It is a qualification, a cultural category, which is assigned to specific behaviours within a social context. In this way it is also inevitably a socially significant act. Which aggressive behaviours precisely are titled “violence” differs and shifts. The use and significances of violence shows fundamental differences between and within societies. This finding is a powerful argument in support of the pertinence of a constructivist approach to violence. If, after all, the essentialist position that violence is a simple derivative of aggressive drives is correct, violence would manifest itself in all societies without distinction.

1 See:  Abbink, Violation and violence, xi–​xvii; Aijmer, Introduction, 8–​9; Collins, Violent conflict, 63–​83; Ploux, Violence in France’s past, 66; Rousseaux, C’est arrivé, 12–​16; Schröder and Schmidt, Introduction, 18; Semelin, Pour sortir de la violence, 15–​37. 2 De Haan and Loader, On the emotions of crime, 243–​253. 3 Blok, The enigma, 192; Stewart and Strathern, Violence, 14.

Introduction

7

Viewed from the dominant social discourse on violence, the study of violent conflicts in any society seems to have little more than anecdotal value.4 The study of violence does indeed make little sense if one assumes that violence is a form of impulsive, irrational, emotional and uncontrolled behaviour and moreover disqualifies it as an irrelevant marginal phenomenon that says nothing about the essence of the culture and the social interplay of a particular society. Such an approach, however, misses the fact that violent interaction is the order of the day in almost all human societies. Violence is not necessarily a “marginal” phenomenon that plays a significant role in a limited number of social subgroups, on the edges of society. On the contrary, often times it is an integral part of daily life. Violence is rooted in the beliefs, norms and values that structure a society. It is in processes of symbolic attribution of significance that certain behaviours become “violence”. The significances assigned to actions are cultural constructions and not universal and ahistorical constants. Even within the context of the same society, it is quite possible that different social groups will assign different meanings to the same behaviours. These divergent meanings will have far-​reaching consequences for the ability of people to communicate. Only people who in particular circumstances use an identical formal language, because they attribute the same meaning to certain behaviours, and thus, in the terminology of historian Gerard Rooijakkers, participate in the same cultural circuit, can successfully exchange information.5 The name of the game is therefore to track the significances given to particular forms of behaviour within a certain context. The plea of some not to focus, in the study of violence, on the “meaningless” act, but on the “suffering” caused by the study, would imply stopping the analysis where it needs to begin.6 In many cases, it is precisely the victim perspective that, in today’s climate dominated by victimization, blocks a sober analysis of violence.7 The fact of approaching “violence” as significant behaviour, designated as such, and used and understood by people in a particular cultural circuit, implies that the use of violence has a communicative effect. Violence is a communicative act.8 In the communicative interaction between persons, not only language sensu stricto, but also non-​verbal codes such as violence carry meaning. 4 See: Boeykens, Zinloos geweld bestaat niet, 48–​57; Rooijakkers, Zinnen van geweld, 97–​98. 5 For this paragraph, Gerard Rooijakkers’s stimulating conceptual framework was more than directive; Rooijakkers, Rituele repertoires, 78–​83. 6 For a sympathetic description of the main representatives of this tendency, see Nedelmann, Gewaltsoziologie, 63–​65. 7 Imbusch, Gewalt, 31. 8 Jabri, Discourses of violence, 73.

8 Introduction The approach to violence as a code, a language, offers the advantage of doing justice to the interaction between structure and action that characterizes human interaction.9 On the one hand, a significant degree of conformity to existing socially acquired collective rules is an absolute prerequisite for successful communication.10 To be able to speak a language, one has to master to a certain extent its grammar and vocabulary. In speech communication, mutual understanding is possible only when there is agreement between speakers and listeners as to the use and meaning of words. Language is intersubjective, that is, rooted in the collective habits of its users. With violence too, meaningful communicative acts are possible only through the use of the shared rules acquired in socialization processes. In any form of communication, whether verbal or physical, there is a necessary degree of intersubjectivity. On the other hand, the conformity of the interaction does not mean that there is no room for individual freedom. The language metaphor does justice to the relative room for manoeuvre that people have in their behaviours. People are indeed bound to adapt to the shared rules of the language to create successful communication, but they can also make creative use of the grammar and vocabulary acquired by them during the socialization process for their own purposes. Against the background of unproblematic, shared attribution of significance, individual variation is possible. In this way, approaching violence as a code does justice to the importance of strategic choices. Violence is not to be reduced to uncontrolled eruptions of uncontrolled impulses. Calculation and targeted action by using the available repertoire of forms of behaviour for one’s own ends are, on the contrary, manifestly important in the case of violence.11 Violence can indeed be used impulsively and unplanned, but equally it can be applied in a calculated and deliberate fashion. In addition, such strategically motivated action does not exclude violence being also associated with emotions.12 Just as the use of socially acquired shared language for certain purposes is not necessarily without emotion, so violence, applied as a code for strategic considerations, is far from emotionless. A  dichotomous division of violence into an emotional-​impulsive and a calculated-​strategic pole does not therefore do justice to the complexity of social interaction. From other viewpoints too, the analogy of violence with language is very fruitful. Human language is particularly multi-​form. Not only are many thousands of 9 See: Jabri, Discourses of violence, 4; Chauvaud, Les passions villageoises, 26. 10 Lorenz, De constructie van het verleden, 44–​45. 11 See: Elwert, Gewaltmärkte, 86–​111. 12 Spierenburg, Violence and the civilizing process, 87–​105; Schwerhoff, Criminalized violence, 103–​126.

Introduction

9

languages spoken on earth, but different groups also apply divergent varieties of one and the same language. A universal code of “violence” exists just as little as does a universal language. Behavioural forms that are perceived as “violence” in one cultural context are not necessarily interpreted as such in another context. For example, in Western Europe, tolerance for certain types of plastic surgery, such as facelifts, for aesthetic reasons is growing, while horror at other forms of physical mutilation such as female circumcision is almost universal. Whether physical mutilation is perceived as “violence” or not relates therefore less to the physical damage inflicted, but much more to whether the particular form is viewed as acceptable behaviour within a social context. Even within a particular society, we often encounter a high degree of pluralism. Various social groups often maintain diverging behavioural standards when it comes to “violence”. For example, despite the undeniable relationship, there were marked differences between the codes maintained in the Europe of the ancien régime by the elite and the common people in respect to duelling. Even among the parties directly involved in a single violent attack (perpetrators, victims, witnesses and authorities), there is often no unanimity about the exact qualification of the act. The impossibility of arriving at a definitive definition of “violence” is ultimately to be put down to this pluralism.13 The fact is that the symbolic transformation of biologically-​based physical aggression into the cultural construction of “violence” occurs in a variety of ways in varying contexts. The language metaphor offers the advantage not only of allowing room for pluralism, but also of constituting a barrier to an overly static view of “violence”. Languages are not fixed for eternity, but are on the contrary subject to change and can even die out completely.14 The “violence” code within a particular society or a particular segment of the population is equally dynamic. Under the influence of social change, the meaning assigned within that code to certain forms of behaviour can shift significantly. In the extreme case, one code can even be exchanged completely for another. As with language shift (exchanging one language for another), such evolution requires a preliminary phase in which various codes are mastered. The specificity of violence as an idiom lies in its non-​verbal, physical character.15 This study starts from a restrictive approach to the notion of “violence”. Over the past twenty to thirty years, the concept has been so inflated as to be 13 Franke, Geweldscriminaliteit in Nederland, 13. For the complexity of defining violence, see:  Achterhuis, Met alle geweld, 69–​96; Riches, The phenomenon of violence, 1–​27; De Haan, Violence as an essentially contested concept, 27–​40. 14 De Swaan, Words of the world, 53-​ 56. 15 Lindenberger and Lüdtke, Physische Gewalt, 7.

10 Introduction in danger of losing any significance.16 The increasing conflation of crime and violence is an illustration of this trend. However, by no means all violence is criminalized and by no means every form of criminalized behaviour is violent. Even more meaningful is the notion of “structural violence”, as used inter alia to indicate the unequal power and exchange ratios between the Global North and South. The tendency to qualify almost any violation of the norm as “violence” points to the fundamental malaise that the concept of violence occasions in contemporary societies.17 Violence as the ultimate violation of normality today has such a strong –​at once repulsive and fascinating –​effect that the concept of violence fans out in all directions. However, if violence exists everywhere and in all places, the significance –​and hence the usability –​of the concept is totally diluted. The analysis of violence then threatens to get bogged down in a general social analysis. In order to keep the concept operational, its scope needs to be kept within limits. A return to the restrictive concept of violence as it existed before this inflationary spiral is the best response to such a complaint, even if the debate on the definition of violence is a permanent one. The concentration on physical violence, on the intentional violation of the physical integrity of another human being with a distinct dimension of force, also has the advantage of offering a relatively hard selection criterion that permits diachronic and synchronous comparisons.18 It is precisely the physical aspect that distinguishes violence from other forms of dominance. The restrictive definition of violence is therefore not based on moral grounds. The distinctive criterion is by no means that violence is “worse” than other forms of dominance. Given its physical character, violence is clearly related to theatre.19 Violence is similar to a performance, which, like theatre, uses the entire body to convey a message to the audience (its target and the witnesses). Symbolically loaded, bodily actions that respond to specific meanings within a particular cultural circuit make it possible to communicate with the public. Hence the need to perform violence according to prescribed theatrical patterns. In the case of (public) violence, as on stage, players draw on an existing repertoire consisting,

16 Schumann, Gewalt als Grenzüberschreitung, 373–​375. 17 Keane, Violence and democracy. 18 Based on the definition of German sociologist Heinrich Popitz, discussed by Haupt, Violence, History of, 16197. For similar approaches see Spierenburg, Violence. Reflections about a word, 17–​18. Zwaan, Politiek geweld, 11. 19 Blok, The enigma of senseless violence, 28–​29; Muchembled, Une histoire, 99 and 299; Riches, The Phenomenon of Violence, 11; Schröder and Schmidt, Introduction, 4–​6; Stewart and Strathern, Violence, 162.

Introduction

11

not of plays, but of meaningful actions and behaviours. A  “symbolic vocabulary” is addressed that allows a specific message to be put across clearly.20 What is possible is that the performer’s perception of the communicative act can be quite different to that of its target or the witnesses, who contest its legitimacy. Complete incomprehension is also possible in the case of non-​verbal communication between people who assign completely different meanings to the same behaviours. For the attention to the performative nature of violence, we are indebted to the work of American social psychologist Erving Goffman.21 Goffman maintains a theatrical view of public life: in social interaction in the public forum, people make according to him “performances” in order to generate a positive image of their own personality in the eyes of the audience, the bystanders. The actors in Goffman’s theatre use formalized patterns of action to achieve their goals, consisting of making a favourable impression on the audience, or at least avoiding a negative one. Goffman emphasizes the importance of non-​ verbal, physical communication means and techniques in the process of self-​ representation. However, according to Goffman, the need for “impression management” exists logically only in the public sphere which he calls the “front stage” of society. Once back stage, in the private sphere, this impression management no longer applies. Out of sight of the eyes of others, less formal behaviour is required, enabling prescribed scenarios to be abandoned. Back stage, people can also prepare for their performative actions in the public sphere. From the Goffmanian point of view, there is every reason to suppose that the logic of violence in the public and private sphere is fundamentally different. Violence front stage proceeds according to appropriate theatrical patterns in order to create the desired public impression. The focus of the present study is aimed at such performative “public violence”. Whenever this notion is used in this study, it is therefore not so much the location of the violence as such that counts, but the primary reference is to violence that –​with all the attendant consequences –​is enacted in the sight of others, in the public eye. In the case of violence back stage, away from the eyes of others, the need to conform to prescribed scenarios is by definition much less compelling, as the performative element is lacking. There is therefore reason to assume that private violence is much less formalized in nature. It has to be said that the Goffmanian scheme indisputably bears the traces of the specific historical context in which it originated, 20 Thompson, Customs in common. 21 Goffman, Interaction-​Ritual; Goffman, The Presentation of Self; Goffman, Relations in Public.

12 Introduction i.e. the higher social groups of a contemporary, large, Anglo-​Saxon city. For example, the existence of a defined private sphere is by no means a historical constant. In many contexts, people spend their entire lives under the eyes of the others, and therefore have to adjust their behaviour all the time. The approach to violence as an interaction mechanism betrays a relational view of human behaviour.22 It is only in the interaction with others that human beings can develop meaningful practices as social beings. Consequently, in this continuous process of giving of meaning, there is room for negotiation and creativity. Violence as a socially constructed practice is directly related to the relationships existing between individuals and groups in a particular society. Where these relationships evolve over time, the pattern of violence in this society will also change. The study of violence therefore constitutes a useful access to analysing how people interrelate. The starting point of a link between social structure and individual action implies a clear positioning towards those who absolutize the internal, autonomous dynamics of violence.23 In a broader perspective, this starting point distances itself from a culturalist concept of culture. The tendency to emphasize the cultural creativity of historical actors without sufficient attention to the inevitable boundaries within which that creativity comes about forms a block to solid cultural analysis.24 Per se, this attention to cultural creativity is of course an important achievement. Thus, Rooijakkers’s situation-​dependent behavioural options model (in Dutch: culturele roosmodel) boasts great conceptual strength.25 According to this model, each individual participates in a number of overlapping cultural circuits (such as neighbourhood, work, family or church), each with its own specific behavioural repertoire. The degree of participation in specific circuits varies according to social position, sex and marital status. It is precisely this participation in various cultural circuits that in Rooijakkers’s eyes provides the prospect of space for the individual, as the latter can choose to which circuit it wants to belong at a particular moment. The behavioural repertoires within a particular cultural circuit have no eternal value, but are susceptible to change through contact with other cultures. Processes of mutual behavioural influence and appropriation take place all the time. So far no

22 Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence, 5–​6. 23 Nedelmann, Gewaltsoziologie, 65–​66. 24 See:  Burke, History and Social Theory, 123; various contributions in Bonnell and Hunt eds., Beyond the Cultural Turn. For an explicitly critical approach to the current tendency for l’oubli du social in the explanation of behavioural patterns, see Anheim and Grevin, Le procès du ‘procès de civilization’?, 174–​176. 25 Rooijakkers, Rituele repertoires, 81.

Introduction

13

problem, but Rooijakkers overshoots the target in his desire to theoretically substantiate the individual’s room for manoeuvre. In particular, with his express wish to leave behind “the anonymous history of groups, classes or other collectives”, he uncouples cultural circuits and their specific behavioural repertoires from the existence of social groups, thereby isolating action from structure. To circumvent the cliff of culturalism, it is necessary to connect the question of the meaning of cultural products with the analysis of social structures and processes.26 The behavioural repertoire that individuals use is largely determined by the social group to which they belong. There is a clear link between an individual’s social position and his behaviour.27 That does not mean that individuals do not possess a certain leeway. The basis of the situation-​dependent behavioural options model, that is the argument that the same people are able to speak to different behavioural repertoires in diverse contexts, continues to hold. No sociologist has pointed more powerfully than Pierre Bourdieu to the relationship between a person’s behaviour and perceptions and his specific position in the social field. He introduced the concept of “habitus” to clarify the relationship between structure and action. By habitus, he understands the aggregate of dispositions leading to practical acts, these dispositions resulting from the internalization of objective social structures.28 Concretely, Bourdieu sees in the habitus a repercussion of class structures in society, structures that it at the same time reproduces. People in different class positions are exposed during the socialization process to different living conditions that result in class-​specific perception, valuation, and handling schemes. The habitus, as an aggregate of these unconscious schemes, forms the basis of concrete action, perception and thinking. Bourdieu therefore considers the behavioural patterns, values and tastes deriving from the habitus as outcomes of social structures. This does not mean that the concept of habitus is necessarily incompatible with the notion of individual leeway. On the contrary, the habitus is conceived as a set of schemas that allow actors to develop practices with which to face changing circumstances. The habitus sets the boundaries of action, but inside them, a lot is possible.29 The habitus as an intermediary mechanism between social 26 Medick, Quo vadis Historische Anthropologie?, 86–​87; Savage, Urban History and Social Class, 67 and Schuurman, Mensen maken verschil, 203–​204. 27 Incidentally, Rooijakkers cannot totally disregard this connection, as he himself speaks of “groups” or “group cultures” that influence each other. Rooijakkers, Rituele repertoires, 87. 28 Pels, Inleiding, 13. 29 Burke, History and Social Theory, 120.

14 Introduction structure and action thus generates class-​specific lifestyles.30 The result is that every social group is recognizable by its behavioural patterns, beliefs, attitudes and tastes, which therefore form socially distinctive features.31 According to Bourdieu, that process takes place independently of consciously distinctive intentions and explicitly sought-​after differences. Attention to the relationship between social structure and culture does not imply a static view of culture. Sociologist Norbert Elias sought to expose the relationship between behavioural standards and patterns of social intercourse and human relations in a long-​term perspective.32 In so doing, he paid a lot of attention to violence. In Western European societies during the late Middle Ages, (highly ritualized) violence was, according to Elias, a widely accepted instrument for conflict resolution. The prevailing violent behavioural standards were functional within the context of the honour culture, which was by no means the privilege of nobility but shared by the entire population. However, the relative consensus on violence was to gradually disappear in the course of the early modern era in Western European societies. The demise of this consensus is, for Elias, part of a multilateral and all but linear complex of changes occurring between the Middle Ages and the early nineteenth century. He establishes significant shifts in behavioural norms with regard to very diverse behaviours ranging from blowing one’s nose, spitting, eating, urinating and sleeping to fighting and making love. In all these aspects of human existence, Elias observes, in spite of differences in tempo and reversals, the same long-​term dynamic. Of a person who wants to be viewed as “civilized”, an ever-​greater degree of “control” and “modesty” is demanded. Certain behaviours are viewed all the more strongly as painful and shameful. These are no longer tolerated in the public domain and eventually disappear “back stage”, or even die out completely. In general, emotional impulses are increasingly controlled and can be expressed openly only in muted form or not at all. Such changes imply fundamental long-​term shifts in people’s psychic households, with a stronger and stable degree of self-​regulation as the ultimate outcome. On the one hand, this greater degree of self-​regulation appears in the very conscious calculated

30 Bourdieu, La distinction, 189–​248. 31 Bourdieu, La distinction, 274–​276. 32 See Elias’s main work that first appeared in 1939: Elias, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation. Important nuances are also found in Elias’s later work, originally published in 1989, Studien über die Deutschen. For an inspiring analysis of Elias’s views on violence, see: Dunning, Violence and Violence Control, 227–​249. For an overview of the thinking of other sociologists based on a link between social structure and violence, see: Von Trotha, Zur Soziologie der Gewalt, 9–​56.

Introduction

15

estimate of the potential consequences of one’s own behaviour. On the other hand, it also runs in part unconsciously: the compliance with social codes obtained by socialization is often experienced so “naturally” that no preliminary consideration is required. Elias emphasizes the uncontrolled character of what he calls the “civilization process”: there is no prior plan to proceed to a comprehensive change of behavioural standards. Nor does a process have a starting or ending point. Despite the lack of conscious steering, the process still shows a clear structure and tends it in one direction. The originality of Elias’s thesis lies in his attempt to explain the dynamics of the “civilization process” by connecting it to large-​scale societal developments. Of crucial importance, in his view, are the increasing interaction and interdependence of more and more people across continually larger territories. The changing societal conditions in which people live together call for behavioural change, leading ultimately to changes in their consciousness and their handling of their drives. The systematic extension of chains of interdependence (in the transition from a feudal society to a dynastic and capitalist state society) rendered, in Elias’s eyes, more self-​control essential. For the changed position of violence in the “civilized” standard of behaviour, Elias attributes paramount importance to the process of state formation. A central element in the state-​ formation process is the establishment of the monopoly on violence: the state is able to restrain the use of violence by private individuals and groups within its territory, in part through the establishment of a stable repression apparatus. The monopoly on violence is, of course, not absolute: violence is not completely eliminated because of the potential of aggression that exists in every human society, and the enforcement of the monopoly on violence requires at least a credible threat of violence.33 Elias’s comprehensive conceptual framework has come under heavy fire.34 In particular, Elias is accused of eurocentrism and selective blindness towards mass violence by the state; reproaches which are often based on an insufficiently balanced reading of his entire work.35 More problematic is the indisputable Freudian contribution to civilization theory.36 The approach of “civilization” as a process of an ever-​increasing degree of control of the management of human

33 34 35 36

The permanent use of violence by the state apparatus is, for some, a powerful argument to reject the notion of civilization. See: Lindenberger and Lüdtke, Einleitung, 21. See: Sieferlé and Breuninger eds., Kulturen der Gewalt. For a detailed discussion, see: Majerus and Vrints, De brutalisering voorbij?, 52–​74. See, for pertinent criticism of the Freudian contribution in Elias’s thinking:  Corbey, Wildheid en beschaving, 105–​115. For a certainly non-​rejecting discussion of Sigmund Freud’s influence on civilization theory, see: Zwaan, Civilisering en decivilisering, 51–​53.

16 Introduction emotions and drives clearly reflects Freud’s view of human personality, with Elias providing, as it were, a historical dimension. The statement that violence decreases as self-​control increases testifies to an overly mechanical view of the relationship between aggression and violence and to a pronouncedly pessimistic image of mankind. A person from the Middle Ages using violence in the context of informal conflict resolution was therefore no less “controlled” than a contemporary man who never uses his fists: it is not a question of a less strong, but rather of a differently directed control of one’s emotions. Explaining violence in terms of weak or strong control does not adequately reflect the complexity of the phenomenon as a social product.37 Violence and a high degree of control are not mutually exclusive. The Freudian influence, however, is no reason to condemn completely Elias’s stimulating thinking to the refuse heap of history.38 Stripped of the Freudian frills and loaded concepts like “civilization”, the core of his work remains: the behaviour of individual people is to be explained by the social relationships and figurations in which they participate, and consequently can be the subject of historical analysis. Replacing the term “management of emotions” with “standard of behaviour”, the terminological rocks are avoided:  a connection exists between shifts in standards of behaviour and changes in the pattern of social interdependence. A  further and powerful argument in support of the value of the core of Elias’s work is that one of its central tenets, namely the reduction in the use of violence by individuals, has been confirmed by empirical research.39 One of the implications of Elias’s conceptual framework is that the social interaction in cities can be expected to be less characterized by violence than elsewhere, owing to the high degree of interaction or mutual dependence.40 Elias is by far not the only one who has thought through the relationship between urbanization and violence. There are roughly two diametrically opposed streams of thought about that relationship. On the one hand, there are thinkers who argue that there is no significant place left for public violence in individualist, relatively open urban societies, heavily pacified by the government. 37 38 39 40

A swelling stream of specialists sees in this component the weak point in Elias’s conceptual framework. See, inter alia: Dupont, Patronen van jongerencriminaliteit, 68–​70; Thome, Explaining Long Term Trends, 71–​72; Rummel, Verletzung von Körper, 86–​88. For example, Schwerhoff, Criminalized violence. For the most detailed examination of this area, see: Eisner, Long-​term historical trends, 83–​142; Eisner, The long-​term development of violence, 41–​66. More recently: Lindström, Homicide in Scandinavia, 43–​64; O’Donnell, The fall and rise of homicide in Ireland, 79–​92. Johnson and Monkkonen, Introduction, 4–​5. See for the Low Countries: Van Dijck, De stad als onafhankelijke variabele, 7–​26.

Introduction

17

Public violence would then be characteristic of small, relatively closed communities in the countryside. Economic criminality would be the characteristic offence of the anonymous city.41 Specialists nowadays increasingly assume that it is not so much stronger government control that worked to pacify cities, but primarily the nature of urban social bonds that demanded an alternative behavioural model. A pacified public space is a simple necessity for the city to function as a focal point of habitation, trade, traffic and other functions. Historian Robert Muchembled speaks directly of la ville civilisatrice.42 From the cities, the pacified behaviour model then spread to rural areas, it is asserted, with a time delay. On the other hand, there are other thinkers who completely turn this reasoning on its head:  they emphasize that it is precisely the concentration of deprived groups, anonymity and mass immigration in cities that lead to social tension, lack of social control and the existence of subcultures; factors they consider responsible for the stronger degree of violence.43 It is clear that the divergent assessment of the role of violence in the archetypal Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft is strongly ideologically coloured. Depending on the wider social climate, the pendulum swings in one direction or the other. For example, in Belgium, like in other Western European countries, violence is today often associated with urbanization, although this was not the case only a few decades ago. On the contrary, Belgian public opinion used to be that the rural population was more violent than the urban one. Criminologist Denis Szabo sees this view as quantitatively confirmed, based on the judicial statistics for 1951.44 Historical research indicates that there is no positive correlation between urbanization and violence.45 Shifts in behavioural patterns are related to social change. Shifts in group-​ specific behavioural standards are the reflection of changing group relationships. An interesting starting point in this connection is the finding that Elias regards “civilized” standards of behaviour as a sort of “declining cultural asset”. He clearly situates the origin of the “civilization process” among the elites, whose behavioural standards spread, via processes of appropriation, to the lower social groups. He indicates that the contrasts between the codes of

41 See:  Diederiks, Urban and Rural, 153. See, for references:  Farcy, Historiographie de la criminalité, 43–​44. 42 Muchembled, Une histoire, 331. 43 For an overview of the theorizing from this perspective: Eisner, Das Ende der zivilisierten Stadt?, 24–​48. 44 Szabo, Crimes et Villes, 208–​209. 45 Chesnais, Histoire de la violence, 374–​375; Eisner, Das Ende der zivilisierten Stadt?, 270–​ 272; Johnson, Urbanization and Crime, 1995.

18 Introduction behaviour of the upper and lower social levels have diminished over time. The driving force behind the spread of “civilized” standards of behaviour in broad layers of Western European society lies in the desire for social distinctiveness and promotion. Again and again, a rising underlayer adopts the functions and attitudes of an upper layer to distinguish itself from other social groups. Characteristics that previously marked out the elites, such as eating with knife and fork, spread throughout society. In other areas, behavioural patterns once specific to lower social layers, such as working for one’s living, have become more widely disseminated over time. The assertion of a number of historians that the elites in the early modern age, out of a concern to maintain their distinctiveness, increasingly distanced themselves from the behavioural patterns of the vast majority of the population (which they termed as “vulgar”), embroiders further on Elias’s conceptual framework.46 Violence that within the shared “popular culture” was an acceptable strategy for resolving conflicts was one of the behaviours that were increasingly seen as socially undesirable. According to Muchembled, this new behaviour model (to be taken over by ever broader layers of the population) implied the transition from the shame culture to a guilt culture, an evolution that he described as the production of a completely new psychic housekeeping.47 The idea that people’s psychic housekeeping has been changed fundamentally by the transition from share culture to a guilt culture is very problematic. Big question marks can be placed with respect to the scope and intensity of that transition. Muchembled himself admits in so many words that it is not moral or religious factors, but social and political ones, that have been decisive in processes of behavioural change. It was the wish to set themselves apart socially which led the elites to abide by the so-​called “civilized” standard of conduct and, for example, to abstain from then on from public violence. Significant in this regard is the finding that (contra)-​reformatory morality offensives only began to find a response among elites when these had appropriated “more refined” behavioural standards.48 The fact that the elites retreated from the “popular culture”, penetrated by notions like honour and shame, does not mean ipso facto the transition to a guilt culture. The desire for social distinction motivating a retreat into the exclusive and closed circle of social class equals, reflects on the other hand the fundamental orientation of elitist behaviour towards the eyes of one’s peers. The fact is that distinctive strategies are meaningless and pointless in a social context that does not attach importance to the 46 See the influential works of Burke, Popular Culture and Muchembled, Culture populaire. 47 Muchembled, L’invention de l’homme moderne, 455–​466. 48 Spierenburg, De verbroken betovering, 312.

Introduction

19

assessment of one’s own social position and behaviour by others. It is also very questionable whether such a society exists at all. The importance attached to the public appreciation of the person as a result of these distinctive strategies is fundamentally incompatible with the notion of a guilt culture. In the elites, what in fact occurred was not so much a unilateral shift from a shame to a guilt culture, but rather a change in the loading of the notions of honour and shame. The shift of behavioural standards does not necessarily imply an absolute cultural shift from shame to guilt, but does involve a redefinition of what constitutes honourable and dishonourable behaviour. Such a shift therefore does not require a fundamentally different psychic housekeeping. A second potential objection to the models developed especially by Elias and Muchembled is the observation that they use, albeit in a nuanced way, the old dichotomy between “popular culture” and “elite culture”. The problematic nature of such a dual classification is sufficiently well known. A differentiated approach with an eye to the specific cultural practices of more closely defined social groups is required.49 In summary, cultural codes are not something that became permanently solidified some time in the past. Rather they continue to be shaped, confirmed or adjusted in daily social interaction.50 Whenever, due to changed circumstances, they are no longer functional for the groups or persons concerned, they are either modified or completely abandoned. Indeed, culture always involves processes of accommodation and appropriation. If one disconnects the existence of cultural circuits from the division of society into social groups, one loses sight of the global dynamics of such processes, because these are equally related to the changing social structure. The tendency, as a result of the cultural turn, to absolutize the autonomy of culture from social processes neglects the fact that behavioural patterns have evolved, and continue to evolve, within the framework of –​by definition –​changing human relationships.51 3

The Empirical Basis

The empirical basis of this book is made up of police sources, more specifically the Antwerp records of police reports (processen-​verbaal). For a number of reasons, these reports offer an interesting source for the analysis of practice and perceptions of public violence in early twentieth-​century Antwerp. These 49 Cieraad, De elitaire verbeelding. 50 Frijhoff, Wegen van Willem Evertsz., 42; Zwaan, Families, huwelijken en gezinnen, 35. 51 See: Blok, Antropologische perspectieven, 19–​20.

20 Introduction are contemporary documents, which (unlike folkloristic memoires of neighbourhood life) are generally composed immediately after the facts. Unlike other sources (such as press articles), the reports permit, to a certain extent, the reconstruction of the context of the facts and the social background of those involved. And, importantly, the players involved in violence speak for themselves –​albeit indirectly –​in the reports. In addition, the serial character of the series of sources allows for long-​term analyses. For the good understanding of a source, it is very important to find out how exactly it originates. Unfortunately, the context in which the police report comes into being is only partially known or studied.52 In the yet very few historical studies of the police in Belgium, little attention is generally paid to daily police practice in the police stations.53 The objectives, functions and legal status of the police are well known, but the spontaneously-​grown conventions that determine daily police work just as much are considerably less so.54 It is a known and frustrating phenomenon that routine practices rarely find their way explicitly into the sources: given their obvious nature, the players of the time did not deem them worth committing to writing. For the correct understanding of a source, knowledge of the institution producing it is an obvious prerequisite. As one of the country’s two largest cities, Antwerp had the second largest municipal police force in Belgium.55 It was created in the nineteenth century as a control mechanism with the task of maintaining civil order. As such, it was directed mainly at the “disciplining” of the supposedly immoral classes dangereuses. By the turn of the twentieth century it had grown into a particularly fine-​meshed apparatus focused on classical police tasks: law enforcement, combating crime and social control. In 1912, the force consisted of 856 men, and by 1940 its number had grown to 1,250 men.56 Apart from some other major cities with sizeable municipal

52 53 54 55 56

Faute de mieu, a manual from 1950 still provides the best access to the practice of writing a police report; Van der Auwermeulen, Handboek. Specifically for Antwerp: Geirnaert, Verordeningen van politie. Stad Antwerpen. Codex van gemeentelijke politieverordeningen. Fortunate exceptions to this rule are Van Houtven, De Negentiende-​eeuwse, De Koster, Routines and De Koster, Politieoptredens. For a historical overview of the Belgian police apparatus, see: Van Outrive, Cartuyvels and Ponsaers, Sire, ik ben ongerust; Fijnaut, Opdat de macht een toevlucht zij? The institutional history of the Antwerp police force has yet to be written. Into such time, the reader is referred to Antwerpen 1860–​1960, 129–​135; De Maesschalck, Gardes in de oorlog; Foubert, Aanzet tot een anderssoortige kijk. Verslag over het bestuur, 73; De Maesschalck, Gardes in de oorlog, 189.

Introduction

21

police forces, the density of the police officers in Antwerp was perhaps the highest in the country.57 While the Antwerp police was headed by a chief commissioner with a number of central departments under him, the practice of police work was largely decentralized. It was primarily at neighbourhood level that daily police practice was shaped. During the period under study, the city of Antwerp was subdivided into twelve police districts (wijken). Each district had its own police station (reinforced in a number of neighbourhoods with sub-​stations) headed by a police commissioner. He was assisted by deputy commissioner. In total, the senior manning of a police station consisted of the commissioner and eight to twelve deputy commissioners. Each police commissioner had his own secretariat, consisting of six to eight agents, responsible for the administrative aspects of police work. The (deputy) commissioners provided a permanent presence in the police stations by means of a rotation system. During their duty periods, the deputy commissioners were assisted by an office clerk (planton), who received the public and ensured that the police officers did their rounds correctly. The (deputy) commissioners were the only members of the police force with the authority to produce a police report. Each deputy commissioner was also responsible for the administrative police tasks of a part of the district, referred to as a quarter (kwartier). Each was assisted by an experienced police officer known as a quarter officer (kwartieragent). The base of the district police consisted of the district officers (wijkagenten). The number of officers per district varied and was dependent on the workload in the district concerned, as determined by a number of parameters, like area, population, presence of public houses and dance halls and the number of registered foreigners. A rotation system ensured a police presence on the streets during both day and night. The surveillance was carried out from fixed observation posts and particularly by foot patrols that followed defined routes through the streets of the district. Unlike the quarter officers, the district officers operated across the entire area of the district. After their rounds, the district officers remained for one hour on standby at the district police station for urgent assignments. The prominent presence of the police officers on the street led to their getting to know in the course of time many residents of the district personally. Moreover, that knowledge was consciously pursued by the ramified structure of the police apparatus. Conversely, the quarter and district officers also become familiar figures among the inhabitants of the district. Revelatory for

57

Even in comparison to highly urbanized suburbs, the police density in Antwerp city was very high; cf. De Maesschalck, Gardes in de oorlog, 189.

22 Introduction the familiarity enjoyed by these officers in their neighbourhoods is the fact that neighbourhood residents often addressed them with a nickname.58 This familiarity between police officers and district residents meant that a significant part of daily police work took place in an almost informal atmosphere. Patrolling officers confronted with minor violations during their rounds often preferred giving verbal warnings to starting time-​consuming written legal proceedings.59 They could use the perspective of proceedings as a means of pressure to lend force to their demand for a change in behaviour. Likewise, the agents could, at the request of the population or otherwise, play a mediating role in interpersonal tensions that had not yet peaked. The call for police assistance could take various forms:  the police officer could be addressed or called in on the street or at the police station. As the ownership of telephones became more widespread, the number of telephone calls gradually increased. The district officer was expected to report all his interventions orally to the (deputy) commissioner at the police station. It can reasonably be assumed that the district officer acted selectively in this reporting. Less serious disputes that he had been able to settle amicably, or minor violations that had gone no further than a warning, were probably omitted. In consultation with the (deputy) commissioner during the oral report, it was decided which interventions needed to be reported in writing. The district officer wrote an account of his intervention in the so-​called “events book” that had a semi-​official status. This written account by the district officer formed the basis for the police report written by the (deputy) commissioner. When produced after a police intervention, this type of report was called an account (verslag). Formally speaking, the core of the account was a breefing by the police officers to the (deputy) commissioner about the intervention they had carried out. In addition, the account also contained statements from those directly involved and from witnesses. The police officers were not permitted to take statements on the spot but requested the parties involved and witnesses to accompany them to the police station to make a statement about the incident in front of the (deputy) commissioner. Persons resisting were led to the district police station by force. Subsequently, the (deputy) commissioner

58 59

100 jaar politie, 18–​20. The role of the district police officer in infra-​judicial conflict settlement is largely comparable to the performance of the village constable (veldwachter) in the countryside. See:  Bastiaen, Veldwachter in het spanningsveld. For infra-​judicial conflict settlement, see:  Diederiks, De sociale geschiedenis, 511–​512; The collection by Garnot ed., L’infrajudiciaire; Garnot, L’infrajudiciaire dans la France, 131–​139; Soman, Deviance and Criminal Justice, 1–​28; Garnot, Justice, 103–​120.

Introduction

23

could also invite other persons in writing to make a statement at the police station. Even though the sequence of individual statements in an account often seems to suggest a victim-​offender relationship, formally the accounts lack such a binary structure. The police officers’ account was followed by a further apparently unstructured summary of individual statements. However, far from all police reports were drawn up in response to a police intervention. There was a second category of police reports, the so-​called complaints (klachten). They were drafted as a result of a declaration by a citizen. The most likely scenario for the production of a complaint is as follows. The complainant appears at the police station in front of the duty deputy commissioner. He or she is regularly accompanied by a witness whose presence is intended to strengthen the complainant’s credibility. The complainant then gives a more or less detailed account of the events. To complete the details of the confrontation (for example, about the precise relationship between the parties involved, the location, potential witnesses, injuries or work disability), the police commissioner will most likely ask a number of questions. The commissioner also seeks to understand the person’s objectives in coming to the police station. While the declaration looks to take the form of a monologue, it was in reality to a certain extent a report of a dialogue between the citizen and the police officer. The person in question will, if necessary, be given first aid at the police station, or be brought by the police to a pharmacist, doctor or hospital. During the first account and any first aid, the commissioner had the time to assess the severity of the situation. The drafting of a police report was a labour-​ intensive task. If there was a chance of settling less serious matters amicably, this would probably have been grasped in many cases. Nevertheless, it is likely that the leeway available to the (deputy) commissioner for settling a matter in this way at the district police station was smaller than that available to the district or quarter officer on the street. The step to the (deputy) commissioner was greater than the step to the police officer, so that it was undoubtedly taken less frequently. Not only was the physical distance between the citizen and the (deputy) commissioner at the police station greater than between the citizen and the neighbourhood police officer on the street, the social distance was also greater. Certainly for the less prosperous parts of the population, it was preferable to settle things with the district police officer with whom they were familiar and who was socially closer to them. Typical for the greater social distance is the fact that a police commissioner was never addressed with a nickname but always with a reverent “Mr Commissioner”.60 Once it had become clear to 60

100 jaar politie, 18.

24 Introduction the (deputy) commissioner that the complainant was serious with his or her declaration, a written version of the complaint was made. The witnesses and the accused were then invited to the police station to express their version of the facts, possibly including organizing a confrontation between the witnesses. Often the public rumour mill was enough to get the accused party to come and convey his or her version of the facts. In a number of cases, witnesses or accused persons refused to come to the police station or make a statement. In the nature of things, the complaint qua document often exhibits a pronounced binary structure. The complainant, who usually presents himself in his declaration as a victim or disadvantaged party, identifies the accused as the perpetrator of an unacceptable deed. Obviously, the recorded violent crime does not constitute a true reflection of all the violence that actually occurred.61 The quasi-​insoluble issue of the so-​ called dark number, the difference between committed and recorded crime, is a well-​known phenomenon for anyone involved in the analysis of crime based on judicial or police files. Many criminal offences escape the grip of police and justice, which in many societies constitute only one of the paths available for the settlement of conflicts and the resolution of problems.62 Police or judicial archives therefore do not provide access to those disputes that were settled by informal, infra-​judicial settlement mechanisms. In addition, account should also be taken of the possibility of people intentionally bypassing the intermediate step of the police and addressing their written complaints directly to the Public Prosecutor (Procureur des Konings). Unlike in rural areas, in the Antwerp urban environment the alternative policing channel of the national, paramilitary Rijkswacht, operating in parallel with the local police force, was of minor importance.63 Although the police archives occasionally contain traces of these strategies, their extent was probably very limited. Despite the irrefutable fact that crimes of violence recorded by the police represent only part of the actual violence committed, the number of registered deeds remained more than significant. For example, in 1912, the Antwerp city police drew up 10,544 police reports for crimes, misdemeanours and offences, of which no less than 2,043 involved (intentional) blows and injuries (19.4%).64 reportThe police statistics of 1949 distinguish between blows and 61

See the critical concerns as to the value of police statistics as expressed by Van Kerckvoorde, De impasse, 185–​188. 62 Rousseaux, Crime, justice and society, 91–​92. 63 Van Geet, De gendarmerie te Antwerpen. 64 Verslag over het bestuur en den zakentoestand der stad Antwerpen door het Schepenkollege aan den Gemeenteraad voorgedragen. Dienstjaar 1912, 74 en 80.

Introduction

25

injuries leading to death (5), blows and injuries leading to work disability (413) and other acts of violence, i.e. blows and injuries not leading to work disability (1,623). In total, therefore, a comparable number (2,041) of police reports for (intentional) blows and injuries was recorded as in 1912.65 Given the strong decline in the population of Antwerp over the period in question, this apparent stability in absolute terms conceals a significant increase in relative terms. In 1912, 654.8 cases of intentional blows and injuries were recorded per 100,000 inhabitants; in 1949, this ratio had increased to 775.4 per 100,000 inhabitants. This being said, the observed relative increase in recorded intentional blows and injuries does not necessarily mean that the city of Antwerp had become increasingly violent in the course of the twentieth century. Police statistics do not reflect the real level of criminality in social life. An increase or decrease in certain types of misdeed does not therefore necessarily indicate an objective decrease or increase in certain forms of behaviour.66 It can also point to changes in the readiness of the population to report such events.67 Changes in tolerance thresholds with regard to certain forms of behaviour can directly impact the readiness to report. Particularly in relation to violence, historians have repeatedly pointed out that fear of violence becomes paradoxically stronger as the chance of becoming the victim of violence decreases.68 Along with shifting tolerance thresholds among the population, changes in police recording policy can also significantly affect police statistics.69 For example, a seemingly banal factor such as a police force’s available manpower can have a repercussion on the number of reports made. For example, in the Antwerp case, it is likely that the constellation of an increasingly large police force against the background of declining population figures had the effect of increasing the number of police reports in relation to the population. Moreover, it is likely that the inclination of police officers to record reports for violence increased as wider social tolerance against violence decreased. The police’s recording behaviour is influenced by the pressure it experiences from the society of which it is also part, the fears and desires of which it shares to a certain extent. What is clear in any case is that critical distance is de rigueur with regard to police statistics: to conclude from a rising number of violent crimes

65 Statistisch jaarbericht der stad Antwerpen, 1949. 66 See: the critical reservations of Dinges and Sack, Unsichere Grossstädte?, 41–​48. 67 Van Kerckvoorde, De impasse, 187. 68 Chesnais, Histoire de la violence, 18; Franke, Geweldscriminaliteit, 18 en 31; Gatrell, The decline of theft and violence, 238–​337. 69 See: Taylor, The politics of rising crime statistics, 5–​28.

26 Introduction recorded that a society has become more violent is to pay insufficient attention to the complexity of the context in which such data comes into being.70 The figures cited earlier illustrate well the massive scale on which the Antwerp police during the first half of the twentieth century recorded reports for crimes, misdemeanours and offences and for violent misdeeds in particular. This zeal formed the basis of a paper flow of rarely seen proportions. The collection of police reports stored in the Antwerp City Archive covers many hundreds of metres. Given the huge size of these sources, a geographical and temporal limitation proved unavoidable for this study. It was physically impossible to analyse all the police reports for the duration of the entire period. In the end, it was opted to work with six sample years: 1912, 1917, 1928, 1938, 1944 and 1949. This choice was dictated on the one hand by pragmatic considerations: unlike for other years, the series of police reports for these years were complete. At the same time, the choice made it possible to discern developments in the medium term. Geographically, the research was limited to three districts. A fortunate result of the decentralized organization of the Antwerp police is that the bulk of the resource material (including the police reports) is structured around the districts. The choice for a limited number of neighbourhoods at a geographical analysis level was evident for technical reasons. Gaps in the sources for certain neighbourhoods and changes in borders meant that only a limited number of neighbourhoods were eligible for a long-​term study. In addition, the widest possible social differentiation was sought in the selection of neighbourhoods. One difficulty here was the lack of a thorough socio-​geographical analysis of the early twentieth century Antwerp population.71 In order to get a glimpse of at least the geographical distribution of the working population across the city, we were forced to use the survey by Christian Democrat Aloïs Sledsens on the use of leisure by the Antwerp labouring population in the 1920s.72 He produced, parish by parish, a list of the streets predominantly inhabited by workers, which, of course, does not change the fact that workers’ families also lived outside these concentration zones. Nevertheless, from the survey in question, the impact of the spatial social segregation process that had taken place during the nineteenth century was still evident on the city map.

70

See, for example:  the alarming piece by Van den Brink and Schuyt, Van kwaad tot erger, 13–​14. 71 A further source is the impressionistic work of Binnemans and Van Cauwenbergh, Nieuwe atlas van Antwerpen. 72 Sledsens, Het gebruik van den vrijen tijd, 29–​32.

Introduction

27

With a view to achieving maximal social differentiation and taking into account the state of source material, it was finally decided to examine in greater detail the second, fifth and seventh districts (see figure 1).  The second district included the north-​eastern part of the old city, bounded by the Italiëlei to the east, the Minderbroedersrui to the west, the Oude Leeuwenrui to the north and the Lange Nieuwstraat to the south. The police station for the second district was in the Venusstraat. Socially speaking, the second district was highly differentiated. Along the one side, there were streets with a pronounced bourgeois profile like in the vicinity of the Keizerstraat, while on the other side the district also included a number of working class areas. According to Aloïs Sledsens, a number of streets in the northern half of the district had predominantly working class populations, while in the southern half workers concentrated in the so-​called Kattenkwartier. This neighbourhood, centring on the infamous Zwanengang, was one of the city’s largest ghettos of poverty in the nineteenth century. Equally, the fifth district could also hardly be objectively classified as socially homogeneous.73 It was bordered by the Handelsstraat to the north and the Carnotstraat to the south. The northern half of the district between the Lange Beeldekensstraat and the Handelsstraat, known as the Seefhoek, can with some reservations be considered as a working class district. A number of streets to the south of the district were then mainly inhabited by people from the social middle groups. The district police station was also in the southern half of the district, in the Klappeistraat. The complexity of the district is further promoted by the concentration of bars, hotels and dance halls in the area adjacent to the station district.74 Both the second and the fifth district can best be termed socially heterogeneous. Neither district formed a continuous complex of pauper neighbourhoods nor an area of homogeneous bourgeois character. In 1920, part of the second district was added to the fifth district (the section between Sint-​Gummarusstraat, Italiëlei, Gemeentestraat and Rotterdamstraat). This border shift means that the police reports for 1912 and 1917 relating to this section were written in the police station of the second district, and for the later sample years in that of the fifth district. The seventh district encompasses the area between the Stadspark and the Mechelsesteenweg, with the district police station in the Florisstraat. The police reports of the Zurenborg district, which belonged administratively to the seventh district but had its own police sub-​station, were not included. In terms of social profile, the seventh district clearly differs from the two previous 73

The folkloric literature on the fifth and eleventh districts is particularly rich: De Vocht, De Seefhoek en ‘t Faboert; De Vocht, Het verenigingsleven in de Seefhoek. 74 See: Lauwers, De Antwerpenaar en zijn statiekwartier.

28 Introduction districts. It does not contain any distinctly working class streets, but was primarily occupied by families from the elites and the (upper) middle class. Terminologically, we have opted, with little other choice available to us, to refer to the non-​bourgeois areas as “poorer neighbourhoods” or “popular neighbourhoods”. The heterogeneous character of these neighbourhoods does not allow us to qualify them simply as “working class neighbourhoods”. In the same way, in order to distinguish the distinctly bourgeois strata (elites and higher social middle groups) for the less prosperous populations, the collective term “lower social groups” is often used. For the three aforementioned districts, only the police reports mentioning physical violence were selected for the sample years. The impossibility of formulating a waterproof definition of violence is well known. In order to avoid the risk outlined above of eviscerating the term “violence” by an excessively wide definition, we opted to include in the quantitative analysis only forms of physical violence involving a deliberate violation of the physical integrity of at least one of the persons involved. This strict definition of the concept of “violence” has the additional advantage of providing a relatively solid criterion,

­F igure 1  Police districts Antwerpen 2, 5 and 7 (main office) SOURCE: alphabetische lijst der straten met aanduiding der wijken en stadsplan, antwerpen, 1915

29

Introduction

permitting subsequently a certain degree of quantitative analysis. Translated into the official terminology as used today in the formulation of crime statistics, this covers intentional “crimes against physical integrity” (intentional blows and injuries, rape, murder and manslaughter, theft with violence) and not, for example, “misdeeds against another person’s moral values and feelings” (verbal abuse and the like). The bulk of the selected police reports related to blows and injuries, precisely because of the restrictive, physical and intentional definition of violence.75 The restrictive selection criterion makes it possible to select a well-​defined, limited whole out of the series of police reports. It is good to bear in mind that, in addition to this segment, there were also police reports resulting from (other) conflict resolution strategies (such as verbal insult and destruction of property) alongside this segment. In other words, as a result of the restrictive criterion of violence, a specific segment was selected out of all the police reports that originated in conflict resolution strategies. At the same time, the selected whole of police reports concerning interpersonal physical violence also offers a view of these other conflict resolution strategies, as these were also in many cases applied in conflicts which ended in violence. Via the selected cases of interpersonal physical violence, other strategies will therefore also be addressed in this study. The triple selection criterion (temporal, geographical and content-​based) ultimately led to a corpus of 1,377 registered reports relating to interpersonal physical violence. Subdivided by sample year and district (Tables 1 and 2), the following image emerges: table 1

Number of selected police reports per year

abs. 1912 1917 1928 1938 1944 1949 Total

340 140 191 276 188 242 1,377

source: corpus of selected police reports

75

See, for a comprehensive discussion: Tulkens, Les coups et injuries volontaires, 165–​190.

30 Introduction table 2

Number of selected police reports by district

abs. District 2 District 5 District 7 total

452 728 197 1,377

source: corpus of selected police reports

As indicated earlier, the selected police reports do not constitute a homogeneous whole. Based on their starting point, we can distinguish between the types of documents. The first category consists of complaints (klachten), whereby a person calls in an external authority, in this case the police, on his or her own initiative. In the event of a complaint, the initiative clearly comes from the injured party reporting an offence to the police. The account (verslag), on the other hand, was produced in principle on the initiative of the police officer establishing such an offence. The corpus of recorded police reports consists of 1,082 complaints (78.6%) and 295 accounts (21.4%) (see Table 3). The complaints involve 1,105 complainants and 1,272 accused. A  number of complaints were submitted by more than one person, and even more were directed against more than one person. In the accounts selected, 615 actors were recorded. The over-​proportion of complaints increased noticeably over the period studied. table 3

1912 1917 1928 1938 1944 1949

Percentage of complaints and accounts per sample year

Complaints

Accounts

N = 100%

73.5 73.6 76.4 82.2 84.0 81.8

26.5 26.4 23.6 17.7 16.0 18.2

340 140 191 276 188 242

source: corpus of selected police reports

31

Introduction table 4

1912 1917 1928 1938 1944 1949

Percentage of complaints and accounts (A and B) per sample year

Complaints

Accounts A

Accounts B

N = 100%

73.5 73.6 76.4 82.2 84.0 81.8

15.0 10.7 16.7 12.7 12.8 15.3

11.5 15.7 6.8 5.1 3.2 2.5

340 140 191 276 188 242

source: corpus of selected police reports

Nevertheless, the strict distinction made so far between complaints received from the population on the one hand and police-​initiated accounts on the other needs to be narrowed. A distinction was made between 195 accounts drawn up following police intervention in response to an explicit request (for example, by telephone call or a cry for the police) from the population (reports A) and 100 accounts of interventions made entirely by police at their own initiative (reports B) (see Table 4). The preponderance of complaints as against reports deriving from police interventions at the request of the population stands out strongly. Only a small percentage of the reports were drawn up entirely on the police officer’s own initiative, and this share continued to decline sharply during the period under review. As far as everyday violence is concerned, the police acted in the first instance reactively. As long as no complaint was made or police intervention requested, the police clearly gave no priority to the active enforcement of the state’s monopoly on violence. This matches the observation of Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly that in criminal investigations in all historical periods, the majority of offences are not established by law enforcement officials, but reported by the injured party.76 Undoubtedly, the police were a disciplinary authority whose action reflected, to a certain extent, the concerns of elites. However, it is going too far to describe the population, especially the lower social groups, as a passive object of government control.77 On the contrary, everything indicates 76 77

Lis en Soly, Jeugd, criminaliteit en sociale netwerken, 14; See also: Eibach, Die Strassen von Frankfurt am Main, 171; Mellaerts, Criminal Justice, 19–​52. Even in totalitarian political contexts, this is by no means the case:  Lindenberger, Volkspolizei, 15–​19. See also the final comments of Emsley, Crime and Society, 236–​237.

32 Introduction that the repression apparatus was largely dependent on the population’s readiness to report. The Antwerp population in the first half of the twentieth century used reporting to the police as a conscious strategy for settling mutual conflicts, employing formal mechanisms and agencies for its own purposes. What we have here is the appropriation of the police structures by the population.78 The subtle bottom-​up use of the repression device constitutes an important contra-​indication against an unequivocal view of the power relations within society.79 Since Michel Foucault’s ground-​breaking work, awareness has grown that power is not only exerted top-​down. All human relations are penetrated by it. The appropriation of policing structures from below indicates that power was exerted not only top-​down but also bottom-​up. In addition, the calling in of the police by the population to assist against neighbours, relatives or colleagues also illustrates that power relationships are far from absent among so-​called equals. The submitting of a complaint to the police is equivalent to invoking an external power factor to strengthen one’s own position against a violent spouse or a brutal neighbour. The police, the instrument par excellence of those holding power to ensure the conformity of the subordinate population, according to the supporters of the traditional disciplinary perspective, is used by the same subordinates to exercise power towards their equals. Translated into sociological jargon, this boils down to an instrument of vertical social control being used to exert horizontal social control, or strategies of informal and formal social control ending up interlinked.80 The knowledge that the police report came into being as the consequence of a complex combination of informal and formal social control strategies also tells us that, for police reports too, estimating the size of the previously identified problematic dark number is far from obvious. It is crystal clear that the recorded violence formed only the tip of the iceberg. Undoubtedly, only a limited part of the actual violence committed ended up reflected in police sources. It is reasonable to assume that it was not a coincidence whether a particular act was recorded or not, or, in other words, that those cases of violence that were registered show certain common features. What the vast majority of the recorded reports have in common is the fact of being written after the population had brought in the police. In those cases, in other words, the formal repression apparatus was brought in. An obvious hypothesis to explain why in 78 Muchembled, L’invention de l’homme moderne, 34, 149, 186, 191–​192 and 200–​201. 79 See Dinges’ enlightening exposition of Michel Foucault’s views on power relations: Dinges, Michel Foucault, 192–​195. 80 For an analysis of social control from the historical angle, see:  Sleebe, In termen van fatsoen, 3–​25.

Introduction

33

these cases that step was taken and in others not, is the assertion that the involvement of the police indicates that informal mechanisms of self-​regulation had, in these cases, reached their limits. For example, we find certain traces in police reports of long-​lasting conflicts that were brought to the police –​and therefore registered –​after a number of informal attempts to settle them. Conflicts that could be resolved informally, on the other hand, are not found in police sources. Obviously, the fact that the vast majority of the reports were the outcome of people’s strategies does not necessarily mean that these reports give a true reflection of their views, values and aspirations.81 On the proviso that the conceptual context and characteristics of the documents in question are approached critically, judicial and police sources provide useful access to the mentalities of individuals and social groups that come into contact with justice and police. What are the main issues posed by the use of police reports as a historical source? The first problem is the inevitable degree of deformation that occurs when the police commissioner commits a verbal statement to writing. Despite its form, the statement does not come directly to the historian, but is coloured by the apparatus within which it was drawn up.82 As with the interpretation of all judicial and police sources, any analysis of police reports must take into account that the intervention of the report writer means that the declarant’s words have not been committed to paper unfiltered. The police commissioner’s glasses deform to some extent the statements in the report. Already, there are significant differences between spoken and written language. The author’s role further enhanced this distinction; it was not the witness himself, but the police commissioner who drafted the written report from the oral statement. He could omit elements from a statement that he considered irrelevant from a criminal point of view and structure them to avoid repetitions. The direct speech of the spoken language was sometimes exchanged for indirect speech in the written account. In addition, individual statements were, to a certain extent, wrapped in administrative-​legal jargon. The possibility that a significant socio-​cultural distance between the citizen and the police commissioner led to the incorrect or half-​understanding of certain elements in the oral statement is not to be excluded. The monologue form of a police report in fact reflects a dialogue between the declarant and the report writer. The questions that the writer asked the declarant in order to arrive at a coherent

81 For an overview, see: Schwerhoff, Aktenkundig, 61–​68. 82 See: Farge, La vie fragile, 9–​10.

34 Introduction statement undoubtedly affected the final charge of the report. Formally, even if a statement takes the form of a purely personal dictation by the declarant (quotation marks, first person singular), it is clear that the relationship between written text and oral statement is less unambiguous than the formal features suggest. The police report is in fact a hybrid, multi-​voice document that reflects both the declarant’s and the writer’s thought processes and is also at the interface between spoken and written language. Does the “police infection” mean that the police report is to be dismissed as inappropriate for the reconstruction of the mentality of the complainant, witness or accused? Such a puristic approach would amount to an abdication; the voices of those social groups which have almost totally failed to leave behind written sources would be reduced to total silence if such strict logic is applied. Sources offering an “unfiltered” view of their voice are few and far between. In principle, the extent of deformation of the police report should not be overestimated. Drawing up police reports was a labour-​intensive matter. Their writers may well have been led less by formal preoccupations, and more by the pursuit of efficiency. Faced with the daily inflow of complaints and accounts, the author usually chose the easiest option: to commit to paper more or less literally what the complainant, accused or witness stated. A clear pointer in this direction is that way, in many reports, both witnesses and complainants return to their version of the facts in the course of their statement. The often-​recurring phrase “I correct” between two versions is an indication that the report writers entrusted the oral statement to paper almost directly and without significant changes. Apart from the calibrated formulations that initiate and close the minutes, the vast majority of the statements are written in a very simple language and style that is far from Dutch officialese. Indeed, many times the Brabant-​ Antwerp dialect of the people in question comes through in the written version of their accounts. In addition, the vast majority of the statements are in direct speech, reinforcing the impression that the oral statement was followed fairly carefully. The sentence structures also point to this. As in the spoken language, we are confronted with not particularly coherent chains of secondary and subordinate clauses. Threats and insults are constantly noted with great accuracy. Only rarely are passages, deemed overly reprehensible, replaced by three telling full stops. Particularly the genitals and the buttocks were considered too infamous to be entrusted by name to paper. An additional guarantee of reliability lies in the fact that the written statement was read for signature to the declarant who could still make changes at that point. The historian, who takes seriously the people and groups he is investigating by doing justice to their critical faculties and their ability to act, can

Introduction

35

also assume that people are not prepared to sign a statement that goes against their values, standards and aspirations. Providing that the rules of historical criticism are observed, the difference between the oral statement and its written form is not an insurmountable obstacle. The critical task of the historian is to have the declarant’s voice emerge from the hybrid document that the report undoubtedly is.83 This voice needs to be distinguished from the administrative-​legal discourse that influences the report. Break points in the coherence of the text of the report indicate where the two discourses collide, providing a handle for the historian who wishes to unravel the report critically. A second significant potential objection to the use of reports lies in the way people formulate their statements with a view to making a favourable impression on the police commissioner, which means that they do not necessarily correspond to the reality of the incident. Undoubtedly, people generally presented their own motives and deeds in the best possible light. Indeed, the frequent complete contradiction between the different statements within a single report highlights the high level of “fiction in the archives”.84 A statement is the result of an active creation process. It involves a representation of a situation, in which the relationship between the representation and the actual events underlying it is anything but unambiguous. The person concerned creates for the police commissioner a coherent story intended to support his or her view of the facts. Complainants usually ascribe honourable motives to themselves. The counterparty, on the other hand, is blackened. To defend their own versions, witnesses are named who are believed to be positively disposed towards the party in question. The consistency of certain testimonies assumes that those making them must have at least consulted in advance, tuning their instruments together for greater credibility. Not seldom does the search for allies by the parties involved lead to two large groups of substantively clearly related testimonies. Such forms of contradiction will undoubtedly drive the Rankean historian to despair. Trained to rid his sources of fictional elements and thus penetrate to the hard, actual core, he is faced here with so many contradictions as to have to abdicate. Each complainant, accused or witness develops a very refined narrative strategy particular to himself with the inevitable consequence that the respective versions of the facts are usually radically different.85 With 83 For the methodological aspects of this task, see: Carlier, Discoursanalytische. 84 Davis, Fiction in the Archives. 85 Inspirational is the in-​depth analysis of narrative strategies in police statements by Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 71 et seqq.

36 Introduction a view to maximizing impact, they make very conscious use of a broad repertoire of rhetorical techniques. However, the fact that the statements resulted from narrative strategies does not necessarily imply that they are fiction writing irrelevant to the case in question.86 Rather the statements open a fertile perspective on collective mentalities. The fact that they do not match the “truth” does not mean that they are “false” and therefore worthless sources. Made-​up statements need, in order to be credible, to fit within the prevailing moral frame of reference. The recurrence of similar motifs in statements provides valuable information about the beliefs of the society in question. The task therefore becomes one of rendering explicit the implicit discourse that lies hidden in the overall corpus of statements. By discourse we mean here the inter-​coherent ways of speaking by which, in a particular society and in certain conditions, meaning is successfully given to the statements (through reference to prevailing views and values). That fact that the contradiction of the different statements may render the “truth” in most individual cases impossible to find post factum, in no way constitutes an insurmountable problem. The historian is not a detective looking for guilt or innocence in this or other case, but wants to be able to make general statements about the shared values, norms and expectations that exist within a certain social context. Moreover, the freedom of the individual to control autonomously his statement is not absolute. It is not just conscious strategic choices that affect the final account; unconscious factors too play a role. Complainants, the accused and witnesses are inevitably led in their interpretation of the facts by the values, views, and conceptual frameworks of the environment in which they live. The boundaries within which the individual enjoys a certain degree of freedom of action therefore provide an additional guarantee for the value of the statements as a source of collective mentalities. Finally, the question remains as to what extent people, in their statements to the police, consciously conformed to the official pattern of values and silenced their own views. A number of theorists (inspired by Michel de Certeau and J.C. Scott) emphasize that in the interaction between subordinates and the bearers of authority, the former “tactically” appropriate the dominant social discourse in order to create space for individual action, in spite of the subordinate power position.87 In the specific case of police interrogation, the interviewee will pay lip service to aspects of official morality in order to use it to his advantage within the unequal power relationship. In Certeau’s eyes, the 86 87

For inspiring viewpoints and references, see: Schwerhoff, Aktenkundig, 65–​67. De Certeau, L’invention du quotidien, 30. Specifically for the context in which the report comes into being, see: Carlier, De wil.

Introduction

37

tactical play of the subordinate (such as the interviewee) is, in view of the difference in power, not exactly the same as the strategies of those representing authority (such as the police commissioner). The strategy of the representative of authority, understood as a calculated act, requires an institutional position that generates power. From this position of power, the police commissioner determines the modalities of the report, in other words drawing the boundaries within which the respondents are required to operate. For the subordinate who lacks his own institutional power base, there is no way of fundamentally changing those boundaries. His only tactic is to lie in wait and to take advantage of opportunities as and when they occur. Concretely, in the relationship between interviewee and police commissioner, the interviewee can pay lip service to bourgeois morality in order to escape prosecution and undermine the disciplinary strategies of the authorities. The distinction between strategy and tactics ultimately runs in parallel with the power of the authority and the opposition of the subordinates. Despite the valuable insight that respondents were able to make creative use of Wahrheit und Dichtung in order to achieve the intended goal, the distinction made between tactics and strategy poses serious risks of narrowing the field of vision. By emphasizing the importance of the vertical power relationship, it threatens unjustly to reduce the actions of the people making statements to reactions.88 With respect to the disciplinary strategies of the authorities, their only choice is apparently between acceptance and resistance. The relationship between population and police is many times more complex than the unambiguous dominating-​dominated conceptual pairing might suggest. The scale of the strategic use of the police apparatus by the population for its own purposes leaves little to the imagination in this regard. There is clearly more between heaven and earth than dominance and subordination. The realization that power can be exercised not only top-​down ultimately eliminates the base of the postulated distinction between strategy and tactics. The police report is not reducible to the written reflection of the interplay between the dominant discourse of power and the tactical attempts by the subordinate to oppose it. A particular problem lies in the implicit placing of a statement on the same level as an interrogation. The representation of a statement as the outcome of cross-​examination of a subordinate by a representative of authority, with the subordinate person constantly conforming out of fear to the discourse of the authority, fails to reflect the complexity of historical reality. Important in this

88

See: the enlightening comments of Lis and Soly, Te gek om los te lopen?, 215–​216.

38 Introduction regard is the finding that by far the majority of reports were initiated by declarations made by members of the public at their own initiative. While it may therefore be reductionist to analyse police reports in terms of acceptance and resistance, the fact remains that declarants could use the language of authority for their own purposes without this necessarily reflecting their own views and expectation patterns. However, the strategic conformance of the declarants was not absolute.89 The values, standards and expectations that emerge from the registered statements are not always consistent with official moral regulations. Historian David Garrioch rightly indicates that the degree of conformity was largely dependent on the purpose of the document and the importance and situation of the speaker.90 The statement of a daughter required to respond to a complaint from one of her parents for use of violence is of a completely different order than a lateral mention of a case of parental abuse in response to a case of noise at night. An additional guarantee of the value of the reports as a source of the views, expectations and tolerance thresholds of the social groups that come into contact with the police lies in their fundamental unanimity.91 In most cases, several persons (complainants, the accused and witnesses) are heard so that descriptions of the same conflict are entrusted to the paper from different perspectives. The differing voices heard in the report reduce the risk of statements being consciously polished to reflect the official value pattern, completely overshadowing any view of individual outlooks. Indeed, one can ask whether it is possible for people finding themselves in the police station to exchange their own viewpoints entirely for an alternative set of values. It is a lot more likely that their own attitudes will show through.92 Indeed, while the police report may not reflect the truth in positivist terms, it does indeed open unexpected perspectives on reality.93 It is one of the few sources in which people from the lower social groups speak and, in addition, judge their own behaviour and that of others. By analysing which behaviours are labelled as (un)acceptable under certain circumstances, one obtains an overview of the underlying codes of moral conduct and tolerance thresholds. Provided that careful interpretative work is carried out, police reports provide in this way a rare opportunity to find out the meaning given to, for example, violence by various social groups. 89 See: the concerns of Sohn, Chrysalides, 49–​50. 90 Garrioch, Neighbourhood, 12–​13. 91 See: Schwerhoff, Aktenkundig, 65. 92 See: Castan, Honnêteté; Egmond, Erezaken, 4–​5. 93 See: Farge’s moving book Le goût de l’archive, 40.

Introduction

39

In a number of stimulating studies, criminal records are used as sources of information on collective mentalities and behavioural patterns. Compared with criminal records, the use of police archives has a number of advantages. They are the first written record of conflicts, often made at the request of the population. In police reports, made right at the beginning of the judicial chain, the material is much less filtered. They precede the selection procedures of public prosecutors’ offices and the courts. The police reports mention conflicts settled with the help of the police commissioner or by mutual agreement and which very likely did not result in criminal proceedings. All this makes police archives a more appropriate source than court archives for the analysis of everyday conflicts. The selected police reports were recorded in such a way as to permit both quantitative and qualitative analysis. For a long time, quantitative analysis has remained the privileged method within historical research into crime and punishment.94 Historians began to work with sets of numerical data to expose and explain the historical structures and cycles of crime, analysing social reality purely from the perspective of the scholar without casting light on the individual players. However, this dominance of pure quantitative analysis ran into increasing resistance from the 1980s onwards. On the one hand, critics often justly pointed to the pronouncedly positivistic, somewhat uncritical and insufficiently differentiated use of numerical data of every kind. On the other hand, in the postmodern climate, scepticism grew with regard to the ability to make quantitatively substantiated statements about long-​term developments. The consequence of this was the turning of criminological-​historical research in a cultural history direction, with no place in the victorious micro-​stories for concepts such as process, structure and the cycle. Quantitative analysis, felt to be bloodless, was abandoned in favour of a hermeneutic, qualitative approach. Based on an exhaustive reading of a limited number of individual cases, historians went looking for the everyday reality of crime and the experiences and mentalities of the actors involved.95 The participant’s perspective became central. Over the last decade, the call has come to move beyond the quantitative-​ qualitative opposition by linking valuable elements from both research traditions. The combination of the acquis of the qualitative approach, cleaned of narrativist relativism, with a more critical and differentiated quantitative analysis makes it possible to arrive in the history of criminality at a synthesis 94 For an overview of the methodological development of the last four decades, see: Rousseaux, Crime, Justice and Society, 92–​94; Schwerhoff, Aktenkundig, 46–​48. 95 Even in the criminology, a similar casuistic approach came to the fore. See here, for example: De Haan, Motives bij plegers, 35–​52.

40 Introduction of the cultural and social historical approaches. Such a synthesis should make it possible to sail between the twin cliffs of determinism and culturalism while once again providing space for the time dimension. It also does justice to the growing awareness that a conjunction of observer and participant perspectives is required for good analysis.96 This book is in line with this trend. To the extent feasible and meaningful, a quantitative analysis is carried out that makes it possible to track down structures and processes that would remain hidden in a pure hermeneutic analysis. But a qualitative analysis of the sources from the perspective of the actors involved is also necessary. The meanings that people attribute to certain actions and the mentalities, values and norms that lie at the basis of behaviours can be tracked down only by detailed analysis of specific cases.97 A casuistic approach is not at all equivalent to a search for the “most individual expression of the most individual emotion”. Individual and social structure do not exist side by side but only in relation to each other.98 Operative individuals do not stand by themselves, but attune their actions to their social environment, acting according to social rules they have internalized. Each individual act therefore contributes elements of information on the values and norms that apply within a particular society. Given the interdependence of individual and structure, it is a valid premise that each individual case provides a valid, and to a certain extent representative, access to shared codes within a society. Of course, it should be noted in passing that most societies are not monolithic; on the contrary, they consist of various social groups that do not necessarily follow one shared norm and value pattern or give a similar meaning to certain practices. To justify this pluralism, the casuistic approach requires the precise social situating of the actors involved. The idea that a meaningful act for the individual is possible only by addressing social rules corresponds to the previously observed inevitable inter-​subjectivity of language. Language constitutes a usable access to the prevailing mentality as it indicates what is literally sayable and therefore understandable in a particular context. Every human being speaks with the words that are available to him as a result of historical social development.99 We should, however, make the reservation here that, in the context of language, words can remain fossilised in an unchanging outward form while losing their original impact. 96 See: Lorenz, De constructie, 206. 97 See for the importance of ‘thick description’ for the analysis of violence: Von Trotha, Zur Soziologie, 20–​25. 98 See: Lorenz, De constructie, 198–​199. 99 Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms.

Introduction

41

The choice for a combined qualitative and quantitative analysis calls for a recording of facts at two levels. On the one hand, the desire to identify the mentalities, values and norms of the actors involved by means of qualitative interpretation requires a literal transcription of the recorded police reports. On the other hand, a quantitative analysis of a large-​scale corpus of documents calls for computerized processing. For this purpose, a multi-​relational Microsoft Access database was designed. 4

Structure of This Book

Now that the general question, theoretical principles and the empirical basis have been outlined, the question remains as to the concrete structure of this book. The break-​down into chapters of this book is based on the formulated research questions. Chapter one centres on the question of the function(s) of violence in the Antwerp public space. The searchlight is here emphatically on the place of public violence within neighbourhood life. The social logic of such violence within informal networks is investigated. The central question is why violence was used in Antwerp in particular by the lower social groups. The Antwerp case is tested here against the scientific debates on the importance and the diversity of reputation, revenge, (in)formal settlement strategies and (in)formal social control. Although not its primary intention, this study it also addresses the place of intra-​familial and sexual violence within the neighbourhood life, as shining additional light on the way this functioned. Chapter two focuses on the form taken by public violence in early twentieth century Antwerp. In general, it investigates what the Antwerp case contributes to the debate on the place of ritual in twentieth century society. More specifically, it examines the ritual forms public violence took and in what respect its formal language was functional in achieving the aims pursued by its perpetrators. A detailed “thick description” of the different ritual practices used makes it possible to expose the rules of the game that structured public violence and the meanings this expressed. Not only are the codes as such the target of this chapter, but also the way in which players enforced respect for those codes. Chapter three is devoted to the gender dimension. The intense scientific debate on the relationship between gender and violence is assessed against the Antwerp case. Central to this chapter is the divergent practice and meaning of violence by and against, among and between the two sexes. The question of how gender-​specific behavioural models influenced the application and experience of violence by both sexes is answered. Conversely, the analysis of

42 Introduction violence also teaches much about the wider gender patterns in early twentieth century Antwerp. After the gender dimension, chapter four puts the social dimension in the spotlight. The question of the reasons for the different meanings given to public violence by the various social groups is examined here more closely. This divergent appreciation of public violence calls for further reflection on the fact that social groups within the same society maintain different respectability models. Chapter five studies the norms and values that governed life in the neighbourhoods. Conflicts are major carriers of significance. Notions of honour and dishonour are the order of the day. In this way, they provide useful access for reconstructing the mental worlds of the social groups participating in them. Divergent elements of the prevailing system of norms and values ranging from sexual to professional honour are discussed in this chapter. In short, the book is conceived as a thematically constructed walk through Antwerp’s streets, taverns and porches of several decades ago. The aim of the trip is to gain a better understanding of various facets of the restless life that took place there.

­c hapter 1

Life on a Stage 1.1

Introduction

In the current debate on violence in the urban public sphere, a causal link is frequently made between the increasing individualization and the alleged “brutalization” of society. Schematically, this approach boils down to the argument that the dissolution of traditional, small-​scale societies has led to a form of social disintegration, whereby individuals, disconnected from a former community-​based morality, resort, in an anonymous society, to violence against their unknown fellow human beings.1 This viewpoint bespeaks a pronouncedly pessimistic image of human beings: that man is naturally inclined to evil, and that only external factors withhold him from resorting to violence. In particular, the fear of social control acts as a brake on the natural tendency of human beings to violent behaviour.2 The fear of being thrown out of informal social networks makes people abandon violence. The stronger the individual is integrated into informal social networks, the less the tendency to place at risk the associated benefits by what is deemed to be a violation of norms. And it is here that the shoe rubs today. Individualization is seen as having led to the destruction of all kinds of informal social control with the effect that today’s atomized individual no longer knows what to hold to. Because it is in the cities that dissolution of community life is farthest advanced, it is there that the phenomenon of “meaningless violence” is increasing. As the ultimate remedy against the alleged increase in public violence in an “embittered” and “hardened” society, a renewal of active neighbourhood spirit is touted with a view to restoring informal social control.3 However, the nostalgic desire for small-​scale communities misses the findings of scientific research. These show that such societal relationships were, at many times, anything but conflict-​free. The unilateral association of lost

1 For the echo of this discourse in sociology and criminology, see: Van den Brink and Schuyt, Van kwaad tot erger, 7–​17; Van den Brink, Geweld als maatschappelijk probleem, 19–​34; Von Trotha, Zur Soziologie der Gewalt, 18–​19 and Wittebrood, Buurten en geweldscriminaliteit, 92–​ 107. For a political echo, see: Blokland, Urban Bonds, 3–​6. 2 Boutellier, Solidariteit en slachtofferschap, 59–​60. Österberg, Criminality, Social Control, 35–​ 62; Österberg en Lindström, Crime and Social Control; Ylinkangas, Major Fluctuations, 81–​103. 3 Boutellier, De veiligheidsutopie.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004416932_003

44 Chapter 1 “community life” with positive values such as inclusion, normative consensus and mutual trust furthermore conceals the fact that it also carried less rosy aspects such as the subjugation of the individual to the views of the others and a strong tendency towards intolerance against anyone who did not fit into the community scheme.4 The face-​to-​face communities can often just as well be titled back-​to-​back communities.5 Historian Joanna Bourke described the tendency to romanticization in this area in the telling words: “… conflict is forgotten in favour of doors that were always open”.6 Violence was often an inherent part of the forms of informal conflict regulation that existed in such communities.7 In other words, violence is not necessarily a crisis phenomenon pointing to the loss of informal social networks, but could indeed fulfil social functions within those networks. Historian Pieter Spierenburg in turn suggests, specifically with regard to homicide, that since the late Middle Ages a shift has occurred in the nature of violence. He also links this evolution to changes in the pattern of inter-​personal relationships.8 According to Spierenburg, every case of homicide –​and by extension of violence in general –​can be located on an expressive-​ritual/​instrumental axis. For him, the centre of gravity of violence in Western European cities has clearly shifted in recent centuries from the one to the other pole of this axis. In the pre-​industrial city, the majority of the violence was characterized by a fundamentally community-​oriented form of language, aimed at damaging the honour or reputation of the opponent. This fitted into the way conflicts were settled in informal social networks. Violence in the modern city, where community life is less intense, is for him characterized predominantly by its instrumentality. Phenomena aimed at a clearly specified objective such as violent extortion, rape and robbery are typical forms of contemporary urban violence. Spierenburg emphasizes that this is a hypothesis that is intended in the first place to stimulate research, and that moreover the respective qualifications of the nature of violence in the pre-​industrial and modern city are based on a somewhat artificial distinction. In reality, he argues, instrumental and expressive aspects of violence are entangled, and the shift in the centre of gravity on the axis over time is to be seen in relative and not absolute terms. Leaving aside the question of whether the terminology is really that well chosen (is 4 De Haan and Nijboer, Youth Violence, 75–​88. Taska, Like a Bicycle, 9–​10. 5 Blok, Antropologische perspectieven, 101. 6 Bourke, Working-​Class Cultures, 137. 7 Bielefeld, Gewalt, Nachtbarschaft, 5–​22; Brücker, ‘Und ich bin heil da’ rausgekommen’, 337–​ 365; Reemtsma, Nachbarschaft, 105–​120. 8 Spierenburg, Faces of Violence, 701–​716; Spierenburg, Long-​Term Trends, 70–​71 and 93.

Life on a Stage

45

rape or robbery per se any less expressive than a duel?), the hypothesis of a change in the profile of urban violence over time is a very enticing one. What can the Antwerp case study contribute to this debate? 1.2

A Public Existence

Inspired by the impressive conceptual framework of German sociologist Norbert Elias, many of his colleagues and historians have stated that in Western European societies, a so-​called “privatization process” has taken place over the last six hundred years.9 Over the centuries, people’s existence has gradually been lived out decreasingly in the public eye and increasingly in the private sphere. The dynamics of the process went from openness to isolation. More and more aspects of human life were withdrawn from the public sphere. Natural bodily secretions such as stools, saliva and snot were increasingly associated with feelings of shame and embarrassment and, consequently, increasingly obscured. Sex, death and madness were also increasingly banned from public life and received their own set-​apart locations. In the field of punishment, a similar process occurred: public, physical punishment gave way to the isolation of prison and banishment overseas. The ultimate triumph of the privatization process is seen as being the birth of the intimate family around the middle of the eighteenth century. The tendency towards homeliness and intimacy was translated into the physical separation of living and working spaces and the growing compartmentalization of the house, with in particular the use of specific and separate bedrooms. The intimate family also increasingly lived apart from the immediate social environment. The privatization of family life implied a decrease in informal social ties with neighbours or fellow villagers. With the disintegration of community life as a result of a more homely lifestyle, the street life that was once so characteristic of village and urban neighbourhood life lost its vitality. While in pre-​industrial society, the neighbourhood community intervened in all sorts of ways in the lives of its members, benevolent distance and respect for private life became the new watchwords of good relationships between neighbours. Although the general dynamic of the privatization process in Western Europe since the late Middle Ages has not been fundamentally contested, recent

9 For the classical vision of the privatization process, see: Ariès, Pour une histoire, 8–​19; Spierenburg, De verbroken betovering, 14–​17.

46 Chapter 1 research shows that certain reservations need to be made.10 It seems that the development proceeded much less linearly than generally accepted, with regular counter-​swings. The process of informalization of sex and death in Western European societies during the twentieth century, as presented by sociologist Cas Wouters, could be a spectacular recent example of one such counter-​ movement.11 In addition, the indirect spiritual father of the privatization process, Norbert Elias, himself focused in his later work more emphatically on the possibility of movements in the opposite direction, borrowing the term “informalization” from his apprentice.12 In addition, it would seem that the posited universality of the privatization process no longer matches the research findings.13 In formulating the privatization thesis, insufficient account has been taken of the possibility of social differentiation leading here too to divergent developmental processes and rhythms. All too often, researchers have assumed without further examination that the privatization tendencies that occurred in socially better-​situated populations also left traces in the lower social groups. Research indicates, however, that this was not necessarily the case. There are, for example, indications that for lower social groups the importance of public life in the eighteenth century actually increased, right when the idea of homeliness was achieving its final breakthrough among the elite and social middle groups. For them, street life continued very much alive for a long time yet: in cheek-​by-​jowl living conditions, active participation in informal neighbourhood networks had a very functional aspect. Nor does the distinction between various developmental pathways in this area necessarily correspond to the difference between poor and rich. For example, in nineteenth-​century England, women from the lowest social groups shared with their gender colleagues from the elites a greater role in public life compared with women from the middle classes.14 For unbiased observers, the superficial reading of only a few Antwerp police reports is sufficient to convince them that, at least for the inhabitants of the popular neighbourhoods, the notion of privacy was a very relative one. The historian who has read through thousands of statements from the corpus of documents in question, with countless implicit and explicit references to the public

10 Pieter Spierenburg, who in an earlier work presented a classic interpretation of the privatization process, pleads on closer investigation for a much more reserved approach: Schuurman and Spierenburg, Introduction, 11. 11 Wouters, Van minnen en sterven, 1995. 12 Elias, Studien, 33–​62. 13 Lis and Soly, Neighbourhood; Castan, Le public et le particulier, 451–​452. 14 Perkin, Women, Marriage, 220–​241.

47

Life on a Stage

nature of existence, comes to the conclusion that the daily living world of the lower social groups in Antwerp in the first half of the twentieth century still had a pronounced public character. In no way can we speak of the generalized, intimate way of life in the home circle, the alleged core of the privatization process. Only for the distinctly bourgeois streets does the deafening silence of the archives with respect to public incidents lead us to suppose that life there was lived predominantly in closed circles. Evidence of active street life can not be detected in them. It is precisely because bourgeois life was lived out largely off-​stage, out of sight of neighbours, passers-​by and the police, that it has left almost no traces in the police archives. On the other hand, the daily existence of the inhabitants of Antwerp’s popular neighbourhoods was lived largely in the public sphere. The police reports literally teem with references to informal conversations, frictions and conflicts occurring in the (semi-​) public space. The bulk of the violence recorded in the neighbourhoods that are the subject of this study occurred in public places such as the street and semi-​public places such as the stairwell (see Table 5). Of a prevalence of domestic violence, as one could expect in a privatized society, there was little sign.

table 5

Percentual distribution of locations of registered violencea

REL. cinema-​dance hall tavern tavern -​street house (indoor rooms) house-​street semi-​public space street workplace shop other 100% = N

1.5 15.5 2.6 28.1 0.4 14.9 31.7 1.3 2.5 1.5 1364

source: corpus of selected police reports a  In 1364 out of 1377 recorded cases it has been possible to ­derive the precise location from the sources.

48 Chapter 1 The street, the stairway, and the tavern are just some of the spatial focal points of informal social life where public relations were forged, maintained and broken. Gossiping women on the corner of the street, a group of men sitting chatting on a doorstep in the Lange Zavelstraat, or drinkers arguing in the café De Welkom are just a few among many examples of the fundamentally outward-​facing sociability of the Antwerp public neighbourhoods. Typical for the outward-​facing living world of the lower social groups is the practice, frequently visible from the archives, of spending the entire evening hanging out of the window or standing in the doorway. The largely public nature of existence implies the continuous presence of others. It was almost impossible to avoid the gaze of other people. Unexpected events such as fights did not go unnoticed. The slightest rumour was enough to set the whole area in commotion. The statement by a witness of a fight in the Kattenkwartier is illustrative of the self-​evident nature of interest in events in the street: “Hearing loud noise in the street, I went outside.”15 In the same vein, the following statement by a housewife: “I heard lots of noise, pulled my window open and saw there was quarrel.”16 Curious heads poked quickly out of porches and windows, rumours ran like wildfire through the immediate surroundings, and in just as little time a crowd of neighbours and casual passers-​by had gathered. A police officer in his report emphatically emphasized the almost mechanical link between public rumour and the response of bystanders: “… that V.S. made a hubbub (…) such as to gather a crowd”.17 Arguments between drinkers, neighbours or friends frequently took place in the public sphere, attracting massive general public interest. The dispute between a housewife and a cleaning lady on the street about supposed tittle-​tattle had just begun, and “at once there were lots of people around.”18 The statement of a smith’s hand who had created a “great gathering” in front of the dance hall Het Keizershof in the Offerandestraat, after being thrown out for alleged misconduct, seems to indicate that a gathering did not just arise from nothing: “… they threw me out, and that gathered a crowd.” Rather, it seems there was a stream of passers-​by, stopped only by an unusual event, which incontrovertibly points to an intensive use of the street. Even at night, curiosity often gained the upper hand over anger at noise. In the case of a fight at three in the morning on the Elisabethplaats in the Seefhoek, public interest was literally awoken very early. The police wrote in its report: “… all these people made such a noise fighting, 15 16 17 18

saa, MA 24632, report district 2, no. 4607, 29-​7-​1912. saa, MA 24648, report district 2, no. 947, 27-​7-​1917. saa, MA 29371, report district 2, no. 1553, 1-​6-​1949. saa, MA 31563, report district 5, no. 2425, 20-​10-​1912.

Life on a Stage

49

crying out and raging that the inhabitants of the aforementioned street came looking out of their windows.”19 The rumour that a confrontation was imminent, without yet breaking out, could already be enough to create a gathering. The statement of a cabinetmaker’s assistant about the emergence of a dispute that he and his family had fought with the neighbours, tells us a lot here: This evening (…) I came home. My wife (…) who had gone and filed a complaint at the police station informed me and I replied: ‘I’ll go to the police station’ and went to find witnesses. When I  came outside, the Neefsteeg was full of people, as was the Lange Beeldekensstraat. It is then that the fight began.20 Rumours about special events spread at incredible speed. The protection that the private sphere of the home was supposed in principle to provide was very relative in the poorer neighbourhoods. Privacy was a luxury that only better-​off people could afford. Houses were often shared by several households so that a clear separation between the public and private sphere was not always the case. The shared use of porch, staircase, basement and inner courtyard, and the thin partition walls made it virtually impossible to escape the eyes and the ears of others. In such buildings, indoors and outdoors flowed seamlessly into each other. Detailed statements made regularly to the police about family disputes of neighbours point to the relative nature of the private sphere among the lower social groups. People inevitably picked up a lot about what happened in their neighbours’ quarters and in the semi-​public areas of the house. Whenever there was scolding or beating, or the husband stumbled into the house blind drunk, or a married woman received strange men in her room, little or nothing of all this went unnoticed by the neighbours. Such events formed a welcome subject of discussion. Typical of the transparency of living in shared homes is the finding that persons who became the subject of such talk regularly got wind of the gossip. But even the limits of a house inhabited by only one family were by no means enough to remove its inhabitants from the eyes of others. Domestic squabbling could be heard in the street and, like other types of “noise”, could produce a mobilization of local residents. Telling in this regard is the report by a police officer about his intervention in a marital dispute between a machine operator and his wife:

19 20

saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 1504, 23-​6-​1912. saa, MA 31560, report district 5, no. 529, 1-​3-​1912.

50 Chapter 1 … relate that we heard (…) on the first floor of the Hollandstraat a violent quarrel that disturbed the inhabitants’ rest, glass was smashed along with a window pane, whereupon the passers-​by gathered to form a group in front of the house: we too heard a woman complain bitterly and being beaten.21 Equally revealing, the first response of the police officer on penetrating the apartment of the disputing couple was the admonition that “by their noise they were gathering a crowd of people in the street”. On the rare occasions that the police acted on their own initiative against violence, this was in almost all cases because “noise” had gathered a crowd. Viewing the gathering of people as a threat to public order, it acted to put an end to the noise. It was usually not the interpersonal violence as such, but the prospect of broader disturbance in the neighbourhood that led to police intervention. It is not surprising that in such a transparent world, people were keenly aware of the permanent presence of the eyes of others and aligned their behaviours accordingly. Translated into Erving Goffman’s terminology, daily existence in the poorer neighbourhoods of Antwerp was played out –​unlike in bourgeois neighbourhoods –​front stage, and only to a limited extent back stage. The prominent presence of the eyes of the others in the Antwerp popular neighbourhoods meant that, according to the Goffmanian way of thinking, inhabitants had to constantly monitor the public impression they gave. Countless statements by Antwerp citizens from the lower social groups show that they were convinced that a negative public impression would have a devastating effect on their reputations. This finding is hardly surprising. Indeed, in the transparent environment of the neighbourhoods, reputations were made and broken in the public sphere and not en petit comité as in the bourgeoisie. For the lower social groups, the street, the stairwell and the tavern fulfilled similar functions as did private salons and other exclusive occasions for the elites. People’s public performance was all about credibly embodying the claim to respectability.22 In particular, it was important to avoid a negative public impression. Everything that could jeopardize the credibility of the message of positive self-​representation was of the devil. Given the sharpness of social control, the slightest public failing was quickly the subject of conversation in the neighbourhood or in the tavern. This could attract the eyes of the others, which was to be avoided at all costs. In this regard, it is certainly significant 21 22

saa, MA 24648, report district 2, no. 456, 21-​4-​1917. Without explicitly referring to Goffman, Ellen Ross speaks in this respect about “performances”: Ross, Not the Sort, 39.

Life on a Stage

51

that two terms expressly referring to public noise, “kabaal” (racket, row)23 and “lawaaii” (noise, din)24 were used in practice as synonyms for “scandal”.25 Numerous statements show the fear of “scandal”, understood as embarrassing, because public, damage to a person’s reputation. “Scandal” was equivalent to any public behaviour by others that endangered the carefully-​built image of a positive self-​representation. In their statements to the police commissioner, the residents of the Antwerp neighbourhoods insisted on the public aspect of potential threats to their reputation. The fear of shame, of public disavowal by informal social networks, was the central concern. When a trader was accosted upon leaving the cinema by the father of a former employee who demanded his son’s overdue pay, he asked him to come to his house the next day to discuss the problem: “I told him, it’s better to come to my house and talk things through than to address me in the street when someone was with me.”26 The trader obviously preferred settling things off-​stage to a potentially status-​threatening public conflict. A man harassed on the street by his wife from whom he lived separately also emphasized the public aspect: “She also said to the passers-​by, pointing to me, ‘Here’s my husband with his sixteen-​year-​old lover.’“27 In the same direction is the statement by workman Jan P. expressly complaining that he was scolded “in full tavern and in the presence of several persons” by tobacco worker Rosalia V.28 A similar sensitivity speaks from a taxi driver’s statement against a cigar maker. He reproached him in particular for continously raking up an old dispute with all its implications for his reputation: “The (…) person brings this up whenever he runs up against me in public.”29 Dockworker Frans V. motivated his request to the police to accompany him to the office with the wish to prevent a public squabble: “… as he expects to meet his wife and wants to avoid all unpleasantness on the street”.30 The preoccupation with how one is seen in the eyes of others is perhaps the most apparent in the analysis of violence in the street, in the tavern or in 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Among dozens of other references, see: saa, MA 31581, report district 5, no. 985, 21-​ 6-​1917; saa, MA 31582, report district 5, no.  1311, 7-​8-​1917; saa, MA 31583, report district 5, no. 2020, 11-​12-​1917; saa, MA 31710, report district 5, no. 4422, 11-​9-​1938. saa, MA 31713, report district 5, no. 4748, 27-​9-​1938. saa, MA 31709, report district 5, no. 3662, 28-​7-​1938; saa, MA 31714, report district 5, no. 5302, 30-​10-​1938; saa, MA 31703, no. 1295, 15-​3-​1938. saa, MA 29829, report district 7, no. 1320, 30-​4-​1938. saa, MA 30019, report district 7, no. 1572, 10-​4-​1949. saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 1352, 13-​6-​1912. saa, MA 31701, report district 5, no. 709, 2-​2-​1938. saa, MA 29218, report district 2, no. 221, 5-​2-​1928.

52 Chapter 1 the staircase. At stake in such confrontations was usually the status or reputation of the parties involved. Ultimately, in conflicts about concrete issues such as outstanding debts, mud on the doorstep or refusing a round of drinks in the pub, it was people’s reputations or the way they were perceived that were in play.31 The preoccupation with their reputations displayed by the inhabitants of Antwerp’s popular neighbourhoods is in itself a significant fact. This indicates that life in these neighbourhoods was a lot less anonymous than the clichés about the atomized character of contemporary urban societies would suggest. The image of total strangers going at each other physically as a result of social control in today’s atomized city contrasts with the finding that the vast majority of the violent conflicts in the Antwerp neighbourhoods were between people who already knew each other (in various contexts) (see Table 6). The concern for reputation makes little sense in a highly individualized context. It indicates the importance attached to how one is seen in the eyes of the others. Or as Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault formulated it sharply: “Scandal exists only with other people watching”.)32 The finding that Antwerpenians from the less prosperous social groups were unusually concerned with their positions within informal societal networks indicates the importance they attached to such networks. Eventually, a large portion of the selected conflicts can be put down to the need to gain respect in the eyes of the (local) community. The daily fights are therefore no indication whatsoever of a far-​reaching degree of disintegration of informal social networks. Analysis of the countless Antwerp police reports on public violent conflicts clearly shows that these are, for the most part, not uncontrolled eruptions of highly individual emotions, but on the contrary, calculated actions in the context of interpersonal tensions and rivalries. To qualify these conflicts as forms of “impulsive”, “uncivilized” or “criminal” behaviour misses the significance they incontrovertibly had in people’s daily existence.33 1.3

Openness, Reputation and Reciprocity

Where did this dominant preoccupation with reputation come from? In the wake of historians Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly, we need to emphasize the functional character of the great sensitivity to reputation and to its loss in the 31 32 33

In this respect, little or nothing had changed since the early modern age:  Ruff, Violence, 122. Farge and Foucault, Le désordre des familles, 36. See the pertinent comments by Brennan: Public Drinking, 25–​26.

Life on a Stage53 table 6

Mutual relationship of actors involved in violence for all sample years together in absolute and relative terms

neighbourhood neighbours maintenant-​tenant owner-​tenant neighbourhood children family spouses parent-​child brothers-​sisters in-​laws others lovers (ex-​)lovers encounters tavern keeper-​customer seller-​customer colleagues competitors employer-​employee friends and acquaintances teacher-​student controller-​citizen rivals in love lover-​family partner unknown relationship unclear police and citizen total source: corpus of selected police reports

ABS.

REL.

237 193 12 40 4 423 319 50 15 38 1 97 97 541 58 38 42 2 33 64 1 3 53 14 166 67 79 1377

17.2 14.1 0.9 2.9 0.3 30.7 23.2 3.6 1.1 2.8 0.1 7.0 7.0 39.3 4.2 2.8 3.0 0.1 2.4 4.6 0.1 0.2 3.8 1.0 12.0 4.9 5.7 100.0

54 Chapter 1 lower social groups.34 A good reputation was an absolute prerequisite for participation in informal social networks. Anyone acquiring a bad name in such networks became the subject of informal social sanctions: he or she was gossiped about, was no longer greeted, or, in the worst case, completely excluded. For people from the poorer social layers, such forms of social exclusion were a disaster. For them, participation in informal social networks was essential to keeping their heads above water. People with precarious livelihoods could literally not afford to disregard how others saw them. In order to maintain the life-​essential relationships of reciprocity, they were completely dependent on transparency and respectability. Reciprocity is one of the most common rules of inter-​personal conduct.35 Essentially, this boils down to assisting people who have helped you previously and the prohibition against harming such people. This reciprocal commitment fits into a broader sociological paradigm that approaches social reality as a set of exchange processes. This view starts from the concept that human relations are rarely based on one-​way traffic, but mostly on a two-​way flow, on giving and taking, and on social exchanges. This means that a relationship of reciprocity can only come into being and operate between people who are in regular contact with each other. Familiarity is an absolute precondition for maintaining reciprocity relationships. The transparency of existence in Antwerp’s popular neighbourhoods was therefore not only an inevitable result of physical conditions, but also very functional for the creation of reciprocity relationships. People had to be sure that the person to whom they rendered a service would be able to offer them a service in return within the foreseeable future. Such confidence could only grow in a climate of openness. Persons who shielded themselves from their immediate social environment, by rejecting contacts as an inconvenience and by never providing a service themselves, did not qualify for the establishment of reciprocity relationships. Indeed, to create the necessary social bonds, one had to have a good reputation and such a good name could only be established in the public sphere. For example, someone known in the neighbourhood as a tough person who took without ever giving back could not count on much goodwill. The familiarity that permits reciprocity relationships does not necessarily equivalate to friendship.36 Ties between good neighbours in this area can be a lot more instrumental than those between distant friends, even though the relationship between the friends is much more intimate than 34 Lis and Soly, Neighbourhood, 16–​21. 35 Burke, History and Social Theory, 69–​71; De Swaan, De mensenmaatschappij, 92–​93; Macherel, Don et réciprocité, 151–​166. 36 See: Blokland, Urban Bonds, 118–​119.

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those between the neighbours. The obvious and unavoidable familiarity of life in the same neighbourhood is evident from the statement by seamstress Victorina T. about the persons constantly besieging her: “I know those guys very well, because I live in their neighbourhood.”37 Between people who see each other only once, a reciprocity relationship cannot exist, as they lack the means of pressure to force the other party in the event of failure to return a service. The willingness to cross the bridge for people one does not know is therefore generally low. Between strangers, gifts and services are usually paid immediately and precisely. Completely different is the relationship of people within a system of reciprocal obligations. Between them, the nature of the service to be done in return and the time limit within which it is to be delivered is not predetermined. That does not detract from the obligation to do something in return for the service or gift rendered. Giving a present, for example, is almost never a completely gratuitous expression of pure altruism. The recipient of the gift is duty bound to make an equivalent counter-​gift in due course and in the meantime to do nothing that could damage the donor. Mutual assistance between neighbours is also characterized by a high level of reciprocal obligation. For example when neighbours keep an eye on things during a period of absence or lend the proverbial egg. The implicit starting point of such assistance is that it is mutual: the assisted person is obliged to assist his neighbours in the case of need. Indeed, behind the seemingly utterly unselfish phenomena such as the distribution of gifts or services to neighbours and friend lies a far from negligible amount of calculating behaviour. People who enter into reciprocity relationships keep an eye on whether the gifts granted and received are more or less in balance. Perceived imbalances (because, for example, one of the regulars in a pub is happy to be offered a beer, but “never offers a round back”) is a regular source of conflicts. Especially for people with precarious livelihoods, undisturbed reciprocity relationships with friends, neighbours and relatives were of the utmost importance. Such informal social networks fulfilled for them the crucial function of a social security network, which they could call upon in times of distress.38 Which networks exactly formed the pillars of reciprocity relationships depends on the broader context. The relative weight within reciprocity relationships of family ties on the one hand and informal networks of neighbours on the 37 38

saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 1279, 29-​5-​1912. For the safety network metaphor, see:  Ross, Survival Networks, 8.  In London, even after 1914–​1918, reciprocity remained important:  White, Campbell Bunk, 21–​23. For the importance of self-​help among less well-​off social actors, see:  Jütte, Poverty and Deviance, 83–​99.

56 Chapter 1 other is anything but a historical constant, but on the contrary is determined by the possibilities and constraints of the particular social context. Catharina Lis shows that, as in early nineteenth-​century Antwerp, family ties became less and less able to meet the need for mutual assistance, so reciprocity among neighbours took on a greater role in the survival strategies of the lower social groups.39 In a context characterized by structural impoverishment and mass immigration from countryside to city, informal neighbourhood networks gained importance, as the impoverished population could, in times of scarcity, count much less than previously on the help of relatives in the immediate vicinity or further away. Only when a significant proportion of the population had become sedentary could increasing close-​knit family ties take over the function of the neighbourhood as a social safety net.40 This view is contrary to the views of other authors who believe that, in a heterogeneous society with strong migration movements, family ties are more important in the field of mutual assistance than informal local social networks. Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly completely reverse the causal connection. In this they are supported in particular by the groundbreaking work of historian David Garrioch on neighbourhood life in eighteenth-​century Paris. Garrioch emphasizes the fundamentally open character of the Parisian informal local social networks: despite the mass influx of immigrants and the instability of the population as a whole, newcomers were relatively quickly and easily integrated.41 People with different regional and social backgrounds adopted with little difficulty the codes of conduct that organized neighbourhood life. Long-​time residence or life-​long familiarity were not an absolute requirement in eighteenth-​ century Paris for participation in such networks, rather the contrary. Garrioch describes the eighteenth-​century immigrants in a sense as people without a past. Whether or not they were accepted depended not so much on their origin or past, but on their behaviour, reputation, profession and personality in the present. Garrioch indicates that the continuing influx of immigrants, the high degree of intra-​urban mobility and population pressure favoured the importance of self-​regulation mechanisms through informal social networks and shared rules of conduct. The finding that the reputation within informal social networks constituted a preoccupation for many Antwerpians in the first half of the twentieth century indicates that the neighbourhood continued in their eyes to form 39 Lis, Social Change, 150–​162. 40 For the significance of reciprocity relationships with neighbours for immigrants in cities, see: Lis and Soly, Neighbourhood, 11–​14. 41 Garrioch, Neighbourhood, 227–​228.

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an important framework of reference. One might have thought that active neighbourhood life had already seen its best days by 1900. Since the era of the nineteenth-​century poverty ghettos, with their sense of community, Antwerp society had undergone a number of significant changes. Nevertheless, a number of structural reasons exist to explain why neighbourhood social life –​at least for the lower social groups –​was still not a factor to be disregarded. The general average standard of living may well have increased considerably since the blackest days of proletarianization, but this does not exclude the fact that the base of existence for broad layers of the population remained precarious. The slightest personal setback (illness, unemployment, accident) very quickly brought the threat of bitterest poverty. The precariousness of the subsistence basis of the lower social groups was also thrown into painfully sharp relief during the period under study by the experience of three long-​lasting crisis periods (the two world wars with their aftermaths and the economic crisis of the first half of the thirties). The traces of such far-​reaching crisis experiences can continue to smoulder in people’s mentalities for a long time.42 Recognizing that incidental problems and structural economic shocks can seriously jeopardize one’s living standards, one remains attached to informal social networks that can be addressed in case of emergency. Reputational loss thereby endangered the material position of the person concerned. It is therefore no coincidence that a negative correlation existed between a family’s economic capacity and its sensitivity to reputation damage.43 People who were largely dependent on reciprocity for their survival simply could not afford not to pay attention to what others thought of them. For people and families with a relatively weak subsistence basis, it was therefore important to keep watch over their reputations. Seen from this perspective, the professional profiles of the persons accused of violence in complaints to the police is more than meaningful (see Tables 7 and 8).44 Even though the absence of socio-​geographical analyses at district level prevents us from comparing these figures with the social composition of the populations of the neighbourhoods studied, some striking trends are immediately visible. The finding that the actors in violent conflicts came largely from the lower social groups (labourers and lower middle groups) can be at least partly put down to the greater degree of vigilance these persons required in 42 43 44

On the functioning of these networks over longer periods, see: Burdy, Le Soleil noir, 112–​ 113 and Blokland, Urban bonds, 97–​99. For literature in this area, see: Lis and Soly, Neighbourhood, 16, note 40. For 1061 of 1272 accused persons, the profession was derived from the reports. For the actors mentioned in the accounts, the corresponding figure is 540 out of 615.

58 Chapter 1 table 7

Percentage distribution of male accused persons (globally and by relational category) by occupational category

officials /​employees management level officials /​employees executive level service staff skilled workers unskilled workers large-​scale self-​employed /​ entrepreneurs small-​scale self-​employed /​ craftsmen free professions private income no official occupation 100 % = N

T

N

F

M

E

P

2.2

2.3

3.0

0.0

1.8

0.0

12.3 2.1 23.3 33.3 0.8

10.2 3.1 22.7 30.5 0.0

14.5 1.3 24.7 28.7 1.0

9.4 4.7 23.4 45.3 1.6

11.0 1.8 22.4 37.0 0.7

66.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

20.5

22.7

19.6

12.5

22.4

0.0

0.6 0.1 4.8 772

1.6 0.0 7.0 128

0.7 0.3 6.1 296

0.0 0.0 3.1 64

0.4 0.0 2.5 281

0.0 0.0 33.3 3

source:  corpus of selected police reports.) (t  =  total, n  =  neighbourhood, f = family, m = lovers, e = encounters, p = police and citizens

order to maintain their good name within informal social networks (and thus enter into reciprocity relationships). The finding that the proportion among the male accuseds of the most vulnerable group, the unskilled workers, was highest in the relational category of “encounters”, the category that includes the informal social networking of friends and acquaintances, fellow drinkers, colleagues and the like, is meaningful in this regard. Furthermore, violence in this category appears to have had a pronounced public nature. In view of their shaky basis of existence, unskilled workers apparently felt even more strongly than other groups the need to publicly defend their good name. However, the fact that the elites and the upper middle class groups hardly feature among the cases of recorded violence is not entirely traceable to the fact that their more solid financial footing made them less dependent on their reputations, with less need to pick up cudgels when their good name was questioned. It also relates to the alternative strategies that those groups had available to them to maintain their good names. Within their own view of respectability,

59

Life on a Stage table 8

Percentage distribution of female accused persons (globally and by relational category) by occupational category

officials /​employees executive level service staff skilled workers unskilled workers large-​scale self-​employed /​ entrepreneurs small-​scale self-​employed /​ craftsmen no official occupation 100 % = N

T

N

F

M

E

P

1.7 12.8 3.8 16.9 0.3

1.8 11.9 2.7 18.4 0.0

0.0 9.4 7.8 15.6 0.0

10.0 30.0 20.0 20.0 0.0

1.9 14.1 0.9 16.0 0.9

0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

20.4

11.9

14.1

10.0

34.0

0.0

43.9 289

53.2 109

53.1 64

10.0 10

32.1 106

0.0 0

source:  corpus of selected police reports.) (t  =  total, n  =  neighbourhood, f = family, m = lovers, e = encounters, p = police and citizens

penetrated by the distinctive value of a privatized lifestyle, they had everything to lose from participating in rowdy neighbourhood life. But it was not just the constant precariousness of their existence that explains the need felt by Antwerp citizens of the lower social groups to develop and maintain reciprocity relationships with people in their neighbourhoods. Despite the process of sedentarization which had indisputably taken place in the course of the nineteenth century, it would be reductionist to describe the Antwerp population of the first half of the twentieth century as “established” across the board. Research shows that in 1900 only 57% of Antwerp’s inhabitants had been born in the city.45 The population of Antwerp between 1910 and 1950 still consisted to a substantial extent of first-​generation immigrants. Migration meant that many of them probably lacked a comprehensive family network in the city that could help in times of need. They may well have had more to gain than established Antwerp citizens of the lower social groups from membership in informal neighbourhood social networks. From this perspective, it is not surprising that more than half of the recorded actors appear not to have been born in Antwerp. Of 2,722 complainants, accuseds and actors 45 Thijs, Minderheden te Antwerpen, 39.

60 Chapter 1 featuring in the accounts whose birthplace is mentioned in the police archives, only just under half (1245, 45.7%) were born in Antwerp itself. Finally, the tight housing conditions of many Antwerp people from the lower social groups simply made it impossible to lead truly private family lives. This was still largely the privilege of better-​situated population layers, which generally enjoyed much more spacious accommodation. Population pressure was still substantial in the poorer streets and alleys. The practice of one dwelling being shared with several families made it virtually impossible to withdraw from the eyes of others. The small size of rooms literally forced residents out, either into the street or the tavern. In other words, the material conditions in which people from the less prosperous population groups existed served to increase the public nature of life. During the first decades of the twentieth century, population pressure in the city of Antwerp was very high. Comparing the population figures of the city of Antwerp for 1912 (312,884 inhabitants) with those of 2000 (155,317) for the present district of Antwerp, it appears that the population of the area in question has halved in under a century. In reality, the evolution is even more spectacular when one considers that since 1912 a number of totally new neighbourhoods (Linkeroever, Luchtbal and Schoonbroek-​ Rozemaai) have been built in previously almost uninhabited areas of the city/​ district area. Deducting the population of these latter neighbourhoods, the population of the part of the district which corresponds more or less to the area already built in 1912 is 131,678. Nor is this figure a good basis of comparison, as in some older neighbourhoods (especially in and around the Kiel), the built-​up area has increased significantly since 1912. Everything suggests that the population pressure in 1912 in the then built-​up area was more likely three than two times higher than today. The population pressure was, however, distributed particularly unevenly across the city (Table 9). Even on the basis of the brutal parameter of the average number of residents per house, it is clear that the population density in certain areas was much higher than in others. Particularly striking are the high figures for the then first (Schipperskwartier), fourth (Sint-​Andrieskwartier), seventh (‘t Eilandje and Den Dam) and tenth (‘t Faboert-​Stuyvenberg) districts, not by chance neighbourhoods inhabited mainly by working class populations. The geographical location of the most densely populated districts, a half moon along the port area, tells us a lot. It reflects the need for the labour force to work as close as possible to their workplace to save on transport costs.46 The average number of inhabitants per house is one and a half to almost two 46 Chartier, L’extension urbaine, 52.

61

Life on a Stage table 9

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 total

Average number of residents per house at district level in 1912

Population

Houses

residents per house

20826 33998 18068 31727 31460 44682 17656 64745 13021 36701 313884

2093 4615 2959 2744 4655 7518 1577 8585 2147 3986 40879

9.9 7.4 6.1 11.6 6.7 5.9 11.2 7.5 6.0 9.2 7.7

source:  verslag over het bestuur en den zakentoestand der stad antwerpen door het schepenkollege aan den gemeenteraad voorgedragen. dienstjaar 1912, antwerp, 1912

times as high as in the sixth district (which included the predominantly bourgeois Leopoldkwartier and Zurenborg and part of the Stationsbuurt neighbourhoods) or third district (consisting of the segment of the inner city that the nineteenth-​century bourgeoisie had reserved for itself). The other districts took an intermediate position in terms of population pressure, reflecting their mixed populations or more recent construction date. Moreover, the contrast in population pressure between the relatively poor and prosperous districts was even more pronounced than the fairly brutal parameter of the average number of inhabitants per house at district level shows. It can be assumed that the average dwelling in wealthier neighbourhoods was a lot larger than an average dwelling in a labouring neighbourhood. Certainly, in the worn-​out dwellings in the streets and stairways of the sixteenth-​century city, the population pressure must have been enormous.47 Moralists of every ilk have posited an almost mechanical link between housing conditions and the public sociability of the lower social groups. Thus, Catholic observatorator Aloïs Sledsens saw the cramped housing conditions as 47 Chapelle, Donker Antwerpen.

62 Chapter 1 responsible for the finding that the Antwerp workers’ use of their leisure time in the 1920s did not meet his own ideal of an intimate family life: Housing conditions have a major influence on the lives of these human beings, with indirect repercussions on their use of free time. Is it surprising that the dance hall is sought by the girls from the popular classes (…) when their ‘litter’ is so dirty and disgusting? No, it’s not pleasant to be forced to spend entire evenings in such rooms. The man seeks his entertainment in the tavern, where he finds friends; working boys and girls visit the dance hall or the cinema, and a few, but only a small number, serious meetings or diligent entertainment. The housewife also goes to the cinema on several evenings. The younger children play on the street, or in rainy weather in a corridor or gateway in the neighbourhood. And in the summer or on warm spring days, the only window giving onto the narrow street is opened; and the mother prattles with her neighbour from “across the door” who also wants to enjoy the delicious evening.48 In Sledsens’s eyes, the publicly oriented social life of the lower social groups formed a moral problem: the impossibility of a family life exposed people from an early age to the dangerous temptations of the street, with moral decay as an inevitable consequence. From Sledsens’ viewpoint, creating a home-​based, family lifestyle offering the best conditions for moral recovery meant, in the first place, putting an end to the terrible living conditions. In interpreting the connection between living conditions and the public social life of Antwerp citizens from the lower social groups, a certain degree of caution is definitely appropriate. Indeed, a real danger exists that the researcher wrongly considers his/​her own living and lifestyle preferences to be universally valid.49 By unilaterally emphasizing the fact that living conditions made a family-​based, private lifestyle impossible, the impression is created that the inhabitants of the tight attics would undoubtedly have preferred a life in the home circle above a public one if liberated from spatial constraints. However, the preference for a privatized lifestyle is not constant. Well-​accommodated social groups have, in certain historical contexts, cultivated a pronounced publicly-​orientated social atmosphere. This included the Western European elites before retiring from the early modern period onwards into the domestic circle of the nuclear family. The finding that the way of life of Antwerp citizens

48 Sledsens, Het gebruik, 66. 49 See the pertinent comments of Scott Haine, The World, 33–​34.

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63

from the lower social groups often did not respond to the bourgeois ideal of homeliness should therefore not be traced back to living conditions. It can be equally explained in terms of cultural continuity. Unlike the wealthier layers of the population, the lower social groups remained attached to their ancestral public way of life. The certainly far from negligible share of the lower middle social groups, especially small self-​employed persons and craftsmen, among the accused and actors mentioned in the accounts might seem surprising. Apparently, they also felt the need to enter the battle, indicating the importance they attached to their public reputations. Shopkeepers in particular were particularly jealous of their reputations. Their livelihood was directly dependent on the name they enjoyed in their local neighbourhood. Unlike the elites and the higher social groups, they could therefore not isolate themselves from neighbourhood life. This dependency points to the complexity of the function of the neighbourhood shop and the complex relationship between the retailer and his (regular) customers. Research in a labouring district in Lyon shows that the function of a neighbourhood store is not limited to providing food and other merchandise, but that it also constitutes an important focal point of informal social life.50 The relationship between shopkeeper and customer cannot be reduced to a strict economic relationship. A relationship of trust exists between them based on familiarity, sociability and reciprocity. Any harm to the shopkeeper’s reputation threatens both his pivotal function in local neighbourhood life as well as his economic position. If word gets out that he is ashamed of his relationship with his customers or if he is otherwise badmouthed, he runs the risk of people taking their custom elsewhere.51 Obviously, one has to beware of an all too all-​communitarian view of informal social networks in early twentieth-​century Antwerp. Neighbourhood and community cannot be easily isolated one from the other.52 The use of the word “community”53 itself carries the risk of the informal social relations between people being equivalated to an isolated, spatially and socially limited group, characterized by a clear sense of identity. Especially when the term

50 51 52 53

De Certeau, Giard and Mayol, L’invention du quotidien, 103–​121. This was no different in Rotterdam’s Hillesluis working district during the first half of the twentieth century: Blokland, Urban Bonds, 93–​94. On the economic risks of damage to a shopkeeper’s reputation, see: Farge, La vie fragile, 56. Sociologist Talja Blokland convincingly points to the problem of equating neighbourhood and community: Blokland, Urban Bonds. The term “community” in particular involves the risk of its members being seen as having a consensual view of society: Burke, History and Social Theory, 28 and 58.

64 Chapter 1 “community” is explicitly linked to forms of neighbourhood-​based identification as repeatedly supposed and described by Antwerp folklorists, a distorted representation of social reality looms. Undoubtedly, such local patriotism was widespread in the Antwerp popular neighbourhoods, and was a real source of identity feelings.54 The Seefhoek, ‘t Faboert or the Schipperskwartier were indeed true “imagined communities”, to use the words of Benedict Anderson.55 But it would be wrong to draw from the existence of such forms of local identification the conclusion that urban society consisted of a catenation of closed, organic entities.56 The geographic scope of the informal social networks in no ways corresponded with the boundaries of these neighbourhoods. Given the population density in the poorer neighbourhoods, it was often impossible to know all the inhabitants of one’s own street, let alone everyone from Den Dam or the Pothoek. As little as all people who feel themselves to be Belgian enter into social relationships with each other, just as little did the inhabitants of Sint-​Andries or the Kattenkwartier. Moreover, the term “community” carries the connotation of harmony and consensus, whereas social life in Antwerp’s popular areas was certainly not free of conflict. Use of the phrase “neighbourhood community” is therefore defensible only when stripped of such ideological implications and understood in the sense of local-​oriented informal social networks. Apart from the ideological implications in a communitarian direction that the use of the phrase is in danger of carrying, there are two further fundamental objections to the equating of both terms. On the one hand, the simple fact of people living cheek by jowl does not automatically imply the existence of a wide-​branching local-​oriented network of informal social links. There are clear indications that the intensity of such local bonds differs according to sex and social group. The absence in the police archives of traces of active neighbourhood life among the elites and the upper middle social groups is certainly an important finding in this regard. On the other hand, the existence of non-​local bonds needs to be emphasized.57 Given the high level of intra-​city mobility, informal social networks also existed between friends, colleagues and relatives who did not necessarily live in the same neighbourhood. Community and neighbourhood are certainly not synonymous. In the corpus of police reports, we find a number of explicit references to reciprocity relationships within informal social networks. In many cases, the 54 Thijs, Burgerlijk Antwerpen, 134–​135. 55 Anderson, Imagined communities. 56 Calhoun, Community, 108–​110 and Savage, Class and Labour History, 67. 57 Bailey, Gifts and Poison, 5.

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existence of such a relationship is reflected in the written sources because one of the parties considered that the principle of mutual obligation had not been respected, leading in this way to a confrontation. The clearest examples of this are the fights that broke out between fellow drinkers when one failed in his obligation to buy a round. Failure to repay small loans was another frequent cause of conflicts.58 These arguments clearly show that loans were granted solely on condition of the recipient repaying the borrowed sum as soon as he or she was able. For example, if it came to the lender’s ears that the borrower had already received his wages despite his statements to the contrary, this was considered a breach of this principle. The conflicts over repayments indicate that residents of the Antwerp neighbourhoods regularly lent small sums to each other. Practical items and food were also lent and borrowed between neighbours.59 Informal social networks not only constituted an important material buffer in times of scarcity and money shortage, but were also of an emotional importance in case of setbacks. The crucial role of neighbourly solidarity in times of need in various areas is pregnantly expressed in the following statement from housewife Rosa W.: “My husband and even my in-​laws refuse to provide for my maintenance, so I have to call upon the help of my neighbours to give me food.”60 Other types of assistance between neighbours have also left traces in the police archives. The supervision of playing children was seen as a collective responsibility, in particular of the women in the neighbourhood. In the popular quarters of Antwerp, children still played in the street in the first half of the twentieth century. In the absence of a garden and indoor space, this was often the only option. The collective supervision meant that not every individual mother had to keep her eyes constantly on her playing children. The existence of this practice is apparent from the repeated references in the corpus of reports to neighbours alarming parents that something has happened to their child in the street.61 Moreover, this did not imply that the neighbourhood residents had a right of disciplinary action against all the children in the

58

59 60 61

saa, MA 31713, report district 5, no. 4866, 5-​10-​1938; saa, MA 31716, report district 5, no. 6361, 23-​12-​1938; saa, MA 31882, no. 2701, 7-​6-​1949; saa, MA 31882, report district 5, no. 2721, 9-​6-​1949; saa, MA 29824, report district 7, no. 665, 4-​3-​1938; saa, MA 29829, report district 7, no. 1109, 18-​4-​1938. saa, MA 31883, report district 5, no. 3038, 2-​7-​1949; saa, MA 29737, report district 7, no. 3292, 10-​11-​1928. saa, MA 31885, report district 5, no. 3814, 12-​8-​1949. See, for example: saa, MA 24634, report district 2, no. 5798, 9-​12-​1912.

66 Chapter 1 neighbourhood.62 Conflicts regularly broke out when an indignant parent did not accept a neighbour giving his or her child a disciplinary clip round the ear. In the case of manifest and totally unacceptable oversteppings of the norm, neighbours intervened to assist the target. To some extent, the presence of the eyes of others contributed to safety and protection. The watchful eye of neighbours translated into actions that halted, for example, theft or unacceptable violence. It is especially from the so-​called Kattenkwartier, not accidently a distinctly pauperized neighbourhood, that the most large-​scale examples of such actions were reflected in police archives. When landlord Remigius D. was beaten by father and son P. with an iron rod, he could immediately count on “neighbours running to his assistance” from the Rozenstraat.63 Commercial traveller Karel de C. declared that he had been rescued by his neighbours when attacked in front of his house by coal dealer Frans B.64 The intervention of the neighbours was perhaps inspired by indignance at the fact that Karel was attacked while pushing a baby carriage. Neighbourhood residents from the Diepestraat came to the assistance of dock worker Anna van L. when her lover, docker Augustinus van D., beat her unconscious in the street.65 The statement by meat inspector Georges P. indicates the reaction of the neighbourhood: I saw the (…) person brutally beat the complainant. I urged him a few times to stop the abuse; the woman was hurt, and looked after in a house. Three dock workers (…) hit him a number of times for his hateful behaviour. While these examples describe the unsolicited and spontaneous response of local residents to help a known person in need, in other cases, people could also very consciously create a scene in the hope of neighbourly assistance. Thus, a nurse declared she “called on the people of the street” when attacked by the shopkeeper in a shop.66 The strategy applied by shopkeeper family D. from the Kattenkwartier in a conflict with an unwilling customer, fairground booth-​holder Raphael V., is the most telling illustration of a successful deployment of neighbourly assistance against a supposed transgressor of the norm.67 In the shop, a dispute broke 62 63 64 65 66 67

In these social layers, sensitivities were apparently different from those in nineteenth-​ century working class London: E. Ross, Survival Networks, 12–​13. saa, MA 24632, report district 2, no. 4607, 29-​7-​1912. saa, MA 31631, report district 5, no. 2566, 17-​9-​1928. saa, MA 31563, report district 5, no. 2503, 24-​10-​1912. saa, MA 29830, report district 7, no. 1624, 8-​6-​1938. saa, MA 24633, report district 2, no. 5055, 20-​8-​1912.

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out based on the question of creditworthiness. Eventually, this led to a violent confrontation between the unwilling customer on the one hand and the shopkeeper’s wife, the shopkeeper and their warehouse assistant on the other. Outnumbered, Raphael V. took to his heels and fled into the Paradijsstraat. Family D. made an explicit call to their neighbours’ solidarity by shouting “stop the thief”, whereupon people streamed in from every side, effectively halting him in his tracks. The gathered group pinned him down on a push-​cart, where he was pummelled and kicked by the shopkeeper and a number of other men and women from the neighbourhood. The strange thing about this incident is that family D. had clearly, from strategic considerations, displayed a particular picture of Raphael V.’s behaviour that did not correspond to reality, but was extremely suitable for provoking a reaction from the neighbourhood. When shopkeeper B. gave the sign to let Raphael V. go, it began to dawn on certain neighbourhood residents that the truth of family D.’s claim was, to put it mildly, doubtful. Housewife Maria van den B.  asked the shopkeeper’s wife’s sister: “But, Phiel, if this is a thief, why aren’t they holding him fast?” This was answered with a laconic “he has already had enough.” As the police report shows, the true motivation lay elsewhere. On the arrival of the police, the shopkeeper apparently indicated, in the precipitation of the fight, the real reason: “There’s somebody who wanted to come and attack me in my house, but I’ve given him his lesson, let him go.” Moreover, other examples show that the cry of “stop the the thief” was used to mobilize the neighbourhood, even in contexts having nothing to do with theft at all. Apparently the threat of theft was the biggest mobilizing force. Shopkeeper Maria D. shouted “stop the thief” when she became the target of unwanted sexual intimacies from docker Louis M.68 A cuckolded wife shouted “hold her” (“just as if I was a thief” according to her target’s statement) to move the bystanders to action against her husband’s lover who had taken to her heels.69 On the cry “stop the thief”, a number of bystanders set off in pursuit of a sailor who had stolen clothes from a peddlar’s basket and managed to catch the thief.70 Less frequently used alternatives to the cry “stop the thief” in order to urge the neighbours to act were cries like “help” or, in a single case, “murder”.71 68 69 70 71

saa, MA 31560, report district 5, no. 429, 18-​2-​1912. saa, MA 29836, report district 7, no. 3134, 13-​11-​1938. saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 1751, 24-​7-​1912. See also: saa, MA 24629, report district 2, no. 43, 24-​11-​1911. saa, MA 31560, report district 5, no.  732, 24-​3-​1912; saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no.  1851, 4-​8-​1912; saa, MA 31630, report district 5, no.  2211, 6-​8-​1928; saa, MA

68 Chapter 1 However, active social control in the face of the threat of theft is not necessarily proof of the internalization of the official standards of government and the elite by the lower social groups. On the contrary, the functionality of such a vigilant attitude from the perspective of the population is clear. The danger of theft was indeed real in the poorer neighbourhoods: the high population pressure, the inability to lock homes well and the tight financial situation of the inhabitants formed ideal conditions for the appearance of theft. Possibly the preference for the cry “stop the thief” points to the central position taken by the threat of theft in the sense of insecurity of the lower social groups of those days. Additional research could indicate whether, in contrast to today, theft rather than violence formed the most important element in the sense of insecurity and when precisely the focal point of the perception shifted du vol à la violence.72 In the last century too, such a shift of tolerance thresholds appears to have taken place: whereas in the nineteenth century, in the case, for example, of robbery with violence the judicial apparatus took a more severe view of the property aspect than of the violence, the relationships are now completely reversed.73 1.4

Honour Fights

The temptation is great to see in the numerous reports on violence an indication that Antwerp inhabitants of the lower social groups exhibited only a slight degree of control of their emotions. Superficially, it looks as if the smallest incident was enough to inflame the desire for a fight, as if like the inhabitants of the popular neighbourhoods took to their fists at the least excuse, like an improper word, a scowl or a bucket of water against the front of a house. The apparently disproportionate response to such minor offences seems to indicate that they did not have themselves completely in hand and gave uncontrolled expression to their aggressive drives. Using Elias’ s terminology, Antwerp inhabitants from the lower social groups seemed to observe a less civilized standard of

72

73

31632, report district 5, no. 3660, 20-​12-​1928; saa, MA 31710, report district 5, no. 3855, 8-​8-​1938. Should it be possible to substantiate such a hypothesis by empirical research, the respective perceptions of violence and theft in the Antwerp neighbourhoods before 1950 would be closer to the late Middle Ages than in the current prevailing imagery in this regard: Schuster, Hinter den Mauern, 80–​84. On tolerance thresholds for violence and property crimes in nineteenth-​century North Brabant see: Van den Brink, Van gevecht tot gerecht, 101.

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behaviour. In spite of the state-​building process, based on the monopolization of the use of violence, and the greatly increased interdependence, there seems to be no compulsion towards self-​control. However, analysis shows that public violence in Antwerp’s popular areas was by no means the result of a lack of self-​control. Moreover, Elias’s assumption that a violent habitus is the result of a lack of emotional control is, as already said, highly problematic. People did not go at each other simply because they were overwhelmed by their drives. On the contrary, behind the use of violence was often a considerable amount of calculation. Violence was generally used consciously with specific objectives in mind. In this way, the violent response to apparently negligible offences is no evidence of an unrestrained desire for a fight. Today, it may seem disproportionate to respond to a skewed look or a misplaced word with violence, but viewed from the perspective of the poorer neighbourhoods, this was by no means the case. The less prosperous populations were dependent on their good reputations for their necessary participation in informal social networks. Every possible threat to one’s good name was therefore taken extremely seriously, especially when it took place in the public domain. An insult or denigrating gesture could not be left unanswered, if one wanted to avoid damage to one’s reputation. Without such refutation, the neighbourhood residents could remain with the idea that the attack was justified. Shipper Frans V. thus saw himself obliged to react publicly after a housewife had accused him on the street of having an extra-​matrimonial relationship with the back neighbour: “Then he got angry, ran into the street and shouted to the neighbours ‘she says I’m having it off with the Jewess, she’s crazy’.”74 An open attack on a person’s reputation (through insults, gossip, violence or gestures) had to be parried immediately and publicly. This was the only way to prevent mud sticking to the good name of the individual in question. Persons charged with violence and also admitting to the police commissioner that they had indeed used violence often gave as mitigating circumstances the fact that the counter-​party had previously humiliated them in the public sphere. Housewife Joanna O., nicknamed Dirty Jeanne, tried to awaken understanding for her daughter hitting the downstairs female neighbour by pointing out that she “could not tolerate her mother being offended in public”.75 The mechanism by which the open confrontation wiped out the shame was almost literally put into words by coffee-​house waiter Julius D. in a statement.76 In addition, his statement indicates that not only overtly 74 75 76

saa, MA 30020, report district 7, no. 1932, 11-​5-​1949. saa, MA 31713, report district 5, no. 4729, 21-​9-​1938. saa, MA 31710, report district 5, no. 3717, 2-​8-​1938.

70 Chapter 1 denigrating acts such as insults were seen as sufficient threat to a person’s reputation to justify a violent response. Julius D. came to blows in a tavern with a former colleague because he had stopped his previous work. “Gerard told me that shame had fallen upon him by my quitting the job. He still had a bone to pick with me and (…) he then grabbed.” Dutch historian Hans de Waardt developed an interesting hypothesis about the need for reaction to a potentially status-​threatening act (such as an insult, a blow or gossip) that has not received the attention it merits in the historiography of violence.77 De Waardt used the familiar anthropological concept of “liminality”, as formulated by ethnologist Arnold van Gennep and deepened by anthropologist Victor Turner, to shed light on this problem.78 Van Gennep originally developed the concept of liminality for the interpretation of so-​called rites of passage, symbolic actions that mark important transitions in time, space and social position. Incisive events in a human life (such as pregnancy, birth, initiation or death) are usually accompanied by symbolically loaded rituals that follow an appropriate pattern. To begin with, people who move to a new social status are deliberately separated from other people. This is followed by a certain timespan during which the isolated persons are considered marginal. Finally, they are rationally reintegrated into society, confirming them into their new status or placing them back in their former status. Thus, rites of passage follow three phases: isolation, transition (margin or limen) and reintegration. Victor Turner further focused on the position of persons in the transitional phase, which he termed the “liminal period”. He distinguished three fundamental characteristics of the “liminal period”. Firstly, this involves the drastic collapse of the social position that the persons have held in their lives so far. Secondly, the social position of those involved is totally unclear for the duration of the rite. Thirdly, during the transition, they are in complete social isolation. For De Waardt, the anthropological insights into “liminality” open a fertile perspective for a better understanding of the dynamics of status-​threatening actions such as insults. In these, he clearly recognizes liminal characteristics like the sudden loss of social respectability, lack of clarity, isolation and reintegration. For De Waardt, the position of a person whose reputation is attacked is clearly liminal. His status is undeniably ambivalent. If he does not adequately defend himself against the violation of his reputation, he is at risk of losing respect in the eyes of others. As a result, his reintegration following 77 78

De Waardt, Ehrenhändel, 303–​319. De Waardt refers here specifically to Van Gennep, Les rites de passage and Turner, Betwixt and Between, 93–​111.

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the liminal phase will take place at a lower level of social ordering. Only by defending himself adequately in the eyes of the bystanders, and in particular of his social peer group, can he cherish the hope of integrating back into the same level after the liminal phase. As long as he fails to adequately parry the attack on his reputation, he will be increasingly shunned by the people he previously shared his status with, who fear being infected by the weakening of his reputation. If the reputational damage is not immediately reversed by a convincing response, an increasing level of social isolation will follow for the person concerned. De Waardt’s views are closely related to those of American sociologist Roger Gould, who sees violence appearing “when relations involving rank are ambiguous or under challenge”.79 In status-​threatening actions, he sees deliberate strategies to change the (power) relationships between the parties, which explains why they cannot remain unchallenged. The sensitivity of the inhabitants of the Antwerp neighbourhoods to their reputation provided an ideal starting point for informal conflict regulation. Anyone who had a bone to pick with someone could use the intended opponent’s concern for his reputation in informal social networks to place him under pressure. The threat to publicly shame the opponent could in itself be enough to push him to be more compliant. For example, someone wanting to drag compensation for damages out of a person, or otherwise force the opposing party to an informal settlement of a dispute, could dangle in front of him the horrific prospect of “scandal”. Frequently, however, it did not stop at threats. The starting point of most of the selected public violence consisted of actions specifically aimed at placing the target party in a bad light. By publicly shaming the intended opponent, the attacking party could make his grievances public and put pressure on the opponent. By their consciously sought-​after public nature and by invoking prevailing norms and values, such actions represented a clear appeal to social networks. All kinds of conflicts, ranging from disputes between neighbours to differences between drinking companions on picking up the bar bill, were deliberately brought to the “tribunal of the street”, with public opinion acting as judge. The stakes in such disputes consisted of persons’ reputations within informal social networks, which could be made or ruined only in the public domain. Whether or not an individual enjoyed a good name within these networks depended on his or her conforming to the shared standards, values and views. Hence, attacking parties, in settling in front of the “tribunal of the street” what were at first sight merely interpersonal conflicts, usually depicted their targeted 79 Gould, Collision of Wills, 17.

72 Chapter 1 opponents as transgressors of the norm. This strategy was aimed at placing the opponent under pressure via the threat of social isolation. The link between the behaviour of the person targeted and the shared norms, values and views was regularly made explicit on the basis of the notion of “shame”. By stating publicly that the opposing party ought to be ashamed, he or she was quickly tarred as a transgressor of the norms. Housewife Palmyre B. sought to shame her husband’s mistress with as many words by shouting at her “you should be ashamed at stealing my son’s father”, in front of the station where she had been waiting for her.80 Seamstress Marie B. made a direct appeal to the sense of shame of her estranged husband by shouting at him on the street: “You’re not ashamed to visit my sister-​in-​law with your mistress.”81 A son who became aware of his mother’s public adultery asked her “whether she was not ashamed of (…) her constant misconduct”.82 The first condition for shaming an opponent based on his concern for his reputation was of course attracting the eyes of others. Such action away from the eyes of others was pointless. An insult, gesture or blow in the face in the absence of witnesses did not endanger the opponent’s reputation. Anyone becoming a target off-​stage did not see a reaction as mandatory. The success of the attacking party’s action was therefore dependent first and foremost on its ability to arouse public interest. The rationalized, theatrical formal language of the preparatory phase of an argument was explicitly aimed at this. In the transparent living conditions of the poorer neighbourhoods, it did not require much effort to attract the eyes of others. Raising one’s voice, ostentatiously hitting someone, or spitting in the face was enough to gather a crowd of bystanders and passers-​by. The attack was deliberately deployed in the geographic focal points of informal social life so as to ensure its public relevance. For the attacker, the important thing was to place himself in the most favourable position possible vis-​à-​vis the gathered public and to humiliate the counterparty. In order to highlight the credibility of the attack, supporters from the neighbourhood and family members were drummed up to add credence to the claim by their mere presence or verbal support. In their statements to the police commissioner, people who had become the target of such a “damaging” action placed a very strong emphasis on its public aspect. There are countless references to “noise” and “scandal” that threatened to stir up the entire neighbourhood. Sometimes the desire to act on local public opinion is expressed in as many words. Housewife Maria S. declared that her downstairs neighbour, 80 81 82

saa, MA 31703, report district 5, no. 1566, 29-​3-​1938. saa, MA 31709, report district 5, no. 3365, 11-​7-​1938. saa, MA 30028, report district 7, no. 3816, 20-​8-​1949.

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police officer Emiel B,. called to the neighbours, “Sir, you saw it, yes” after she had dealt him a blow.83 The disturbing effect of such public commotion is also well expressed by the statement of pensioner Ernest W. about the conduct of housewife Maria S., his niece.84 Ernest W. had thrown her out of the apartment for squabbling, but she kept clinging to the door and calling out in order, in his estimation, “to gather a crowd of passers-​by”. The gradual, ritualized build-​up of quarrels indicates that the attacker’s primary intention was not so much to physically hurt the intended opponent. At stake was the battle to win over public opinion by humiliating the counterparty. If this could be achieved without a physical confrontation, then all the better. The gradual build-​up of hostilities was aimed at giving the opponent every opportunity to back off. If the targeted party left the violation of his or her reputation unchallenged, the attacker’s triumph was obvious to all. The bystanders would interpret the absence of a reaction as a tacit admission that the attack was not unfounded. Silence was equivalent to acceptance. If the attacking party succeeded in humiliating his opponent so much that he retreated in shame, victory was totally complete. How effective the publicly shaming of an opponent could be is apparent from the complaint that Joanna de W. lodged against a police officer.85 Joanna no longer tolerated the police officer having an extra-​marital relationship with the tenant living above her and went to the police office to inform the commissioner of his subordinate’s dishonourable conduct. To prevent this, the police officer decided on a preventive attack. Joanna declared about this: “… but in the Kerkstraat at the courtyards, he called out to me ‘procuress, slut, dirty whore, you take money for finding customers for Marie’. Immediately a crowd of people gathered together and I left in shame and did not take witnesses.” The police officer’s attack was only initially effective, because just two days later Joanna de W. filed a complaint to the police after being beaten so hard by her female tenant that she could not work. In the context of this complaint she brought out the insult of two days previously. Without the concrete evidence provided by the wound, she had apparently not deemed her position strong enough to submit a complaint earlier. The statement by seamstress Maria K. about the “hubbub” that her former sweetheart, tavern-​keeper Mathieu B., came to rouse up against her in a tavern is another illustration that such a strategy could pay dividends:  “He abused me yesterday to a gentleman in whose company I was, saying that it was for his money

83 84 85

saa, MA 31885, report district 5, no. 3940, 9-​8-​1949. saa, MA 28817, report district 7, no. 1696, 25-​7-​1944. saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 1283, 3-​6-​1912.

74 Chapter 1 that I was with him. He scolded me as a slut and dirty whore. I was absolutely ashamed and took to my heels.”86 Once public interest was aroused, it became increasingly difficult for the intended opponent to back down without compromising his reputation. The same applied equally, moreover, for the attacking party, who had to put his claims and threats into action on pain of losing credibility. Under the eyes of the crowded bystanders, there was generally no escape from the often violent dénouement of the conflict. Of the initial room for manoeuvre allowing both parties to beat a strategic retreat, little remained in the presence of the others. There was no way out other than resolving the conflict in front of the “tribunal of the street”. At stake for the attacking party was to confirm its claims, with the attacked party obliged to respond to erase the shame brought upon it by the attack. In other words, the parties pitched their actions to appeal to the authority of informal social networks, which determined who would come out of the confrontation as a winner or loser. By directing their actions at gaining the respect and recognition of the informal social networks, the opposing parties strengthened the authority of the community. Through the structural reference to the shared norms, values and beliefs, they contributed to the reaffirmation of shared morality. The use of violence in informal interpersonal conflict resolution was by no means rejected by the inhabitants of the popular neighbourhoods. Under normal circumstances, the bystanders did not intervene, but rather acted as neutral “judges”. The rule of non-​intervention was essential to prevent any interpersonal dispute from turning into a large-​scale confrontation that could tear apart the entire neighbourhood. However, the warring parties did not have anything like absolute freedom in the confrontation. There was a complex set of informal rules that the parties had to adhere to. They too had every interest in abiding by these rules of conduct. Failing which, they placed in jeopardy their own positions in informal social networks, which was precisely what was at stake in the confrontation. Anyone failing to honour the rules of informal conflict resolution became known as a transgressor of the norms. The bystanders made no secret of their dislike of such transgressions, to the shame of the purported transgressor. When cleaning lady Sophia S. was hit in the face in the street by her former lover, diamond worker Alfons de C., a crowd immediately gathered “talking about the shame of his way of acting”.87 If necessary, the bystanders could also actively intervene to put an end to the violation of the

86 87

saa, MA 31789, report district 5, no. 1822, 24-​6-​1944. saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 1802, 29-​7-​1912.

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norm. In cases of manifest violation of the rules of conduct regulating informal conflict resolution, they took action, for example to prevent one of the parties being severely wounded. This social control by neighbours and other bystanders guaranteed that informal conflict resolution could take place without too many risks. The inhabitants of the Antwerp neighbourhoods viewed violence as a legitimate form of informal conflict resolution, functionally comparable to the informal regulatory mechanisms in societies with no formally structured repression apparatus.88 The pattern of public violence as recorded by the police in the Antwerp neighbourhoods is therefore no indication of social disintegration. On the contrary, it points, however paradoxical this sounds to our modern ears, to the vitality of informal networks of (neighbourhood) sociability. Conflicts of all kind were deliberately brought to the “tribunal of the street”, with the immediate social environment functioning as a judge. At stake in the use of violence was ultimately people’s reputation within informal social networks. It was fundamentally all about persuading public opinion of the honesty of the actors. A credible performance, a show that was able to convince the public, was the key to this. The practice, in the event of a conflict, of mobilizing allies among neighbours, friends and family members to provide support in the confrontation with the opponent cannot be reduced to the desire to acquire physical power. Above all, it was about making clear to the public that one was by no means isolated, but on the contrary, that people were ready to come to the defence of the person in question. In other words, the ability to mobilize was instrumentalized as public proof of one’s own honesty. Especially when this was severely threatened by an insult like “thief”, it was important to indicate that there were people ready to put their hand in the fire for the respectability of the humiliated person. Their presence in itself formed a powerful counter-​indication against the merit of the claim. What respectable person would be willing to come to the side of an individual who really was a thief? But the fundamental way in which public violence is aimed at informal social networks appears especially in the formal and substantive interpretation given to violent conflict resolution. In order to convince the bystanders of their own respectability and their opponent’s lack of it, an appeal was made structurally to the standards, values and beliefs prevailing in informal societal networks. At stake in the use of public (violent) conflict resolution was ultimately the good name enjoyed in informal social networks. Or, expressed in somewhat

88

Research indicates that this is not fundamentally different from the situation today in a number of Dutch urban neighbourhoods: De Haan and Nijboer, Youth Violence, 78.

76 Chapter 1 archaic-​sounding terms:  a person’s own honour(ability) was defended and, where possible, strengthened, and the opponent was put to shame. Interest among historians in notions like honour and shame has increased dramatically in recent years. Most of these have been were early modernists who, inspired by anthropological research into concepts of honour in contemporary Mediterranean rural contexts, went on to study Western European societies of the past also from the spectrum of honour and shame. The increased historical interest in the notion of honour has already led to a broadening of the perspective in several areas. Existing ideas about the concept of honour have proved unable to withstand confrontation with empirical studies.89 Traditionally, honour has been associated with rather closed, “traditional” societies with rigid power relationships, norms and values. Honour has often been seen as a trait of certain homogeneous and established populations such as the nobility, artisans or farmers.90 Other groups (for example, beggars, executioners and fairgoers) were deemed by reason of subordinate social position, infamous activities or travelling lifestyle to lack honour. In addition, the concept of honour is traditionally and overwhelmingly associated with the virile identity experience of men fighting for access to women and goods. According to that logic, honour lost its significance with the demise of the “traditional” world. With the arrival of modernity, characterized by individualism, capitalist meritocracy and universal values, honour as a component of the mental reference framework of a rigidly-​structured society disappeared.91 Research shows, however, that in the field of honour the dichotomy between “traditional” and “modern” societies is unfounded.92 In virtually all societies, the sense of honour plays an important role in inter-​personal interaction. The battle for respect, status, reputation –​in other words, honour –​is an important factor in human activity. The traditional view that honour is reserved for a relatively limited spectrum of social groups in agrarian and premodern societies reflects more an uncritical taking over of the perspective of those groups than it does sober analysis. The common association of honour with chivalry blurs the importance of the struggle for reputation in non-​nobility social contexts. The notion of “honour” needs to be relieved of specific time or group-​related loadings to make of it a useful instrument of scientific analysis. The definition 89 Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 24. 90 For the idea that honour belongs to the world of elites, and exists in the lower and middle social groups at best as a declining cultural asset, see: Nye, Masculinities, 28; Scott Haine, The World, 174–​175. 91 In its purest form, this view is the one found in Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. 92 De Waardt, De geschiedenis van de eer, 335–​338.

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that British anthropologist Julian Pitt-​Rivers attributes to the concept best meets this requirement: “Honour is the value of a person in his own eyes, but also in the eyes of his society. It is his estimation of his own worth, his claim to pride, but it is also the acknowledgement of that claim, his excellence recognised by society, his right to pride.”93 Pitt-​Rivers’ definition clearly indicates that an individual’s honour is established in the interaction between the person in question and the social groups to which he belongs. It also makes it clear that every person can lay claim to respect and standing in social networks. Disconnecting the concept of honour from time or group-​based interpretations also gives room for the historical dimension. Thus, it becomes conceivable that the loading of the concept of honour can shift as a result of social changes. One can imagine, for example, that with the rise of capitalist and individualistic relationships, the honour concept of a society of orders, strongly directed at the physical person and his family ancestry, is gradually exchanged for a loading that is oriented more towards the individual’s merits or wealth. Viewed in a long-​term perspective, it is evident that the honour concept, traditionally associated with “traditional” societies, can be a receptacle for both “pre-​modern” and “modern” content. A dynamic view of honour makes it possible to bridge the dichotomy between “traditional” and “modern” societies. The proposition that the concept of honour ipso facto lost its significance with the advent of the modern, capitalist and individualistic world, is therefore reductionist.94 In addition, there are also fundamental objections to the vision of contemporary society that supports such evolutionary models. This vision assumes that in a modern society people do not let their identity be determined by, nor do they match their behaviour to, the group(s) to which they belong. As completely autonomous individuals, they are supposed to do and not do what they want and not be guided by the norms, values, and behavioural patterns derived from membership of a group. Even in contemporary societies, the freedom of individuals to autonomously control their actions and lives is anything but absolute. On the contrary, people receive values, norms and expectations during the socialization process that regulate and direct their behaviour patterns. The group watches to ensure that everyone operates within the boundaries of the permissible and where necessary acts to prevent deviant behaviour. Widespread human conformism ensures that there is often a high degree of consistency between people’s behaviour and the expectations of the social group(s) to which they belong. At the heart of this conformism

93 94

Pitt-​Rivers, The fate of Sichem, i. De Waardt, De geschiedenis van de eer, 337.

78 Chapter 1 lies the desire to be an accepted and respected member of the group or society. The distinction between the contemporary notion of “respectability” and the “pre-​modern” concept of honour is therefore very relative. Notwithstanding the huge difference in shape and loading between the standard of behaviour deemed respectable for a contemporary citizen and the honour concept of an early modern Languedoc farmer, what we have are in fact similar mechanisms aimed at the same end, namely the acquisition and enforcement of respect within the social group to which the subject belongs. Pieter Spierenburg formulated a hypothesis about the evolution undergone by the honour concept since the early modern period in Western European societies.95 His starting point is the close connection in the late Middle Ages between honour and the physical person. The medieval honour concept was in this respect very similar to the notions of honour and shame that anthropologist Anton Blok sees for much more recent periods in mediterranean rural areas.96 The reputation of both men and women in such cultural contexts is fundamentally related to the physical person. For women, it is primarily a matter of safeguarding their physical integrity in the sexual field (i.e. their virginity, chastity or faithfulness). For men, physical power and control over the physical persons of the women under their authority constitute core conditions for a good reputation. The connection of honour to the physical person is evident from the strong physical symbolism with which honour-​related violence is penetrated. Blok points in particular to how in a rural and pastoral community a physical violation of the face was conceived as a violation of a person’s public reputation. The scar was seen as a permanent mark of dishonour. This intermingling of physical and moral qualities is found in Dutch terms like “aanzien” (standing; literally ‘how one is looked at’) and “gezichtsverlies” (loss of face).97 The close connection between honour and the physical person explains why the slightest impairment of physical integrity could be enough to awaken the perception of an outright attack on the person’s reputation. Given its symbolic charge, physical violence offered the best answer for removing any possible doubts about a person’s honour. Research has shown that the shame of certain affronts could be wiped out only with blood.98 In particular, researchers found that when sexual honour was called into question, or when the previous spilling of blood had sown public doubt as to the physical strength of the person

95 Spierenburg, Masculinity, 5–​7. 96 Blok, Eer en de fysieke persoon, 211–​230. 97 Roodenburg, Eer en oneer, 131. 98 Ruff, Violence, 81–​82.

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or family concerned, only the symbolic charge of blood was strong enough to express a satisfactory response to the affront. According to Spierenburg, this close connection between honour and the physical person is no longer dominant in contemporary Western European societies. He talks in this connection of a process of the spiritualizing of honour. In his opinion, honour can be directed both inwardly and outwardly. A close connection between physical appearance and honour points to a strong externally-​oriented honour concept; in such a cultural context, appearance is seen as externalizing internal virtues and is therefore of paramount importance. Where the honour concept is more spiritualized, inner virtues are of decisive importance; here, moral quality and character take precedence over outward appearance. Although Spierenburg emphasizes that the internal and external orientation of honour form two extremes of a continuum and the prevailing honour concepts within a particular society can never be regarded as purely internally or externally-​oriented, in Western Europe the pendulum has tended for about three centuries towards internal orientation. In other words, the connection between the physical person and honour has been largely wiped out, leading to the almost complete disappearance of the positive valorization of violence for virile honour.99 From Spierenburg’s viewpoint, it is today other, rather inner values (e.g. honesty or creditworthiness) that determine a person’s reputation. However, caution is advisable in talking of the “spiritualization” of honour. At first sight, the combination of both concepts looks like a contradiction in terms. Indeed, an essential feature of any honour code is its fundamental dependence for its existence on continued public updating and confirmation.100 If by the spiritualization of honour is meant that a person’s public reputation is dependent on inner qualities rather than physical strength, this does not pose a problem. With such an embodiment, only the specific substantive charge of honour is changed and not the operation of the mechanism as such. The notion of spiritualization does, however, become problematic when it is understood as meaning that the testing against personal conscience forms the basis of the honour system. If the frame of reference no longer consists of public behaviour, but of the individual in absolute terms, there can be no talk of honour. That caution is required with regard to the spiritualization process is also clear from conflict resolution as practised in twentieth-​century Antwerp 99

Blok’s thinking also connects in with this: Blok, Mediterranean Totemism, 207–​209. See here also the well-​contextualized case study by Eibach:  Städtische Gewaltkriminalität, 359–​382. 100 Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 25–​26.

80 Chapter 1 neighbourhoods. The violent interaction carried the stamp of concern for honour. The old connection between honour, physical person, and violence was far from worn away, at least in the lower social groups. The (quasi-​) absence of violent actors from the elites and the higher social groups in the corpus of recorded conflicts indicates that for them violence was not an option for defending their honour.101 Their honour concept had long since taken on a different embodiment. One can therefore question the universal nature of the process of spiritualization of honour, with a need to pay attention to the divergent developmental lines of various social groups.102 Where does the central position of the honour concept in the world of the lower social groups come from? Attention has already been drawn to the functionality of care for one’s reputation for the inhabitants of the poorer neighbourhoods of Antwerp. This finding is in line with the proposal of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to see honour as a form of symbolic capital.103 He transcends the Weberian dichotomy between the honour-​oriented society of orders and the profit-​oriented capitalist society by resolutely rejecting a separation of economic and non-​economic, and by applying the concept of “capital” in a much broader sense than is customary. In his later work, Bourdieu splits up the original concept of symbolic capital to distinguish three forms of mutually interchangeable capital –​economic, social and cultural. Economic capital reflects the material possibilities based on income and property. By social capital, he understands the sustainable network of social relations and the status or respectability within this network. Cultural capital refers to the whole of values and beliefs that refer to education and culture stricto sensu. With the concern for their honour that Antwerp citizens exhibit, it is clearly social capital that is the issue. Crucial in Bourdieu’s approach is the instrumental aspect of social capital.104 He emphasizes the benefits individuals obtain from their membership of social groups and the conscious construction of sociability with this purpose in mind. In concrete terms, for twentieth-​century Antwerp residents of the poorer neighbourhoods, membership of informal social networks offered the benefit of reciprocity relationships that could be addressed in case of emergency. Consequently, damage to one’s reputation could have profound material consequences.105 In the absence of other forms of capital, the acquisition of significant social capital was crucial. 1 01 Cf. Infra. 102 Cf. Muchembled, Une histoire, 38–​42. 103 Bourdieu, Esquisse, 348 e.v. 104 For the instrumental aspect of social capital, see: Bourdieu Portes, Social Capital, 3–​4. 105 Gould, Collision of Wills, 56.

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In a sharply critical text, German historian Martin Dinges points to a number of problems with qualifying the honour concept as “capital”.106 The main objection in his eyes is the impossibility of accumulating honour. A good reputation is never definitively acquired. On the contrary, it can be endangered at any time. The intrinsic fragility of honour implies that it must be constantly proven. The finding that, in the process of social interaction, honour has to be repeatedly affirmed, defended and preserved publicly constitutes a further indication that an essentialist approach to the honour concept does not add much. Attention needs to be paid to the rules that make it possible to damage, restore and increase honour in public. Dinges rightly points out that honour is in the first instance a code aimed at regulating the relationships of a person or group with others. This code, with its pronounced ritual character, provides an instrument for resolving conflicts in a highly regularized manner. Placed in the light of Spierenburg’s ideal-​typical distinction between violence in the pre-​industrial and modern city, the Antwerp case, unexpectedly, appears to correspond to a large extent to the pre-​industrial pattern. Unlike what appears to be characteristic for modernday cities, the selected cases of violence in the Antwerp neighbourhoods consist by no means mainly of violence to facilitate theft or of sexual violence. For the entire corpus of selected reports, the share of both categories is a low 4.0% (55 in absolute numbers) and 2.8% (38 in absolute numbers) respectively. The vast majority of the selected cases of violence fulfilled primarily a communicative function. However, it does not consist exclusively of informal conflict regulation based on honour codes and aimed at convincing public self-​ representation. The nature of the relationship between the conflicting parties had clear implications for where the conflicts were conducted. A correlation appears between the inter-​relationships of the conflicting parties and the conflict locations, which clearly indicates that the latter were by no means arbitrary, but on the contrary significant (Table 10).107 Intra-​familial conflicts were often kept indoors, precisely out of concern for reputation. Intra-​familial conflicts were preferably resolved as far as possible between four walls as they could only harm the family’s collective respectability. The fundamentally public-​oriented action form of the “Theatre of the Street” was therefore unsuitable for settling intra-​familial conflicts. What we have here is not “public violence” in the strict sense of the term, that is, not performances aimed at convincing public opinion. Precisely the convincing

1 06 Dinges, Die Ehre, 419–​424. Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 25–​26. 107 In 1364 of the 1377 cases, the location was deduced from the reports.

82 Chapter 1 table 10

Percentual distribution of the location of the recorded violence by relational category

public semi-​public indoors 100% = N

Neighbours

Family

Lovers

Encounters

Police-​ citizens

32.9 50.4 16.7 234

29.0 9.7 61.3 421

57.3 4.2 38.5 96

83.9 7.5 8.6 535

94.9 0.0 5.1 78

source: corpus of selected police reports

of the immediate social environment of one’s respectability required intra-​ family tensions to be kept indoors. For the rest, the vast majority of the reported violence consists of interpersonal conflicts that were resolved by means of the code of honour via-​à-​vis informal social networks. The public nature of that conflict resolution was essential for its functioning. Even if conflicts between immediate neighbours were often fought in the semi-​public parts of the house such as the stairwell, while conflicts between drinking companions, colleagues and lovers were usually settled on the street, the preferred location served the same purpose of presenting convincing evidence of respectability to a relevant audience. The same preoccupation for reputation could thus have opposing spatial implications: intra-​familial violence and conflicts were to be kept indoors, while tensions outside of the family circle sought public expression. The concrete reasons and the contentions behind these conflicts varied widely. Strongly divergent motives such as overly long outstanding debt, night noise or a refusal of a dance were cited by the declarants as causes of violent conflicts. The differentiating factor is the nature of the relationship between the opposing parties. Disputes between neighbours, drinking companions, fellow-​workers and other relational categories were brought to the “tribunal of the street”. Although conflicts regularly took place between unknown passers-​by and were settled on the basis of the honour code, the finding that the majority of cases of registered violence took place between persons known to each other is in itself certainly meaningful. It is also a misconception that violence is something that takes place between strangers: research indicates that violence occurs to a significant degree between persons known to each

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other.108 An important portion of the recorded violence between unknown persons relates to thefts with violence. The finding that most fights were between acquaintances supports the position that public violence, with honour as a shared interaction code, was, on the contrary, fundamentally aimed at informal social networks. The social background of the violent player and an overview of their mutual relationships indicate that the fighting parties were socially close to each other (the higher social groups were not involved) and often in symmetrical relationships of power (like between friends, neighbours and drinking companions). The fact that honour battles were usually fought between “equals” is consistent with the statement that the relationships between people with no clear hierarchical difference carried the greatest potential for conflict.109 This hierarchical ambiguity facilitates the conflict. People with little difference between them have the sharpest disputes. However different the motives of the conflict and the relationship between the actors, the disputes were, so to speak, reduced to a common formula by expressing them in the specific vocabulary of honour.110 From the perspective of the actors concerned, at stake in the dispute, irrespective of its actual reason, was their reputation within informal social networks. The undoubtedly high degree of sensitivity to personal reputation of the Antwerp population in the first half of the twentieth century forms an important contra-​indication to an evolutionary view of the ideal-​typical distinction between shame and guilt cultures.111 In a shame culture, concern for public reputation is central: in such a culture the outward presentation of one’s own person and command of the formal codes of conduct are of decisive importance. Shame cultures are often characterized by a sharp separation between the private and public domain and –​often in parallel with it –​the female and male sphere. The good name in the eyes of the outside world determines a person’s (self-​)value in such a cultural context. In a guilt culture, on the other hand, it is not the public appreciation of a person’s behaviour, but that person’s estimation of himself according to his own conscience that is of decisive importance. In such a society, internalized notions such as guilt and virtue take precedence over mechanisms with a distinctly public character such as honour and shame. A widespread view among historians is that a gradual shift from a shame to a guilt culture has occurred in Western Europe since the beginning of the early modern period.112 1 08 Gould, Collision of Wills, 67–​68. 109 Gould, Collision of Wills, 67–​103. 110 See the inspiring reflections of Schwerhoff, Aktenkundig, 123. 111 For a comprehensive detailing of the difference between both, see: Egmond, Erezaken, 7–​8. 112 For the Netherlands, this view is defended by Van de Pol, The Burgher and the Whore.

84 Chapter 1 Strangely enough, the corpus of recorded conflicts reveals a completely different picture than what one would expect in a Western European city during the first half of the twentieth century on the basis of the prevailing views of the transition from a shame culture to a guilt culture. The supposed characteristics of a guilt culture, such as internalized guilt or personal conscience, feature rarely in the selected material. In settling their conflicts, Antwerp citizens hardly, if at all, used words like guilt, virtue and sin, making almost no use of these categories to give force to their allegations. Numerous, on the other hand, are the implicit and explicit references to their concern for their reputations. One’s public appearance was a preoccupation of the first order for the people of Antwerp. Words like honour, scandal and shame are found countless times as arguments in declarations. Concern for public respectability, for one’s honour, formed the anchor point of informal conflict resolution. Conflict resolution practice in the twentieth-​century Antwerp neighbourhoods indicates that the transition from a shame to a guilt culture was less unambiguous than was often thought.113 1.5

Between Self-​Regulation and Disciplination by an Outside Agency

The practice of resolving conflicts in an informal manner in front of the “tribunal of the street” indicates that informal networks of local social life in Antwerp’s less prosperous neighbourhoods still possessed a real ability to self-​regulate. Violence was an instrument that people from the lower social groups used to regulate their disputes autonomously.114 As long as the honour codes, the implicit rules of conduct regulating violence, were respected, the legitimacy of violent informal conflict resolution was not contested. Such forms of violence with a pronounced public character fulfilled a number of varying functions within informal social networks. They made it possible to express tensions and rivalries within well-​defined boundaries, and in this way to resolve conflicts. With informal social networks watching over the way the implicit but real standards that regulate conflict resolution are respected, the risks to the parties involved and the immediate social environment were kept within limits. In view of the persistent functionality of public violence in the 113 See also:  Egmond, Erezaken, 21. Further elaborated in Egmond and Mason, Points of Honor, 59–​65. 114 This was also the case in nineteenth-​century rriveg neighbourhoods in the Ruhrgebiet. See: Jessen, Gewaltkriminalität, 226–​255. The same was true between the two world wars in London’s poor neighbourhoods: White, Campbell Bunk, 24–​26.

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context of informal conflict resolution, it is totally wrong to present it as an archaic left-​over.115 Autonomous conflict resolution using public violence by the lower social groups is an indication that, in the early twentieth-​-​century city, at the culmination point of the state-​building process, the state’s monopoly of violence was far from absolute. And that is surprising, because it is generally assumed that in the long run in Western European societies, the ability of informal social networks to resolve conflicts autonomously declined and that these societies increasingly moved to formal legal proceedings.116 This finding is all the more remarkable when one considers that in Antwerp a large-​scale local police corps had been built in the course of the nineteenth century that could be supposed to maintain a close watch over all the neighbourhoods of the city. From the known logic of the so-​called “disciplinary offensives”, one would expect the possibilities for self-​regulation through informal social networks to be extremely small. Does this mean that the Antwerpians were in fact not entirely subject to the external control of the repression apparatus, in this case the urban police, who had the sole right to enforce public order? Certainly there would seem to be no space for violent conflict resolution in this context, given the preoccupation of the repression apparatus with its monopoly on violence. Nevertheless, the analysis of the registered violence clearly indicates that, in addition to social control by the formal repression apparatus, the (violent) self-​regulation mechanisms of informal social networks still played a role. The finding that the expansion of a strong repression apparatus did not in any way mean the end of informal violence is in line with the existing research. Indeed, in spite of past beliefs, there appears to be no clear correlation between the presence of third party regulatory bodies (courts, police) in a society and the reduction of violent conflict arrangements.117 There is no straightforward evolution from disputing to complaining, as previously thought.118 The rise of the state repression apparatus did not put an end to violent self-​regulation. Coexistence is not, however, an adequate term to qualify the complex relationship between the forms of informal conflict settlement and formal repression. Indeed, there existed various cross-​links between the two, not least because

115 The approach to violence in contemporary Western societies as a relic of earlier times is already very problematic in itself: Lindenberger and Lüdtke, Einleitung, 17. 116 See Roodenburg, Onder censuur, 19–​23. 117 For discussions of the recent development in this area, see: Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 173–​174; Rousseaux, C’est rrive, 15; Rousseaux, Crime, Justice and Society, 92; Roberts, The Study of Dispute, 9–​10; Sleebe, Community, 168–​169. 118 Nader, From disputing to complaining, 71–​94; see: Roberts, The Study of Dispute, 16.

86 Chapter 1 table 11

Percentage distribution of male complainants by occupational category (globally and classified by relational category)

officials /​employees management level officials /​employees executive level service staff skilled workers unskilled workers large-​scale self-​employed /​ entrepreneurs small-​scale self-​employed /​ craftsmen free professions private income no official occupation 100 % = N

T

N

F

L

E

P

2.9

1.5

4.5

0.0

2.9

0.0

18.4 4.4 19.9 19.7 2.2

9.1 6.1 21.2 24.2 1.5

17.0 3.4 18.2 19.3 3.4

18.2 0.0 9.1 54.5 0.0

21.7 4.5 20.5 17.2 2.0

0.0 0.0 33.3 0.0 0.0

26.0

27.3

29.5

9.1

24.6

66.7

1.2 0.2 5.1 412

1.5 1.5 6.1 66

1.3 0.0 3.4 88

0.0 0.0 9.1 11

1.2 0.0 5.3 244

0.0 0.0 0.0 3

source: corpus of selected police reports (t = total, n = neighbours, f = family, l = lovers, e = encounters, p = police and citizens

many aspects of the informal settlement were criminalized from the official side. Nor can the relationship be reduced to an oppositional repression-​resistance one. The prominent presence of an extensive police force did not destroy informal self-​regulation mechanisms, but had a clear impact on their functioning. Important in this regard is the previously established finding that the vast majority of registered violence was brought to the notice of the police by the population. Thus, the recording of violence is by no means a proof that the repression apparatus set out on its own initiative and against the will of an unwilling population to engage combat with informal forms of violent conflict resolution. According to the figures, the practice of complaining to the police was in no way an exclusive matter of the better situated population groups, rather the contrary (see Tables 11 and 12). Based on the men’s occupations, one sees that a significant proportion of the complainants came from the lower social groups.119 119 For 1003 of 1105 of the complainants, the profession can be derived from the reports.

87

Life on a Stage table 12

Percentage distribution of female complainants by occupational category (globally and classified by relational category)

officials /​employees management level officials /​employees executive level service staff skilled workers unskilled workers small-​scale self-​employed /​ craftsmen private income no official occupation 100 % = N

T

N

F

L

E

P

0.3

0.0

0.8

0.0

0.0

0.0

4.4

4.4

4.8

1.6

5.0

0.0

12.7 3.5 16.6 18.4

10.3 2.9 19.1 14.7

9.9 3.2 12.3 17.5

20.6 3.2 31.7 17.5

16.4 5.0 15.0 24.3

0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

0.3 43.6 591

0.8 47.8 136

0.4 51.2 252

0.0 25.4 63

0.0 34.3 140

0.0 0.0 0

source: corpus of selected police reports (t = total, n = neighbours, f = family, l = lovers, o = encounters, p = police and citizens

The relationship between the lower social groups and the police was clearly much more complex than a maintenance of discipline perspective suggests. Seen from the perspective of these population layers, the police also performed very different functions than those for which they were created.120 These social layers indeed used the police apparatus to achieve their very particular goals. The motives behind making a complaint for violence were as complex as they were varied.121 In a sense, the complaint could represent the continuation of a public dispute by other means.122 In such a scenario, the formal repression apparatus was, as it were, brought into the process of informal conflict resolution. An appeal to the police is therefore not necessarily to be read as proof of the incapacity of informal regulatory mechanisms. In the same way as a blow in the face, an insult or a denigrating gesture, an interested party could use a 1 20 Lis and Soly, Neighbourhood. 121 For the various motives for the initiation of the formal repression apparatus, see: Roberts, The Study of Dispute, 23. 122 See in this connection:  Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 177; Frage, Familles, l’honneur et le secret, 558–​560; Sharpe, Such Disagreement betwyx neighbours, 180.

88 Chapter 1 complaint as a strategic weapon to publicly shame an opponent. In doing so, the intention was not so much to proceed effectively to prosecution. Such a complaint was primarily a message aimed at informal social networks. Submitting a complaint with aplomb, and thus imposing on the intended opponent a humiliating visit to the police station, could place the latter’s reputation under severe pressure. In such a case, the complainant had every interest in giving as much publicity as possible to the complaint with a view to maximum effect. Housewife Josephina P. instrumentalized the fact that she had successfully had a woman from the neighbourhood summoned to the police station:  “When you had to go to the police station, the commissioner told you, ‘You have no right to say anything, because you’re carrying on with a married man’.”123 Much more often, a complaint was used by an interested party as a defence strategy rather than an offensive weapon.124 As mentioned, once an opponent had attacked a person’s respectability, the primary concern was to respond in order to highlight the unfoundedness of its claim. One strategy to avoid the claim sticking was therefore to file a complaint with the police. Many of the complaints were intended as public signals that one felt secure in one’s rights, with the complainant indicating in this way that he or she would not back off, even if the matter ended up in court. By filing such a complaint, what mattered most to the complainant was not the prospect of any actual prosecution, but rather the public impression made. The message was not initially (or at least not exclusively) directed at the repression apparatus, but (at least as much) to informal social networks that had to be convinced of the complainant’s respectability. The complaint was a public gesture, a convincing piece of evidence, placed in front of the “tribunal of the street”. The common practice of filing a complaint after a status-​threatening action such as an insult and/​or a blow does not mean that any fixed chronology existed between the use of, for example, violence and the formal repression apparatus. Rather, formal and informal mechanisms formed complementary strategies that could be addressed in parallel in a quest for justice.125 In the strategic bringing the formal repression apparatus into community-​ oriented forms of informal conflict resolution by means of a complaint, one can ask what role was played by the fact that people knew from experience that, given their generally minor seriousness, the majority of complaints for 1 23 saa, MA 24648, report district 2, no. 188, 10-​2-​1917. 124 This was equally the case in eighteenth-​century Paris: Garrioch, Neighbourhood, 45–​47. 125 For a vision of informal mechanisms and formal structures as alternative forms of conflict regulation, where activated by the population at their own discretion, see: Ruff, Violence, 74–​75. This already occurred in eighteenth-​century Paris: Dinges, Michel Foucault, 206.

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violence never came to court. Obviously, it is impossible to determine the exact share of the complaints aimed initially at informal social networks, as complainants left such wishes unspoken in their complaints. It is also likely that in a number of complaints a dual motivation was in play: the complainant wished to convince the immediate social environment that he was in the right, while seeking at the same time a genuine prosecution. The two types of complaint were not mutually exclusive. The gathering of witnesses to support one’s own version of the facts could also be done with two objectives in view. Witnesses could be drummed up on the one hand to convince the commissioner of the well-​foundedness of the complaint. On the other hand, the mobilization of witnesses could also be directed at making a positive impression on informal social networks. In the decisions of witnesses to add strength to a complaint by their testimony, personal and family loyalties weighed very heavily. If a person witnessed a violation of transgression of the norm by a friend or relative, solidarity with the friend or family member often counted more than any sense of outrage. Housewife Louisa P. stated so: “There were no other witnesses than the woman from below (…) but she won’t testify for me, as she’s in cahoots with my daughter.”126 A billiard ball maker’s assistant said, according to witnesses, that “he was forced to testify for his master, whether he wanted to or not”, for fear of losing his job.127 In situations of conflicting loyalties, declarants often sought to avoid making any meaningful statement. Servant Hortensia T. declared about a dispute between two family members: “Given the circumstances, in my capacity as family member it is impossible for me to intervene in a domestic dispute.”128 The frequency of the practice of using a complaint to the police commissioner as a means of safeguarding one’s own reputation and compromising that of one’s adversary is impossible to estimate accurately. The reactions triggered in these cases, however, indicate the effectiveness of such a strategy. The prospect of a complaint could already be enough to force the counterparty, who felt his reputation threatened, to a reaction. Such a reaction could consist both of threatened and actual physical violence. An alternative strategy for the individual threatened with a complaint was to hurry to the police station and lodge a complaint himself against the adversary, in order to be literally one step ahead of him in the battle for credibility and respectability. If the complainant actually made a complaint, this regularly elicited a reaction, violent or not, from the accused, aimed at enfeebling the well-​foundedness of 1 26 saa, MA 31710, report district 5, no. 3981, 18-​8-​1938. 127 saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 1144, 23-​5-​1912. 128 saa, MA 31884, report district 5, no. 3376, 13-​7-​1949.

90 Chapter 1 the complainant’s claim. Thus, a female tavern-​keeper declared that she had questioned her opponent, cleaning lady Maria M., on the street in front of her home and in the presence of female neighbours “what she had gone doing at the police station”, giving rise to a fist-​fight.129 The practice of violent retaliation to a complaint is an indication that the perception of the potential danger of a complaint did not relate exclusively to the prospect of a possible prosecution. From a penal perspective, a violent retaliation to a complaint for violence was the last thing an accused party needed in order to strengthen its position. The complainant could use such an action in front of the police commissioner as an additional decisive argument for the accused’s alleged misconduct. The reports show that in many cases this actually happened: after the complainant had been threatened or hit by the accused, he usually returned to the police office to deliver an additional statement about the new facts. A  diamond grinder’s declaration about a violent retaliatory action by a cobbler is a classical example here: “This evening (…) I met B. Marcus in the Pelikaanstraat (…) where he punched me without saying anything to me (…) whereupon I immediately started to run; and he called after me ‘I’ll smash you to pieces’. I think he did this because I filed a complaint against him.”130 Since a violent response could, in front of the law, only weaken the accused’s position, other motives must lie behind his behaviour. In such cases, the desire to defend one’s reputation within informal social networks outweighed the threat of possible prosecution. The response of doorman Ernest B. to an, in his eyes, unjustified complaint is very revealing here.131 A commercial traveller had brought in the police because Ernest B. had purportedly dirtied him with powder in a dispute over the payment of a round of beers. When the police officer scolded him for his behaviour, Ernest B. expressed his anger against the commercial traveller: “… he said to T.: ‘Oh, you’re going to lodge a complaint against me, so I’ll show you what you can complain of’, and sprang at him and punched him several times in the face.” With striking frankness, Ernest B. declared in his statement that he considered the penal sequels to be of secondary importance in relation to the allegation he deemed unfounded: “… I got angry and said that I would give him a reason to accuse me, and that this would just be added to my other penalties, and hit him a few times with my fist in his face. I  can’t help it, but when someone accuses me when I’m innocent, I’m

1 29 saa, MA 24632, report district 2, no. 4760, 13-​8-​1912. 130 saa, MA 29734, report district 7, no. 1790, 13-​6-​1928. 131 saa, MA 31699, report district 5, no. 190, 5-​1-​1938.

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capable of killing someone, and if the police officer had not been there, the complainant would have got even more.” However, the willingness to report violence is not entirely reducible to the desire, in the struggle for reputation, to send a meaningful signal, functionally completely similar to a fist or insult, towards the informal social networks. In many cases, the complainant explicitly appeals to the repression apparatus, in this case the police commissioner, to intervene. However, this request for intervention directed at formal structures did not necessarily equivalate to the desire to initiate criminal prosecution against the accused party. In a significant portion of the complaints, the complainant explicitly made clear to the police that he was not out to instigate a formal criminal prosecution. In many cases, a complaint was used as a means of pressuring the opposing party to resolve the conflict. People called in an external factor to tilt the power balance in their own favour. There are, for example, numerous examples of people withdrawing their complaint several hours or days after filing it, because the accused proved ready to make satisfaction in exchange for not prosecuting (see Table 13). The satisfaction could consist of compensation, but could also include the promise to leave the complainant in peace. The complaint was an effective stick for persuading an opponent to be more accommodating. Not only is the fact that a not-​insignificant share of the complaints was subsequently withdrawn an indication that the complaint was often used as a means of pressure, even at the time of the declaration itself, that intention is regularly apparent. A significant number of complainants explicitly stated in their complaints the reasons leading them to the police. Those motives were not unequivocally consistent with the unambiguous wish to see the accused party prosecuted. The complainants regularly expressed explicitly their wish table 13

1912 1917 1928 1938 1944 1949

Withdrawn complaints as share of total number of complaints per sample year

Complaints

Withdrawn

%

249 104 146 227 158 198

11 7 17 26 13 15

4.4 6.7 11.6 11.4 8.2 7.6

source: corpus of selected police reports

92 Chapter 1 to force an informal settlement between the parties involved (for example, compensation for the damage suffered) by bringing in the police. In addition, the police were often asked in so many words to intervene to de-​escalate a tense relationship (for example, by inviting the accused party to calm down) without things necessarily coming to a prosecution. In such a scenario, the parties are not aiming so much at an informal settlement, but are rather bringing in an external power factor to force a change in behaviour. In other words, parties frequently and consciously brought in the police to settle their mutual problems. To a certain extent, police action in conflict prevention was similar to the mediating role played by wijkmeesters (literally: ward masters) during the ancien régime.132 The objective of the complaints was to force a solution by the appeal to formal structures. Visibly, purely informal strategies hit their limits there. The strategic use of the repression apparatus was aimed at a settlement half-​way between a purely infra-​judicial arrangement and a formal criminal prosecution. On balance, the structural invocation of police assistance by the Antwerp population to resolve conflicts tells us that the self-​regulating power of informal social networks was not absolute. The frequently expressed desire to go as far as actual prosecution illustrates this very clearly. Relationships in the twentieth-​century Antwerp districts were in this respect very different from those in urban neighbourhoods during the early modern era, where local communities were able to manage almost all of their problems autonomously, even going as far as exhibiting a high degree of hostility towards the possibility of intervention by government agencies such as the police.133 The integration of the arm of the law into informal regulation mechanisms by no means meant the end of the ability to self-​regulate, but did exert a significant influence on it.134 At a minimum, the police took over certain functions previously exercised by the neighbourhood. As a result, police logic played an inevitable role in conflict resolution. Patrolling police officers intervened when combatants went too far, a task previously performed exclusively by the immediate social environment. The police commissioner had partly taken on the conciliatory role of peysmakers (peace-​makers) and other informal mediators. The perspective from which the police undertook such tasks was of course fundamentally different from the approach to conflict regulation as exercised by neighbours and family members. In purely informal conflict resolution situations, with no intervention of the formal repression apparatus, the local residents familiar 1 32 Deceulaer and Jacobs, Les implications de la rue, 26–​53. 133 See: Carter Wood, Self-​policing, 111. 134 See: Garrioch, Neighbourhood, 217.

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with the parties involved, and who also had to continue to live with them, were seen as possessing the decisive authority. Even if the initiative of involving the police apparatus in interpersonal conflict resolution often came from the population, the fact remains that an external authority was used that maintained its own logic that did not necessarily correspond to the shared norms, values and views of the less prosperous layers of the population. Simply, the police apparatus had been created for very different reasons than those for which the population used them. In the exercise of its duties it could therefore have objectives, such as law enforcement and combating crime, that differed considerably from those of the people appealing to it. The police commissioner also belonged to a social group which, to maintain social distinctions, kept a distance from the active street life of the lower social groups. Given his professional and social background, it is very likely that, in his reconciling role, he formulated arrangements that did not necessarily correspond to the views prevailing within informal social networks in the working-​class neighbourhoods. Nevertheless, the objection can be made that if the solutions suggested by the commissioner were completely at odds with the values, opinions and aspirations of the population, they could never be effective. Any attempt at reconciliation could succeed only if it found points of contact with the mental world of the parties involved. An analysis of the official reports in which the police commissioner clearly functioned as a mediator indicates that his actions were by no means unilateral. In many cases, he did only what he had been requested to do by the complainant, for example by warning a man to stop harassing his female neighbour, and the commissioner’s personal contribution was limited. It is also characteristic of his position as mediator, not only between persons, but also between the world of the street and the world of the law, that he sought to find a compromise between the different positions and logics and did not unilaterally impose a solution. In certain circumstances, he had more room to manoeuvre and to reconcile the various viewpoints than in others. It goes without saying that his freedom of movement to move outside the bounds of legalistic logic was extremely limited in cases, for example, of public ­disturbance. The relationship between the population and police officers is in this case even less clear than the attitude of the population to the police commissioner. While his social distance to the less affluent population layers and his location in the police station meant that the police commissioner could undoubtedly count as an external authority, it is questionable whether the same applied to the ordinary police officer. Not only was the normal police officer undoubtedly socially much closer to the residents of the working-​class districts, but

94 Chapter 1 also his daily presence in the street led to a certain degree of familiarity with them.135 Further research could possibly reveal to what extent this familiarity led to the police officers being seen not only as representatives of the formal authority, but also as an integral part of informal social networks in the neighbourhood. It looks very much as if a widely ramified urban police force, like the Antwerp one, differed significantly in this respect from the gendarmerie or state police force. In the case of the Antwerp police, there is no indication of a consciously pursued policy of distance, as appears to have existed between the territorial gendarmerie brigades and the populations in their particular areas of ­responsibility. The picture outlined above of a complex interplay between informal self-​ regulation mechanisms and the formal repression apparatus could erroneously lead to the conclusion that the authority of the police in the Antwerp neighbourhoods was completely undisputed in all circumstances. In the day-​ to-​day interaction between the police and the population, the relationships appear to have been far less clear than a first impression would suggest. The fact that the population involved the police in its conflict regulation strategies indicates in itself that there was no general climate of hostility towards the urban police force. The police had been generally accepted as part of life in the working-​class neighbourhoods. The attitudes of the lower social groups in Antwerp to the police had probably gone through a similar evolution in this respect as they had in British working-​class districts in the course of the nineteenth century.136 There, the initial attitude of outright hostility had changed by the turn of the century to a considerable degree of acceptance. Whether a comparable hatred of the police apparatus existed in the nineteenth-​century Antwerp ghettos remains to be seen. In the folkloric literature on nineteenth-​ century neighbourhood life, indications can be found that this might well have been the case. For the ill-​reputed Faboert district, a local resident with a great sense of drama described the earlier antagonism between residents and the police, as he remembered it to have existed in the second half of the nineteenth century: For the police officers, working in that part of town was indeed no sinecure. It was rather like the Far West in the movies. Only the demonstration of power and violence could control the ‘schoelies’ (scoundrels). The police stations in the Tulpstraat and Schoolstraat were in a constant state

1 35 See: De Maesschalck, Gardes in de oorlog, 116–​117. 136 Carter Wood, Self-​policing, 111.

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of war. Fighting with the ‘gardevils’ (urban policemen) was the favourite sport of local heroes. (…) A simple reminder from a policemen to a group of idlers (…) was usually sufficient to rekindle the ever-​smouldering flame of hatred against the ‘silver buttons’. (…) Very quickly, the ‘truncheons’ bore down on the gathered crowd and it lasted a good while until the battle was decided, with one or more heroes with bloody heads dragged to the station by a bunch of policemen, to the accompaniment of the howling and jeering of the barely controllable bystanders.137 Continued police control work, however, appears by the 1890s to put an end to the protracted confrontations between the male inhabitants of the Faboert and the police. There was no question of any antagonism of comparable sharpness in the twentieth-​century Antwerp neighbourhoods. It is clear, however, that the population’s acceptance of the authority of the police always remained conditional. Moreover, not all sections of society shared it to the same extent. A possible indication in this direction is the finding that the share of unskilled and skilled workers among those bringing complaints for violence was considerably lower than their share among the accused. Maybe this can be explained in part by a (relatively) smaller inclination of these groups to involve the police. The relationship between the population and the municipal police force was indeed permeated by a certain tension. The potential tension often gave rise to overt conflicts. 79 of the 1377 registered violent conflicts involved violence between civilians and police, representing a non-​negligible 5.7% of the entire corpus. The reason for the vast majority of these conflicts was police intervention in one form or another that was not accepted by citizens and provoked a violent reaction. The majority of these conflicts were expressions of resistance to concrete police interventions. There is no indication of any widespread practice –​dictated by an attitude of general hostility to the police –​of consciously seeking confrontation with the police without concrete reason. Only one police report, concerning the behaviour of a market vendor, clearly points in that direction: “D. is a great agitator, who does not miss any opportunity, when in his cups, to abuse policemen who come into contact with him.”138 Another likely indication that confrontation with the police was usually not deliberately sought, is the finding that two-​thirds of the registered cases of violence against the police involved drunkenness. There is therefore reason to assume

1 37 Broeders, Het faboert, 155–​156. 138 saa, MA 31562, report district 5, no. 2260, 20-​12-​1912.

96 Chapter 1 that with the disappearance of inner inhibitions due to alcohol consumption, the slumbering, latent hostility towards the police force came to the surface. The professional profile of those persons involved in a violent conflict with the police seems to confirm that bad blood towards the police force was most prevalent among the working population. The profession is known of 88 out of the 96 persons involved in the 79 registered cases of violence between police and civilians: 27 of them were unskilled workers, 20 skilled workers, accounting for the significant percentage of 53.4%. The not inconsiderable number of violent reactions by citizens to police interventions indicates that the relationship between the local populations and police in the Antwerp neighbourhoods was more complex than the readiness to file complaints suggests at first glance. The ambiguity of the population’s attitude towards the police is apparent, for example, from the different reactions to arrests. In some police operations, police officers could count on the support of the bystanders who actively cooperated in an arrest. In other situations, the population did everything possible to prevent the arrest of a neighbour or friend. For example, when arresting a young dockworker, police officers felt obliged to draw their sabres to prevent his comrades from releasing him by force.139 A housewife arrested for the theft of a loaf of bread from a bread cart during the food shortage of the First World War was freed from the hands of the police by a rabble after their leader had shouted: “Men, are we going to let the woman be led away like this?”140 However, the willingness of local residents and friends to actively prevent arrests should not be exaggerated. Just 6 of the 79 recorded incidents of violence between civilians and police involved collective action to prevent or complicate an arrest. The full complexity of the relationship is apparent from incidents where some bystanders oppose police action, while others do everything to make it succeed. Four drunken labourers, for example, tried to prevent their friend, sailor Jozef de L., from being arrested for hitting policemen.141 Under the shouts “stamp him to death”, they kicked the policeman so harshly as to produce long-​term incapacity for work. The response of the local residents, however, did not correspond at all with the attitude of the drunken sailors. The statements of the police officers who intervened to relieve their colleague from his plight clearly indicate that the local residents alerted the police. Police officer Willem J. stated: “I was standing (…) in the Lange Beeldekensstraat and heard the people shouting that a policeman was badly mistreated.” The 1 39 saa, MA 31560, report district 5, no. 829, 7-​4-​1912. 140 saa, MA 31580, report district 5, no. 511, 4-​11-​1917. 141 saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 1200, 28-​5-​1912.

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statement of police officer August C. goes in the same direction: “… I was informed by the public at the station that one of my colleagues was being beaten by several miscreants. (…) Afterwards (…) I was informed in the Beeldekensstraat by indignant onlookers that a certain Peter was also one of the assailants.” The following statement by a police officer about a confrontation with a blacksmith who ran amok after being denied access to a dance hall, also illustrates the various reactions that police action could provoke: At my request to move on, he refused, seized me at a certain moment (…) to throw me to the ground; he called in the help of his comrades who tried to get him out of my hands; I was kicked and punched several times on my entire body and face by B. and also by his comrades. (…) It is only with the help of two police officers that we were able to lead him to the police station. Before that, I had been assisted by Hendrik V., a life insurance manager, who had to flee because B.’s comrades shouted ‘kill him!’ and kicked him. I had also called for help to the tavern-​keeper, who refuse with the words: ‘That’s your problem’.142 Whether or not people supported or challenged police action depended on the specific perspective of the bystanders.143 Their attitude was determined by whether or not they considered the police action legitimate. As mentioned earlier, views could differ: for Jozef de L.’s mates, their friend’s arrest may have been an abuse of power, while the bystanders did not question the legitimacy of the police action and saw the opposition to it as a violation of the norm. What exactly determined whether or not people regarded a certain police intervention as legitimate or not was perhaps due to a multitude of factors. Undoubtedly, the position within informal social networks of the person who had become the object of a police action played a significant role.144 Willingness to take up cudgels on behalf of an individual with a bad reputation was probably limited. Likewise, people probably jumped into the breach faster for “established” people with sufficient social capital than for “outsiders” with few ties to informal social networks. Apart from the social position of the object of the police action, it was obviously the perception of the policeman’s attitude that determined whether or not an intervention was considered legitimate.

1 42 saa, MA 31582, report district 5, no. 1535, 6-​9-​1917. 143 In Belle Époque Berlin, this was also the case:  Lindenberger, Die ‘verdiente Tracht Prügel’, 194. 144 See in this connection: Lis en Soly, Jeugd, criminaliteit, 16–​20.

98 Chapter 1 Police officers were in an extremely complex and vulnerable position,145 having to operate at the intersection of two cultural circuits. Given that the meanings the population and the law respectively assigned to certain behaviours and customs did not necessarily correspond with each other, police officers found themselves in an in-​between position, representing the official normative framework in a social environment that maintained its own standards, values and opinions. In practice, they acted as middlemen, as “cultural intermediaries”. This demanded of police officers the necessary flexibility in their activity to reconcile the legal framework with the values, norms and expectations of the population. The population assumed that police officers were willing to engage in a modus vivendi that left room for informal arrangements and negotiations. When police officers were insufficiently ready to compromise and insisted ruthlessly on legalistic logic, acceptance by the population came to an end. Where police officers lacked the flexibility to reconcile the tasks prescribed by law with the expectations and aspirations of the population, the perception of a form of illegal interference arose. The phrase “this is none of your business” could not be clearer.146 Such cases regularly led to (even violent) resistance against the intervention of the police officer. For a police officer to act from a purely legalistic logic was conceived as an illegitimate form of harassment. A ship smith’s hand referred to this view when he reproached the policeman who had taken him out of a queue: “You used to be the biggest bandit yourself, and now you torment people.”147 School pupil Maria van S. expressed the aversion towards a legalistic attitude by the police with the following sneering remark to the police officers escorting her to the police station: “They want to earn a medal and a plume.”148 Her accusing the police officers of exaggerated zeal was probably related to the fact that she had been arrested for a very minor offence: singing with friends at night in the city streets. The legitimacy of a police action was jeopardized in the eyes of bystanders when the police officer in question rejected a proposal for an informal settlement out of strictly legalistic considerations. At the intersection of the legal and real worlds, the police officer was expected to be prepared to accept informal arrangements. The reaction of the neighbourhood to the arrest of a man who had urinated in public was prompted by the policeman’s refusal to accept an informal arrangement. More specifically, the reaction followed the rejection 1 45 146 147 148

Inspiring in this regard is Rooijakkers, Opereren, 245–​283. saa, MA 31582, report district 5, no. 1204, 22-​7-​1917. saa, MA 24648, report district 2, no. 360, 23-​3-​1917. saa, MA 31559, report district 5, no. 544, 16-​1-​1912.

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by the police officer in question of an offer from a friend of the man relieving himself in public to take him home and thus restore calm. Given the fact of this immoral activity and the fact that he did not have an identity card with him, I led him to the police station. (…) Arriving in the Lange Beeldekensstraat he suddenly refused to go further and he threatened to hit me. (…) At this moment, Joannes S. intervened between us saying that he would take his friend home, which I could not allow. At this he tried to free his friend from my hands. Seeing myself overwhelmed and given the disapproving cry and the disapproving attitude of the bystanders, who became more and more numerous and hemmed me in, I  pulled my sabre defend myself. (…) After much effort (…) we were able to get him to the police station. We received no help from the many bystanders; on the contrary, they made our task even more difficult by encircling us.149 The police officers’ actions were naturally equally deemed illegitimate if they used a degree of violence that was seen as excessive. The corpus of recorded conflicts includes three complaints from citizens against the police for violence. For those being arrested, the aversion to police violence provided a starting point for provoking a reaction from the bystanders. A clerk tried to create the impression that he was being mishandled by the police by calling to the bystanders: “People, men, they’re beating me up here. I’m being hit.”150 Violent opposition to police intervention was largely a male affair: of the 96 actors involved in the 79 cases of violence between police and civilians, 88 were men.151 Of course, this high proportion was not necessarily entirely the result of gender-​specific hostility of men towards the police. A possible explanation is also the orientation of the exclusively male repression apparatus towards men. There is reason to believe that the police acted harder against men, in whose behaviour they saw a greater threat to public order, than against women, who were not entirely taken seriously because of machismo-​coloured views on the “weak” sex. In addition, it could be argued that, given the difference in physical strength between men and women, it was a relatively less interesting option for women than for men to turn against the police with violence. Possibly women preferred to express their opposition to police intervention in other ways, for example by using the weapon of the tongue. However, the 1 49 saa, MA 31711, report district 5, no. 4203, 4-​9-​1938. 150 saa, MA 29270, report district 2, no. 335, 15-​2-​1938. 151 In Belle Époque Berlin, this was also the case: Lindenberger, Strassenpolitik, 68.

100 Chapter 1 male overweighting here is such that it seems unlikely that it can be explained solely by such factors. There seems to have been a specific masculine animosity towards the police. The fact that the relationship of the two sexes to the police apparatus was not exactly the same is also apparent from the fact that women more often filed reports for violence than men.152 The male predominance in violence against the police is, as it were, the other side of the coin. Without claiming that the relationship between women and the police was conflict-​free, it is clear that the relations were less sharp-​edged. This situation apparently differs from that in the London working-​class districts during the Belle Époque, where men and women apparently resisted the intervention of the police with the same intensity.153 The gender-​specific male hostility towards the police is also evident from the insults that men proffered in confrontations with the police. While there is no particular pattern to be found in the myriad of insults that women shouted to the police, the insults of men were clearly aimed at humiliating the police officer as a man. With insults like “coward”, “weakling” (literally “fig”) and “ragdoll”, they expressed disapproval of the police officer using his official status to get the upper hand, castigating his owing his authority to his function and his failure to establish himself personally as a real man, and his taking measures against the alleged offender not in a physical confrontation, but on the basis of his legal powers. An insult like “coward” was therefore an implicit invitation to fight like a real man instead of hiding behind a uniform. Sometimes that invitation was made explicit. A drunken dockworker shouted at a policeman who wanted to take him to the district police station: “I’m rather full now, but even so, five of you weaklings will not get me to the station.”154 A  drunken travelling salesman on being arrested shouted: “The Antwerp cops are murderers and cowards, the first cop I meet when I’m freed, I’ll knock to blazes.”155 A  slaughterhouse hand ordered to move on challenged the officer with the words: “Now we’re going to have an argument and fight.”156 Implicitly, to insult a police officer as a coward was to publicly deny his authority, putting across the message that one was not impressed by the authority with which the policeman was invested ex officio. Men expressed the virile contempt for the authority of the police and its unmanly behaviour even 1 52 Cf. infra. 153 Ross, Survival Networks, 17. 154 saa, MA 31562, report district 5, no. 2049, 13-​08-​1912. 155 saa, MA 29824, report district 5, no. 135, 11-​1-​1938. 156 saa, MA 31579, report district 5, no. 142, 16-​1-​1917.

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more clearly by referring to their own “balls” which they saw as highlighting their own masculine superiority. A  painter’s mate called out to the police with so many words:  “Bollocks to the police.”157 A  tavern-​keeper dismissed his wife’s admonition not to respond to an intervention by a police commissioner (“don’t hit him, he’s the police commissioner”),158 shouting: “Bollocks to the commissioner”, and hit the commissioner several times. The bloody vengeance against the police that the arrested persons promised (“I’ll find you”) fits in the same perspective. The message was to be put across that they would not be put off by the authority expressed by the uniform. Expressions like “stupid ass, weakling, I’ll kill you, wait till I meet you, you’ll be one man less”, “coward, even if they jail me for fifteen years, I’ll still find you” or “you coward, I’ll give a treat to you and your friend once I meet you” leave little to the imagination. Threatening police officers was not, however, a male exclusivity. An ironing woman, who was being led to the police station for singing on the streets at night, called to the police officer involved: “If you dare touch me, I’ll scratch your eyes out, you bastard.”159 The revenge that women promised lay, with this one exception, on a totally different plane. In particular, they threatened to jeopardize the police officer’s professional position by exposing him to his superiors in a bad light. The effectiveness of this strategy can be seen from the fact that police officers in their reports precisely reported the practice of noting the police officer’s number. The report about the behaviour of maid Adelia de W. is a striking illustration of this: “… W. Adelia threatened to write to the mayor, about both me and my colleague, writing both our numbers in a pocketbook”.160 A recurring theme in the insults to police officers by men and women is the alleged profiteering from community funds. A servant smeared an agent with the sneer: “You’ve been supping at my expense all evening, because the whole evening, and you’re paid out of my taxes, and that’s why I care nothing for your silver buttons.”161 A maid hit two police officers with the comment: “Devourers of government money, glad that you’re cops and can get the 600 francs.”162 Popular resistance to police officers who exhibited insufficient flexibility in reconciling the sometimes divergent interests of the real and the legal worlds, 1 57 158 159 160 161 162

saa, MA 31560, report district 5, no. 2595, 10-​10-​1912. saa, MA 29221, report district 2, no. 1574, 17–​1928. saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 1360, 9-​6-​1912. saa, MA 31628, report district 5, no. 452, 18-​2-​1928. saa, MA 29275, report district 2, no. 1767, 13-​8-​1938. saa, MA 31628, report district 5, no. 452, 18-​2-​1928.

102 Chapter 1 plus the latent male hostility against the police, could erroneously suggest that the population-​police relationship was predominantly conflictual. Such a qualification, however, ignores the fact that the interaction between local police and residents was very intense and did not always lead to conflicts. Not only did the population bring in the police on a considerable scale, but there is also every reason to believe that numerous interventions at the initiative of the police did not meet with opposition. In this connection, one should not be overly guided by the relative silence of the sources. In the sources, traces of routine, successful interventions by the police (for example, warnings) are of course relatively rare, since there would have been little enthusiasm among police officers for writing reports –​a labour-​intensive ­exercise –​on cases they themselves had settled in a semi-​informal manner. The fact that the Antwerp lower social groups availed of the formal repression apparatus indicates that informal strategies were apparently not enough for finding satisfactory solutions to all problems. This in no way means that self-​regulation and freedom of movement no longer existed. The presence of a formal repression apparatus, set up to control and discipline the population, did not stand in the way of an important degree of agency.163 Paradoxically, the coexistence of formal and informal regulation mechanisms in a certain sense increased the room for manoeuvre of people with conflicts to settle. The interweaving of different types of informal conflict regulation with the state’s formal repression apparatus implies that the population of Antwerp had a certain degree of freedom of choice in deciding which mechanisms were preferable in particular circumstances for taking action against a targeted opponent. Thus, there was a certain amount of room for strategic considerations. It is probable, therefore, that for certain conflict areas the intervention of formal institutions was preferred to personal violence, and vice versa. A man decried as a “coward” might well opt for violence to prove his virile courage and strength more readily that a man publicly accused of theft. It is also not inconceivable that certain categories of people were more inclined to use formal structures than others. The acceptance of the state’s repressive apparatus is not absolute, but conditional. The police were expected to strike a balance between the values, norms and aspirations of the population and the legal framework in which they were required to operate.

163 See Medick, ‘Missionare im Ruderboot’, 56–​57.

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Revenge, Social Standing and Violence

The mechanism that entailed that a potentially status-​threatening act had to be adequately responded to in order to prevent loss of reputation irrefutably brings us to the subject of “revenge”. At first sight that can seem surprising. Is it appropriate to consider such an archaic notion applicable to a twentieth-​ century urban society? Have European societies not long ago abdicated private revenge to criminal justice executed by the state authority?164 Well-​meaning persons associate revenge, not with today’s industrialized Western European societies, but on the contrary with bloody feuds during the Middle Ages or with vendettas in peripheral rural Mediterranean areas today.165 Revenge is supposedly a core element of so-​called “honour cultures”. Within such a cultural context, revenge was a shared code of conduct that imposed a legitimate retaliation for injustice inflicted. However, research shows that revenge is an almost universal phenomenon.166 The fact of reserving the notion of vengeance for “foreign” cultural contexts such as the distant European past or non-​European societies makes it a priori impossible to recognize the retributive characteristics of certain behavioural patterns in contemporary European societies.167 The often-​occurring but unjust equivalation of feuding with revenge encourages ethnocentrism. From the observation that the feud as an institution has in Western Europe become a marginal phenomenon168 since the early modern period except in a few peripheral areas, it is concluded that revenge has lost its significance. Much of the current confusion about revenge can be traced back to an uncritical taking on board of the state’s perspective on violence.169 A central element of the state formation process, as it has taken place in Western Europe since the late Middle Ages, is the state’s ever-​growing monopoly on the use of force. In order to establish its monopoly on violence, the state criminalized violence by private individuals. From the outlawing of private violence motivated by revenge, it was only a small step to presenting revenge as the opposite of right 164 For the prevailing perception here, see: Egmond and Mason, The Longue durée of ritual punishment, 136. 165 Gould, Revenge as Sanction, 682–​683. 166 See the series by Verdier, Courtois and Poly, La vengeance. 167 For a plea from an anthropological perspective for a renewed attention to the phenomenon of “revenge”, see: Stewart and Strathern, Violence, 108–​136. 168 Spierenburg, Long-​term trends, 74. 169 The origin of the inability to recognize the retributive element in contemporary societies lies largely in evolutionary schemes as developed by nineteenth-​century sociologists. For references, see: Chauvaud, Les passions, 183.

104 Chapter 1 and justice. For people familiar only with the centralized judicial apparatus of the state, it is therefore difficult to imagine the regulating effect that revenge has in many societies. Nevertheless, most specialists emphasize precisely the regulatory aspects of revenge. Revenge is a mechanism that permits some rules to be imposed on violence in societies where the state’s monopoly on the use of power is weak or non-​existent. In such a context, fear of retaliation acts as an important brake on violent behaviour. The knowledge that revenge is likely prevents attackers from taking violence too far. Victims of violence and their relatives, for their part, have every interest in demonstrating, via targeted acts of revenge, that they are not to be messed around with. Indeed, the absence of a reaction could be interpreted as an invitation to further attacks. While the price of the persistent readiness to resist in order to defend one’s reputation may be high, that of failing to react would be even higher. An act of retaliation for perceived violation is therefore not necessarily an irrational response that only contributes to the escalation of violence, but fits within a system aimed at the regulation of conflicts. Counter to current views, in societies without a centralized state judicial apparatus, revenge is not perceived as the opposite of justice. On the contrary, for those carrying out a retaliatory action, revenge is exactly equal to justice, in the sense that they think that through their action they are again quits with their opponents. Abandoning stubborn ethnocentrism about notions such as vengeance and retaliation makes it possible to recognize that also largely pacified contemporary societies are not free from or immune to such tendencies.170 Revenge is an important factor both in informal settlements and in formal case law. Thus, the observation that the courts of the state have largely taken over the function of private feuds is far from meaning that revenge has completely lost its significance in this area.171 However much the official rhetoric of governments and complainants may deny it, it takes little imagination to, for example, discern at least elements of retribution in contemporary punishment. The praxis of (violent) conflict resolution and the willingness to file complaints in early twentieth-​century Antwerp illustrate that even in a contemporary city in a Western European country where the state formation process had made far-​reaching progress, revenge indeed played a significant role. Revenge could form the basis both of direct informal conflict resolution by the use of

1 70 See: Rousseaux, C’est arrivé, 15. 171 F. Ploux convincingly showed that the rural population in southern France during the nineteenth century did not distinguish between a court conviction and revenge. Ploux, Guerres paysannes.

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force and of the decision to avail of the official authorities (in this case the police) to harm one’s opponent. Revenge played a crucial role in informal conflict regulation. The avenging of perceived previous wrongs was seen as a necessary step to avoid potential reputational damage. The balance, which had been dangerously affected to the detriment of the target person by an action of the counterparty, was rebalanced by a reaction.172 In case of reporting someone to the police, revenge could be just as much a motive as it could be for a public insult or act of violence. Needless to say there are no explicit traces of this motive in the complaints, as this would undermine their validity. The reactions of the accused persons to the fact of being reported are much more telling in this respect. The anger at being reported can be so high as to, in turn, provoke acts of revenge, precisely in view of the perceived danger to the accused’s reputation. Diamond grinder Erno B. expressed to the police the suspicion that the reason he had been punched in the face on the street by shoemaker Marcus B. and had been threatened by him was because he “had filed a complaint against him”.173 Unsatisfactory testimony could also give rise to revenge. Cleaning lady Maria V., for example, ran into trouble with her neighbour Maria P., after testifying to the latter’s detriment at the police station in a case about insulting behaviour instigated by another neighbour.174 Maria P. was waiting for at her flat with the question “whether she had played false witness”, which led to a fight. Maria P. motivated her blows with the words “that will teach you to come and testify against me, you filthy steed”. Antwerp residents from the lower social groups also literally used the word “revenge”. Those wanting to do justice to the voice of those population layers cannot simply ignore the notion in question. The justification that factory worker Rosalia B.  gave to explain her violent response to insinuations from peddler Julia M. is revelatory in this context: “M. suggested that I was familiar with that sailor. I have my suitor and took revenge for this. (…) I grabbed her by the hair and she too grabbed me tight.”175 A night watchman stated that he feared an “act of revenge” from the mechanic with whom he had fought.176 After a report had been drawn up about a quarrel between two police officers, one threatened the other on leaving the police station with the words: “I’ll get my revenge.”177 Incidentally, the far from rare practice of expressing threats 1 72 Chauvaud, Les passions, 203. 173 saa, MA 29734, report district 7, no. 1790, 13-​6-​1928. 174 saa, MA 29277, report district 2, no. 2709, 28-​12-​1928. 175 saa, MA 31560, report district 5, no. 451, 21-​2-​1912. 176 saa, MA 29396, report district 2, no. 940, 9-​4-​1949. 177 saa, MA 31560, report district 5, no. 671, 20-​2-​1912.

106 Chapter 1 in general, and of death threats in particular, again points to the fact that the notion of “revenge” in no way refers to a distant past. An important argument for stating that vengeance was indeed an important factor in twentieth-​century Antwerp is the observation that, in (violent) interactions, people were not always guided by the principle of a person’s individual responsibility for his deeds. Characteristic of revenge is the mechanism that people can be collectively held responsible for the actions of an individual belonging to the same group.178 For a contemporary observer with a distinctly individualistic view of the world, the notion of collective guilt that this bespeaks comes across as alienating. People living in cultural contexts where group identifications are of paramount importance do not share this perception. From their strong feelings of collective identification, it is obvious that the guilt or responsibility for a particular act is not placed primarily with the individual, but with the group to which that individual belongs. In such a context it is equally understandable that, on the other hand, an attack on a person is not necessarily experienced as a hostile act towards an individual, but also as an action against the group as a whole. The group par excellence that in the twentieth-​century Antwerp neighbourhoods could collectively be held responsible for an alleged transgression by one of its members and that could act as a collective if one of its members was harmed was (besides the police force) the family, and more specifically the nuclear family. It is significant in this connection that in 20 of the 21 cases of violent retaliation by third parties registered after a previous act, family ties were at stake. Many violent conflicts point to a strong degree of mutual identification between relatives in the first degree. The family was not only a legal or economic entity, but also and not least a moral community, a group of people who were emotionally bound to one another and who identified with each other.179 The far-​reaching degree of entanglement of the individual reputations of (close) family members clearly illustrates this. The collective identification of family members is evident in this way from the remark that workman Petrus A. purportedly made on the street to dockworker Eduard de S., the brother of his ex-​wife: “So what, if you go to your sister, she won’t be home, the dirty whore, you’re also one of the team.”180 The extent to which the reputations of family members are interlinked is also shown by the fact that individuals, in planning their strategic moves to defend their personal reputations, took due account of the implications of these 1 78 Gould, Revenge as sanction, 684; Van Eck, Door bloed gezuiverd, 38–​39. 179 See: Burke, History and Social Theory, 54. 180 saa, MA 31582, report district 5, no. 1469, 3-​9-​1917.

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moves for the honour of family members. The motivation of telephone operator Marga d’H. to withdraw her complaint to the police against two women for insults and violence, is significant: “After consulting with my father, he advised me to withdraw the complaint, as this would damage his name if it became known. In view of the minor nature of the facts, I withdraw my complaint.”181 The pressure of family members concerned for their reputations certainly played a role in the willingness to report with respect to intra-​familial conflicts. There was a real fear that reporting someone would rub off on the entire family. The decision of housewife Marie G. to withdraw the complaint against her father-​in-​law is a striking illustration of this: “I don’t want a prosecution, because my father-​in-​law has asked me to spare him and the rest of the family have also insisted.”182 In the case of a perceived violation of standards, the inevitable impact on the reputation of the family members was a powerful argument to bring the offender back in line. Particularly when those family members were highly regarded in society, the logic of the infectious effect of the dishonour was cited. In this way, chauffeur Leopold C. tried to persuade his brother-​in-​law, metalworker Henri F., to stop cheating on his wife on the grounds that “he should be embarrassed and ought to think of his children (…) who have good positions”.183 The low level of willingness to report sexual violence is undoubtedly largely attributable to the fear that the complaining party’s reputation would not come out unharmed, but also the fear that the effect of a complaint in this area would extend to the victim’s entire family. The settlement of the next complaint is very clear in this respect.184 Housewife Anna S. filed a complaint requesting the police to question her fourteen-​year-​old daughter about a sexually charged contact with a married man of which she did not know the ins and outs. From her daughter’s statement it appeared to be a case of rape. From Anna S.’s subsequent request not to prosecute the case further, we read clearly the fact that concern for the reputation of her entire family prevailed over the desire to see the man who had abused her daughter punished: “… because I now know where things stand, and also to preserve my family from shame, and because this person has promised in your presence to leave my child in peace”. The view that the reputations of family members are closely linked and irrefutably reflect on each other is also evident from insults. Anyone wishing to 1 81 182 183 184

saa, MA 31878, report district 5, no. 1531, 5-​4-​1949. saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 950, 1-​2-​1912. saa, MA 29376, report district 2, no. 3094, 19-​11-​1949. saa, MA 24634, report district 2, no. 5798, 9-​12-​1912.

108 Chapter 1 damage an opponent’s reputation could do so by calling him names directly as an individual, but the possibilities included blackening his family as a whole or certain family members in particular. Some of these insults were indirect strategies to damage the person’s individual reputation. They cannot therefore be regarded as a full proof of the intertwining of the reputation of family members. Someone shouting at his opponent that his mother was a whore wanted to suggest in the first place that his target was a bastard. Whoever snapped at him that “his wife was having it off” or that his daughter was a “scrubber” (i.e. a prostitute) or “rotten”, was first of all poking fun at his opponent’s sexual inability or low parental qualities.185 Given the specific position that controlling the sexuality of the women under his authority takes in masculine honour, it is perhaps a bit short-​sighted to draw far-​reaching conclusions from insults with such references. Yet such insults in themselves already bear witness to the fundamental dependence of an individual’s reputation on the good name of his (close) family members. The entanglement of the reputations of (close) family members is, however, unambiguously apparent from insults proffered against family members who do not meet specific notions of male respectability. A housewife reproached for her husband’s being a thief or a female trader for the fact that her mother-​in-​law had gone broke, are telling examples of this. Moreover, a direct insult of a person could also provoke a reaction from a family member without the latter being necessarily involved or even present at the original dispute. This was particularly the case with insults in the sexual sphere that indirectly impacted the members of the offended person’s family. The response of housewife Hortensia V. in a tavern in the Offerandestraat is a clear illustration of this sensitivity.186 Hortensia stated that the female tavern-​ keeper’s son had apparently beaten her without reason when she wanted to enter the tavern for a second time. The statement of her drinking companion, dockworker Alfons van den B., confirms the violence, but implicitly places the responsibility with Hortensia who, while in the tavern for the first time, reproached the tavern-​keeper “for having it off with her husband in the past”. The tavern-​keeper and her son indicated that the insult to the mother had indeed been the cause for the son’s action. As if they wanted to limit the scandal by not repeating the exact words of the insult in front of the police, both mother and son limited themselves to general bad words in the sexual sphere. It was only via a statement from a drinker who was a witness to the dispute, metalworker Jan-​Baptist van G., that the police learned the precise wording: “You’re a dirty

1 85 For example, see: saa, MA 31583, report district 5, no. 2020, 11-​12-​1917. 186 saa, MA 31560, report district 5, no. 430, 10-​2-​1912.

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whore, you’ve let yourself be used on a barrel in the cellar by my husband.” Such a meticulous accusation, which gained credibility from the profferer’s placing of her own reputation at risk, required a vigorous response to safeguard the reputation of mother and son. In a completely similar case, servant Anna S. accused Charles S. of lying in wait for her at her workplace and punching her in the face “saying that” she “had made his wife out to be a whore”.187 The strong degree of mutual identification of family members meant that an attack on (the reputation of) one family member was rapidly interpreted as an attack on the entire family. Unconditional group solidarity in fights was the result. Readiness to jump into the breach for family members was self-​ evident. During a fight among sailors in a tavern on the Falconrui, skipper Camiel J. articulated this logic explicitly: “If you quarrel with my boy, you can also count on a beating from me.”188 In the same direction are the actions of the Van M. brothers, both dockworkers, against worker Carolina C. who had supposedly hit their mother.189 On hearing of this, Cornelius van M. went to Carolina C.’s lodgings to warn her to leave off. As she turned out to be absent, Cornelius smashed some of windows of the lodging by way of revenge. The next day his brother Ludovicus returned to the lodgings to make the message explicit. He declared “that you strike my mother, you also strike me” and hit her in the face. A similar identification with a relative appears from the expression “he who strikes my father, strikes me” that dockworker Jan C. addressed to driver Julian de C., because the latter had previously fought with his father.190 Worker Maria de S. complained that her neighbour, electrician Karel L., had struck her in the face because she had “told his mother to keep her daughter away from my door”.191 Telling in this connection was also a complaint from servant Josephine C.192 Irritated by the letters that a visitor to the tavern sent her persistently, she decided to hand these over to his wife so that she would be left alone. After which, however, for three weeks in a row she was waited for by relatives of the woman involved who cried “scandal” in the street, suspecting Josephine C. of a relationship with the married man. By playing on Josephine C.’s name in the neighbourhood, they sought to put pressure on her to stop the relationship in order to safeguard the reputation of their family member. Significantly enough, Josephine C.’s son also came under pressure. This led to a 1 87 188 189 190 191 192

saa, MA 29736, report district 7, no. 2716, 13-​9-​1928. saa, MA 29374, report district 2, no. 2458, 11-​9-​1949. saa, MA 24629, report district 2, no. 1, 24-​12-​1911. saa, MA 29219, report district 2, no. 404, 4-​3-​1928. saa, MA 31563, report district 5, no. 2519, 28-​10-​1912. saa, MA 31711, report district 5, no. 4112, 25-​8-​1938.

110 Chapter 1 public attack by the sister of the (allegedly) deceived woman on the son, whom she suspected of organizing a rendezvous between his mother and the man in question. Women too also practised such forms of retributive violence. Ironer Francisca O. expressed clearly in words the right or even duty to assist an attacked family member.193 She could not care if people were upset at her coming to the defence of her daughter who was insulted in a tavern: “When my daughter is insulted, I defend my daughter and it is not for you to meddle.” Housewife Jeannette J. called merchant Louis J. to account in the street for the blows he had inflicted on her husband (“why do you have to beat my husband”) and hit him with her fist in the face.194 In a remarkably frank statement for the police, she gave the motives for her action: “It’s true I slapped J. Louis. I did so because my husband came up all upset, telling me that J. had hit him in the Kattestraat, at that his hat had fallen to the ground.” (). Housewife Philomena de B. motivated her attacking a neighbour in the street with a reference to her obvious obligation to stand up for her mother: “Yesterday there was an argument between H.  Adelgonde and my mother. For that reason, I  grabbed H.  Adelgonde this morning and dealt her a few blows and tore her clothes.”195 Violent revenge in the twentieth-​century Antwerp neighbourhoods was by no means the exclusive means of action of men who, owing to the literal or figurative violation of a female family member, felt themselves disgraced for failing to safeguard the women under their authority from attack. Women too could feel aggrieved or insulted by an act of hostility towards a relative (female or male) and proceed to retaliatory action. The entanglement of reputations within a family is amply demonstrated by the fact that when avenging the injustice done to a relative, not only the alleged perpetrator could become the target of retributive violence, but also his immediate family members. Coffee gleaner Joanna T.  was “struck out of vengeance” in the face until she bled by picture framer Franciscus M., because her mother had attributed to his grandfather a robbery that had taken place some considerable time earlier at her lodgings.196 A similar act of revenge, in which neither the perpetrator of the violence nor the target were involved in the original dispute, took place between two neighbours in the Deurnesteeg in the Seefhoek.197 Housewife Antonia de J. accused blacksmith’s mate Jozef 1 93 194 195 196 197

saa, MA 29369, report district 2, no. 1014, 17-​4-​1949. saa, MA 29220, report district 2, no. 1279, 2-​8-​1928. saa, MA 31631, report district 5, no. 2889, 14-​10-​1928. saa, MA 24632, report district 2, no. 4707, 11-​8-​1912. saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 1424, 3-​6-​1912.

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van L. of striking her in the face. The accused indicated that there was a quarrel between them, since “her son Arnold van C. (…) has punched my mother in the chest”. The statement by office clerk Napoleon H. concerning a violent confrontation with cabinetmaker César C. also refers to the principle of collective responsibility: “Since about a year ago my father won a case in front of the justice of the peace against César C., the latter takes every opportunity to harass me and my family.”198 Incidentally, César C.’s statement went the same way: “It’s H. who constantly provokes me and my family.” The collective identification of family members is also evident from the perception of the behaviour of parents and children. Parents were expected to keep their children in line. For example, housewife Rosalia B. urged her neighbour to chastise her children, as they were continually “Judassing” her family.199 The reason for this was a song by seven-​year-​old Jos in which he insulted her son, butcher’s hand Julius G., as being a “cess-​pool cleaner”. Machinations by parents are often suspected behind children’s behaviour. Very telling here is the explanation given by housewife Anna de V. for the fight between her and her neighbour on the stairs: “Mrs S. said good day to my child, who did not answer. She was disturbed about it and said: ‘Is it your lazy rag of your mother who had told you not to speak?’ I replied: ‘No, dirty old pervert, I told him not to’.”200 In the following dispute between the inhabitants of the Roskamgang, a narrow alley giving onto the Paardenmarkt, the active participation of children in conflicts that their parents fought is clear. The conflict reached the report via a complaint from housewife Louisa V. about the behaviour of her neighbour’s children.201 Her detailed complaints were: I live in a bad relationship with Mrs M. (…) and whenever her children see me, they begin to taunt and insult me. There (…) her son Joseph called me a ‘whore’ and shouted to my husband: ‘come out you bastard, I’ll cleave you with my axe and throw a bowl of soup in your mug’ and his two little sisters shouted at my husband, ‘bastard, thief, and scum.’ My husband only said to the youngest: ‘For a child about to take his first communion, you should be embarrassed to pronounce such words’. The complaint suggests that the children had been put up to this by their mother and points to the undeniably serious way the children’s voices were taken. 1 98 199 200 201

saa, MA 24630, report district 2, no. 1287, 27-​3-​1912. saa, MA 31583, report district 5, no. 2021, 12-​12-​1917. saa, MA 31580, report district 5, no. 643, 30-​4-​1917. saa, MA 24631, report district 2, no. 2604, 25-​4-​1912.

112 Chapter 1 Children were actively engaged in the family strategies. Conversely, they were addressed by reason of their membership of a hostile family and just as often used as go-​betweens. Aneleven-​year-​old schoolgirl stated that the complainant’s husband had told her on the street: “When your mother comes home, I’ll take the head off her body”. The way children’s voices were taken seriously relates not only to the identification of children with their families, but also to the fear that children would in their supposed “innocence” make public gossip that was circulating in the neighbourhood.202 A cleaning lady called a “dirty whore” by children from the neighbourhood clearly feared the impact of that action on her reputation: “I would ask that B. Alfons no longer utter such words to me because my husband is working in Germany and I would not want him to get bad ideas about me.”203 As integral parts of the family, attacks on children were not tolerated, the more so when the attackers were older children or adults, given the unequal relationships of force in such scenarios. Based on the small number of complaints filed against children, there was probably a great deal of tolerance in practice, as long as confrontations were between children of equal strength. The situation changed, as stated above, when it came to disputes between children and young people or adults.204 The confession of housewife Maria B. after tap-​woman Marie-​Jeanne van H. complained of being hit by her is significant in this respect: “I hit Van H. because she bothered my children and stuck her tongue out at them.”205 The conclusion that a not-​insignificant degree of group solidarity existed in the Antwerp neighbourhoods, especially among close relatives, leads to an apparent paradox. How is it to be explained that, in such a cultural context, not every initial interpersonal conflict escalated into a large-​scale confrontation between the groups (e.g. families) of which the individuals concerned were part? Does the finding that the number of violent actors per confrontation in the corpus of recorded conflicts generally remains limited to a couple or at most a handful of people not contradict the thesis that group solidarity was a significant factor in twentieth-​century Antwerp? For example, it can be pointed out that 1272 individuals were involved in the 1082 registered complaints

202 For the significance of the role of children in this context, see: Farge, La vie fragile, 59; Garrioch, Neighbourhood, 59–​60. 203 saa, MA 31792, report district 5, no. 2302, 21-​8-​1944. 204 For such unequal confrontations that were not tolerated, see, inter alia: saa, MA 30020, report district 7, no. 1824, 21-​4-​1949; saa, MA 31704, report district 5, no. 1676, 26-​3-​ 1938; saa, MA 31701, report district 5, no. 766, 30-​1-​1938. 205 saa, MA 31562, report district 5, no. 2046, 20-​08-​1912.

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for violence, which represents the modest average of less than 1.2 defendants per complaint. Does the relatively rare character of collective retaliatory action not indicate that the archaic notion of “revenge” is not entirely appropriate for a contemporary urban society? The findings of the American sociologist Roger Gould on feuds in nineteenth-​century Corsica offer illuminating perspectives in this respect.206 Gould came to the surprising conclusion that in Corsica, a society widely known for its tradition of violent collective feuds, only a very limited percentage of the violent conflicts between individuals escalated into clashes between groups. The transition from a conflict between individuals to a conflict between groups turned out to be anything but automatic.207 According to Gould, a group only resorted to a collective revenge action when a rival group had previously called into question the solidarity and cohesion between the members of the first group.208 For this reason he considers a collective act of revenge primarily as a demonstrative affirmation of group solidarity. When did the reputation of the group come under pressure? In order to avoid conflicts between individuals continuously ending up in confrontations between groups, one assumed in principle individual responsibility. As long as in a dispute between two persons only the two fighting parties were involved as individuals, such a confrontation had no implications for the groups to which they belonged. The perception of the dispute, however, changed dramatically once the boundaries of single combat were exceeded. This could take the form of availing of the help of group members or by targeting members of the counterparty’s group who were not so far involved in the dispute. This signalled that the dispute had gone beyond the purely interpersonal level. For the group members of the targeted party, there was no alternative to such (deliberate) violations of the norm of individual responsibility than to respond collectively in a proportional manner. Moreover, by transgressing the norm, the attacking party had indicated that it doubted the ability of the opponent’s group to take a strong stand. To avoid damage to the collective reputation, a response had to be served to such a claim. Disputes, however, moved beyond the individual level when one of the parties did not follow the rules of the equal confrontation. If one party in a man-​to-​man fight received help from an ally, members of the other party’s family and friends felt obliged to assist immediately, or

2 06 Gould, Collective Violence, 356–​380; Gould, Revenge as Sanction, 682–​704. 207 Moreover, in late medieval Europe, vengeance was also subject to well-​ defined rules: Muchembled, L’invention, 31–​32. 208 Gould’s findings fit into a broader human pattern. See: Collins, Violent Conflict, 66–​67.

114 Chapter 1 subsequently to avenge the victory gained by a force majeure deemed to be illegitimate. A collective response was seen as called for whenever the attacking party explicitly questioned the readiness of a group to demonstrate solidarity with the intended opponent. A far-​reaching dispute in the Neefsteeg leading to a rare confrontation between two entire families is a clear illustration of the importance of family reputation in the emergence of such collective quarrels.209 After four months of growing tension between the De T. and C. families, it had finally come to an open confrontation in front of a large crowd of people who had gathered from the neighbourhood. Both couples and their adult sons actively participated in the fight. It is very striking how both parties emphasized in their statements that their respective opponents had previously attacked their reputations as family collectives. Mrs De T.  stated about the previous statements of her neighbour: “Father C. cried ‘when they come out, they have to be given it’, referring to the De T. family, ‘and if they don’t come out, I’ll stamp their room in, they’ll have to be given it’.” A similar collective verbal attack can be found in the statement of her rival, Mrs C.: “Mrs De T. is constantly plaguing us. Just yesterday she called to us:  ‘Lazy good-​for-​nothings, not awake yet?’”. Both testimonies implicitly indicate that a confrontation had become inevitable, since the respective counterparties had explicitly attacked the reputation of the family as a collective entity. Gould’s conclusions indicate that one cannot conclude from the relatively low incidence of violence by groups that revenge was of minor significance in a particular society. Even in a Mediterranean context, known for its tradition of long-​lasting feuds, one observes that violent disputes between two persons generally do not elicit a collective response unless group solidarity is explicitly challenged. In so doing, Gould refines the old position of anthropologist Max Gluckman, who states that revenge mechanisms, however violent, only rarely grab hold of an entire society.210 The observation that most fights in the Antwerp neighbourhoods were fought out between two persons does not therefore necessarily negate the statement that revenge was indeed an important factor. The opinion that, in the first instance, a fight between two persons formed a mechanism for settling a dispute between two individuals was certainly not foreign to this. As long as this was a fair confrontation between equal parties, the need was generally not felt to jump to the aid of a combative relative or friend.

2 09 saa, MA 31560, report district 5, no. 529, 1-​3-​1912. 210 Gluckmann, The Peace in the Feud, 1–​26.

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Violence as a Means of Social Control?

The public at large associates violence with processes of social and moral disintegration, with a crisis of authority and of social order in general. This view is not generally upheld, however, by anthropologists and sociologists. They ask whether violence contributes to social control and social order, or whether it just destroys that order and is completely anarchistic in nature.211 On the one side, there is the structural-​functionalist approach that ties in with the dominant social discourse on violence in twentieth-​century pacified societies in Western Europe. This line analyses violence from the spectrum of law enforcement; in the first place it sees violence as contrary to the state of equilibrium to which every society aspires, and therefore needing to be kept under control by means of coercive measures. On the other side, there is the symbolic approach that emphasizes the decisive role of subjective and cultural meanings attributed to violence within a given context. From this point of view, violence can have both an order-​disrupting and an order-​creating effect. Depending on the observer’s perspective, an act of violence can be perceived as an infringement of order or as an action with which order is established or reconfirmed.212 There is a risk that the historian, by assuming an abstract notion of “order”, that is, a state of equilibrium that the hypothetical society as a whole supposedly constantly strives for, ignores the concrete –​and divergent –​views of the historical actors. In particular, there is the danger of the researcher wrongly attributing universality or permanence to his own conceptions of social order.213 For an average observer in a largely pacified westernized European society, for example, it is not self-​evident to recognize that violence can in a different context indeed have an order-​creating capacity.214 The starting point that social order is not a single abstract principle, but rather on the contrary a subjective concept, offers many more insights for historical analysis.215 What exactly is considered as social order, and how it can be achieved and maintained, varies according to the social group to which one belongs and the personal views one holds. In other words, there is no social consensus about social order. It is therefore important to analyse the relationship between violence and order from the perspective of the actors involved. 2 11 For the debate on this issue, see: Stewart and Strathern, Violence, 2–​3 and 159–​160. 212 Riches, The Anthropology of Violence, 11; Harvey, Die geschlechtliche Konstitution, 124. 213 For the dangers of such projections, see: Blok, The Enigma, 23–​24. 214 Roberts, The Study of Dispute, 9–​11. On the evolution over time of the relationship between social control and violence, see: Spierenburg, Apegatjes. 215 See: Spierenburg, Social Control and History, 1–​21.

116 Chapter 1 The strategies of informal conflict regulation in twentieth-​century Antwerp illustrate the proposition that violence is not necessarily evidence of processes of moral and social disintegration. The leaning towards respect and acceptance within social networks that formed the basis for the informal regulatory strategies had a major conformity-​producing effect.216 The wish to be socially accepted so as to be able to avail of relations of reciprocity in times of need led to at least public alignment with the norms, values and expectations that applied within a particular community. In other words, a strong degree of conformity was an absolute precondition for building sufficient social capital. In such a context, the freedom of the individual to organize his life according to his own taste and insight was therefore a relative concept. Anyone making light of the shared values, norms and opinions was excluded from informal social networks as an unwanted outsider and faced the world alone.217 The preoccupation with reputation therefore had a strong community-​affirming effect. On the basis of similar conflicts and sources for eighteenth-​century Paris, David Garrioch establishes solidly a similar sensitivity to reputation and the associated awareness of informal social networks.218 He convincingly explains how the many occurrences of reputation-​based conflicts are not an indication of social disintegration, but on the contrary point to the importance of informal social networks, and even, paradoxically, contribute to their strength. Garrioch’s argumentation also opens fruitful perspectives for the analysis of the violent conflicts in twentieth-​century Antwerp. It is plausible, Garrioch argues, that preoccupation for reputation has, in a number of areas, a community-​ affirming effect. The problem is, however, that this same concern for one’s good name constantly leads to conflicts. The continuous need to preserve one’s own position inevitably leads to competition with others, with the claims of the other that are deemed illegitimate needing to be combated and one’s own pretensions defended. The result is a situation of persistent tension and protracted contradictions that at first glance scarcely rhyme with a notion of community spirit. The image of the competition between individuals does not evoke reminiscences of shared norms, values and expectations, but the “law of the jungle”. Yet for Garrioch, this is not justified on closer inspection. On the contrary, the informal social ties are strengthened because the conflicts are settled according to more or less fixed patterns and rules of conduct. Formally, this translates into a strong degree of ritualisation of informal conflict resolution. 2 16 See: Portes, Social Capital, 15–​18; Blokland, Urban bonds, 154. 217 For the values-​membership interrelationship in a social group, see:  Bailey, Gifts and Poison, 8–​9; Taska, Like a Bicycle, 27. 218 Garrioch, Neighbourhood, 40–​55.

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Particularly important is the public nature of the informal conflict resolution: disputes about recognition and respect are deliberately fought out in the presence of informal social networks which act as arbitrators. Basically, such forms of informal conflict resolution are therefore aimed at the community. The choice of the “tribunal of the street” implies that conflicts are embedded in forms that, with public control, limit the risk of escalation. The actions taken in the context of informal conflict resolution produce a sustained (re)confirmation of the authority of the community through the conscious appeal to the informal social networks and the strategic invocation of the prevailing norms. Fundamentally, the nature of (violent) conflict resolution in early twentieth-​ century Antwerp did not differ from the pattern Garrioch established for eighteenth-​century Paris. It was also common practice that the parties involved in violent interpersonal conflicts deliberately referred, with a view to their public effect, to the norms, values and expectations prevalent in the community. Pressure was placed on the intended opponent by painting him as a transgressor of norms in front of the relevant informal social networks with the help of insults, body language or otherwise. The massive occurrence of this practice undoubtedly had the unintended consequence of reproducing, on a structural basis, the prevailing norms and values that structured and made possible informal social networks. Anyone scolding a shopkeeper as a “whore”, or giving the message with his gestures that his neighbour was a coward for avoiding a violent confrontation, contributed by that individual action to confirming the shared basic values within the community. The risk run by the inhabitants of the Antwerp popular neighbourhoods of being charged with violations of the norm when under attack in conflict situations undoubtedly had a preventative and strongly conformity-​producing effect. One certainly had every interest in avoiding any form of behaviour in public that could be targeted by potential opponents as a weak point in one’s reputation. An attack on someone else’s good name was obviously most effective when it echoed the reputation that the person in question enjoyed in his immediate social environment. As obvious as the structural pressure to conform induced by this practice in general may be, it is far less evident that enforcing respect for the prevailing values, norms and opinions belonged invariably to the motives of the individual attacker in interpersonal conflicts. At a more analytical level, this problem can be translated into the question of whether the structural and individual appeal to shared norms and values in interpersonal conflicts was a form of social control. The answer to this question depends, of course, on what meaning is ascribed to the concept of social control. If, under social control, one understands more or less the ability of a society to regulate itself, it is clear that the structural reproduction of the

118 Chapter 1 shared norms and values as an outcome of informal conflict resolution was an important mechanism of social control. The evolution that the concept of social control has undergone in sociology over the past decades ensures that it also offers usable insights for historians more than it did in the past.219 The original charge of the concept was certainly not at odds with a historical approach. It was precisely the profound social changes that took place in the course of the nineteenth century that made sociologists of that time think: how was it possible that a society did not completely disintegrate despite these changes, but on the contrary exhibited a certain degree of order, stability and continuity? In the spirit of nineteenth-​century progress optimism, social control was understood as the ability of a society to consciously manage processes of social change in spite of contradictions and differences. In the heyday of functionalist sociology, the concept was given a pronounced static interpretation: social control meant the mechanisms that led people to control their behaviour in such a way as to maintain the unchanging balance in society.220 This was only possible by following the existing values and norms. The starting point here was that these were shared by everyone and were immutable. From this perspective, social control in the first place equivalated to the processes in society that countered deviations from those values and norms. Today, the term in sociology usually receives a much more dynamic charge. Instead of the relationship between the individual and an abstract and unchanging society, it focuses on the concrete social figuration, the changeable mutual relations between people.221 Contemporary sociologists assume that within a society people initially try to persuade each other to adhere to norms. In this line of thought, social control is not an isolated social activity, but on the contrary forms an intrinsic part of the daily interaction between people. Given the interwovenness with everyday life, this influence on behaviour is not always conscious. Thus, in one sense, all forms of socialization can also be regarded as (unconscious) mechanisms of social control. Contemporary sociologists understand social control as all the ways in which people define deviant behaviour and take measures to respond to this.222 Which behaviours are viewed as violations of standards is not the result of an unchanging and universally shared value system, but can only be successfully analysed if due account is taken of the changing perspective of the actor(s) involved.223 Hence 2 19 See the collection: Emsley, Johnson and Spierenburg, Social Control in Europe. 220 For classical functionalist visions on social control, see: Davis, Human Society. 221 See: Criss, Social Control. 222 Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 169. 223 See: Black, Towards a General Theory, 1–​16.

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the obvious importance to be attached to shifting power relations for the analysis of social control. Anyone wanting to exercise control over the behaviour of other people must have the necessary levers to make them fall into line. Social control is therefore a specific form of exercise of power aimed at behaviour regulation with reference to broader norms and values. Although practitioners of social control usually purport to serve a broader social interest, it is clear that in a large number of cases this not coincidentally corresponds with private interests.224 Typical of the broadening of the concept of social control is the observation that today a much broader spectrum of sanctioning mechanisms can count on scientific interest.225 Not only formal punishments, but also informal social sanctions (such as negative stigmatization and social exclusion of people through insults or gossip) are now regarded as fully-​fledged mechanisms of social control.226 Contemporary sociological views on social control open up important perspectives for the historical analysis of everyday conflicts in early twentieth-​ century Antwerp. To start with, by the emphasis on daily interaction, they clearly reflect the importance of studying such conflicts. It is clear that invoking shared values, norms and expectations in interpersonal conflicts is an important form of influencing behaviour. The fact that the way informal conflict resolution influences behaviour is not always conscious, but is in some sense an uncontrolled consequence of daily interaction, is no reason not to regard it as a mechanism of social control. The structural invocation of values, norms and expectations in conflicts, whether consciously or unconsciously, contributes to the force of such shared views. Whoever accuses his intended opponent in a conflict of a violation of standards strengthens the beliefs underlying these norms. It is therefore primarily in praxis, in the daily interaction between people, that values, norms and expectations take shape, are (re)affirmed and tested. Taking a symbolic inter-​actionism line, the social order can therefore be understood as a continuous creation process. The starting point that norms and values do not have eternal value, but on the contrary come about and are confirmed within the concrete –​and therefore necessarily changeable –​context of social interaction opens perspectives for a historical analysis.227 The dynamic view of social control, which provides space for the changing perspectives and strategic considerations of the actors, allows the concept to be used also for this case study. It is clear that, in a conflict situation, the 2 24 Lis, Soly and Van Damme, Op vrije voeten? 225 Schwerhoff, Aktkundig, 10–​11. 226 De Swaan, De mensenmaatschappij, 94. 227 See: Lis and Soly, Disordered Lives.

120 Chapter 1 qualification of a particular kind of behaviour as a violation of the norm could not be derived from a closed and absolute value system, but was dependent on the perspectives of the actors involved. An example can clarify how, within the same conflict, actors had fundamentally different views of what violations of the norm lay at the very heart of the confrontation.228 Thus the declarations of housemaid Filomena de H. and her employers, merchant Karel F. and his wife Maria B. and sister-​in-​law Emilienne B., on their mutual difference in front of the police commissioner, express very wide-​apart views on acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Housemaid Filomena de H. described her employers’ behaviour as unreasonable. They were constantly complaining unjustly about her faulty services. A  reprimand by Karel F.  that “the food was not ready in time and that she had not done anything the whole day” was for Filomena the last straw. She snapped at her boss “do you think I can do everything at once?”, and complained of Maria’s and Emilienne’s unreasonable demands: “that the madames are always sitting in their armchairs and were never satisfied”. At this, Maria supposedly intervened in the quarrel and accused her servant of the theft of golden bells and scolded her as a “cripple”. Filomena acknowledged riposting to this with a reference to her boss’s flat feet. But what got her angry against her employers was their telling her –​after her announcing that she was handing in her one week’s notice –​that she must leave immediately without the wages still owed to her and her clothes. Right down the line the maid described her own behaviour as a form of legitimate protest, in sharp contrast to the unreasonable course of action of her employers. The perception of Philomena’s employers was completely different. They stressed that their maidservant had overstepped the mark with her behaviour, while labelling their own actions as expressions of completely legitimate complaints by employers. They view Filomena de H.’s protest as unfounded and as additional proof of her failing in her duties as a maid. They described the tone and form of their girl’s actions as unacceptable. She had not only used violence against Maria B. because her positions did not please her, but also scandalously attacked the honour of pregnant Emilienne B. by shouting at her: “Just keep your mouth shut, because you could lose the baby.” In view of Filomena de H.’s behaviour, it was completely legitimate in their view that they did not accept that their maidservant not leave immediately, but only after eight days. Obviously, when qualifying certain behaviour as a violation of norms, the actors referred to shared values, norms and expectations. If they did not, the action would completely miss its goal, namely that of influencing the witnesses 228 saa, MA 29270, report district 2, no. 599, 19-​3-​1938.

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present, in the absence of common reference points. In a social context where a man’s reputation was largely determined by his physical strength and his ability to defend himself, actors would play on this with a view to maximum effect and not on their target’s financial capacity, which in other contexts was decisive for a man’s reputation. Actors made creative use of the shared norms and values, and in so doing transforming them to a certain extent. In other words, they appropriated them for individual or collective ends. It was an appropriate strategic option in the Antwerp neighbourhoods to damage the reputation of an intended opponent by presenting him or her in front of a relevant audience as a transgressor of the norm. Of course, the existence of the practice of the purely strategic use of norms and values in the context of (informal) conflict resolution does not preclude that in other cases there was indeed real moral indignation about a violation of standards. For example, the corpus of registered conflicts includes a (limited) number of violent actions that are strongly reminiscent of forms of collective sanction.229 Neighbourhood social networks used collective sanctions with a noisy formal language to punish divergent violations of norms, ranging from theft to adultery. The weapon of the collective sanction was also used in social and political conflicts, for example in the event of strikes and elections. With the lion’s share of registered conflicts having an interpersonal character, it is generally impossible, however, to determine where the strategic invocation of shared norms, values and beliefs in interpersonal conflict ceases and genuine moral indignation about a perceived violation of norms begins. However, contemporary sociologists find the question of whether or not actions are consciously and explicitly directed at behavioural regulation, not to be fundamental in determining whether mechanisms of social control are at work. The conclusion that the structural invocation of shared values and norms in conflict resolution has a behaviour-​regulating effect at all is sufficient to qualify it as a form of social control. The analysis of informal conflict regulation in twentieth-​century Antwerp calls into question a number of basic assumptions on the alleged relationship between urban life, social control and violence. This analysis tends to confirm earlier research that urban life and informal social control are not at all mutually exclusive and indicate the limitations of a structural-​functionalist approach in this area.230 Violence and other practices that, legally speaking, 2 29 For an extended analysis, see: Vrints, Het recht in eigen handen. 230 See in particular the following case studies:  Burdy, Social Control; Dinges, Der Maurermeister; Garrioch, Neighbourhood; Jessen, Gewaltkriminalität; Van Meeteren, Op hoop van akkoord.

122 Chapter 1 undoubtedly constituted violations of public order, appear, when viewed from the perspective of the actors (albeit under well-​defined conditions), to contribute to their own ordering and even to function as a mechanism of social control. The Antwerp case is a clear illustration of the tension between the social control of violence by formal structures and social control by violence in the daily praxis of informal social networks.231 1.8

Domestic Squabbles and Respectability

In contemporary Western European societies, domestic violence is strongly associated with the privacy of the domestic circle. Women who are beaten by their husbands, or children who are thrashed by their parents (or vice versa) often bear their fate in silence. The discrepancy between, for example, the large number of women whom research shows to be beaten by their husbands, and the low resonance of this in public life, allows no other conclusion. In early twentieth-​century Antwerp similarly, the recorded intra-​familial violence (predominantly violence between spouses) took place indoors, to an incomparably greater extent than was the case for the other relational categories. The conclusion that the majority of intra-​familial violence took place in a domestic setting is not just a mechanical reflection of the fact that intra-​familial interaction took place mainly indoors. Rather, it is an indication that conflicts between family members were consciously much less frequently brought in front of the “tribunal of the street”. Informal conflict regulation strategies, based on codes of honour and oriented towards the authority of social networks, were intrinsically inadequate for settling intra-​familial tensions. Families preferred to solve their problems away from the eyes of others. Given the collective identification of family members, individual family members had little interest in hanging out their dirty laundry for all to see. Such an approach would boomerang back on them. A family that fought out its disputes in public would soon be gossiped about as being “unable to control itself”, with all the detrimental consequences. Shopkeepers, even less than other professional categories, could ill afford this. Wrangling in public with family members represented for shopkeepers a direct threat to their livelihoods. The conflict that master tailor Joseph P. and his wife seamstress Armandia van C.  fought in the context of their divorce is a clear illustration of this.232 According to Joseph P.’s statement, from the 2 31 Schwerhoff, Aktkundig, 126. 232 saa, MA 31632, report district 5, nr. 3660, 20-​12-​1928.

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moment he refused to give her money because of her gambling addiction, his wife began to “drink and create scandals to the extent that the business was badly affected”. In this way he directly linked his clients’ staying away with his wife’s “scandalous” behaviour, and admitted to hitting his wife in yet another incident “in order to put an end to the night noise”. According to Joseph P., his wife consciously played on his dependence on his reputation: “She has begun to shout and rant at me more to provoke me because she knows that I am very afraid of scandal.” Another trader who was at odds with his wife filed a complaint to prevent further damage to his business from the domestic wrangling: “I demand that … that she be obliged to behave in such a way that my business no longer suffers.”233 The statement by flower peddlar Eugeen V. about his son’s behaviour goes in the same direction.234 He complains of his son’s impossible behaviour when selling flowers. In his description of his behaviour, we clearly hear the preoccupation with his reputation: “… he scolds me in front of everyone in all kinds of ugly ways”. Tavern-​keepers also tried to keep family bickering out of sight of customers. The statement of tavern-​keeper Melania M.  about the slap that she had given to her husband, fireman Marten B., is revealing here. “The slap I gave him on Sunday evening (…) took place (…) in our kitchen because he had been berating me in the café earlier. I called him into the kitchen so as to have no scandal in the café in front of customers.”235 For other professional categories, it was not persons’ livelihoods as such, but the participation in reciprocal relations that was at stake. The preference for keeping family tensions off-​stage arose from the compelling necessity of a positive self-​representation towards the outside world as a family collective. In this sense, the lower social groups did indeed make the distinction between indoors and outdoors. One could be tempted to see this –​at first glance –​as an indication of the penetration of the privatization process. However, it will also appear that caution is required in this context. In terms of form and function, intra-​familial violence deviated strongly from ritualized performances in the context of informal conflict regulation strategies based on local public opinion. At stake in intra-​familial violence was not the securing of one’s own position within informal social networks by a credible representation, but the establishment, maintenance or rejection of power relations within the family context. Consequently, it was not necessary to use the appropriate codes that organized the informal regulation strategies. In this context, violence went unstructured with all the associated additional 2 33 saa, MA 29836, report district 7, no. 3128, 29-​10-​1938. 234 saa, MA 29824, report district 7, no. 77, 7-​1-​1938. 235 saa, MA 31709, report district 5, no. 3509, 14-​7-​1938.

124 Chapter 1 risks.236 In the practice of the husband’s patriarchal right of chastisement of women and children that appears from numerous official reports of domestic violence, the internal power dimension is obvious. The motives for the declaration of domestic violence were also different. It was not, for example, the wish to restore their reputations or to be compensated for damage incurred that moved women to lodge complaints against their husbands, but rather the desire to change the unequal balance of power within the marital relationship by appealing to an external power factor. The objectives of a woman’s charging her husband of violence often also went further than the desire to put an end to the ill-​treatment. Women often used partner violence as a crowbar to enforce a police intervention in which they could demand improvement from the man on other fronts. Strikingly, for example, women bringing complaints against their husbands for violence often mention totally other violations of the norms by him. The refusal to hand over sufficient housekeeping money, chronic drunkenness or adultery are only a few examples here. The observation that intra-​family violence took place mainly in the home environment does not, however, imply that it was necessarily a completely private matter.237 In cramped and densely populated houses, it was probably often a public secret among the neighbours as to which woman was being hit by her husband. Moreover, it was not uncommon that squabbles between spouses completely upset the social environment. What began as a purely domestic quarrel ended up in such cases in very public commotion, with neighbours seeking to force an end to the husband’s violence against his wife. To a certain extent, domestic squabbles between spouses also fell under the control of the immediate social environment, which indicates that contemporary views on the private-​public relationship cannot simply be projected into the past. A man’s freedom to beat his wife was far from absolute. He could under certain circumstances be called publicly to account for violence against his wife. The willingness to intervene in marital violence, however, was based on a more complex interplay of factors than a superficial analysis would at first sight suggest. The practice of intervening in domestic disputes is not directly reducible to pure altruism. Usually, the help of the neighbours in such cases consisted of protecting the woman who had been thrashed from the violence of her husband. Such intervention was not, however, without risk. For example, a housewife who 2 36 This was also the case in other contexts. See: Ploux, Violence in France’s Past, 68. 237 In this, relationships in the Antwerp neighbourhoods between 1910 and 1950 are closer to the situation in early modern Paris or London than to the current situation. See: Farge, La vie fragile, 56; Farge, Vivre dans la rue, 139–​140; Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 216–​217.

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had taken her battered neighbour into her home had potentially reputation-​ damaging aspersions thrown at her by her husband: “Dirty whore, watch out, because one whore takes the other inside!”238 Docker Jan de C. was hit in the face by his upstairs neighbour, docker Cornelius D., because the latter’s wife had sought refuge in his kitchen from her husband’s blows.239 He had refused to put the woman outside and emphatically protected her with the words: “You’re crazy to do this. I’ll not put her outside, but if you want to have it out with me.” Contrary to the case in eighteenth-​century Southern Netherlandish cities, such direct interventions in favour of beaten-​up female neighbours were apparently not uncommon in the poorer neighbourhoods of twentieth-​century Antwerp.240 The knowledge that, given the thin dividing walls and the high population density, the neighbours’ domestic quarrels were inevitably heard by others, offered the targets of family violence a rare instrument to curb their assailants. For example, housewife Alice de G. motivated her howling during battles with her husband: “… so that he would stop beating me, I called on the neighbours”.241 Housewife Rosalia M. stated that she had knocked on walls and windows to call in “the help of the neighbours” against her husband.242 Men were very aware of the strategic calculation that lay behind women’s cries. An unemployed man stated:  “… then my wife ran into the street calling out to create a scandal for me.”243 The effectiveness of this strategy is evidenced by the statement of a boatswain who gave his wife a beating in the street: “Since you were making a din in order to collect bystanders, I rode back on my bicycle.”244 The prospect of public scandal was often enough to put a stop to the person acting violently. From the observation that men usually ceased the violence against their wives once public interest was aroused, it can be inferred that they perceived as a real threat to their respectability to be regarded as tyrants who cruelly beat their wives, and in so doing upsetting the entire neighbourhood. The preoccupation with how one was seen by others is also apparent from the fact that family members reinforced the demand to stop the quarrel with the argument that the family reputation was at risk. The fear of the consequences of domestic squabbling on the reputation of the family in question is evident from the request that the ship’s carpenter Emiel

2 38 239 240 241 242 243 244

saa, MA 31579, report district 5, no. 343, 5-​3-​1917. saa, MA 31710, report district 5, no. 3892, 17-​8-​1938. See : Lis and Soly, Te gek om los te lopen?, 138-​139. saa, MA 31581, report district 5, no. 1230, 26-​7-​1917. saa, MA 31699, report district 5, no. 212, 10-​1-​1938. saa, MA 29699, report district 7, no. 119, 21-​7-​1917. saa, MA 31700, report district 5, no. 431, 20-​1-​1938.

126 Chapter 1 L. addressed to his quarrelling father: “… I asked him not to make a hubbub in front of the neighbours”.245 In parent-​child relationships too, the fear of scandal could be used to stop violence. Metalworker Frans S. used the perspective of the “tribunal of the street” to place his father, pan-​maker Albert S., under pressure: “to avoid further difficulties with father, I went out on the street, and then called on him to fight me there if he wanted.”246 For women, neighbours’ intolerance of domestic quarrelling provided room for strategic actions. If we can generalize from driver Lode V.’s complaint about his wife’s behaviour, women could, even when there was no violence, consciously instrumentalize the fear of the reactions of neighbours for other purposes: “for several days she has been calling in the courtyard of my house without me touching her. Once I hit her, she then calls ‘murder, murder’ to attract the neighbours’ attention”.247 Moreover, his wife, housekeeper Joanna van A expressly denied this with a reference to the neighbourhood: “In the neighbourhood people know well enough that I suffer a lot from my husband.” Accused husbands could, in turn, try to disculpate themselves by pointing to the strategic nature of their wife’s calling in the police. A dockworker explained about his wife:  “I didn’t hit her, however (…). She then called and said that I hit her.”248 Equally, the fear of the neighbours’ reaction to squabbling could lead to violence. In such cases, men invoke the care for their reputations as a legitimate mitigating factor for violence. Docker Adolf R. motivated in this way his hitting his wife, housewife Maria de C.: “When at a certain moment she wanted to go outside in order to shout, as is her habit to provoke scandal, I held her back.”249 The willingness of neighbours to assist a battered female neighbour was not, however, absolute. In the absence of (semi-​)public squabbling, they did not intervene. The intervention was usually restricted to protecting a woman who had managed to escape her husband’s blows or knocking at the door of the house to enquire what was happening where the squabbling occurred. To enter the privacy of the marital home to relieve a beaten woman was not customary. When shopkeeper Gerda W. was beaten up by her husband in her shop, the neighbours, according to her own statement, intervened by calling on her to come outside where she would be safe because of social control: “The people cried ‘madame, come outside, then the executioner will stop’.”250 Nevertheless, 2 45 246 247 248 249 250

saa, MA 29372, report district 2, no. 2033, 14-​7-​1949. saa, MA 31789, report district 5, no. 1784, 27-​6-​1944. saa, MA 31630, report, destrict 5, no. 1774, 29-​6-​1928. saa, MA 31791, report district 5, no. 2149, 2-​8-​1944. saa, MA 31710, report district 5, no. 3953, 14-​8-​1938. saa, MA 31579, report district 5, no. 128, 29-​1-​1917.

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the effect of such actions should not simply be dismissed as irrelevant. In view of the preoccupation for their reputations that the Antwerp population lived with, the simple awakening of public interest in itself already produced results. The gaze of others was usually enough to stop the violence. The neighbours’ intervention often consisted of direct assistance, sometimes the neighbours called in the police to put an end to the intra-​familial violence.251 However, this phenomenon should not be overestimated: only three (two reports, one complaint) of the 319 registered official reports of violence between spouses were made following action by neighbours. Oftentimes, however, neighbours were willing to make statements to the police which confirmed the domestic violence, thereby strengthening the position of the complaining party. This willingness, however, depended on the relationship they maintained with the parties involved and their perception of the relationships within the family concerned. The willingness to take the side of a battered neighbour was not, however, a pure expression of solidarity and altruism.252 The observation that neighbours intervened only when there was noise or squabbling is important in this respect.253 The spouse’s right to discipline as such was not questioned.254 As long as the chastisement was considered to be well-​founded and carried out with moderation and, above all, discreetly, in a domestic setting, no rooster crowed. Only when a man ostentatiously ignored these implicit rules and began to cause noise at semi-​public places such as the stairwell did the neighbours intervene. Neighbours’ tolerance threshold appears to have been exceeded only when the violence between the spouses also caused inconvenience to themselves. The neighbours’ intervention was therefore also –​and in no small measure –​motivated by the desire to restore peace and quiet to the neighbourhood. The willingness to make statements against squabbling neighbours was therefore an unmistakable message to the accused individual: the threshold of the permissible is amply exceeded by the squabbling, and behavioural change is urgently desired. However, the neighbours left the formal filing of the complaint to the wife who had been thrashed, who regularly came under pressure from the neighbours to take action against her squabbling husband. Towards

251 See: saa, 31880, report district 5, no. 2217, 28-​4-​1949; saa, MA 31886, report district 5, no. 4291, 2-​9-​1949. 252 The analysis of Lis and Soly, Disordered Lives, is inspiring. See also: Capp, When Gossips Meet, 103–​114, and Hak, Zur Wahrnehmung, 317–​355. 253 Donald Hak too notes for Holland during the Ancien Régime that neighbours intervened when there was squabbling and noise: Hak, Marriage and family, 58–​59. 254 Cf. infra.

128 Chapter 1 the police, accused men sometimes refer to the pressure of neighbours in order to disqualify their wives’ statements as unfounded phantasies. The appropriate formula in this respect is that the woman has “let herself be wound up by the neighbours”. The corpus of registered official reports contains only a single complaint filed to put an end to neighbours’ domestic squabbling. Tavern-​keeper’s daughter Virginie J. stated in the district commissioner’s office: I’ve come to complain about the spouses V. who live with us on the first floor. They’re fighting all the time, and when the woman gets slapped, she shouts and howls so much that my mother lies sick in bed with fright. (…) Would you like to have the goodness to warn them not to keep us awake at night?255 The extent to which the complaint about a squabbling spouse was not a purely family affair, but a form of collective action (as Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly established for requests for internment during the ancien régime), is, however, a food for further investigation. In this context, it is sufficient to realize that the willingness to come to the aid of a battered woman (for example by giving testimony) was partly motivated by the desire to put an end to uncontrolled behaviour and thus to prevent further scandal. The low tolerance threshold for domestic quarrels among neighbours can also be traced back to the fear of a row in an individual family affecting the broader social environment.256 This applied in particular to the many households that each inhabited part of a joint dwelling. The fear was that uncontrolled behaviour in one family would place all residents in a bad light. Suppose that nightly noise in the family concerned kept the entire neighbourhood awake, which outsiders would be able to decide which inhabitants of the house exactly were responsible? The inseparable entanglement of the reputations of the residents of the same house is apparent not only from the intolerance towards fellow-​residents’ domestic squabbles. Given the large degree to which the residents were identified with the house, and the view that the house is an expression to the outside world of the respectability of the same, it is not astonishing that in particular the outer appearance and maintenance of the house caused tensions. In particular, cleanliness of the communal parts, rooms and facilities of the house was a major source of conflict. For example, two

2 55 saa, MA 31581, report district 5, no. 1230, 26-​7-​1917. 256 In this connection, see: Van der Heijden, Women as victims, 634.

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housewives from the Lange van Bloerstraat got into a fight over the pouring of wastewater down a drain.257 The dirtying of stairs and corridors was seen not only as a serious violation of individual claims and rights, but also as a threat to the respectability of all residents of the house. The importance attached to cleanliness is not entirely surprising. It is in line with the observation of British historians that among the lower social groups the cleanliness of the home was an important indicator of the respectability of its inhabitants.258 Just like in England, the preoccupation with domestic cleanliness in Antwerp was also a strategy for the respectable (“decent”) social groups to distinguish themselves from the “dirty” poor. From this logic, uncleanliness in the common areas of a house was therefore intolerable as this posed a potential threat to the reputation of all residents of the building. This applied perhaps even a fortiori for the doorstep, the facade and the pavement in front of the house. Given the public nature of these places, residents paid special attention to their cleanliness. The undoing of these efforts by fellow residents was not appreciated and led to violent confrontations. For example, two cleaning ladies from the Oude Leeuwenrui fell to blows because one of them had emptied a bucket of dirty water onto a freshly scrubbed pavement.259 Precisely because of the close relationship between cleanliness and respectability, there was little tolerance towards remarks about (un)cleanliness from neighbours. The following complaint from cabinetmaker Jan U. from the Violetstraat against his upstairs neighbours clearly indicates that the accusation of uncleanness was equivalent to a direct attack on the reputation of its targets: About 10 minutes ago I stood in the door of my house speaking to my female neighbour. I said that I suffered a lot from my upstairs neighbour’s sloppiness. I said: ‘because they pour out the slop bucket in the lavatory and then come and wash it in the sink, in which we prepare our food.’ The upstairs neighbour came downstairs and without saying anything except ‘It has to be done’, father and son grabbed me and hit and kicked me on the body and in the face.260 According to the counterparty, it was Jan U. who had opened the attack by calling them “garbage”. Strangely enough, in certain cases, precisely the excessive cleaning of common areas could create conflicts. Cleaning again immediately 2 57 saa, MA 31628, report district 5, no. 481, 22-​2-​1928. 258 Tebbutt, Women’s Talk?, 80–​81. 259 saa, MA 29221, report district 2, no. 1953, 10-​11-​1928. 260 saa, MA 31706, report district 2, no. 2320, 10-​5-​1938.

130 Chapter 1 after a cleaning by another occupant of the building was viewed as an intentional provocation. Such an action sent out the signal that the (female) neighbour in question was unable to clean properly. In a culture in which cleanliness was a determining factor for respectability, this was a genuine affront. Servant Maria C., for example, attacked her niece Emilia D. who was living with her for scrubbing the corridor “with no need for it”.261 Since Maria C. herself had just scrubbed it, it was obvious to her that her niece had done this over again “to provoke us”. Landlords were very concerned about the respectability of their houses, especially if they themselves lived there. The presence of just one person of “irregular” behaviour threatened the standing of the entire building and all its residents. Landlords did not hesitate for a moment to evict such an individual or family in order to safeguard the respectability of the house.262 The motivation that landlord Joannes van der V. quoted for turning a couple of tenants out of their room is a very revealing example of this:  “… I  have asked them to live elsewhere because they were constantly squabbling”.263 But landlords could turn out tenants also on moral grounds. Thus a “waitress”, a profession that already stood in a bad light, declared that her landlady had told her that she would do everything to get her out, with the argument that the tenant had “turned her house into a whorehouse”.264 This statement clearly expresses the concern that the reputation of a building and its inhabitants could, as it were, be contaminated by the dishonourable activities of one of the residents. For her part, Mathilda van der E. gave notice to a coffee house clerk “because he always has strange men in his rooms”.265 That sensitivity to the behaviour and the moral level of the residents was also shared by the so-​called “main tenants” who were responsible for the goings on in the building. Numerous Antwerp houses were rented in their entirety by their owners to a “main tenant”, often a small-​scale shopkeeper or lodgings keeper who moved into the ground floor and subleased the rest of the house. The main tenant thereby exercised a certain degree of control over the other tenants, without there being –​as in the owner-​tenant relationship –​a clear difference in status. The main tenant laid down the rules of the house with which the other tenants had to comply. The main tenant kept careful watch over many areas such as the quietness at night and the cleanliness of 2 61 262 263 264 265

saa, MA 31581, report district 5, no. 823, 30-​5-​1917. This was no different in eighteenth-​century Paris. See: Farge, Vivre, 32. saa, MA 29371, report district 2, no. 1617, 30-​4-​1949. saa, MA 30026, report district 7, no. 3407, 8-​8-​1949. saa, MA 31702, report district 5, no. 962, 22-​2-​1938.

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the house. The concern for the respectability of the house and its residents was an important criterion guideline here. The main tenant also kept a close eye on the other tenants’ moral behaviour. Main tenant Maria van B. came into conflict with another tenant because every night she was letting a married man in to stay with her.266 Incidentally, as a result of such forms of control, there were more frequent conflicts with the other residents of the house who had difficulty recognizing the legitimacy of the main tenant’s authority. Many times the main tenant’s behaviour was experienced as a meddlesome violation of personal freedom. The latent tension between the main tenant and the other tenants resulted in a dozen violent confrontations in the corpus of recorded confrontations. The relationship of authority became even more problematic when family members of the main tenant –​implicitly based on the blood tie –​took it upon themselves to correct other residents of the house. For example, a housewife from the Maatstraat did not accept the injunctions from main tenant’s son to always close the front door in future.267 She complained about this to the main tenant, who threw her down the stairs, whereupon she created a hubbub in the street to place the main tenant in a bad light with the neighbours and went off to file a complaint with the police. 1.9

Sexual Violence, Shame and Discretion

The concern for reputation is evident not only from the desire to make public certain actions, but also, paradoxically, from the desire keep specific areas out of the public eye. People regarded certain things as so damaging to their reputations that they preferred to keep them indoors. Obviously, the desire for discretion about certain taboo subjects inevitably affected people’s readiness to report them to the police. The (strategic) assessment of the possible impact of a complaint on one’s reputation had a clear influence on the decision whether or not to actually set out to the police station. In a number of areas, the fear of a complaint possibly doing more harm than good to their own reputations held people back from filing a complaint. For example, a weigher motivated his silence about his wife’s repeated suicide attempts with the argument: “In order to prevent scandal I  did not make this public.”268 The low proportion

2 66 saa, MA 24632, report district 2, no. 4069, 7-​6-​1912. 267 saa, MA 31632, report district 5, no. 3465, 28-​11-​1928. 268 saa, MA 30030, report district 7, no. 4300, 26-​9-​1949.

132 Chapter 1 of sexual violence in the corpus of recorded conflicts reflects the fear of scandal.269 In the absence of sufficient empirical material, it is impossible in this study to carry out a thorough analysis of sexual violence in early twentieth-​ century Antwerp. It is also very questionable whether, given the specificity of sexual violence, an exhaustive treatment of it would fit within the general line of this study. We examine here only the perceptions of and responses to sexual violence, since they provide a revealing insight into the importance attached by the Antwerp population to how other people saw them. In other words, the response to sexual violence serves as an indicator of people’s sensitivity to their public reputation in informal social networks. The scarcity of the empirical material available on sexual violence, but especially the law of silence270 which undeniably prevailed in this area, are important indications that life in the city’s popular neighbourhoods was anything but anonymous, but, on the contrary, was permeated by the consciousness of being watched by others. The fear of “scandal” kept many from taking matters to the police. Only 38, or just 2.8%, out of 1377 recorded conflicts can be categorized as sexual violence. This low share is in line with previous statistical findings by historians and criminologists about sexual violence in Belgium.271 Since sexual violence generally took place away from the gaze of others, and its specific societal charge further enhanced the tendency towards discretion, it is not surprising that, for the recording of sexual violence, the police depended much more on the public’s willingness to report than for other forms of violence. In the corpus of police reports there is no example of the police recording sexual violence entirely on its own initiative. Among the 38 reports there were 27 complaints; while the 11 accounts of sexual violence were all drawn up following explicit requests for police intervention from the public. Of the 38 reports concerning sexual violence, 26 concerned “adult” victims, i.e. those who had reached the legal minimum age of 15. The age distinction between “children” and “adults” is made here to do justice to possible differences in the perception of sexual violence against the two categories among perpetrators, victims, family members and neighbours. All adult victims were women, with one exception, a man who had resisted an attempted anal penetration by another man. The 26 identified perpetrators were men without 269 On the connection of sexual violence with shame and pudor, see: Van der Heijden, Women as Victims, 623–​644. 270 See the pertinent comments of Sohn, Les attentats, 94–​98. For the fear of shame that prevented women in eighteenth-​century Paris from reporting rape, see: Farge, Vivre, 144. 271 Keunings, La dynamique, 231; Tixhon, La poursuite, 68; Van Kerckvoorde, Van kwelling tot telling, 256.

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exception. The limited number of official reports drawn up for sexual violence shows clearly the fear that making the situation public would negatively influence the victim’s reputation. In particular, this was the case for women who, because of the unequal balance of forces within the forced heterosexual relationship, probably made up also the vast majority of the victims of sexual violence. Tolerance thresholds in the sexual field were in general significantly lower for women than for men. The damage to a woman’s sexual reputation was much more threatening to the family name than the impairment of a man’s sexual honour. Women who became victims of sexual violence often avoided publicity out of concern for their own reputation and that of their family. The statement by two female neighbours that after months of sexual violence they were no longer keeping silent “because Van L.’s revelations have brought everything to light”, implies that their silence was initially prompted by the fear of the consequences of the publicity.272 The fear of shame and a sense of pudour prevented female victims from taking the step to the police, especially since the risk was real that as a result of the double standard the blame would eventually end up with them. In the case of married women, the fear that their husbands would turn against them or would resort to violence against the perpetrator to avenge their honour also played a role. Housewife Matilda T., one of the neighbour women from the aforementioned case, also explicitly appealed to “the peace in her household” to motivate her long-​term silence. According to another neighbour woman, she was especially “afraid of her husband thinking that the two would then fight”. A particularly sensitive matter was the sexual reputation of young, unmarried women.273 Both in the bourgeoisie and among the lower social groups, a daughter’s sexual reputation was generally regarded as a form of capital. To safeguard the girl’s respectability –​and thus her prospects for a good marriage –​care had to be taken that her name remained unsullied on a sexual level. Given the possible implications of a formal declaration for the reputation of the female victim and her family members, it is not surprising that an informal settlement was often preferred. Such an informal resolution offered advantages for perpetrator and family member alike, in sparing them the shame of a public prosecution. Revelatory of the preference for informal solutions is the reasoning that housewife Helena M. developed to motivate her delay in lodging a complaint against trader Gaston D. For some time already she had had indications that he had sexually abused her fifteen-​year-​old daughter who

2 72 saa, MA 29733, report district 7, no. 618, 22-​2-​1928. 273 De Koster, Ongepast gedrag, 112–​113.

134 Chapter 1 worked for him as a shop assistant. “The reason that I did not bring the facts to the police before is because I  thought that an agreement could be made between me and Gaston D. He himself had suggested to me that the girl go to a boarding school and that he cover the costs. Thus I wanted to prevent all disclosure of the facts.”274 For a long time, Helena M. therefore opted for an informal arrangement with the man who had abused her daughter, rather than start formal proceedings that would have led to the punishment of the man in question. In weighing both options, reputational concern played a clear role. Initially, the informal solution whereby the physical removal of the girl would take away any risk of reputational damage seemed best. Helena M.’s preference was originally for the discretion of a boarding school instead of taking the matter to court, the public character of which would have involved reputational risk. The fact that in this option it was in the first place the girl who was punished instead of the rapist, is a derivative of the broader social tendency that a woman’s reputation did not emerge unscathed from a case of sexual violence, even where she was simply the victim. The practice of relatives asking for the placement of daughters who, because of their behaviour, might constitute an (alleged) threat to the family reputation, was widespread in early twentieth-​century Antwerp.275 In this example, the family is clearly using it as a preventive strategy aimed at avoiding disgrace. Girls who were sexually abused were aware that the risk was real that they would ultimately get the blame if the matter was made public. Gaston D. consciously responded to the impossible position his young employee was in to impose silence on her. According to her statement, he warded off her intention of publicizing the sexual violence by dangling in front of her the dreadful prospect of a boarding school for “fallen girls”: “Tell them and you go to the improvement school.” The threat of boarding school, where the blame clearly ended up with the victim, was also used in the context of incest. Diamond worker Leon K. purportedly warned his fifteen-​year-​old daughter several times that he would send her to the improvement school should she let anything out to third parties.276 Placement on request was not the only possible strategy for an informal settlement between the parents of a sexually abused girl and the perpetrator for preventing reputational damage. Where the sexual violence resulted in an out-​of-​wedlock pregnancy, abortion was another option. The response to the pregnancy of fifteen-​year-​old Joanna K. who had been sexually abused by her 2 74 saa, MA 31712, report district 5, no. 4879, 9-​10-​1938. 275 De Koster, Ongepast gedrag, 130–​131. 276 saa, MA 31790, report district 5, no. 2037, 24-​7-​1944.

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employer, Adolf M., makes this very clear.277 Her mother, cleaning lady Maria B., chose an informal amicable settlement with the perpetrator which would also guarantee a discreet resolution of the problem: “I then went to speak to Mr and Mrs M. and to avoid scandal we agreed to do away with the fruit. M. had to pay all costs and find someone to do the abortion.” It was only by chance that police got to know of this informal settlement, because someone from the neighbourhood had blabbed about the termination. The carrying out of an abortion for such reasons is related to the practice of killing illegitimate infants.278 In this latter case, the pregnancy is kept secret and the illegitimate child secretly killed at birth to prevent damage to the family’s reputation. The staging of a miscarriage (understand abortion) also forms an alternative strategy in this context to save the family’s standing. Such examples of informal settlements, and the low level of willingness to report sexual violence exhibited by the Antwerp population in general, indicate that Georges Vigarello’s claim that informal arrangements in this area hardly occurred in urban areas needs at least to be nuanced.279 Vigarello partly bases his thesis on the image of the weaker informal social control that for him characterizes society in the assumed anonymity of the big city. The fear of the public perception of their own reputation, which made victims of sexual violence and their family members shy away from reporting the matter to the police, once again suggests that any social anonymity in early twentieth-​century Antwerp working-​class neighbourhoods is a figment of the imagination. Helena M.’s initial reluctance to file a complaint against the man who misused her daughter may not be entirely unconnected with his superior social position as an employer. In his original study on the perception of sexual violence in the nineteenth-​century Namur countryside, Geoffroy Le Clercq emphasizes the importance of “social capital” in explaining the divergent public reactions to sexual violence.280 Perpetrators who enjoyed a good reputation or social status within the local community could count on much more benign treatment than perpetrators who already had a bad name. Preferably, cases involving such perpetrators were settled amicably through informal channels or were totally left to rest by the victim and his family. Where a perpetrator had acquired little social capital, there was no social resistance to a possible judicial process. The scarce examples in which men with substantial social capital were called to account by the courts for their sexual behaviour appear 2 77 saa, MA 29181, report district 2, no. 1336, 23-​11-​1917. 278 Van Eck, Door bloed gezuiverd, 59–​60. 279 Vigarello, Histoire du viol, 179–​180. 280 Le Clercq, La perception, 114–​127.

136 Chapter 1 to have run into resistance from the local communities. In particular, Le Clercq retraced reactions of male solidarity, where people jumped into the breach for a perpetrator who was well integrated within informal social networks. There is no trace of such expressions of male solidarity in favour of a man with considerable social capital in the recorded Antwerp reports on sexual violence. There are, however, clear traces of female solidarity. This translated not only into the willingness to support the victim in making a complaint against the perpetrator, but also extended to the family members, especially the wife, of the perpetrator of sexual violence. The good relationship with the perpetrator’s wife within informal networks of (neighbourhood) sociability could hold back victims of sexual violence from filing a complaint. In other words, the social capital of the perpetrator’s wife could have a certain protective effect. The complaints lodged by three women neighbours against a grope-​easy neighbour, warehouse manager Joseph V., are a clear illustration of how this mechanism worked.281 When asked by the police why, despite the long history of sexual harassment, they had only now reported the matter, they indicated three motives. Besides the fear of the reaction of Joseph V. and the implications to their own reputations, they pointed to their “compassion for the wife of the latter who, according to these women, is an honest and decent person”. Partly because they wished to spare shame to their female neighbour, they had endured Joseph V.’s groping for months. Paradoxically, concern for their own reputations could, in specific circumstances, consciously lead women to report sexual violence. This was especially the case when women feared that a perceived violation of norms in the sexual field would come to light (for example, by an extra-​marital pregnancy). In particular, young, unmarried women who wanted to maintain some chance of a respectable marriage considered a report in such circumstances to be the lesser evil. In order to limit the inevitable damage to their sexual reputation, they opted to “flee forwards”. They consciously claimed the passive role of female victimhood to disguise what were in fact sexual contacts with mutual consent.282 The complaint of 25-​year-​old kitchen maid Elisabeth V. provides a striking illustration of such anticipatory behaviour.283 She accused factory worker Joannes V. of raping her when he came to repair the boiler in her employers’ house. In her complaint, she emphasized that she herself had repulsed all his advances, and with all violence had resisted his intrusiveness until, 2 81 saa, MA 29733, report district 7, no. 618, 22-​2-​1928. 282 J. Carlier and A.-​M. Sohn identified similar mechanisms of “tactical” lies. Carlier, “De wil tot weten”; Sohn, Du premier, 244. 283 saa, MA 30030, report district 7, no. 4475, 29-​9-​1949.

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“paralysed”, she no longer had the strength to oppose him. In her description of the events to the police, she also emphasized that her resistance was based on the wish not to shake the trust of her fiancée: “I started yelling and told him that I had a good boy in Holland and that it would be a disaster for me if he went ahead.” However, after confrontation with Joannes V. it appeared that she had invoked coercion in her complaint in order to keep the disgrace of a possible pregnancy somewhat within bounds. From the confession about her initial lie, we read the premise that she felt an extramarital pregnancy as a result of rape as being relatively less threatening to her reputation than a pregnancy caused by having a bit on the side: Last time, I concealed things out of honest shame and fear of possible consequences. (…) I made the declaration for fear of any consequences (…). I knew morally that I should not do this because it put me in danger. I’m engaged to be married and was thinking about that. I did it, however, out of my free will, but mainly under the influence of physical weakness. The flesh was too weak although my will did not agree very much. There was a much stronger taboo on intra-​familial sexual violence than generally in this area. In view of the fact that until recently sexual violence within marriage was not punishable, it is not surprising that the corpus contains just one example of a woman’s complaint against her husband for rape.284 The taboo on incest was so great that in the sample years only a single report of sexual abuse of a fifteen-​year-​old daughter by her father reached the police.285 The low willingness to report sexual violence against spouses or relatives is a consequence of the impossible position in which the victims found themselves. Not only was the potential impact on the reputation of the family involved even more devastating than otherwise, but given the difficult burden of proof and the paternalistic legislation, the chances of an effective conviction were also much lower. And even if such action were to result in an effective conviction, there was another factor that certainly constituted a far-​from-​negligible brake for people living on tight budgets: the perspective of the long-​term imprisonment of the perpetrator involved a significant loss of family income. 284 saa, MA 29735, report district 7, no.  2411, 7-​8-​1928. The nineteenth-​century assize files of both East and West Flanders do not contain a single example of sexual violence between the sexes. Herman, De grenzen, 65. 285 saa, MA 31790, report district 5, no.  2037, 24-​7-​1944. For comparison, see the absolute taboo on incest in the nineteenth-​century French countryside in Chauvaud, Les Passions, 45.

138 Chapter 1 The vulnerability of the woman’s sexual reputation is shown by the fact that it served as a useful starting point for the accused perpetrator to hang his defence on. In addition to the steel-​hard denial of the facts and the passing on of responsibility to the victim, the attack on the woman’s sexual reputation was the most important option that accused men used in their statements to oppose the victims’ claims. The perpetrator attempted fundamentally to undermine the victim’s credibility by consciously placing her reputation in the sexual area in a bad light. When questioned by the police, factory worker Joannes V. strongly emphasized his assessment that the unmarried woman who had accused him of rape must have had extensive sexual experience. “She seemed already well aware of what she had to do to have sex with a man and placed her legs further apart to make it easy. (…) I immediately felt that this girl had already had sexual relations as she had no hymen”.286 The strategy of undermining the victim’s credibility by questioning her sexual reputation was not limited to the statements at the police station. Especially in the case of a failed attempt at indecent assault in the street, it was important to give the public the impression that they were dealing with a woman of light morals in order to avoid possible indignant reactions. Following hairdresser Irma C.’s reporting an attempted sexual assault on the public highway, her assailant Joseph M. tried to blacken her sexual reputation from the moment she called for the help of the police.287 As soon as she started to make a noise to stop the unwanted actions, he started to hit her in the face and he exclaimed “dirty slut, dirty whore, is it for you to call the police?”. The dialogue that, according to cleaning lady Anna van M., took place between her and her unknown assailant in the street before her escape, points to the same mechanism: “ ‘So why won’t you go with me, because I need it so much.’ I replied: ‘Sir, you must leave me alone, because I’m married.’ (…) ‘So then you are not like other women, who like to have another guy from time to time.’ (…) ‘Listen, sir, that’s for them to know, but I’m not a street whore and you have to leave me alone or I’ll call in the police.’“288 Historian Julie Carlier came to the conclusion that this practice was widespread, while accused men never tried to improve their position by highlighting their own exemplary moral behaviour.289 The fact that attention was paid only to the woman’s prior sexual history and not that of the man is a clear expression of the double standards that applied in the field of sexuality. 2 86 saa, MA 30030, report district 7, no. 4475, 29-​9-​1949. 287 saa, MA 29275, report district 2, no. 1848, 30-​8-​1938. 288 saa, MA 29736, report district 7, no. 3096, 23-​10-​1928. 289 Carlier, “De wil tot weten”; Carlier, Een seksuele geschiedenis.

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The statement that the fear of implications for their own reputation prevented victims of sexual violence from talking and reporting to the police is not absolute. Not only did victims actually lodge complaints –​albeit in fairly limited numbers –​but analysis of a (albeit small) part of these declarations also shows that victims of sexual violence did not, by definition, keep silent about persons outside the immediate family circle. So the response of victims to sexual violence did not always consist of absolute silence from shame.290 In certain cases, the victim of sexual violence or her family explicitly appealed to the solidarity of the neighbourhood. The reaction of flower seller Marie van den E. and her mother, housewife Bertha V., fits into such an alternative strategy, fundamentally directed at the public sphere.291 In the absence of her boyfriend who was on a long voyage, she stated that she had been raped in the house by his best friend, electrician Hendrik van B. In the morning, after much insistence, she told her mother, while Hendrik van B.  was still in her apartment. Together they went and told everything “to the neighbours”, whereupon neighbour factory worker Pieter de W. proposed throwing out Hendrik van B. Apparently to convince the neighbours of her own victimhood and to incite them to action, Marie van B. had told them that Hendrik had “placed a plug in her mouth and tied her hands”, an element significantly missing in her statement to the police. Eventually, with the neighbour’s help, she threw out Hendrik, while her mother went to bring in the police. Maybe Marie van den E.’s specific social position explains the unusual ease with which she involved the neighbourhood in taking action against the man who had forced her to have sex. A number of elements in the official report allow us to assume that her sexual reputation in the neighbourhood was such that she had little to lose by going to the police and calling on her neighbours to assist her. Marie had been divorced for seven years and had being living, unmarried, for two years with sailor Victor V. “as husband and wife”. Moreover, her mother’s statement began with the following striking passage: “My daughter used go a lot with men. She has been living with V. for a few years and since then she has been behaving herself. Since then, I have not known her act badly in the moral field.” This remarkable opening can be explained in two ways. Either the statement-​taker inquired about the daughter’s sexual reputation because, as part of the district police, he was aware of old rumours circulating in the neighbourhood, or the mother knew all too well the reputation that her daughter enjoyed in the neighbourhood and wished to quash any possible 290 Stefie Herman came to similar conclusions for both East and West Flanders during the nineteenth century: Herman, De grenzen, 71. 291 saa, MA 31709, report district 5, no. 3448, 21-​7-​1938.

140 Chapter 1 suspicions immediately. In any case, this passage indicates that Marie’s reputation in sexual matters was not flawless. Marie’s mother might well state that her daughter’s licentiousness belonged to the past, but a slip in Marie’s own statement suggests that her boyfriend was less convinced of her monogamy. She stated that she suspected that Hendrik had come at his request to check she was “at home”, in other words that she was not away exploring other horizons in her boyfriend’s absence. Still, it would be reductionism to ascribe Marie van den E.’s relative openness in speaking about sexual violence unreservedly to the position that, in view of her past, she had nothing to lose. The possibility that she was more ready to go to the police because she belonged to a social environment that had less stringent sexual norms is not to be rejected out of hand. Sexual values and norms are not necessarily identical within the same society or social group.292 The only possible fundamental reservation to the statement that reputational concern prevented people from using formal mechanisms to sanction sexual violence concerns the response to the sexual abuse of children. One could assume that the tolerance threshold within informal social networks towards paedophilia is so low that, in the event of the reporting of sexual violence against children, the public outcry would totally target the alleged perpetrator. There may be some degree of analogy with the findings of historian Florike Egmond on the handling of incest in jurisprudence at the time of the seventeenth and eighteenth century Dutch Republic.293 She makes an important reservation in her conclusion that the court treated both parties involved in an incestuous relationship as (possible) perpetrators and eventually punished them: only children younger than about twelve years escaped being perceived as co-​perpetrators. The age limit established by Egmond indicates that apparently only the sexual immaturity of the child provided protection against the suspicion that it was partly responsible as an active party for the incestuous relationship.294 Given the asexuality of children, mutatis mutandis it seems obvious that reporting paedophilia to the police entails fewer risks for the reputation of the child and her family than a complaint from a (young) woman. Le Clercq’s findings for the nineteenth-​century Namur countryside, however, prompt us to be very cautious.295 He observes that, while the tolerance threshold with regard to paedophilia was relatively low, this in no way implies that family members of an abused child immediately took public action against the 2 92 For references in this regard, see: De Koster, Ongepast gedrag, 113, note 31. 293 Egmond, Incestueuze betrekkingen, 231. 294 See in this connection also: Sohn, Les attentats, 100. 295 Le Clercq, La perception, 118–​125.

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paedophile. The response ranged from relative indifference, to crippling feelings of shame, to violent revenge. There was also an apparent link between the willingness of the child’s family members and the social status of the perpetrator; out of respect for a respected member of the community, families from the lower social ranks in particular held back from action.296 The small number of registered cases (12) of sexual violence against children under the age of fifteen suggests that, even in twentieth-​century Antwerp, reporting such a misdeed was not automatically taken for granted. For the most part, these were cases where an adult lures children on the street with candy or money and, in exchange, obliges them to perform or undergo sexually charged activities, ranging from caresses and kissing to penetration. Children routinely used the word “dirty” to describe the actions and the body zones involved. All persons accused of sexual violence against children were male. Overall there is no evidence of a relatively greater readiness to report sexual violence against boys compared to girls, because their sexual reputation was supposedly less vulnerable. There were eight cases of sexual abuse of girls reported to the police against only four of boys. In general, parents or other relatives bringing in the police in these cases do not refer in their statements to the reputation of the child or of the family. The desire to see the perpetrator punished apparently took precedence. Pointing in the same direction is the fact that the complainants went immediately to the police as soon as the sexual violence against the child became known. There is therefore some reason to assume that, in twentieth-​century Antwerp, the presumed sexual innocence of the young child, and the general aversion to sexual violence against children, led to the family viewing the reputation risk for themselves and the child as slight. In this connection, it may be significant that the only complaint in which the family referred to the dangers to their own reputation was a months-​long relationship with clearly amorous traits between a fourteen-​year-​old girl and a married man. This case contrasts with the other cases that incidentally involved abuse of younger children. The complaint that housewife Anna S. filed in order to find out what exactly her daughter was up to was motivated rather by the desire to preserve a young woman’s respectability than to denounce sexual violence against an immature child.297 The daughter stated that after a number of innocent dates she had finally been abused by the married man in a hotel room. Anna S.’s subsequent request not to pursue the matter further clearly bespeaks the concern for the reputation 296 In nineteenth-​century England, a similar connection appeared to exist. Emsley, Crime and Society, 24. 297 saa, MA 24634, report district 2, no. 5798, 9-​12-​1912.

142 Chapter 1 of her entire family. That concern took precedence over the desire to see the man who had abused her daughter being punished: “… because I now know how things stand, and also to preserve my family from shame, and because this person has promised in your presence to leave my child in peace”. As to the impression that fear for one’s own reputation did not play a dominant role when reporting sexual violence against children, an important marginal comment is required. No single case of sexual abuse of children under fifteen by their own family members reached the reports in the sample years. The fear of the shame connected with incest prevented family members from bringing incestuous child abuse into the public arena. The publicizing of sexual violence against children had a devastating impact on the alleged perpetrator’s reputation, leading to social ostracism.298 Local residents kept a close eye on any person known as “dirty”. For example, a girl who had undergone an attempted assault on the street stated that she had been extra careful as a rumour was circulating in the neighbourhood that a person dressed in khaki was misbehaving with young girls.299 Persons with known paedophilic tendencies were kept under strong informal social control in order to safeguard the physical and psychological integrity of children playing in the neighbourhood. In emergency situations, informal neighbourhood sociability networks intervened actively, as the following example shows. Thirteen-​year-​old cabinetmaker’s hand Petrus M. arrived on 25 February 1912 in the narrow Klapdorp alley where his house was located. There he found his eight-​year-​old girl neighbour Sophieke and forty-​year old docker Peer O. Because Peer’s behaviour seemed suspicious to him and he was familiar with his reputation as a paedophile, he watched him from a concealed place. When he saw Peer coming with the girl neighbour from the toilet, he alerted Sophie’s mother (“because I know Peer is a filthy person”). Her complaint to the police is revelatory to the vigilance that informal social networks displayed towards well-​known paedophiles. She stated: “That man is known for that and everyone fears him.” A statement from a female neighbour went in the same direction: “He is known as a dirty man and I daren’t leave my children at home on their own.” Informal neighbourhood social networks could also mobilize to keep a paedophile out of the neighbourhood for good. The following passage from a letter to the court, written by residents of Zurenborg in response to the possible release of a paedophile, is very telling in this respect:

2 98 Sohn, Du premier, 61. 299 saa, MA 31873, report district 5, no. 59, 7-​1-​1949.

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It has been made known to the people of Zurenborg that the filthy man from the Dageraadplaats is being protected by former justice of peace M.W., who is going to take the necessary steps to let that inhuman run free. (…) The population and especially the parents of the children who have become victims of this inhuman place their hope in ‘Justice’. Hoping he will soon be behind lock and key, because he is a very big danger to schoolchildren.300 The bad reputation of a “filthy man” extended to his family members. Concern for the name of those family members with whom they had good ties could sometimes keep the relatives of the sexually abused child from going to the police. Once the complaint had initiated the procedure of interrogation and possible prosecution, the reputational damage for the paedophile’s family was irrevocable. In the aforementioned case of Peer O., it was the good neighbourliness with his wife which had for a long time restrained the neighbours from filing a complaint, despite a long series of incidents. The statement by Sophie’s mother, housewife Adela S., is revealing in this respect: “A year ago he did this and then I informed his wife, and again six to seven months ago. Then I told her it was the last time I would let it be for her sake and that of her children, but that if he began again I would file a complaint with the police.” Housewife Maria W., whose child had also been abused by Peer O. “in exchange” for money, used a death in his family to put him under pressure in a symbolic way: “… and I once threw the pennies before his feet in his house in the presence of his entire family, gathered for his father-​in-​law’s funeral.” 1.10

Conclusion

The dominant social discourse on public violence does not pass the test of empirical testing. The presumed correlation between the occurrence of public violence and the decline of informal social networks does not appear to hold water and must even be reversed to some extent. The nature of public violence in the selected reports points paradoxically precisely to the importance of such networks. The target of violence in the street, in the tavern or in the stairwell was precisely the position a person occupied within informal social networks. The use of violence in the public sphere in the Antwerp neighbourhoods was for the most part intended to prevent or undo the damage to 300 Anonymous letter, Zurenborg, 9 April 1922, quoted in: Carlier, Discoursanalytische, 232.

144 Chapter 1 the reputation a person enjoyed in informal social networks. This makes the recorded public violence extremely expressive in nature. It fulfilled a distincitvely communicative function; by means of theatrical actions (performances), the warring parties sent meaningful messages to the public, consisting of informal social networks. The assumption that such highly ritualized strategies of informal conflict resolution in twentieth-​century Western European cities were of subordinate importance because of their supposed anonymous character is emphatically not confirmed by the Antwerp research results. Rape and robbery, considered typical for twentieth-​century cities, represent only a small proportion of registered violence. The development of a fine-​meshed police apparatus did not in itself put an end to informal conflict resolution. The government authorities’ claim to the right to regulate conflicts was less total than is often assumed for twentieth-​ century Western European societies. A sort of “legal pluralism” existed in which unofficial forms of conflict resolution continued to exist alongside the official repressive apparatus. This indicates that, through their self-​regulating ability, informal social networks managed to retain a certain degree of autonomy, despite the disciplinary strategies from above. The prominent role of violence in informal conflict resolution strategies is a clear illustration that violence is not necessarily a dysfunctional crisis phenomenon. The use of force in the context of informal conflict resolution was a very exclusive affair of the lower social groups. The elites and the upper middle social groups usually distanced themselves from such strategies. The necessity felt by people from the poorer sections of the populace to engage in public confrontation if necessary to maintain their good name, points to the importance attached by them to their positions in informal social networks. In view of the high level of economic precarity, participation in informal social networks was a necessary precondition for them to be able to call upon carefully-​constructed reciprocity relationships if need be. The bourgeois strategies of building good reputations en petit comité were therefore not functional for them.

­c hapter 2

The Rules of the Game 2.1

Ritual Interaction

Initially, the term “ritual” was used solely to refer to religious –​in particular liturgical  –​actions, aimed at establishing a connection between the earthly and the supernatural.1 Gradually, however, its definition was extended, with an increasing tendency to consider every form of repeated, formalized human action as ritual. It is a subject of debate as to whether human interaction had a stronger ritual character in the past than today. Until not so long ago, it was generally assumed that ritual was of secondary importance in modern Western European societies.2 Scientists found ritual practices incompatible with modernity. Under the influence of the rise of individualism, rationalism and technology, and the increasing importance attached to values such as spontaneity, truthfulness and privacy, rituals in Western Europe supposedly lost much of their strength. As mentioned earlier, Pieter Spierenburg sees a similar evolution in the field of violence.3 In his estimation, the focus of violence in Western European cities, when placed on a ritual/​expressive-​instrumental axis, has clearly shifted from the former to the latter pole over the past centuries. The case of early twentieth-​century Antwerp places questions marks as to the validity and scope of Spierenburg’s general hypothesis. The general picture of recorded public violence does not correspond at all to the contemporary urban pattern of instrumental violence as Spierenburg conceives it. The vast majority of violent public conflicts that occurred in twentieth-​century Antwerp can, on the contrary, be categorized as distinctly expressive, ritualized forms of conflict regulation in the heart of informal social networks. The Antwerp findings tie in rather, mutatis mutandi, with the thinking of Erving Goffman, who emphasizes the ritual aspects of human interaction in contemporary large cities. Goffman’s views on the ritual aspects of daily life in particular open up interesting perspectives, especially for the analysis of public violence. In observing daily interaction in the United States, Goffman is struck by the way people unconsciously respect a whole series of rules in order to facilitate living together in the public space. For example, strangers in a lift avoid eye contact 1 Muir, Ritual, 3. 2 Burke, The Repudiation of Ritual, 223; Muir, Ritual, 269. 3 Spierenburg, Faces of Violence, 701–​716; Spierenburg, Long-​Term Trends, 70–​71 and 93.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004416932_004

146 Chapter 2 and physical contact as much as possible. Such rules of behaviour prevent public life from being complicated by a complete lack of predictability in daily interactions. The meanings of such formalized forms of behaviour are usually acquired without much effort during the process of socialization by all members of a certain culture. Moreover, according to Goffman, daily interaction in public is not only about avoiding needless clashes, but above all about leaving a favourable public impression. He maintains a pronouncedly theatrical conception of public life. Goffman’s emphasis on the instrumentalization of a ritual, expressive, symbolic formal language for the positive presentation of one’s own person is of more than secondary value for the analysis of public violence. He concurs with the conclusion that what was at stake in the use of violent interaction in public in early twentieth-​century Antwerp, as in many other cultural contexts, was primarily the reputation of the opposing parties. In informal conflict resolution, the aim was to place unambiguous actions in front of a relevant audience that would benefit one’s own reputation and damage that of one’s opponents. The theatre metaphor seems to correspond to the fundamentally outward character of social interaction in the Antwerp popular neighbourhoods. Incidentally, the people of Antwerp explicitly used theatre metaphors to indicate undesirable public commotion, deliberately provoked by an opponent. For this, Antwerp residents literally used the word “theatre”.4 They also used other concepts from the theatrical atmosphere. Boatman Ludo S.  suspected his wife’s family of putting up his son to play “such a comedy” so as to disgrace him.5 He described the reaction of the neighbourhood in theatrical terms in the same statement: “… then the women from the neighbourhood started to make a show”. House owner Catharina W. also described the war of words that tenant Joanna G. caused in her apartment, in the context of a rent dispute, as a “show”.6 Painter’s hand Karel L.  described his neighbours’ marital strife as “comedy” or a “Punch and Judy show”.7 Shopkeeper Isaak H.  stated that his wife had created a “scene” in front of the public.8 Declarants used the term “scene” only to indicate a woman’s deliberately provoked quarrel with a view to

4 saa, MA 24633, report district 2, no. 4831, 26-​8-​1912. 5 saa, MA 31707, report district 5, no.  2691, 14-​5-​1938. For the use of “playing comedy”, see also: saa, MA 31563, report district 5, no. 2417, 10-​10-​1912; saa, MA 30030, no. 4300, 26-​9-​1949. 6 saa, MA 31561, report 5, No. 1091, 15-​2-​1912; For the use of “show”, see also: saa, MA 29320, No. 1207, 9-​9-​1944. 7 saa, MA 31583, report district 5, no. 2034, 13-​12-​1917. 8 saa, MA 31712, report district 5, no. 4570, 21-​9-​1938. For the use of “scene”, see also: saa, MA 29696, report district 7, no. 61, 18-​2-​1912.

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damaging her husband’s reputation. A specific charge of the concept is well reflected in a trader’s statement: “When my wife makes such a scene, she always shouts loudly to make people think I’m mistreating her.”9 Valuable also for the analysis of public violence is Goffman’s view that the instrumental and ritual aspects of human interaction are inseparable from each other. Anthropologists often make the distinction between these two components of human behaviour. By instrumental aspects, they understand practical considerations, in particular the relationship between goal and means, while the ritual component is associated with the behavioural forms, in other words the question of what the specific practice expresses. The emphasis here is on form rather than on purpose and means. Anthropologist Anton Blok insists that, especially in violent behaviour, instrumental and ritual aspects are inextricably intertwined.10 The theatrical, formalized character that often characterizes acts of violence demonstrates in his view that there is usually no purely mechanical striving towards a particular goal. If goals have to be achieved, this can only be done by using behavioural forms that are characterized by their prescribed, ritualized character. In order to influence public opinion, the actor should not only make use of an action repertoire that is understandable to everyone, but should also make sure that the implicit behavioural rules of informal conflict resolution are respected. If he fails to do this, he disqualifies himself and it becomes totally impossible to attain the set goals. Specifically, in reputation-​based conflicts, it is only possible to achieve the concrete objective, that is damaging the good name of the intended counterparty and safeguarding one’s own honour, by making use of forms of behaviour that are understood by a public that assigns the same meanings to them. Obviously, the position that a good understanding of violence is only possible by paying attention to its ritual character does not mean that it is a form of purely “symbolic” behaviour.11 Attention to the ritual form of violent behaviour by no means implies denying that violence can result in pain, injury and ultimately even death. On the contrary, recognition of the ritual aspects of violence leads to the realization that violence and ritual are in no ways mutually exclusive. After an analysis of various forms of ritualized violence (such as football hooliganism, executions, election riots, blood feuds and fights between gangs), American sociologist Charles Tilly came to the conclusion that “ritual” should 9 10 11

saa, MA 29836, report district 7, no. 3128, 21-​10-​1928. For the instrumental-​ritual relationship in violence, see: Blok, The Enigma, 27–​29. Historian Benoît Garnot for example leans towards this view, see:  Garnot, La violence et ses limites, 107. Anthropologist Jon Abbink also goes in the same direction: Abbink, Violence and culture, 136–​139.

148 Chapter 2 not be understood in the sense of courtly gallantry and formality.12 Ritual violence also carries the potential of serious escalation. Moreover, there is always the possibility that the participants decide at a given moment to cease to respect the rules of conduct that restrict the use of physical violence. In particular, the chance of this is real when the particular circumstances mean that the social control by the public of compliance with the ritual code no longer exists. To some extent, ritual violence also exhibits its own dynamics; once the mechanism is set in motion, a process is launched that is not always controllable.13 Specialists in collective actions in particular all too often assume that ritualization ipso facto leads to the channelling of the conflict potential within a society into less violent forms.14 In so doing, they base themselves on the ideas of anthropologists like Max Gluckman and Victor Turner, who emphasize the channelling power of rituals.15 Indeed, it cannot be automatically denied that ritualized festivities and collective actions such as carnival and charivari usually permit a highly formalized and relatively peaceful expression of social tensions and contradictions.16 To a certain extent, such rituals are indeed comparable to a “safety valve”: the subversive ridicule and the game element of which they are permeated make it possible to express social dissatisfaction in a symbolic way so that it cannot assume dangerous proportions and all too violent outbursts can be avoided.17 The problem with the often used “safety valve” metaphor is that it conceals the potential for violent escalation that is always inherent in rituals like the charivaris.18 Moreover, practice shows that, in shared ritual formal language as it concerns the physical person, there is also no formal distinction between so-​called “innocent” charivari and carnival forms on the one hand, and so-​called “cruel” actions such as public executions and lynch parties on the other.19 What we have is more a continuum of behavioural forms than a sharp boundary between mere “symbolic” and “violent” rituals. The same reservation regarding the intrinsic ability of ritualization to limit the use of force applies equally to small-​scale face-​to-​face conflicts.20 It is 12 Tilly, The Politics, 101. 13 For pleadings for greater attention to the Eigendynamik of violence, see:  Nedelmann, Gewaltsoziologie, 65–​66; Von Trotha, Zur Soziologie, 25. 14 Thompson, ‘Rough Music’, 289. 15 For bibliographical references to the work of anthropologists who emphasize the channelling power of rituals, see: Bouroncle, Ritual, 55–​56. 16 Muir, Ritual, 104. 17 For the metaphor of the safety valve, see: Burke, Popular Culture, 201–​202. 18 On the functional level too, there are objections to the reduction of such rituals to a “safety valve”: see Davis, The Reasons, 97–​123. 19 For the ritual, demonstrative aspects of executions, see: Spierenburg, The Spectacle. 20 See: Lacour, Faces of Violence, 653.

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The Rules of the Game

possible and even probable that in the practice of informal conflict resolution the use of a ritualized language and the respect of shared rules, codes of conduct, report and etiquette restricts the use of force. Essential in this context is the social control that the bystanders exercise on compliance with codes that regulated violence. But the ritualization does not detract from the fundamentally violent nature of the interaction and certainly does not prevent a potential escalation. The best strategy for putting pressure on an intended opponent or moving him to open confrontation was to play on his concern for his honour and public reputation. Erving Goffman wrote crisply:  “… the person’s attachment to face gives others something to aim at”.21 In other words, the counterparty’s care for his or her reputation was consciously instrumentalized in the framework of (informal) conflict resolution strategies. An overly rigid view of honour as an unchanging strict moral code that regulates human behaviour is clearly inadequate here.22 People naturally attuned their own behaviour to opinions about respectable behaviour as these existed in society at large, but this does not imply that their behaviour was entirely determined by them. However much people were permeated and guided by such notions, they also adapted them creatively within their strategic options. The creative use of notions of honour and disgrace by the Antwerp population is a clear illustration of the proposition that culture is not a static fact, but always implies appropriation and transformation.23 The Antwerp population used notions of honour and shame as instruments to strike at the opposing party’s reputation. A pronounced symbolic vocabulary was available to express the message of contempt.24 The necessity that the target of such a meaningful action felt to respond to this, and thus save face, arises from the fact that it was formulated in a ritual language that everyone in the immediate social environment understood. To be effective, the response to a ritualized reputational attack had to be expressed in the same code. A broad repertoire of means of action was addressed. The theatre term “repertoire” stems from research into collective actions, but also offers fruitful perspectives in this context. Surveys show that the violence in collective actions, however cruel they can at times be, is by no means completely uncontrolled or unrestrained.25 On the contrary, the contenders invariably draw from a repertoire of forms of action that are generally used .

21 Goffman, Interaction, 239. 22 See: Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 113. 23 See: Frijhoff, Wegen, 42. 24 Thompson, Customs in Common. 25 See for references: Davis, The Rites of Violence, 154.

150 Chapter 2 in a highly ritualized manner against well-​defined, anything but accidental, targets. In interpersonal conflicts, the situation is not fundamentally different. On a formal level, there is no question of a dichotomy between collective and interpersonal violence.26 Of what did the repertoire of forms of action that were addressed in the “theatre of the street” in Antwerp between 1910 and 1950 consist? Which symbolic vocabulary was used in the honour play? For the historian it is also important to track down the meanings that are attributed to actions within a particular cultural context. This being said, reconstructing the code, the idiom that was specifically respected in the Antwerp reputation-​based conflicts, is no easy task. The historian does not have manuals of behaviour indicating which meanings were assigned to certain types of behaviour. Only a meticulous analysis of praxis can bring a certain degree of enlightenment. This is not straightforward, since standards, values and expectations can be expressed in many different forms. The choice of a particular form depends to a large extent on the specificity of the context. The same action can have very different meanings depending on the context. Gerard Rooijakkers compares behavioural forms with the letters of an alphabet: only in well-​defined combinations do they acquire a specific meaning, at least for those who are familiar with the code.27 Reconstructing the behavioural repertoire used within a particular cultural circuit requires us to track down formalized patterns of action. 2.2

The Power of Language

For broad sections of the Antwerp population, the written word played a completely subordinate role in daily life. The spoken word, on the other hand, had enormous force. A single wrongly-​placed word could instantly turn a pleasant atmosphere into a climate of distinct hostility. In a still largely oral society, certain statements were etched into the memory and could still have effects long after they were uttered.28 The contemporary reader of the statements of the Antwerp population to the police is often amazed at the great precision with which declarants report words spoken months, sometimes even years before. A good or bad name in the early twentieth-​century Antwerp popular neighbourhoods was established in the first instance via verbal communication. 26

For the supposed collective-​individual dichotomy, see: McHale and J. Bergner, Collective and Individual, 31–​32. 27 Rooijakkers, Rituele repertoires, 78–​83. 28 Draaisma, Waarom het leven.

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In the focal points of informal social life (taverns, shops, stairwells and doorsteps), reputations were constantly made and broken with the help of oral communication. A  person’s reputation in the still largely oral culture was based on the way he or she was talked about in informal social networks. The preoccupation with one’s –​by definition public –​reputation as it existed in twentieth-​century Antwerp neighbourhoods reflects the relative importance that oral communication still played in daily interaction. It is known that oral cultures are characterized more than highly literate societies by an outward, ‘community’-​directed and therefore less internalized way of communicating.29 Given the close connection between the spoken word and reputation, it is not surprising that, in conflicts in which honour was at stake, verbal forms of communication were the means of action par excellence to put the intended counterparty under pressure. Insulting and scolding the opponent in public was the most direct strategy in the verbal action repertoire of the Antwerp population. It was the order of the day: in 481 of all 1377 violent conflicts selected there was insult, representing a percentage of 34.9%. An insult was viewed as a serious threat to reputation, needing to be parried immediately to avoid losing face. The answer could consist of a return insult, a complaint to the police commissioner, or violence, the essence was that there be a public refutation. There were also circumstances in which only violence sufficed to erase the disgrace.30 The absence of a reaction would simply be interpreted by informal social networks as an admittance of guilt. Certainly for the lower social groups in Antwerp between 1910 and 1950, Anton Blok’s claim that in contemporary European societies, sensitivity to insults has greatly diminished is far from substantiated.31 The logic that insults could be ignored without losing face, as being more painful for the profferer than for the targeted party, was totally foreign to them. One must, however, beware of overly unequivocal interpretations. In terms of form alone, it is very tempting to reduce insult to no more than an instrument of social control: a weapon that enforces respect for the prevailing norms in a community and sanctions violations of the same. Insults undoubtedly fulfilled a much more multi-​significant set of functions. Apart from the question as to whether insults refer to the prevalent social discourse or to a private moral frame of reference, analysis of the corpus of recorded insults quickly reveals that it is far from always concrete violations of the norm that were denounced. By no means all people who were scolded as “whores” or “thieves” were actually 29 Tebbutt, Women’s Talk?, 4; Lecharny, L’injure, 565–​566. 30 Cf. infra. 31 Blok, Mediterranean Totemism, 207.

152 Chapter 2 prostitutes or stole property. For example, it will also appear that the insult “whore” was regularly used towards women in conflicts that had nothing to do with sexual behaviour. The reason for this must be sought in the strategic considerations of the speaker: the woman was attacked in the area where she was most vulnerable and the attack would therefore have the most effect. On the other hand, there are other indications in other cases that concrete behaviours were pilloried. For example, if a woman is scolded in the street by women from the neighbourhood for seducing a married man, the intention is indeed to denounce a real violation of standards. Such an action was intended to make clear that the tolerance thresholds had been exceeded and to push the person overstepping the norms into social isolation. Certainly, in the case of frequently used passe-​partout insults, it is frequently difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. Obviously, the thematic charge of the insults used reflects the preoccupations, fears and attitudes that existed within informal social networks about certain forms of behaviour. This does not imply, however, that the purpose of every insult was to force respect for the shared codes of conduct. Such an approach ignores the fact that, in general, speakers with their insults consciously pursued individual objectives. The option to insult and the use of a well-​determined word of abuse most times resulted from strategic considerations aimed at maximizing the reputational damage to the intended opponent. The ultimate aim of an insult was usually not to enforce respect for moral standards, but to humiliate an opponent. It was a formidable weapon that was used deliberately in conflicts with neighbours, colleagues or friends. In order to ensure the effectiveness of the insult, reference was naturally made to transgressions that could count on the general disapproval of the public. A less direct, but no less effective, strategy to put pressure on an intended opponent was gossip. This was one of the central mechanisms with which reputations were made and broken in the Antwerp neighbourhoods. Gossip is aptly described by M. Bulmer as “informal talk about other people who are absent, about their conduct, and moral evaluation of that conduct”.32 In other words, an exchange of information among acquaintances about absent persons known to both parties. Gossip fulfils an important integrating and socializing function.33 Quite apart from its content, the exchange of all kinds of news plays an essential role in forging and maintaining informal social bonds. Membership of informal gossip circuits is an absolute prerequisite for being able

32 Bulmer, The Social Basis, 95. 33 Tebbutt, Women’s Talk?, 1–​2 and 48–​49.

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to avail of all sorts of mutual assistance in times of scarcity. In other words, reciprocity relations are entered into through daily informal verbal interaction. However, only persons belonging to their own group have the right to gossip about certain people. Gossip therefore has not only an integrating, but also an excluding effect.34 Outsiders do not gain access to gossip circuits and, on the contrary, form only the object of negative gossip. This type of bad reputation also means that people are excluded from all kinds of mutual assistance. Gossip thus undoubtedly fulfils a distinguishing function:  when speaking about others, the distinction between “we” and “them” is established and with that the moral superiority of one’s own group is emphasized.35 Gossip plays a crucial role in formulating and reconfirming shared behavioural norms. This makes it also an important mechanism of social control with regard to (potential) transgressors of norms. Offenders against the norms have the choice to conform or to be excluded from the informal social networks. The fear of gossip as an informal social sanction prevents people –​at least openly –​from ignoring the shared norms. Obviously, gossip is an effective means of pressure only within an environment that is relevant to its subject. Gossip is characteristic of relatively closed, introspective communities where the high degree of mutual familiarity makes horizontal social control possible.36 In relatively “open” or more anonymous social relationships, gossip as a mechanism is, in the absence of sufficient mutual familiarity, obviously less powerful. The observation that gossip played a significant role in early twentieth-​century Antwerp is therefore more than significant, indicating that –​at least for the lower social groups –​informal networks of (neighbourhood) sociability were still crucially important. For them, life in the city was not an anonymous existence. On the contrary, the gaze of the others was omnipresent. This resulted in a high degree of social control. Significant for the importance that the population of the Antwerp neighbourhoods attached to a good name are the furious reactions of people when informed of the existence of bad gossip about themselves or a family member through the same circuits. Anyone learning that a certain person was placing them in a bad light in their absence in front of a relevant audience did not hesitate to call that person to account. In such cases, one’s own position within informal social networks was at stake. Also when the targeted party, in case of a direct insult, was led to believe, from its precise contents of it, that someone was spreading gossip, he or she went in search of the source. When shopkeeper Adelaïda M. was insulted 34 Elias and Scotson, The Established, 89–​105. 35 Blokland, Urban Bonds, 105. 36 Tebbutt, Women’s Talk?, 2.

154 Chapter 2 by her neighbour, housewife Maria P., with the words “you filthy fart, you wheedler, your husband’s been beating you for fifteen years now”, she asked who had told her that and immediately sent for the supposed gossiper to her store to ask for an explanation.37 Responses to gossip regularly involved a violent clash between the party which felt its reputation to have been harmed and the alleged gossip-​monger. Thus, in 26 of the 1377 recorded violent conflicts, one of the parties involved explicitly mentioned as the motive the fact that the opponent had spread malicious rumours about him or her. By openly confronting the gossip-​monger, one sent a message to the immediate social environment that one was not frightened by the allegations. The reaction was therefore aimed at limiting or reversing the loss of reputation caused by gossip. With this aim in view, the blackened party often repeated in front of the gossip-​monger explicitis verbis the malicious gossip that had come to its notice. By quoting the contents of the gossip itself, the defamed person sought to reinforce the impression that there was nothing in it. An alternative strategy consisted of asking the pointed-​at party to repeat the gossip again, but now in the presence of its object. Housekeeper Sidonia C. filed a complaint against her sister-​in-​law Flora S. because the latter had hit her in street, shouting at her: “Now tell us all what you said to my brother, bastard, dirty whore, son-​of-​a-​bitch and mischief-​maker.”38 The objective behind such demands was twofold. The defamed party indicated, on the one hand, by the willingness to engage in the confrontation, that the gossip was unfounded. On the other hand, it showed up the opponent as a gossip-​monger, a cowardly person who claimed everything behind the defamed party’s back, but lacked the courage to speak it openly to its face. By deliberately seeking publicity, the defamed party tried to transfer the damage to its own reputation, in other words the shame, to the gossip-​monger.39 The wish to undo the effect of the gossip could lead the party to attempt to force the gossip-​monger to take back his words in the same environment where the incriminating statements had been made. The next conflict is a good illustration of this strategic option. Factory worker Maria T. learned from another customer in her regular café De Welkom in the Dambruggestraat “that people came knocking on her door to collect the debt”.40 Given that she had a debt of 1073 francs outstanding to the neighbours below her, she decided

37 saa, MA 29277, report district 2, no. 2495, 29-​11-​1938. 38 saa, MA 31892, report district 5, no. 6099, 16-​12-​1949. 39 Rooijakkers, Vieren en markeren, 223. 40 saa, MA 31882, report district 5, no. 2812, 8-​6-​1949.

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from these reproaches that they had made this public in the tavern, thereby threatening her creditworthiness. Maria T. decided to hold them to account and marched into the room of her downstairs neighbour housewife Césarine C. She reproached her: “Big mug, I dare you to come with me to the Welkom. You’ve been telling people I have debts.” On Césarine C.’s refusal to accompany her to the tavern in question, the quarrel escalated and blows and insults were exchanged. Gossip was taken so seriously that it could be grounds for dismissal for an employee. Old clothes buyer Anna J.  had learned that day labourer Jan van G. (nicknamed de Zot), who worked for her, had been spreading gossip about car mechanic Joseph V., the man she was living with.41 In particular, he had “spread around” that fact that he had been jailed for three months (which, by the way, was the truth). Joseph V. was informed of this and told Jan van G. that he “should not put things on the street”, told him off for being a “blabber” and informed him on behalf of his girlfriend that there was no more work for him. The piqued reactions of people who became the targets of gossip indicate that it was indeed a powerful tool of social control. People were very apprehensive of the ability of words to damage their reputations. Even so, a complex phenomenon such as gossip cannot be reduced to an unambiguous mechanism of social control.42 For example, it should not be forgotten that gossiping, the exchange of news, was, when all is said and done, a pleasant pastime. Gossipers were especially interested in an interesting, well-​told story that appealed to the imagination. It is not inconceivable that gossipers did not always focus primarily on the sanctioning of inappropriate behaviour, but were more concerned with satisfying their curiosity in a humorous way. There were also often individual strategic options concealed behind the spread of bad rumours. In the context of conflicts with neighbours, colleagues or relatives, people deliberately spread rumours to discredit within informal social networks the people they were at odds with. Gossip was one of the strategies in the action repertoire from which the people of Antwerp drew for the purpose of conflict resolution. When gossip was used as a weapon in often long-​smouldering conflicts, motives of revenge and humiliation clearly prevailed over any real moral indignation at a possible violation of standards.

41 saa, MA 31709, report district 5, no. 3538, 17-​7-​1938. 42 See: Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 230–​231; Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 120–​121.

156 Chapter 2 2.3

Expressive Body Language

Given their education and the nature of the available source material, historians are automatically inclined, when analysing societies from the past, to concentrate on the verbal repertoire used, in the belief (rightly or wrongly) they can crack its codes relatively easily. This concentration on the verbal repertoire is too exclusive. Non-​verbal communication in its different forms also plays a crucial role in social interaction.43 We think of other forms of sensory communication such as the use of signals, gestures, smells, intonation, silence and expressive use of time and space. In addition to language, there are many communicative actions that are often used in combination. Anyone wishing to explore the discursive organization of a particular society needs to pay attention to both verbal and non-​verbal communication codes.44 It is therefore unacceptable to disqualify gestures and facial expressions as objects of study by referring, for example, to the limited number of traces in the source material and the intrinsic risks involved in reconstructing the non-​verbal communication codes in a particular society. Analysis of the action repertoire used in reputation-​based conflicts clearly indicates that the historian who confines himself to the study of verbal communication leaves aside an important dimension of human interaction. Forms of non-​verbal communication, such as gestures and body postures, were also taken as real threats to the reputation of the person being targeted. Not only verbal insults but also denigrating gestures had to be parried in order to prevent damage to one’s personal reputation. There are numerous examples of conflicts in which an offensive gesture gave rise to a violent response. Viewed from the perspective of the Antwerp population, gestures were undoubtedly a serious matter. The historian who tries to reconstruct the socio-​cultural world of that population cannot therefore ignore the role and meaning of gestures. For a long time, gestures have been a favourite subject of study for anthropologists, social psychologists and linguists. The pioneering character of Norbert Elias’ work requires hardly any explicit mention in this respect.45 The growing public control of emotions and feelings, one of the central elements of the civilization process as it had, according to Elias, been proceeding since the late Middle Ages, had inevitably led to changes in body postures and non-​verbal communication. Since the beginning of the 1990s, interest among historians in the history of the body in general and the history of gestures in particular has 43 Aijmer, Introduction, 4. 44 Bourdieu, La distinction, 553. 45 Elias, Het civilisatieproces.

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grown considerably.46 An important acquis of the swelling historical research in this area is the apparently banal observation that gestures and body language have a history at all.47 Just like the repertoire of verbal communication, non-​verbal communication is also permeated by culture. There is no universally shared and historically unchanging body language. Every cultural and historical context has its own specific codes of physical expression that, just like languages ​​or language groups, are inter-​related to a greater or lesser degree. The initial criticism by some people that historians should not engage in such a trivial subject, since the study would not teach anything essential, has in the meantime largely ebbed. Two important arguments exist to convince sceptics of the importance of historical research into gestures.48 Firstly, gestures are a fundamental element of social interaction in virtually all societies. Secondly, gestures are key to a number of fundamental norms and values ​​that structure the society in question. They are therefore anything but banal or trivial, but on the contrary permeated with meaning. Erving Goffman expresses it crisply: “The gestures which we often call empty are perhaps in fact the fullest thing of all.”49 The fact that, for obvious reasons, linguistic communication has left much more explicit traces in the written sources than non-​verbal interaction could erroneously give the impression that gestures were of absolutely minor importance in comparison with words in social traffic. However, accurate analysis of daily conflicts shows that interpersonal interaction was permeated by gestures and body language. Incidentally, interpersonal violence as such is pre-​eminently a form of non-​verbal communication. For the Antwerp population, gesture codes were, in every respect, a language comparable to the spoken word. There is therefore no reason to treat non-​verbal communication disdainfully compared with verbal expression. In the absence of dictionaries, grammar books and other written sources, the reconstruction of the codes that regulated non-​verbal interaction is not, of course, an obvious task. Much more than with the study of linguistic interaction, the historian engaging in the analysis of body language will have to reconstruct the codes and conventions of the grammar of gestures. Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that non-​ verbal and verbal communication codes are not completely separate entities, 46

Bremmer and Roodenburg, A cultural history, 1991; Muir, Ritual, 117–​146. Specifically for the insulting effect of non-​verbal communication, see also: Ruff, Violence, 122–​124. 47 For a history of the development of body postures in the Eliasian line, see:  Revel, Les usages, 209. 48 Burke, The Language of Gesture, 60–​62; Thomas, Inleiding, 14. 49 Goffman, Interaction, 91.

158 Chapter 2 but on the contrary are often used in parallel. There are clear cross connections between spoken and gesture language. The facial expression, the general body posture and the use of the hands with which words are accompanied clearly influence the content of the verbal message. Non-​verbal communication can reinforce the verbal message or, on the contrary, negate it. Insulting gestures provide a rare access to the non-​verbal communication code of the Antwerp population, as their offensive nature means that are mentioned more in the written sources than other, less honour-​damaging gestures. In order to reinforce his or her statement to the police commissioner, the party treated with contempt had every interest in highlighting the insulting character of the gesture. With this goal in mind, the declarant usually reconstructed the conscious gesture very precisely. Judging from the conflicts selected in the corpus, in early twentieth-​century Antwerp a wide range of explicit insulting gestures existed and were frequently used, in the same way as in a number of contemporary Mediterranean societies.50 The thesis that the body had lost its expressive power in the lower social groups as a result of disciplinary processes at school and in the factory in the contemporary period does not pass the test of analysis of the empirical material.51 Insulting gestures were deliberately used, just like bad words, to strike the targeted party’s reputation. This therefore made them very suitable instruments for provoking disputes. Certainly when such a gesture was made in public, there was nothing left for the adversary party to do than to respond to it. The response to a denigrating gesture was also expressed many times in body language, by an act of violence. It is possible to distinguish between offensive gestures of a general character, expressing unspecified disgust or enmity towards the targeted party, and abusive gestures with a specific substantive charge. Facial expressions were the pre-​eminent instrument for expressing general disgust or hostility to a certain person. An “ugly face” or a “crooked face” was interpreted by the targeted party as a public expression of enmity.52 Temporary police officer Gustaaf de B., for example, read as an expression of contempt the “mule” face that his former girlfriend, seamstress Margaretha V., had made to him in a dance hall.53 The dispute that, according to shop assistant Philomena P., occurred between herself and her husband, diamond worker Florimond van A., at the evening meal is equally telling of this connection: 50 51 52 53

For Andalusia, see: Driessen, Mannelijkheid in gebaren, 265–​281. For this hypothesis, see: Farge, Vivre, 118–​120. See for example: saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 1144, 23-​5-​1912; saa, MA 29273, no. 1218, 13-​6-​1938. saa, MA 31560, report district 5, no. 671, 20-​2-​1912.

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When I came home from work in the evening, I asked him if he had already found work. (…) While we were eating, he said ‘what a face you’re pulling now’. I pointed out to him that I was not badly intentioned at all and that if I did not have a pleasant face this was only because of fatigue. More words were exchanged until he said ‘kiss my balls, damn you’. To which I replied ‘enough with this silliness’, whereupon he punched me on the mouth.54 An outstretched tongue was perhaps the most explicit expression of general aversion. Factory worker Stella C. accused cigar maker Maria M. of sticking her tongue out at her in the street after they both left the magistrates’ court where they were facing each other in a case.55 Similar to the protrusion of the tongue, was the “making a big nose”.56 Apart from these general denigrating gestures, there was another repertoire of gestures with a very specific content. In a number of cases, such gestures were gender-​specific, in the sense that they could only be used by men or women towards men or women. This was particularly the case with gestures that put the sexual mores of the targeted party in a bad light. A good example of this category of gestures is the gesture of a woman who raised her skirt in front of another woman to publicly question the respectability of her sexual behaviour. According to historian Lotte van de Pol, the same gesture was used in early modern Amsterdam by women who were not far apart from each other in terms of social position, but between whom there was a considerable difference in respectability.57 By pulling up her skirt, the less respectable woman wished to lower the intended counterparty to her own level. In other words, she forged her inferior (sexual) reputation into a strategic advantage against a respectable woman who, out of a concern for her honourability, was forced to operate much more cautiously. Equally of a sexual nature was the “cuckold” gesture. This was meant to ridicule a deceived husband. Two curved fingers behind the head of the targeted party made it publicly clear the partner of the person in question had cheated on him or her. The accusation of being a “cuckold” is a good illustration of the entanglement between the codes of verbal and non-​verbal communication. The message that the targeted party was being deceived by his or her sexual partner could be expressed not only with the gesture of the two curved fingers, 54 55 56 57

saa, MA 31705, report district 5, no. 1941, 17-​4-​1938. saa, MA 31714, report district 5, no. 5312, 5-​11-​1938. See for example: saa, MA 24631, report district 2, no. 3109, 7-​5-​1912. Van de Pol, The Burgher and the Whore, 59.

160 Chapter 2 but also through the verbal expression of the imagery that this gesture referred to. In the following statement made by housewife Joanna van de W. against diamond-​cutter Andreas V., the similarity of imagery and gesture is clearly expressed. In addition, it illustrates well that both verbal and non-​verbal insults were used in one and the same attack on a party’s reputation: On the aforementioned date, around 17:30, I met her husband Andreas V. When he saw me, he raised his hand and made a gesture like someone wearing horns. I asked him what he meant by this. He said I knew well that I had horns on my head, because I knew well enough that my husband was having relations with a friend of mine. He also went on to say that I was a driver’s whore and that I had become a millionaire from taking people to bed with me for twelve years. He also said that I had lost my civil rights. I  threatened to go to the police station, whereupon he said ‘go to the police station, because all you do is bribe the police, you’ve enough money for it’.58 Particularly significant in this statement is the fact that it indicates that, unlike under the ancien régime, the “cuckold” gesture could be used not only for men but also for women. A similar entanglement of verbal and non-​verbal insults is possible with the virile reproach “you can kiss them”. The statement of a clerk about the behaviour of his neighbour, a diamond polisher, is a striking illustration of this: “At the same time, he put his hand on the front of his trousers, saying ‘see, here you can kiss them’.”59 Other violations of the norm such as theft could also be denounced by means of gestures. The complaint lodged by housewife Maria van E. against Maria S. and her daughter, cleaning lady Rosalia K., clearly indicates this: Today afternoon (…) passing though the Lange Zavelstraat with a pushcart loaded with coal, I was shouted at by S. Maria and her daughter in the following way: “there rides Madame again, her husband will have done a lot of that again,” while gesturing with her hand indicating that for her my husband had been stealing.60

58 59 60

saa, MA 31793, report district 5, no. 2845, 1-​10-​1944. For this gesture, see also: saa, MA 31786, report district 5, no. 959, 2-​4-​1944. saa, MA 31562, report district 5, no. 1807, 30-​7-​1912. saa, MA 31580, report district 5, no. 577, 20-​4-​1917.

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Any deviant physical characteristics of the targeted party were pre-​eminently a subject that could be ridiculed with the help of gestures. Factory worker Alfons V. fell out with electrician Jozef de C. after the latter had, in a full tavern, made “signs” referring to “the large body size” of his wife.61 Housewife Maria van der H. did not accept her sister-​in-​law humbling her publicly by imitating her limp.62 The violation of the ideal of cleanliness could also be denounced by means of gestures. Diamond polisher Joannes S. complained that a landlady, every time she saw him, made “movements as if she was sick of me.”63 Not only explicit gestures could be regarded as insulting, even body postures that were not, per se, denigrating in nature could still cause offence. A laugh, for example, could be interpreted as a very harmful gesture, when intended to ridicule. Many violent conflicts were started by a laugh. Factory worker Cornelia K.  complained that her ex-​husband, office clerk Theophiel G., had waited for her after work and had beaten her up because she and her colleagues were “laughing at him”.64 Typesetter Ludo van L. became furious when timber merchant Jozef H. (who had run away with his wife 22 years earlier) “smiled (…) at him in his customary mysteriously challenging way” in the toilets of his regular tavern.65 Student Lodewijk C. hit two women waiting at a tram stop for laughing at him as no one had opened the door in the house where he had rung the bell.66 A fifteen-​year-​old chandelier maker’s mate who had laughed at two quarrelsome boys publicly was immediately challenged by one of them to a duel, during which he was stabbed with a knife.67 Just like an insult, a laugh experienced as denigrating could lead to revenge actions not only immediately, but also a long time later. The resentment that publican Joseph C. had nursed towards dockworker Jozef van L. is very telling here.68 Because the latter had ridiculed him at his tavern several days before for “weeping”, publican Joseph van L. had denied him access to his tavern. In front of customers he had said “that Van L. would be beaten if he dared come in”. When the docker then entered the tavern, the innkeeper indeed attacked him to avenge himself.

61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

saa, MA 31704, report district 5, no. 1819, 10-​4-​1938. saa, MA 31789, report district 5, no. 1844, 20-​4-​1949. saa, MA 29319, report district 2, no. 1182, 11-​9-​1944. saa, MA 31630, report district 5, no. 2967, 18-​10-​1928. saa, MA 31632, report district 5, no. 3552, 9-​12-​1928. saa, MA 31879, report district 5, no. 1818, 24-​4-​1949. saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 891, 21-​4-​1912. saa, MA 31564, report district 5, no. 2982, 26-​12-​1912.

162 Chapter 2 The refusal of a dance was a distinctly derogatory gesture, especially since it always took place in a pre-​eminently public place like a dance hall or a tavern. With the refusal, the woman indicated that she was not interested in the requesting party’s attention. The statement of dockworker Constant R. about his rebuff by coffee grinder Theresia B. in a dance hall in the Kattenkwartier is very revealing in this respect:  “I asked Theresia B.  for a dance. When she refused, I said “then you shouldn’t stay in here,” and then I pushed her so that she fell outside. I did this because she affronted me by not wanting to dance with me.”69 The feeling of being looked at (“stared at”) was interpreted equally as an expression of disapproval. An unwelcome look could suffice to raise emotions.70 When a diamond polisher and a workman in the street got the feeling that two clerks “were looking at” them and laughed at them, they immediately asked “what they wanted”, which gave rise to a fight.71 A student who got the impression that a diamond polisher was looking at him and his girlfriend too explicitly told the person in question: “Excuse me sir, keep your eyes to yourself.”72 The following dialogue that warehouseman Jerom D. conducted with a stranger who was looking at him shows the intensity of the charge that a look could elicit.73 “He said he knew why he was looking at me. I then asked him if he thought that I was a Jew. He said I was not a Jew, but a germanophile.” An all too curious look in the family kitchen quickly passed as unauthorized meddling. The following dispute between mechanic Joseph P. and hotel clerk Henri van T. clearly indicates how low the tolerance threshold was towards ostentatious curiosity.74 Henri van T. wanted to leave his home, but his wife tried to prevent it because he was under the influence of alcohol. Passer-​by Joseph P. looked a little too curiously at the struggle taking place in the doorway of Henri van T.’s apartment, which aroused his anger. He asked Joseph P. “what he was looking for” and told him to move on. The latter replied with an insult, which ended up causing a fight.

69 70 71 72 73 74

saa, MA 24632, report district 2, no. 4565, 21-​7-​1912. This was no different in eighteenth-​century Burgundy, see:  Garnot, La violence et ses limites, 97. saa, MA 29696, report district 7, no. 100, 12-​4-​1912. saa, MA 29696, report district 7, no. 221, 17-​9-​1912. saa, MA 31879, report district 5, no. 1838, 9-​4-​1949. saa, MA 31630, report district 5, no. 2623, 19-​9-​1928.

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163

Violation and Defilement

Given the close connection between honour and the physical person, it is not surprising that the human body is the ideal medium to make clear a message of violation of reputation, humiliation or submission.75 In almost all cultural contexts, the desire to damage an intended opponent’s reputation translates into the ritual violation of his body. This includes inter alia phenomena such as decapitation, stigmatization, branding, excavation, mutilation and exhibition of corpses, shaving, and amputation of limbs. In very diverse forms of violence such as ethnic, religious and political conflicts, executions and wars between regular armies, such ritual violations of bodies are applied on a large scale. It is less known whether similar dynamics also played a role in less large-​scale and less radical forms of violence. A number of studies on daily violent interaction clearly show that this was indeed the case in Western Europe during the early modern period.76 For the contemporary period, much less research is available in this respect. In particular, an accurate analysis of the nature and the location of the injuries sustained from the everyday confrontations can offer some clarification in this respect. Such an analysis therefore forms an important test case for the proposition that violent interaction in early twentieth-​century Antwerp still had a pronounced ritual character. Such an analysis has two possible outcomes. On the one hand, it could appear that there is no pattern in the injuries, which would indicate that they were made randomly, in a completely arbitrary manner. In this scenario, the wound is a further result, without meaning in itself, of the interplay between an impulsive outburst of anger, the general desire to offend the opposing party and the accidental accessibility of the violated body part. Within this perspective, there is no room for strategic considerations and culturally charged actions. If, on the other hand, there is indeed a pattern in the injuries, this finding is an important contraindication to the supposed “senseless” nature of interpersonal violence. Such a pattern would indicate that injuries are not entirely arbitrary, but on the contrary are the result of ritualized actions aimed at maximizing damage to the reputation of the targeted party. Within this perspective, the attacker acts from a broader spectrum of motives and considerations than the simple desire to harm the opposing party. It therefore assumes that certain zones of the human body are of greater symbolic significance than others and that the violation of those 75 Blok, The Enigma, 33–​34. 76 See:  De Waardt, Ehrenhandel, 316; Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 324; Farr, Hands of Honour, 182–​183; Muchembled, La violence au village, 167 ff.; Van Dülmen, Der ehrlose Mensch, 14.

164 Chapter 2 specific zones will be experienced as additionally grievous.77 Any determination of the practice of the ritual violation of the body is also an important contra-​indication to the proposition that the concept of honour in contemporary Western European societies is disconnected from the physical person. People making statements to the Antwerp police about the injuries they had sustained during a fight usually did so with great accuracy. The fact that wounds are the only visible traces of a violent confrontation, and can therefore be displayed as one of the few relatively “hard” pieces of evidence, is likely not foreign to this accurate depiction. To convince the commissioner of the seriousness of the attack, the presentation of wounds was strategically perhaps the strongest argument. The precision of the declaration of wounds was also motivated by the wish to recover the possible financial consequences (especially medical costs and incapacity for work) later against the attacker. The emphasis with which pregnant women invoked their condition in their statements about injuries indicates the desire to hold the assailant to account in the event of a possible miscarriage as a result of the violence. Pregnancy was also invoked as an argument to be able to depict the opponent with greater verve as overstepping the norm. Housekeeper Maria de V. insisted that the worker Maria B. had hit her on her stomach “even though she knows that I have been with child for five months”.78 In the many hundreds of statements mentioning physical injury, declarants referred to various types of injuries. Cut wounds from knives and broken glass, bruises from being hit by fists or sticks, face burns from vitriol, black eyes, loss of blood, crushed ribs, broken limbs, teeth knocked in and hair pulled out are just a few examples of the injuries inflicted by Antwerpians in violent interactions. The accumulated conflict potential was often such that, when the proverbial last drop caused the bucket to overflow, the reaction was fast and furious. For the contemporary Western European observer who statistically only has a small chance of becoming the target of (at least) public violence in the course of his life, the conclusion after reading the numerous reports about such serious injuries seems obvious: for him these look like impulsive outbursts of uncontrolled anger visited upon the opponent’s body, with strategic-​symbolic considerations being of minor importance. Whether this superficial first impression of senseless violence corresponds to reality can only be determined by quantitative analysis.

77 See: Nedelmann, Gewaltsoziologie, 76–​77; Nolde, The Language of Violence, 141–​159. 78 saa, MA 24531, report district 2, no. 2660, 22-​4-​1912.

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For the quantitative analysis of the injuries per body zone, however, the problem arises what exactly can be regarded as a wound and what cannot. In order to have an admittedly fairly arbitrary, yet relatively “hard” criterion, only those wounds were selected that led to a visit to a doctor or hospitalization. (Given the possible legal implications, such data were carefully recorded by the district police in the report.) It can reasonably be assumed that injuries of a certain severity, and not the occasional bruises, bumps or scratches, were recorded in this way. In total, a limited corpus of 191 relatively serious injuries was filtered out of the many hundreds of statements in which injuries are mentioned. In order to verify the hypothesis that certain body zones were, given their specific symbolic charge, more strongly targeted than others, the injuries quoted in the statements were arranged by body part. A disproportionate representation of certain body zones can be interpreted in two ways. On the one hand, one can see a real reflection of the strategic preferences of the person inflicting the wound. On the other hand, it can be understood as a consequence of the fact that victims made more of injuries to certain parts of the body than to others. Ultimately, however, both interpretations come down to the same thing: certain body zones were connected to a much stronger degree with specific meanings than others. Apart from the biological-​physical differences between man and woman, it is known that gender-​specific charges are attributed to the bodies of the two sexes. It cannot therefore be entirely ruled out that the divergent significances attributed to the body parts of men and women also had an impact on the strategic considerations of violent actors. Put more simply, did attackers aim at different –​because gender-​specifically loaded –​body parts in men and women? The quantitative overview of the wounds, classified according to the targeted body zone, clearly invalidates the impression of a random physical distribution of the wounds (see Table 14). Both men and women reported head injuries to an overwhelming extent. The preference for the head is not accidental. In other historical and cultural contexts too, the head occupies a special position in the context of interpersonal violence. The fact that, of all body parts, the head is the favourite target of perpetrators of violence is related to its specific symbolic charge. In almost every culture, the head is considered the most important part of the body, symbolizing the status and personality of the person as a whole. A violation of the face is therefore one of the most powerful ritual forms of jeopardizing the reputation of the person being targeted. A person violated in his face felt his or her reputation damaged more than in the case of an injury to, say, an arm or a foot. That the face was deliberately targeted is apparent from the statement of a carpenter about his neighbour, worker Josefa E.: “She said to me (…) I’ll scratch your mug to pieces directly (…). She then

166 Chapter 2 table 14

arm leg hair head torso 100% = N

Percentage distribution of injuries per part of the body by sex

total

men

women

8.4 3.7 16.3 67.4 4.3 190

7.6 3.8 1.3 80.8 6.4 78

8.9 3.6 26.8 58.0 2.7 112

source: corpus of selected police reports

flew at me and hit my face with her hands, and I received several scratches on my face.”79 Hotel clerk Alfred B. stated that he could not work because of his appearance, because his wife had scratched his face open.80 Worker Julia van O. apparently had the same in mind when she scratched open the face of a female assembler who had gossiped about her. Before passing to action, she shouted: “I’ll make sure you can’t go to work today.”81 Whereas in certain male subcultures (such as in the student clubs of imperial Germany) injuries or scars in the face incurred in an honourable fight were regarded as proofs of virility, courage and strength, such significance was completely lacking in early twentieth-​century Antwerp. Even within the highly ritualized and strictly masculine context of the popular duel, such views were completely absent. The value ascribed to injuries in the urban environment of Antwerp clearly deviated from the significance that, according to the French moralist Henri Joly, was given to them in popular duels in the Flemish countryside. Joly described the symbolic load of injuries sustained in Flemish tavern disputes as follows: “… between friends it is a game, so to speak permitted and hallowed, to be covered with knife strokes to show that one is not afraid. One is almost proud of them, like German students too of the rapier cuts that they have both received and given in their duels”.82 On the contrary, there are indications that it was considered very disgraceful for a man in the poorer neighbourhoods of Antwerp to sustain a wound in the face during a fight. Rather 79 saa, MA 31792, report district 5, no. 2722, 3-​10-​1944. 80 saa, MA 31716, report district 5, no. 6293, 22-​12-​1938. 81 saa, MA 29273, report district 2, no. 1388, 29-​6-​1938. 82 Joly, La Belgique criminelle, 99. In the adjacent Dutch province of North Brabant, there was a similar practice with the same symbolic charge, the so-​called “basin cutting”, continued into the nineteenth century. See: Van den Brink, De grote overgang, 364–​365.

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than a proof of courage, it was viewed as an indication of humiliating weakness and the inability to defend oneself. A docker’s wife stated that she and not her husband was filing a complaint against a workman who had slashed his face with a knife because “he does not dare come out, as he is ashamed of his face”.83 The aforementioned incident seems to indicate that men in the Antwerp neighbourhoods in the first half of the twentieth century could literally lose face, just as in Mediterranean peasant and shepherd communities.84 While, given its high pars pro toto content, the head was in itself a cherished target for ritual injuries, under certain circumstances it was targeted for very specific reasons. In particular, the mutilation of the head was a strategy to brand the intended opponent as a transgressor of the norm in the sexual-​ relational field. A  violated face would publicly shame the target. The desire to make the transgressor sexually unattractive through mutilation was equally important in the choice of the face. In collective sanctions by women from a neighbourhood towards a “whore”, that is a woman who, by her dishonourable sexual behaviour (for example by yoking up with a married man) made life impossible for regular households, it was the face (and especially the nose) that was targeted.85 In case of revenge against the former partner by men and women whose relationships had broken, the violence was concentrated for similar reasons on the face. Only the weapons used by both sexes diverged. Women usually tried to maim their former husband or lover with vitriol, while men usually used their fists or knives. The preponderance of head wounds is so overwhelming in both sexes that the numbers of wounds to the other body zones are so small that it is not possible to derive gender-​specific patterns from them. The only exception in this connection is the pulling out of hair. All persons who declared that they had lost head hair during a fight were, without any exception, from the female sex. Particularly in violent confrontations between women, the warring parties targeted each other’s hair. But there are also examples of men grabbing women, especially their wives, by the hair. The conclusion that it was only women whose hair was torn out is undoubtedly related to the gender-​specific meanings associated with head hair in the Western European cultural context.86 Although scalp hair –​unlike, for example, beard hair in a man –​does not constitute an absolute indicator of the person’s gender, it is undoubtedly an important element in the physical differentiation of men and women. 83 saa, MA 24630, report district 2, no. 912, 15-​2-​1912. 84 In this connection, see: Roodenburg, Eer en oneer, 131. 85 See: Vrints, Het recht in eigen handen. 86 For the symbolic charge of head hair, see: Perrot, Le travail des apparences, 200–​203.

168 Chapter 2 Despite the gradual rise of minoritarian subversive trends in this context (in particular à la garçonne hairstyles from the 1920s onwards), men and women in Antwerp between 1910 and 1950 were usually easy to distinguish by their hair. Specifically, the (long) hair of women also carries out explicit sexual charges according to an old Western European and Mediterranean tradition. The previously widespread practice of sanctioning female violators of the norm by shaving their hair is in line with this. The fact that in twentieth-​ century Antwerp only women’s hair was pulled out is an indication that a gender-​specific threat to a woman’s honour and reputation was seen in this. Women’s hair was targeted for symbolic reasons in the case of violence. The outburst by housewife Louisa P.  against her daughter-​in-​law, cleaning lady Catharina van D., states this literally: “I’ll pull the hair out of your rotten head, you dirty whore.”87 The advice that housewife Nelly G. gave to a female neighbour about a dispute with another female neighbour also seems to indicate a strong symbolic meaning in the pulling out of women’s hair:  “You ought to have pulled her hair out of her head.”88 Given the much less pronounced charge of a man’s hair, the extra symbolic motivation to target his hair was lacking. The specific term “to fly at (i.e. attack) the hair” was only used with regard to women.89 Apart from the difference in the symbolic charge of men’s and women’s hair, other factors may also be conceivable. There is the prosaic reason that women’s usually longer hair offered more opportunities than the shorter hair of men. It is also conceivable that the specific notions of masculine courage and honour placed a brake on pulling it out, at least in the case of interpersonal violence. For example, it is very likely that, in the strongly regulated popular duelling between men, the pulling out of hair was forbidden. In such a confrontation aimed at measuring perceived male qualities like courage and strength, hair-​ pulling might present more of a threat to the perpetrator’s reputation than to that of the target. The hair-​puller would be open to the accusation of being unable to get his own in a “masculine” way, with his fists, and having instead to resort to pre-​eminently “female” forms of action. Given the importance attached in the Antwerp neighbourhoods to how one was seen by others, it is not surprising that outward appearance was an important preoccupation. The ritual defilement of the opponent’s body or clothing formed therefore a powerful attack on his respectability. The Antwerp

87 88 89

saa, MA 31710, report district 5, no. 3891, 18-​8-​1938. saa, MA 31788, report district 5, no. 1509, 13-​5-​1944. saa, MA 31560, report district 5, no. 451, 21-​2-​1912.

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population associated uncleanliness with the lifestyle of marginal groups. Cleanliness and uncleanliness also had pronounced moral connotations in the Antwerp neighbourhoods. Violations of the norm and the transgressors were explicitly associated with dirt. The symbolic charge made dirt a very suitable instrument with which to strike at opponents’ honour. The ritual defilement of the adversary in a conflict is rooted in widespread opinions about the connection between cleanliness, morality and respectability. Just as anthropologist Mary Douglas determined for so-​called “primitive” cultures, in the same way the early twentieth-​century Antwerp population used dirt as a creative force.90 By dirtying an opponent’s body or clothing, one not only expressed one’s aversion to him in a symbolic way, but consciously aimed at public humiliation. In this area, the Antwerp population applied, in informal conflict resolution between people, a visual language that exhibits a high degree of affinity with the ritual defilement of violators of norms in informal collective sanctions such as charivaris.91 Through the ritual defilement, the opponent was, as it were, declared “dirty” and thus forced into social isolation. The status-​reducing loading of dirt explains why the slightest defilement could give rise to reactions that appear at first sight exaggerated. A travelling salesman thus immediately lodged a complaint against his fellow-​drinkers after they had sprinkled his hat and clothes with powder as a joke.92 Many violent confrontations also originated in ritual defilements. Saliva was an extremely suitable medium for the ritual defilement of an opponent. Apart from practical reasons (such as continuous and immediate availability and simple projection), its specific symbolic charge lies at the basis of the frequent use of saliva in conflicts. One of the central facets of the civilization process, as Norbert Elias put it, is the greatly increased distance from a number of bodily functions.93 Since the late Middle Ages, according to Elias, a process has taken place in Western European societies, in which the tolerance thresholds for spitting have been raised, taking it from a generally accepted human need into a shameful habit. Finally, in large parts of Western society, the need for spitting, once considered so natural, almost completely disappeared. While in other cultures saliva sometimes had distinctly positive connotations under certain circumstances, the aversion towards saliva in Western European societies steadily increased over the centuries. The negative view of saliva in

90 Douglas, Purity and Danger. 91 Rooijakkers, Vieren en markeren, 226–​228. 92 saa, MA 31699, report district 5, no. 190, 5-​1-​1938. 93 Specifically with regard to spitting, see: Elias, Über den Prozess, 208–​216.

170 Chapter 2 twentieth-​century Antwerp society explains its frequent use in ritual defilements. Possibly there is also a relationship with the biological-​bodily language that is used in collective sanctions to brand violators of the norm.94 Gerard Rooijakkers refers in this context to the conception of the body as a metaphor of society. People who place themselves out of this, by violating the prevailing norms and values, are often symbolically associated with body secretions in collective sanctions, being ritually tainted with saliva, urine or vomit. The connection of bodily fluids such as saliva with shame and social isolation was apparently also played out in interpersonal conflicts to put pressure on an intended opponent. In virtually all references to the use of saliva, the declarants declare that the spitting was into the face of the opposing party. Given that the face is representative of the person as a whole, the concentration of spitting on it is not surprising. Spitting in the face was considered very humiliating and it was therefore also the direct cause of numerous fights, functioning regularly as the ignition mechanism that caused an already tense situation to explode. The following dispute in a tavern in the Dambruggestraat is a striking example of the escalating capacity that spitting in the face carried.95 Waitress Paulina de K. had called in the bar owner, dockworker Frans B., because she thought that five boozers of Dutch-​Jewish origin were laughing at her because of her dialectical pronunciation. The pub owner made as if to fight by taking off his jacket. Piqued by an attempt by diamond worker Emmanuel van L.  to calm down spirits, he spat in his face, whereupon Emmanuel van L. spat back. For the company of drinking brothers who initially wanted to calm the situation, the spitting was the starting signal to attack and to smash the tavern to pieces. Once someone had spat, an open confrontation was apparently inevitable. Only in one example was the saliva aimed not on the face, but on the clothes of the targeted party. Worker Melanie D. filed a complaint against dockworker Arthur van G. for publicly humiliating her in a tavern by laughing at her, insulting her and spitting on her clothes.96 Apart from saliva, water was a favourite instrument for the public defilement of an intended opponent. There are countless reports in the police archives of people who got a bucket of water thrown over them. Dirty water was used by preference in such actions in order to defile the opponent publicly. In a dispute between neighbours, in the street and in front of several neighbours, worker Maria D. poured a “bucket of dirty street water” over the body of her 94 Rooijakkers, Vieren en markeren, 228. 95 saa, MA 31559, report district 5, no. 613, 25-​2-​1912. 96 saa, MA 24630, report district 2, no. 1122, 4-​3-​1912.

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opponent housewife Coleta B.97 The use of contaminated water was in line with the strategic intention to socially isolate the counterparty by publicly declaring him or her unclean. With this aim in mind, a specific scolding vocabulary was used, full of the physical impurity of the opponent (“dirty” and “lice” in various combinations) and the targeted woman was called to keep her house clean before showing herself back on the street. To reinforce that message with body language, the opponent was deliberately defiled with dirty water. A bucket of water was also an excellent way of getting an opponent who came to kick up a rumpus in front of the house to move off. Waitress Rosalia M., who sought by making noise in the street at night, to force tavern-​keeper Nathalia L.  to return clothing left with her, had a bucket of water poured over her from the window so that her “clothes were completely wet and soiled”, whereupon she proceeded without more ado to the police station to file a complaint.98 Not only the health risk of wet clothing in winter cold, but especially the fear of being laughed at by the neighbourhood, generally quickly moved the person undergoing such treatment to stop the squabbling in front of the house. Inside a tavern, a glass of beer could fulfil the same function as the bucket of dirty water on the street and in the stairwell.99 One finds repeated traces in the corpus of selected conflicts of the practice of emptying a glass of beer over the body and clothing of an intended opponent. Again, what we have here is not necessarily an impulsive outburst of uncontrolled anger, but rather a deliberate humiliation of the opponent that was all the more serious for being carried out publicly, at the focal point of informal sociability par excellence. Preferably, the pint was poured over the head of the intended opponent, the tabernacle of his respectability. The ritual pouring of a pint over an opponent formed in this way the ignition mechanism for many violent conflicts. The fact that the accidental spilling of beer onto someone, for example as a result of an unwanted jolt in an overcrowded tavern, could provoke a violent reaction, indicates that this was seen as a serious threat to a person’s reputation, with an accident very quickly suspected of being a conscious strategic attack. In a tavern in the Falconrui, for example, a violent confrontation ensued between two regular customers after sailor Jean M. had knocked over a glass and dirtied the dress of worker Maria H.100 Maria H. was convinced of bad intent, while Jean H. maintained his innocence. Maria H. turned to revenge, throwing two glasses in the direction of Jean H., hitting him on the head and wounding him. 97 saa, MA 31702, report district 5, no. 981, 18-​2-​1938. 98 saa, MA 24629, report district 2, no. 34, 26-​12-​1911. 99 See: Vrints, De codes van de kroeg. 100 saa, MA 29219, report district 2, no. 293, 19-​2-​1928.

172 Chapter 2 Anyone looking for a violent confrontation had a powerful tool, in the form of spilt beer or other beverage, to force an opponent into a fight. 2.5

Territorial Strategies

The importance of non-​verbal communication is fully apparent from the spatial dimension of many conflicts. Space is not a purely physical category. People appropriate space and connect its use with multiple meanings. In other words, space also has a specific cultural charge. In the analysis of conflicts, the spatial background against which they are played out cannot be neglected. Anthropologist Anton Blok repeatedly pointed out that, for an understanding of the logic behind a seemingly “senseless” phenomenon, it is important to pay attention to its spatial dimension.101 The (often ritualistic) use of space in conflicts is an important key to unlocking the meaning of the violence. A specialist in the Northern Irish Troubles explicitly talks about “spatial formations of violence”.102 Since the pioneering work of Robert Muchembled on violence in early modern Artezia, the historian involved in the study of conflicts cannot but take a position with regard to the spatial, territorial dimension of interpersonal violence.103 According to Muchembled –​who was inspired by the work of sociologist E.T. Hall104 –​people observe a certain degree of distance in social interaction. Depending on the nature and the circumstances of the interaction, the distance to be respected is greater or smaller. In other words, there exist around the physical person invisible boundaries which may not be overstepped in social interaction. People insist that this certain degree of distance, so to speak their personal “territory”, be respected. Muchembled noted that countless violent conflicts in early modern Artezia were motivated by the desire to defend personal “territory” against uninvited intruders. Violation of personal “territory” was equivalent to threatening a person’s reputation. Here, Muchembled implicitly followed in the footsteps of German sociologist George Simmel. It is important, however, to avoid seeing, in the violent response to an unwanted touch, evidence of a limited degree of emotional management, such as Norbert Elias, following Johan Huizinga (“the fierceness of life”), has proposed for late medieval society.105 The interpretation of violence as an initially physical 1 01 Blok, The Enigma, 32. 102 Feldman, Formations of Violence. 103 Muchembled, La violence au village, 260–​268. 104 Hall, The Silent Language, 162 ff. 105 Elias, Über den Prozess, Huizinga, Herfsttij, 5–​33.

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reflex that is created, as it were, outside the consciousness of the actor testifies to a marked reductionism. Without falling into an all too mechanical vision, whereby every unexpected physical contact automatically and inevitably led to a violent response, Muchembled’s vision opens up interesting perspectives for the study of violence in a contemporary society. The mechanism whereby undesirable physical contact formed the flashpoint for a violent conflict can certainly also be found in twentieth-​century Antwerp. For example, diamond-​polisher Peter H. explained that he was scolded in the street by diamond-​polisher Joseph K. for “touching his legs” in passing with his cane.106 Warehouseman Jan D. retorted to an undesirable touch from a passer-​by in the street with the words: “Do that once more, and I’ll hit you”.107 In the busy bustle of the tavern, uncontrolled oversteppings of the invisible boundaries of personal “territory” regularly led to violent confrontations.108 People who were accidentally jolted or kicked often reacted particularly forcefully. A violation of the physical person could not simply be left to rest. Especially where a suspicion existed that the unwanted jolt or kick was not a coincidence, but an expression of hostility, then it had to be responded to. Clerk Napoleon H. and cabinetmaker César C., between whose families a long-​running feud existed, accused each other of having “deliberately” run into the other, which resulted in a fight.109 This of course does not mean that an unwanted touch ipso facto gave rise to a violent response. It is possible that in many cases the parties involved arranged such accidental incidents amicably (for example by apologies) so that they left no traces in the police archives. There was no question of automatism, but the connection between a transgression of the personal sphere and a violent response should not simply be dismissed as irrelevant. The existence of a personal “territory” around the body that could not be violated without punishment is evident from the ritual codes that surrounded the popular duel.110 The symbolic starting shot of a violent confrontation consisted in a considerable number of cases of the conscious penetration of the personal “territory” of the intended opponent. Someone wanting to lure his opponent into a violent response came much closer to the latter’s body than was customary in peaceful social traffic. The opponent was spurred in a ritual-​like manner into a reaction by touching him at breast height.

1 06 saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 1810, 21-​7-​1912. 107 saa, MA 31711, report district 5, no. 4481, 19-​9-​1938. 108 See: Vrints, De codes van de kroeg. 109 saa, MA 24630, report district 2, no. 1287, 27-​3-​1938. 110 Cf. infra.

174 Chapter 2 The situation was particularly explosive when the ignoring of the implicit rules of conduct regarding keeping a certain distance was motivated by the desire to acquire priority or superiority over that other person.111 Here, a certain party tries to make an act that, if not provoking a reaction, would at least give him or her the appearance of superiority. Especially in public or semi-​public places, such conflicts were the order of the day. On the street in particular, the issue of priority was very sensitive. Its public nature forced people to respond promptly to provocative claims of priority. The absence of a reaction would be understood as a victory for the opposing party who had succeeded in establishing its superiority. The following incident that took place in the evening of 13 April 1912 in the Seefhoek is a good illustration of the need to respond immediately.112 Two sisters R., working as a tailor and seamstress, were chatting with two men on the pavement of their street, when housewife E. from the same street wanted to pass with her daughter and her boyfriend. The sisters R. refused to make room to let Mrs E. and her retinue pass. Reaction to that public humiliation was quick in coming: the sisters R. were scratched in the face and insulted as “rotten whores, dirty rags and clots”. Also in more closed circles, not giving way could create problems. Just like on the street, the failure to give passage immediately in a semi-​public space was enough to provoke a reaction. 11-​year-​old Mariëtte W., for example, had a bucket of water thrown over her because, in the eyes of a grown-​up neighbour, she had not cleared off the stairs sufficiently quickly after a visitor had rung for him.113 Housewife Francisca de B. filed a complaint against her upstairs neighbour, tailor’s assistant Frans S., for beating and insulting her in a dispute about the use of the front door.114 He attacked her because, to his sneering “away from the door, so that I can go in and out”, she apparently replied that he could easily pass. Frans S.’s version of the facts differs totally from this: he states that Francisca de B. had responded to his request to “let the people through” with a haughty “not even for a king”. Clothing in a broader sense formed a favourite target for territorial-​physical attack strategies. Countless are the reports in the statements to the police commissioner of torn shirts, ripped jackets and frayed skirts. The sense of detail with which the consequences of fights on items of clothing were described clearly indicates that this was very important. Obviously, behind the 111 This was the case similarly in early modern France:  Garrioch, Neighbourhood, 33–​37; Muchembled, La violence au village, 262–​263. 112 saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 902, 13-​4-​1912. 113 saa, MA 31579, report district 5, no. 95, 8-​1-​1917. 114 saa, MA 31787, report district 5, no. 1072, 12-​4-​1944.

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meticulous reconstruction of the damage caused lies in the first instance the desire to be reimbursed as fully as possible by the counterparty. However, one should not forget the clear link that existed between clothing and public reputation.115 In the first half of the twentieth century, the various social groups in Antwerp were still easily recognizable by their dress. Whether someone wore a cap or a hat was not so much the expression of a highly individual choice, but rather was closely related to the social position occupied by the person in question. Well-​groomed “posh” clothing was the externalization of a socially respectable position. The working class too emphasized the connection between clothing and respectability. The violation of clothing was taken very seriously as a public affront, being visible to everyone in the neighbourhood or in the tavern.116 One’s reputation was at stake, as damaged clothing made it clear that one had suffered a defeat. Since clothing was the boundary between a person and his environment, people perceived the touching of clothing as a sort of transgression of borders. Violation of clothing was equivalent to an attack on bodily integrity, on the physical person. The fact that, in statements, bodily injuries and damage to clothes are generally cited together and without distinction is a clear indication in that direction. Although it is no easy task to reconstruct the specific meanings of garments, it appears from a large number of conflicts, in which attackers deliberately directed the damage to the opponent’s clothing, that clothes were indeed symbolically loaded. Anyone who touched the clothes actually touched the person himself. The quarrel between housekeeper Joanna B. and street-​seller Maria C. is a good illustration of the strategy to hit the targeted person by damaging his or her clothing.117 At the exit of the unemployment benefits office in the Gratiekapelstraat, Joanna B. had called Maria C. a “rotten dog” and “rotten dirty rap”, to which Maria C. had replied: “It’s because you’re having it off with my husband that you call me names.” Maria C.’s statement about what happened next indicates that the tearing of clothes was not necessarily a secondary consequence of a fight, but could well fit into a conscious strategy:  “I confess that I  (…) returned, because I could not stomach the fact that that woman had insulted

115 In this connection, see for early modern Holland:  Dekker, Handwerkmen, 123 ff. For eighteenth-​century Paris, see: Farge, Vivre, 97. For the role of clothing as a visible indicator of class in twentieth-​century Great Britain, see: Bourke, Working-​Class Cultures, 3. For the meanings attached to clothing in a French working-​class neighbourhood, see: Burdy, Le Soleil Noir, 156–​158. 116 For the territorial charge of the violation of clothing, see: De Waardt, Ehrenhandel, 316; Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 327. 117 saa, MA 24648, report district 2, no. 146, 31-​1-​1917.

176 Chapter 2 me, and that’s why I grabbed her in the Gratiekapelstraat and pulled her fur to pieces.” Given the special symbolic charge of the head, it is not surprising that headgear was one of the most important targets in territorial-​bodily attack strategies. In the first half of the twentieth century, the wearing of headgear by the Antwerp population was still common among all social groups, albeit with the various social groups being distinguished one from the other by their headgear. The headgear was a device of social distinctiveness and therefore strongly linked to notions of respectability.118 Certainly, men hardly ever left home with their heads uncovered. The importance of putting a hat on one’s head is clearly seen, a contrario, from the following domestic dispute.119 After protracted quarrelling with his wife, housewife Anna R., the retired Emile S. wanted to leave his home to visit a friend. His wife did not agree with this and took Emile S.’s hat off. Her motivation to do so and the reaction of her husband indicate how deeply rooted was the habit of leaving the house only once one’s head was covered: “Since he wanted to leave again, I took his hat off, not with ill intent. He told me ‘Then I’ll go without a hat’.” The strong symbolic charge of the hat is also evident from the fact that it was lifted or even taken off when greeting people. Thus, housewife Octavie P. motivated the statement that an insult was not intended for her sister-​in-​law with the argument that she “would have taken her hat off when speaking to her”.120 The throwing down of the hat was equal to a provocation and therefore formed a favourite strategy to move the intended opposing party into a reaction. Worker Edmondus D. declared that he had attacked sailor Pavels T. because the latter had grabbed his hat in a full tavern and had thrown it to the ground.121 The fact that the throwing off of headgear was not an unintended consequence of the commotion of a fight, but a conscious, strongly symbolically charged act aimed at humiliating the opponent, is evident from the seriousness with which declarants reconstructed the gesture in front of the police. In 23 of the selected violent conflicts, explicit mention is made of the tearing off of headgear. In a single example, the ritual of the tearing off of the hat was replied to in kind.122 In his revenge for his lover, worker Adrienne M., tearing the hat on his head into pieces in the De Toekomst tavern, metalworker Robert 118 For the symbolic charge of affronts involving headgear in the early modern period, see: De Waardt, Ehrenhandel, 315–​317; Muchembled, L’invention, 223–​227. 119 saa, MA 29734, report district 7, no. 1249, 27-​1-​1944. 120 saa, MA 31879, report district 5, no. 1844, 20-​4-​1949. 121 saa, MA 29276, report district 2, no. 2182, 16-​10-​1938. 122 saa, MA 31629, report district 5, no. 975, 16-​4-​1928.

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D. threw her hat under the tram. The humiliating effect of throwing off the hat took place, according to historian David Garrioch, on two levels.123 On the one hand, it involved a public negation of the social pretension that spoke out of the choice of a particular type of headgear. On the other hand, it is clear that a person succeeding in throwing off the opponent’s hat, and at the same time keeping his own headgear in place, symbolically expressed his superiority. The humiliation was complete when the hat was not only torn off, but also taken away. When the attacker managed to take possession of the hat and display it as a trophy, the public powerlessness of the targeted party was made clear. It is noteworthy that declarants insisted in a number of statements on the fact that the attacker did not simply throw off the headgear, but took it off and consciously threw it onto the ground. It seems that in such cases the attacker was aiming at a ritual defilement of the hat. The soiling of the headwear represented a conscious downgrading. The symbolic charge of removing the opponent’s headgear took on a more pronounced ritual character when the attacker deliberately destroyed the hat in question. In order to humiliate the person, not only was the head gear removed, but the externalization of his respectability and identity was destroyed. Tavern-​keeper Anna van H. tore up dockworker Franciscus S.’s hat because he had wrought havoc in her tavern and made efforts to wind his way into her daughter’s affections.124 When housewife Maria L. caught her husband’s former lover, housewife Lucia L., along with her husband in the street, she got into a fight with her.125 Lucia L. declared later in respect of Maria L.’s behaviour: “She pulled the hat off my head and tore it completely apart.” Since the person concerned wanted in the first instance to express her anger and moral disapproval of her rival’s behaviour, the tearing off of the hat may involve a sexual component here. The humiliation was complete when the destruction of the headgear was combined with its defilement through contact with the ground. The sisters Elisa and Louisa H., both street vendors, received similar treatment in a dance hall on the Ossenmarkt.126 Street seller Maria K. had learned from gossip from a group of young people from the nearby Kattenkwartier that both sisters, who lived in Sint-​Andries, had supposedly called her “dissolute”. Displeased by this, Maria K.  removed both sisters’ hats, trampling them underfoot to express her anger and disgust. The territorial sensitivity of the inhabitants of Antwerp was, however, more comprehensive than the concern about the limits of their own bodies. It is 1 23 Garrioch, Neighbourhood, 43. 124 saa, MA 24632, report district 2, no. 4622, 29-​7-​1912. 125 saa, MA 29316, report district 2, no. 135, 27-​1-​1944. 126 saa, MA 24630, report district 5, no. 969, 20-​2-​1912.

178 Chapter 2 abundantly clear from numerous violent conflicts that this also extended to locations that, for various reasons, they considered meaningful. In his analysis of the interaction between people, Erving Goffman makes the distinction between three territorial circles.127 The closer the circle to the physical person, the more intimate in character. In other words, various degrees of secrecy are linked to the three territorial circles. For example, fewer people are admitted into the bedroom than into the kitchen. People make territorial claims in places that they regard as “own” and the intensity of those claims increases as one gets closer to the physical person. People try to enforce respect for the distinct “territories”. In practice, this is done, among other ways, by actions that are intended to make clear the appropriation of the places involved. A passenger on the train will thus try to reserve for himself the largest possible space around his physical person by strategically placing his luggage and the well-​considered choice of a particular seat. Historian Martin Dinges points to the value of the territoriality concept for historical research.128 He indicates that the use of spatiality varies greatly over time and that it is therefore the task of historians to explore the geographical and historical variations in the use of space. In particular, Martin Dinges emphasizes the importance of the use of space in reputation-​based conflicts. In his wake, the following sections attempt to find out how, during the first half of the twentieth century, Antwerpians consciously violated the territorial claims of their intended opponents to strike at their reputations. Antwerpians structured the space in which they lived by assigning specific meanings to specific locations. The social interaction of the Antwerp population displayed clear territorial dynamics. People appropriated particular places that they went on to see as their personal territory. Such territorial claims, however, were only real as soon as or as long as they were recognized and respected by other people. After all, they could never be considered as permanently acquired. They needed therefore to be continuously (re)confirmed, secured and defended. From that perspective, it is not surprising that reputation-​based conflicts had a pronounced spatial character. In this connection, Arlette Farge speaks of “a certain ritualization of the use of space”).129 The specific locations where such confrontations took place were usually far from accidental, but on the contrary, often the result of conscious strategic choices. Places such as taverns, shops, homes, neighbourhoods and workplaces are far from neutral, but on the contrary are of great practical and therefore also symbolic significance 1 27 Goffman, Relations. 128 Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 313 ff. 129 Farge, Vivre, 9.

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for their users.130 The researcher who wants to understand why conflicts are being fought at a certain place must also try to reconstruct that symbolic charge.131 By seeking to incite a conflict at a location of particular significance to the intended opponent, the attacker put him under heavy pressure. The opposing party’s territorial claims were consciously denied and even explicitly violated. In view of the symbolic charge of such spaces, the targeted person perceived the violation of his territorial claims as a major threat to his public reputation. An appropriate response was therefore required. The concern for reputation was all the more well-​founded given that it was precisely at those symbolically important locations that a meaningful audience was usually present. Attackers took that presence into account and were very conscious of it. The decision to violate the territorial claims of the intended party was clearly motivated by the desire to publicly damage his reputation. It served a clear theatrical purpose: the attacker chose a suitable “arena” for his action, a location that easily allowed viewers to witness the social drama that was taking place. In order to strike the intended opponent, the players used spaces that were of particular significance to the former, with the additional advantage of being able to appeal to an audience relevant to the opponent. With a view to causing maximum damage to the targeted party’s reputation in front of a relevant public, the actors usually chose the place of the planned confrontation with great care. It is certainly no coincidence, for example, when an impatient creditor visits the regular tavern of the person who owes him money in order to settle the dispute. The tavern, the focal point par excellence of (male) informal sociability, was extremely suitable for placing pressure on his opponent to settle his debt by questioning his reputation in front of a relevant audience.132 Nor was it a meaningless detail that a deceived woman chose the street of her husband’s lover to publicly denounce her behaviour. Where else than in her own street, where everyone knew her, could effective pressure be put on the reputation of the adulteress? Conversely, a deceived woman could regard as a provocative humiliation the fact of her husband’s mistress coming strolling through her street. Housekeeper Jeanne van R. admitted to having hit housekeeper Germaine S. in the face, as she suspected she had a relationship with her husband and “as she always comes to challenge me in our 130 Particularly inspiring here are the pertinent comments of Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 318 ff. For the significance of various locations in nineteenth-​and twentieth-​century British cities, see: Pooley, Patterns, 430–​434. 131 De Waardt, De geschiedenis van de eer, 351. 132 See: Vrints, De codes van de kroeg.

180 Chapter 2 street”.133 The practice of people standing “waiting for” their opponents at certain well-​defined locations indicates that it was not exactly irrelevant where a conflict was fought out. Housewife Maria van L. and her daughter were waiting for a stoker in his street with the express intention of shaming him after his sending them a letter that they considered unacceptable.134 On returning home, he was greeted by the two women with a cannonade of insults. The effectiveness of this strategy is evidenced by the fact that the stoker asked the quarrellers to move from the public arena into the private sphere to preserve his reputation: “Come inside and don’t argue in the street.” The only way to expose such territorial strategies consists of a quantitative analysis of the locations where the violent conflicts took place. Earlier, it was indicated that a link existed between the relationship of the warring parties and the location where the conflict was fought out. Violent intra-​familial conflicts took place mainly indoors, violence between neighbours in the semi-​ public parts of the house, and the “encounters” category in the tavern or on the street. In the case of intra-​family conflicts, the perpetrator certainly had nothing to gain from publicity. Intra-​familial squabbling in public could only damage the family’s reputation in informal social networks. Not only did families who fought their quarrels in the public disturb the peace of the neighbourhood, but their internal instability and uncontrolled behaviour also marked them as unreliable partners for reciprocity relationships. There is therefore every reason to assume that perpetrators in the family context preferred private, domestic locations to avoid public interest. The targets of family violence were also probably not entirely insensitive to the threat of scandal brought about by disputes in public. There was undoubtedly a tendency to keep up a smokescreen of a harmonious family life, as far as this was possible in the crowded housing conditions. The category of “encounters”, that is quarrels between friends, colleagues and strangers –​the relational categories par excellence of the concern for honour –​took place only to a very small extent in private. This small share does not necessarily prove that the integrity and private character of a potential opponent’s home was respected. It is also a result of the desire to undertake the confrontation in a place that, owing to its public character, offered a suitable arena for informal conflict resolution. From a strategic point of view, the inside of the opponent’s home, away from the eyes of others, was a bad choice. If one had already decided to proceed to a confrontation, it was above all important to be

1 33 saa, MA 31788, report district 5, no. 1464, 19-​5-​1944. 134 saa, MA 24630, report district 2, no. 2379, 29-​3-​1912.

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able to arouse the interest of a relevant audience. Obviously, the reputational game could not be conducted effectively in closed circles. Locations with a pronounced public character were therefore preferred. Whereas today, public violence is mainly associated with a limited number of isolated spatial segments of the urban fabric, the so-​called no-​go areas in back streets, such a pattern of pronounced compartmentalization was virtually unknown in the twentieth-​ century Antwerp neighbourhoods.135 Because of the way reputation-​based violence was directed at the gaze of others, most of the public violence took place in the spatial focal points of informal social life, such as the tavern, the street or the shop. The observation that the public violence cannot be situated in a few isolated areas, under the control of “criminal” gangs, but on the contrary took place in the spatial heart of the daily existence of the inhabitants of Antwerp’s working-​class districts, is significant. It is a further indication that the public violence was not initially the affair of a “marginal” or “criminal” minority, but was a pronouncedly demonstrative interaction ritual used by broad sections of the population. The crucial role it played in informal social life also implied that, spatially speaking, it took place at the focal points of social life. The spatial distribution of registered conflicts is a revealing indicator of the nature of social life as it existed in the early twentieth-​century Antwerp neighbourhoods. The by no means negligible, but still minority, proportion of domestic violence indicates that the impact of the often presupposed privatization process on the daily life of the lower social groups should not be overly invoked. On the basis of the spatial distribution of the violence, social life displayed, on the contrary, a large degree of resemblance to the fundamental public life of cities during the ancien régime. Unlike in nineteenth-​century Paris, where no less than half of the recorded violence took place in taverns, figures for the Antwerp neighbourhoods between 1910 and 1950 tell us that the public bar had not completely absorbed the former street life.136 The fact that, spatially speaking, violence in the streets was the most important category in the selected cases of violence indicates that a vital street life continued to exist in the neighbourhoods of early twentieth-​century Antwerp. Unlike in Paris, where a consciously controlled urban development (“Hausmannisation”) had inflicted

135 On the distinction between the period of the ancien régime, when public violence took place in the heart of public life, and the current concentration of public violence in specific spatial compartments, see: Schwerhoff, Aktenkundig, 124–​125; Schwerhoff, Insel des Friedens, 150; Farge, Vivre, 160; Garnot, La violence et ses limites, 93 and 96. On the dividing up of contemporary cities into zones with different safety risks, see: Bielefeld, Gewalt, Nachbarschaft, 9–​10. 136 Scott Haine, The world of the Paris cafe, 176.

182 Chapter 2 a serious blow to the vitality of street life, the street retained its function as the focal point of informal social life.137 Although in nineteenth-​century Antwerp the bourgeois administration had –​albeit on a more modest scale –​pursued a somewhat comparable urban development policy, partly aimed at increasing the level of control over the working population by depriving the street of its social function as much as possible and relegating it to a mere traffic function, the effect of this policy was apparently limited to the streets in richer neighbourhoods and to major traffic arteries in and around the city centre.138 In the poorer neighbourhoods, street life remained largely intact as long as its functionality was undisputed from the perspective of the lower social groups themselves. Given the significance of the tavern and of semi-​public places in houses as “arenas” for informal conflict resolution, public social life was not exclusively oriented towards the streets. Violence in shops involves two different phenomena: on the one hand disputes between customers, and on the other conflicts between customers and shopkeepers. The shop as the focal point of informal sociability was a perfect arena for shaming another customer. A shop was, as a location, ideally suited for specifically attacking the creditworthiness of the intended opponent. The confrontation between two sisters-​in-​law in a shop in the Seefhoek is an illustration of the vicious sophistication with which this could happen.139 Housewife Octavie P.  humiliated her sister-​in-​law, housewife Maria van der H., by saying to the shopkeeper: “I’ll pay for them now even though I’d planned to put them on the slate.” The latter retorted that this was an attack on her, which Octavie P. confirmed with a battery of insults (“It certainly is (…) go and pay your debt to your sister in Turnhout, your sewing machine has been seized for the debt (…) you do nothing but badmouth people”) and a kick against her leg. Particularly vulnerable to strategic territorial attacks were the shopkeepers themselves, being highly dependent for their businesses on their reputations in the neighbourhood. The justification that shopkeeper Mendel H.  cited in front of the police for turning out a dissatisfied customer illustrates this sensitivity: “I did this because she was making a scene by hitting the cash register, and because of this many people were standing in the street in front of my shop.”140 The dissatisfied customer in question, housekeeper Joanna C., 137 In this case, the situation was similar to that in the nineteenth-​century working-​class districts of Birmingham. See: Bramwell, Public Space, 31–​54. 138 For the attempts to strengthen control over the working class through urban development, see: Lis, Proletarisch wonen, 325–​366. Specifically for Antwerp in the nineteenth century, see by the same author: Lis, Social change. 139 saa, MA 31879, report district 5, no. 1844, 20-​4-​1949. 140 saa, MA 24634, report district 2, no. 5712, 18-​11-​1912.

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appears, from witness statements, to have played very consciously on the vulnerability of the shopkeeper’s reputation; she had returned to the shop after an earlier conflict with a friend and had started to hit the counter to put pressure on the shopkeeper to say that she was in the right. People with accounts to settle with a shopkeeper or a publican were very aware of his material dependence on his reputation. In order to exert maximum pressure, they sought to create a quarrel in their target’s shop or tavern. The statement of shopkeeper Gustaaf D. about the dispute in his shop with commercial traveller Henri B. is a good illustration of this strategy: “B. came out to my house to have an invoice paid. I told him I could not pay at the moment and he started to make a show in my store. I just said that he could go out through the door by which he had come in.”141 Butcher Gerard K. feared public rumour just as much in showing his maid’s father, Jozef D., to the door.142 The latter, all excited, had entered the butcher’s shop and demanded his daughter’s wage arrears and her clothes, saying that the butcher had ill-​treated her. The response from Gerard K. indicates that he was ready to settle the dispute anywhere, except in his shop: “No noise here and you outside.” The public nature of a shop did not make it any easier to remove customers who had begun to create a scandal. Violence regularly ended up being used to remove an unwilling customer who thought he could walk and stand wherever he wanted. For example, car driver Oscar M. reacted testily, in the context of a dispute over the sale of potatoes, to the request from shopkeeper Paulina S. to go and make his racket outside, with a remark that indicates that the right to throw someone out, given the supposedly public character of the shop, was not undisputed: “I come here into a public place and I come here whenever I want and do what I want and not what you want.”143 Fear of a disturbance could grip the shopkeeper so much that he or she eventually gave in to the quarrelling party. Shopkeeper Antoinette V. stated that she had climbed down after the wide-​open threat from sales representative Maria D.: “Then she said she wouldn’t leave the shop until the matter was resolved, or else ‘I’ll walk into the street in front of your shop and tell the passers-​by what kind of people you are, because that’s what happens to people like you’.”144 Only in a remarkably small number of cases was the intended opponent deliberately searched out at his workplace in order to shame him. A very limited percentage of the recorded conflicts were fought on the shop floor, and most 1 41 142 143 144

saa, MA 29270, report district 2, no. 599, 16-​3-​1938. saa, MA 24633, report district 2, no. 4906, 19-​8-​1912. saa, MA 29316, report district 2, no. 276, 19-​2-​1944. saa, MA 29833, report district 7, no. 2619, 20-​9-​1938.

184 Chapter 2 of these disputes were between colleagues and were immediately settled. It is easy to understand how employees, out of a concern for their employers’ reactions, preferred to keep mutual conflicts on the shop floor out of the public eye. Driver Henri E. stated to the police that he had been dismissed from Bell for fighting in the factory.145 Less obvious is the finding that there are just as few people coming to make a disturbance at their opponent’s workplace. Maybe there was tacit consensus that it was not the “done thing” to settle a conflict at a workplace? Or are there structural reasons that explain that it was strategically less interesting to confront the intended opponent there? Was the risk of problems with the opponent’s employer overestimated? Did the intended counterpart’s colleagues form a less suitable “public” than informal networks of neighbourhood sociability? In any case, the furious reactions in the rare cases that it did happen show that an attempt to damage a person’s reputation at his or her workplace was not taken lightly. The following statement by a hotel clerk who was shamed at his work by his wife, and who had struck her in the face in reply, does not leave much to the imagination in this respect: “… I want her not to return and make a scandal, because if she comes there again, I’ll give her ten times worse”.146 Saleswoman Maria van C.  motivated her complaint against her husband, a metalworker from whom she lived separately, with the same argument: “My husband makes my life difficult again and again by following me everywhere and finding me everywhere where I’m working and selling scandal there.”147 Office manager Lode V. found himself in a similar situation, complaining in particular that his wife’s actions were making him the laughing stock of his subordinates: “She (…) even comes and stands the whole morning in front of my office on the Italiëlei, where I become the mockery of my clerks.”148 Sensitivity to disturbance at the workplace is not surprising, as the resulting reputational damage could have far-​reaching consequences. Thus, Joanna B. was dismissed on the spot after her lover had come and hit her in the face in the private club where she was working because he suspected her of having sexual relations with customers.149 Remarkably enough, there are only a few examples of people coming to find their (ex-​)partners at their workplace in the context of relationship difficulties.

1 45 146 147 148 149

saa, MA 29737, report district 7, no. 3758, 27-​12-​1928. saa, MA 31708, report district 5, no. 3294, 6-​7-​1938. saa, MA 31875, report district 5, no. 824, 21-​2-​1949. saa, MA 31630, report district 5, no. 1774, 29-​6-​1928. saa, MA 31708, report district 5, no. 2870, 15-​6-​1938.

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A logical choice for attack strategies where location played a role was the immediate vicinity of the intended opponent’s home. The symbolic value of the home is obvious.150 The identification between the home and its residents is almost universal. If any one space was deemed pre-​eminently to be personal “territory”, it was a person’s own home. The home was almost the only somewhat enclosed place where one could still escape the gaze of others to some degree, although the transitions with the public space were not absolute, but fluid. Frequent declarations to the police point to a widespread view among the Antwerp population that the home had a “territorial” character that outsiders had to respect. Much emphasis was given in the statements to the undesirable nature of the violation of domestic space. At stake was not so much privacy as such –​very relative in the densely populated neighbourhoods –​but rather the recognition of the house as an “own” place for its residents. The boundaries of the home, which indicated the distinction between personal territorial claims and public space, were to be respected.151 The preoccupation with the integrity of the house as a personal “territory” offered opponents a cherished instrument with which to force its inhabitants into a confrontation, by ostentatiously refusing to respect the integrity of their personal “territory”; for example, by entering the home uninvited and creating a rumpus there. Such a violation of the personal “territory” could not remain unanswered without reputational loss, especially as this violation took place in front of a very relevant public, being the neighbours of the targeted party. A retired dockworker called to the postman who came to cause a disturbance in front of his home: “You must stay away from my door.”152 Certainly, when the creditworthiness of the targeted person was jeopardized by deliberately provoked noise in or around the house, a reaction was essential. The fate that insurance agent Karel van H. had to undergo was significant in this respect.153 The agent in question had visited the home of wood-​turner’s assistant Petrus H.  to put pressure on him to pay an overdue bill, but was rough-​handedly shown to the door. Peter H.’s motivation for acting like this speaks for itself: “I

150 Unsurpassed is Le Roy Ladurie’s estimation of the significance of the house in the southern French village of Montaillou. Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, 43–​73. 151 For the meaning of borders and overstepping of borders in conflicts between neighbours, see:  Reemtsma, Nachbarschaft, 103–​120. On the boundaries of the dwelling in early modern folk culture and its significance, see: Heidrich, Grenzübergänge, 19; Eibach, Die Strassen, 158–​159. 152 saa, MA 29370, report district 2, no. 1193, 1-​5-​1949. 153 saa, MA 24633, report district 2, no. 4831, 26-​8-​1912.

186 Chapter 2 threw the insurance agent outside because he came to make theatre in my house.” Actors therefore consciously played on residents’ concerns for the opinion of the nearest significant others, their neighbours, doing all they could to attract the targeted party outside the home by noise or insults to bring about a confrontation that would be visible to everyone in the neighbourhood. The police archives contain numerous references to conflicts that in this way successfully attracted the attention of the entire neighbourhood. Curious heads appeared in windows and porches, and regularly even whole crowds of neighbours formed around the quarrellers. The persons targeted frequently complained to the police about the “scandal” their opponents had generated in the neighbourhood. As in early modern Europe, doorsteps and doorways were of particular significance in this respect in twentieth-​century Antwerp,154 functioning as testing grounds where the resident was challenged to step outside. The doorway, in the border zone between the domestic and the public sphere, also offered a strategically interesting location for the residents. It was a favourite base for publicly disgracing people from the neighbourhood, from the relative protection of the domestic atmosphere.155 For example, there are numerous examples of batteries of insults launched from the doorways into the street or the stairwell, which then regularly led to violent reactions on the spot. In a house occupied by several households, the semi-​public areas (corridors, stairs or courtyard) were also valid options for the location of informal conflict resolution.156 After all, the slightest rumpus in such a place was enough to arouse the attention of all residents who then played a similar role to the “tribunal of the street”. The residents of the same house formed a kind of neighbourhood community in miniature, with the semi-​public parts of the house providing ideal locations for forging links, but also for settling conflicts in front of a relevant audience. This is evident from the high share of semi-​public spaces as locations of conflicts between neighbours. Considerable potential for conflict lay in the shared use of semi-​public spaces in homes, with the need to reconcile different territorial claims. Especially in the working-​class neighbourhoods, characterized by high population densities, several households rented one or more rooms in the same building. 1 54 De Waardt, De geschiedenis van de eer, 350. 155 This practice also existed in English working-​class neighbourhoods, see: Tebbutt, Women’s Talk?, 81–​82. 156 This was equally the case in early modern London and Paris: Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 316; Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 97–​98. For the significance of such intermediary places for the French working-​class population before 1914, see: Perrot, Manières d’habiter, 316.

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This forced them to share a number of spaces (entrance, stairs, landing, basement and courtyard) and facilities (sink, pump and toilet). The claims to the use of such spaces and facilities by the various residents regularly collided, since the exact limits of each individual’s rights were often disputable. The fact that a violation of spatial claims was equivalent to a violation of rights is apparent, for example, from the sneer that a night watchman shouted to his female neighbour:  “You’ll have to move from here, you have no right to our house entrance.”157 Neighbours kept a close eye on whether everyone in the building kept to the implicit agreements about the use and maintenance of the common areas. A cleaning lady complained that her neighbour was totally ignoring the arrangements for the use of the communal yard:  “Between the second and the third floor there is a landing and it has been agreed that washing can be done there once a fortnight. Today it was my turn and I wanted to hang my laundry in this washroom, while L. also wanted to come and do her washing.”158 The feeling that the overstepping of a norm by a neighbour was at the expense of one’s own rightful claims inevitably led to conflicts. The tolerance threshold to such an overstepping was so low that people turned to violence to defend their own claims. A confrontation over the use of pump water between the residents of a number of little houses around an inner courtyard in the Lange Sint-​Annastraat is significant in this respect.159 Worker Anna C. was so annoyed by the excessive water consumption by diamond worker André V. that she attacked him at the pump with a broomstick and scolded and threatened him and his family members: “Bag of filth, lazybones, thieves (…), you’re too lazy to work, today or tomorrow I’ll kill one of you, because the first one who touches the pump will get screwed.” This led to a broader conflict between the family members of both parties involved. Attempts to impose exclusive claims on parts of the common areas were frequently met with fierce resistance. For example, bricklayer’s assistant Ludo van S. distributed a few blows because his neighbour, shopkeeper Maria O., denied him the use of the courtyard to do his laundry.160 Also, the hanging out of laundry in the common spaces often caused tensions.161 Similar conflicts arose about whether people living above a tavern had the right to enter via the tavern.162 Placing fellow residents in front 1 57 158 159 160 161 162

saa, MA 29829, report district 7, no. 1109, 18-​4-​1938. saa, MA 298265, report district 7, no. 419, 7-​2-​1938. saa, MA 29270, report district 5, no. 470, 5-​3-​1938. saa, MA 31630, report district 5, no. 1881, 6-​7-​1928. saa, MA 31630, report district 5, no. 2153, 30-​7-​1928. saa, MA 31563, report district 5, no. 2417, 10-​10-​1912.

188 Chapter 2 of a fait accompli, for example by making a change in the house that affected the prevailing modus vivendi, was another source of conflict. For example, a confrontation ensued when a neighbour, at his own initiative, closed a common attic.163 The man in question countered the criticism with his fists and the accusation that his opponent had “a dirty room and was also a dirty woman”. The territorial sensitivity within a building was often related to the respective floors that the residents considered as their particular territory. Angered by the fact that the upstairs neighbour used the toilet on her floor, housewife Maria van B. supposedly threatened her with the following words: “If she dares come downstairs, I’ll bury a meat-​cleaver into her head, me in prison and she in the cemetery.”164 Disputes over user rights to certain places sometimes exceeded the boundaries of the dwelling. Diamond polisher Ludo V.  from the Duinstraat became so annoyed by a group of young men, who for a few months had stopped on the pavement in front of his house to chat about “all kinds of dirty things”, that at a particular moment he lost his patience and poured a bucket of water over the youngsters, after which a short fight ensued.165 Apparently the neighbours shared his view that he could assert certain claims on the pavement in front of his house as they collectively signed a letter in which they legitimized Ludo V.’s actions. In a similar case, a cleaning lady sent the children playing cards on the pavement under her window to “the other side of the street”.166 In a certain sense, the pavement was regarded as an extension of private space. As a transition zone between the personal “territory” and the public space, the pavement was an important battleground in the dynamics of spatial appropriation.167 People deliberately not only opted, from territorial-​strategic considerations, for the immediate environment of their opponent’s home to launch conflicts, but also directed their attention against the house as such. A telling example of the combination of causing a disturbance in the vicinity of the home and the ritual damage to the house can be found in the statement by housewife Petronella van der S. about the behaviour of patternmaker Anna van M.: “The thirtieth of April, from three to six-​thirty in the afternoon, an unknown woman came to make a scandal in front of my apartment. I even saw her that she was spitting on the windows. Because she persistently called: ‘putaine, salope’, I opened the window. Noticing me, she said: ‘It’s not for you, it’s for that dirty 1 63 saa, MA 30013, report district 7, no. 203, 6-​1-​1949. 164 saa, MA 31889, report district 5, no. 4935, 28-​9-​1949. 165 saa, MA 31886, report district 5, no. 4082, 26-​8-​1949. 166 saa, MA 31791, report district 5, no. 2302, 21-​8-​1944. 167 See: Perrot, Le genre de la ville, 284.

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whore you have living with you’.”168 In this case, the attacking party clearly used a double strategy to undermine the opponent’s respectability: placing pressure by deliberately causing a rumpus, and by ritual defilement of the house. The symbolic charge of the house was so strong that damage to it was equivalent to an attack on the residents’ reputation. With a view to a favourable public impression, much care was taken with maintaining and cleaning the public areas of the house. The deliberate degradation of the house by destruction or defilement was therefore a threat to the inhabitants’ respectability. Incidentally, the practice of attacking residents’ reputation through ritual damage to or contamination of the dwelling is widespread in various contexts.169 For example in charivaris, that is, collective sanctions against violators of norms in early modern Europe, damage to the home was a crucial element. In the urban context of early twentieth-​ century Antwerp, charivari-​like activities were also aimed at homes. But in interpersonal conflicts too, the weapon of violation of domestic space was used. From the complaints of people whose living space had been violated, it is clear that much store was set by ritual destruction. Obviously, the motive of submitting a claim for compensation for damage caused plays a clear role. Yet it would be reductionism to attribute the great readiness to destroy property entirely to the desire for compensation. It is particularly noticeable that even in cases where no significant material damage was done, the targeted party felt the need to file a complaint. Moreover, such statements clearly show that rattling a door or knocking on shutters was viewed as sufficient reason to serve the attackers with a (often violent) response. Contractor Pierre M. filed a complaint against his neighbour for persistently “challenging him by drumming on the door with her fist”.170 A housewife supported her complaint against her neighbour with, among other things, the same argument: “Today (…) he has come knocking on the kitchen again, and he has got into the habit of standing singing and making a noise.”171 Concern for one’s own reputation was therefore an equally important motive in filing a complaint about such behaviour. This was also the case with actions where actual damage, like broken windows, was caused. The specific choice of breaking windows as a means of action can be explained in two ways. Window-​breaking was a deliberately humiliating illustration of an impotent position.172 Anyone unable to prevent the windows in his 1 68 saa, MA 24631, report district 2, no. 3109, 7-​5-​1912. 169 See: Heidrich, Grenzübergänge, 26. 170 saa, MA 31706, no. 2258, 25-​4-​1938. 171 saa, MA 31881, report district 5, no. 2625, 4-​6-​1949. 172 Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 321.

190 Chapter 2 house from being broken could not be considered capable of adequately defending himself and his family. This probably threatened in a broader sense the resident’s ability to maintain his reputation and that of his relatives. When windows were repeatedly broken, without the resident being able to do anything about it, the humiliation was probably complete. On the other hand, there was the specific symbolic charge of the window as the outward expression par excellence of the respectability of the residents.173 The destructive effect on the reputation of the target of an action such as window-​breaking lay largely in the deliberate public nature of its results. Broken windows were visible to everyone in the neighbourhood, making them a rewarding subject for gossip about their possible causes, with all the possible dangers to the resident’s reputation. The threat of “coming and breaking your windows” was therefore taken very seriously.174 Window-​breaking was a way of producing visible damage with a minimum of effort. It is therefore not surprising that it was the most commonly used form of violation of living space. The reputational danger that broken windows entailed and the costs of the repair made window-​breaking an appropriate form of revenge against alleged opponents. Housewife Gertruda P. explained the two stones that flew through the front window of her house as follows: “It has to be the two S. who have broken the window, as revenge on our reporting them to the police.”175 Based on Gertruda P.’s statement, the motivation of the brothers S. suspected of the window-​breaking is obvious. As evidenced by the insult “cowards” thrown at Gertruda P. and her brother on leaving the police station, both brothers were not at all served by their opponents’ opting to bring in the police instead of settling the conflict. On the contrary, they interpreted the calling in of the police as a violation of the norm that had to be sanctioned. As already mentioned, retailers were heavily dependent on a good reputation. A  shop in which quarrels regularly took place soon appeared in a bad light and risked being avoided by respectable customers. Damage to a pre-​ eminently public place like a shop was a powerful form of action, posing a serious threat to the retailer’s professional reputation. The following complaint that shopkeeper Carolina J. filed against worker Maria B. illustrates this well:

173 In nineteenth-​ century Amsterdam, during public disturbances, the windows of canal houses were specifically targeted to shame the residents:  Bos, Waarachtige volksvrienden, 30. 174 saa, MA 31890, report district 5, no. 5462, 7-​9-​1949. 175 saa, MA 29274, report district 2, no. 1501, 11-​7-​1938.

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This afternoon, around half past two, widow De L. (…), who has lived in my house and caused me a lot of trouble, came into my shop and accused me of badmouthing her female companion. Because I  denied it, she scolded me as a filthy creature and deliberately broke the window-​pane of the door onto the street. This has a value of approximately 1.50 francs. She then left my house and, while I was going outside to find witnesses, grabbed me and struck me on the arm with a hard object (…).176 The ultimate targets for window-​breaking were, however, not shops, but taverns. In the period under study, one finds dozens of examples of conflicts where tavern windows were broken or the furnishings smashed to pieces.177 As with shopkeepers, the specific sensitivity of a publican for his public reputation was consciously played on. However, the frequent occurrence of window-​ breaking in taverns cannot be entirely attributed to this factor. A specific field of tension between publican and customers on the right to use the tavern was also important.178 A step further than damage to the public parts of a house such as doors, windows and facades was the practice of forcing an entry into the private parts of the house and vandalizing them. In this way, the strategy of generating honour-​damaging quarrelling was combined with a violation of territorial claims. Housekeeper Marcella de B. had to deal with metalworker Désiré P., the son of the main tenant.179 Désiré had got into conflict with Marcella’s son about the sale of a radio set. In revenge, he turned Marcella’s room upside down, shattering a mirror in the process. The public humiliation was complete when the furniture was not only destroyed, but also thrown out onto the street. Coffeehouse waiter Julius D. filed a complaint because his landlord’s wife, Maria A., had, in the context of a dispute over rent, thrown his entire belongings and all his clothes down the stairs and out of the window.180 Given the public nature of the tavern, it is not surprising that the destruction of household effects occurred there much more frequently than in private homes. The ritual contamination of the house formed an alternative strategy to vandalism. In the complaint that trader Francis P. filed against his wife (with whom he was involved in divorce proceedings) for making a disturbance in front of his home, his main accusation was of her consciously defiling his 1 76 saa, MA 24632, report district 2, no. 4782, 20-​8-​1912. 177 Cf. infra. 178 See: Vrints, De codes van de kroeg. 179 saa, MA 31886, report district 5, no. 4059, 21-​8-​1949. 180 saa, MA 31712, report district 5, no. 4617, 15-​9-​1938.

192 Chapter 2 house: “She then took up position in front of my apartment (…) took a bucket of dirty water from the cleaning lady (…) and poured it over the façade.”181 For example, shopkeeper Elisabeth G. regarded it as a genuine affront when her upstairs neighbour, actress Victorine van B., after a protracted conflict, came into her shop and spat on the floor.182 The strong symbolic charge of the house is expressed very strongly in the following altercation between postman Georges van B. and retired dockworker Franciscus M.183 Georges van B. was angry with Franciscus M. because of an old dispute about water consumption, and he took up position in the stairwell where he began to make a rumpus, pounding on doors and walls and shouting at Francis M. when he came to see what was the matter: “Lousy creature, come out, it’s you I must have, I’ll bash your head in.” Franciscus M. said to him: “You have to keep away from my door” and threw him harshly out of the apartment. When Franciscus M.’s wife left to file a complaint with the police, Georges M. called again: “Come on, now it’s daytime, and I’ll wring your neck.” Similar practices already existed in the early modern period and were described in French and German as tapage and Herausfordern aus dem Haus respectively.184 In terms of form, the twentieth-​century Antwerp examples of this type of action do not differ essentially from the practices that were customary during the ancien régime. Incidentally, the concept as such, at least in the French language, was not unknown. Coffeehouse waiter Emile G. complained to the police about the tapage of an unwilling customer.185 Pensioner Elisa H. complained of “un grand tapage” (a big hubbub) by her son-​in-​law.186 What we have here is a clearly ritualized action that always followed a more or less standard pattern. In the context of a pending conflict, in which the reputation of the acting party was generally at stake, the displeased person appeared before the opponent’s home. With noise, verbal challenges and insults, he tried to persuade his opponent to come out of his home and engage him in single combat on the street. It was a challenge where the opponent had to come out to make clear to the public his ability to defend his reputation. In order to put extra pressure on the counterparty, windows could be broken and household goods or doors damaged. The counterparty could not leave such provocations

1 81 saa, MA 29831, report district 7, no. 1955, 8-​7-​1938. 182 saa, MA 24633, report district 2, no. 4905, 4-​9-​1912. 183 saa, MA 29369, report district 2, no. 1790, 11-​5-​1949. 184 Lacour, Faces of violence, 653; Van Dülmen, Der Ehrlose Mensch, 15–​17; Van Dülmen, Kultur und Alltag, 201; Schwerhoff, Köln in Kreuzverhör, 318–​319. 185 saa, MA 24630, report district 2, no. 1350, 31-​3-​1912. 186 saa, MA 31563, report district 5, no. 2348, 6-​8-​1912.

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unanswered without the risk of loss of reputation. Tailor Herman K. became involved in this way in a nocturnal tapage with two acquaintances.187 At half past four in the morning, two men began calling and kicking at Herman K.’s door. The tailor put his head out of the window and tried to chase his assailants away with the aid of a bucket of water. This led to an exchange of words in which the two men called Herman K. downstairs. When they opened the door, both men beat up the tailor under the eyes of the neighbours who had been woken out of their sleep by the noise. The example in question indicates that tapage in twentieth-​century Antwerp was not necessarily a purely individual matter. In a dispute in the Roskamgang, a side alley giving onto the Paardenmarkt inhabited mainly by dockworkers and their family members, there was also no question of a one-​man action.188 Dockworkers Joseph P. and Frans J. caused a disturbance in front of the apartment of worker Maria M. because the latter had scolded them and Joseph P.’s wife on the street. The assailants tried to kick down the door and pried off planks from the cellar hole to attack the targeted party. The attackers challenged Maria M. and her husband, docker Jan van N., onto the street to fight. Women too used tapage as a form of action. In a dispute about her children’s behaviour, street seller Joanna G. purportedly knocked on her neighbour’s door and shouted at her: “dare to come out”, whereupon a battle ensued between the two families in the doorway.189 A tapage could be held not only in front of an individual home: the various spatial claims to semi-​public places such as hallways and stairs in dwellings shared by several households provided starting points for this form of action. A dispute in the Rotterdamstraat illustrates how the claims that residents exercised to their own floors created room for tapages within the same building.190 Housewife Anna S.  started the conflict by shouting “filthy creature, rotten bastard” in front of the door of her downstairs neighbour, and pouring out a bucket of water on the first floor with the intention of starting a fight. Isabelle C. picked up the challenge, spat in Anna S.’s face and it came to a fight in which the two husbands also became involved. In order to prevent the spouses from the first floor from making a disturbance on the second floor by way of revenge, the upstairs neighbour, wire-​maker Constant J., called to them: “If you dare come upstairs, I’ll shoot you down with my carbine.” This threat again indicates that the territorial sensitivity also came into play within the limits 1 87 188 189 190

saa, MA 26430, report district 2, no. 968, 11-​2-​1912. saa, MA 24640, report district 2, no. 1207, 21-​3-​1912. saa, MA 24648, report district 2, no. 1034, 19-​8-​1917. saa, MA 24633, report district 2, no. 5578, 10-​11-​1912.

194 Chapter 2 of a building. The semi-​public places such as stairs and halls then fulfilled the same function as the street in a classical tapage. A housewife declared that her downstairs neighbour shouted loudly upstairs to her and her husband: “Cowards, come out, and I’ll hit you on the face.”191 A conflict in the Nieuwe Gang, another working-​class alley in the vicinity of the Paardenmarkt, took on such proportions in August 1949 that it can rightly be described more as a collective action than as an individual tapage.192 The confrontation showed similarities with ritual sanctions like charivaris. At the basis of the action was a dispute over the payment of a 50 francs drink bill at a tavern in the neighbouring Stijfselstraat. It came to an exchange of words between port labourer Guillaume C. from the Nieuwe Gang and his mistress, housewife Carolina H. on the one hand, and bricklayer Eduard H. and his wife Maria van B. on the other. The mood grew so tense that, at a certain moment, Maria van B. threw an empty lemonade glass in Guillaume C.’s face, at which both men of the company came to blows. For Guillaume C., this reaction was apparently not sufficient to preserve his reputation, because he decided to wait, along with his mistress, for his opponents on the corner of the Nieuwe Gang. When Eduard H. and Maria van B. left the tavern and effectively passed the Nieuwe Gang, Guillaume C. attacked. He called to them on the street: “You have sat on mine so often, and I’ve had yours just as often.” A violent confrontation then ensued between the four people involved. Guillaume C. fled with his wife to his home in the Nieuwe Gang. Outraged by the public insult and the brawl, Eduard H. and Maria van B. took up positions in front of the house, struck the windows with their shoes, and shouted to Guillaume C. and his wife to come out, and that they would “break them into pieces”. Apparently they succeeded in mobilizing the neighbourhood because, according to Guillaume C.’s son, at one point in time there were at least twenty people in the corridor in front of the apartment concerned. The role of the bystanders was to boo the targeted family as “murderers” and “cowards”. The attacked persons had clearly contributed by their own behaviour to having the neighbourhood turn against them. Above all they had been very piqued by the disapproving remarks of neighbours who, startled by the squabbling, watched the dispute on the street through their windows. Dockworker Jan D. and housewife Elisabeth W., after remarking that the noise in the street was a disgrace, had thrown out the following reproach:  “The filthy creatures, those lice bags have once again seen everything.”

1 91 saa, MA 30032, report district 7, no. 4831, 18-​10-​1949. 192 saa, MA 29273, report district 2, no. 2379, 28-​8-​1949.

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Visibly, relations between the neighbourhood and the C. family had already soured, which would explain the fairly massive participation of local residents in the action in front of their apartment. Caroline H. threw extra oil on the fire by calling to her neighbours: “You knew how to play witnesses for 60,000 francs, you got 10,000 francs for that –​from which you bought your radio –​ now you can play your radio from my money.” Her son Gerard H. chipped in with the following threat: “I’ll shoot you down today or tomorrow and smash your windows and set your house on fire.” It is only against this background of existing and protracted conflicts between the C.-​H. family and the local residents that one can understand how an at first sight banal dispute between two families could turn into a charivari-​type collective sanction that was expressly undertaken by the neighbourhood. The local residents joined the individual tapage to express the long-​smouldering displeasure about the family’s behaviour. Faced with the din in front of their door and the threatened violation of their living space, father and son came out of the targeted home and got into a fight again with their initial opponents Eduard H. and Maria van B., who thereupon filed a complaint with the police. Despite the presence and participation of many local residents, however, Eduard H. had difficulty finding witnesses who could add strength to his complaint. The reluctance of the neighbours was probably prompted by fear of Guillaume C.’s wrath. There were rumours circulating in the neighbourhood that the latter “walked around with an iron bar in his pocket and plans for revenge”. The question remains whether the territorially-​tinted dynamics in early twentieth-​century Antwerp were also played out at a higher level than the purely individual or family one. For example, did the strong degree of identification of residents with their street, square or neighbourhood lead to territorially coloured violence? Did residents experience their neighbourhood as a “territory”, an area to be defended against potential invaders?193 In folkloristic look-​backs on street life in the Antwerp neighbourhoods, fights between groups of boys from different working-​class neighbourhoods such as the Faboert, the Vuilrui, the Seefhoek, the Kwetterwei, Sint-​Andries, the Schipperskwartier and the Kiel take prominent place.194 But also within the same neighbourhood, an atmosphere of distinct hostility could arise between boys from two different streets or between schools from various educational networks (city, national or Catholic). The tradition of violent clashes between groups of boys from different

193 For bibliographical references in this context, see: De Waardt, De geschiedenis van de eer, 348–​350. 194 See, inter alia: Dirix, Een sinjoor, 33–​34.

196 Chapter 2 streets and neighbourhoods appears to have continued until after the Second World War. Folkloristic publications present the image of highly ritualized confrontations with a pronounced territorial dimension. The concrete cause of such conflicts were “border oversteppings”, with a deliberately provocative character: a group of boys from a certain neighbourhood entered a “foreign” neighbourhood with the intention of kicking up a shindy in it. Fairs or dance evenings in a different neighbourhood were preferred targets for such actions. The flashpoint of the actual fight often consisted of explicit attempts by the intruders to win over girls from the neighbourhood. The participants added force to their open hostility by provocative shouts or singing songs praising the superiority of their own neighbourhood. Boys from the target neighbourhoods experienced such a raid as a deliberate violation of what they considered their own “territory”. They felt honour-​bound to resist the unwanted intruders so that it quickly came to a fight between the two groups. Sometimes this could get rough, with the groups of boys armed with sticks and stones. In repelling an enemy raid, the boys from their own neighbourhood could probably count on the tacit consent of the entire neighbourhood. There was a great deal of tolerance towards the actions of one’s own young people that was experienced as a form of legitimate self-​defence. The following description of fights on dance nights in the Dam district seems to indicate that the attitude of the neighbourhood sometimes went even further than a benevolent passivity: The men from the Duivelshoek from Merksem, those from Eeckeren and from ‘‘t Faboert came to dance with the nice girls of the Dam and the surrounding area, and so a quarrel arose. (…) The music suddenly fell silent, there was a call, a whistle, and in a jiffy the corridor was full of scolding young men and women. (…) Some more noise and then a sharp sound of a whistle. The struggling and fighting group broke up and the fight went on between a few waiters and a determined boy, who did not want to be taken with the others to the police station. If the person escorted to the police station was from Merksem or Eeckeren, the whole of the Dam, big and small, old and young, yelled out. ‘These ugly people always go against our boys,’ said one old woman, ‘let them stay in their own hovels and leave girls alone. Down with them!’195

195 Van Hoof, De Dam, 85.

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A starting-​point for large-​scale fights could also be the precise boundary delineation between the geographical spheres of influence of two neighbourhoods. Historian Oscar de Smedt states, in his memories of the Sint-​Andries of his youth, that a controversial “border area” could form the base “for an encircling offensive against boys of another, and thus hostile, side”.196 In neighbourhoods which saw lots of sailors pass through, the territorial hostility was given a xenophobic load, with Antwerp youths picking fights with foreign sailors. At a dance hall it came in this way to a large-​scale confrontation, in which national identifications played a clear role.197 Some fifty young Belgian men in the dance hall rushed en bloc against five Scandinavian sailors who, disturbed by the landlord’s refusal to let them in, ran amok. The national nature of the confrontation appears in so many words in the landlord’s statement: “… Belgian boys got into a fight with these strangers (…)”. The image from various local historical publications corresponds to the familiar pattern of territorially organized gangs that played a key role in the socialization and identification of male youths from the working-​class districts.198 Participation in such a group not only implied a strong sentiment of solidarity with the other group members, but also a pronounced resentment against rival groups from other neighbourhoods. The desire to defend the group honour often resulted in violent confrontations with young men from other neighbourhoods. These formed the urban counterparts of the highly ritualized fights between young country people from different villages.199 Curiously, the Antwerp police archives maintain an almost general silence here, other than sporadic references. Only rarely did such territorial rivalry fights between groups of youths find their way explicitly into police sources. Perhaps precisely because it involved a misunderstanding that was considered unjust, the following incident was reported, as the May 1944 police orders show: On 30 April at around 22:30, five youths aged under 16 left the Majestic in the Carnotstraat. In this street and at the Victorieplaats they were attacked by a dozen boys of their age who thought they were living in the Vischmark area. Before it transpired that the five boys were living in the

1 96 De Smedt, Het Scheldeken, 245. 197 saa, MA 31631, report district 5, no. 2464, 2-​9-​1928. 198 A critical approach to the phenomenon in nineteenth-​century British cities is found at: Davies, Youth Gangs, 649–​679. See also the twentieth-​century case study by the same author: Davies, Street Gangs, 251–​267. 199 For the logic of such rural conflicts, see:  Ploux, Rixes, 269–​ 275; Chauvaud, Les passions, 26–​27.

198 Chapter 2 Kruishofstraat, they had already received punches, after which they took flight.200 The police of the fifth district, in the margins of a report on the arrest of a Borgerhout hoodlum, alerted the public prosecutor to the fact that young people from that municipality were deliberately coming to the district to create disorder: We beg to point out to the public prosecutor that in recent weeks, skirmishes have taken place, at night and especially from Saturday to Sunday, usually caused by young men from Borgerhout in the streets of our district, which they make unsafe. They take flight only when the police show up.201 A police memo from the same district goes in the same direction: “B. and his brothers come to the fifth district only to fight. They are known for that.”202 Only once is a brawl at a fair reflected in the police sources, perhaps because a person sustained wounds resulting in incapacity to work.203 Thirteen-​year-​old chandelier maker’s assistant Victor B.  had gone with a number of his peers from the fifth district to the Carnotkermis on the Laar in Borgerhout, where a group of Borgerhout youths challenged them to a fight. Victor B. was stabbed with a knife in the leg. In view of the foregoing, it is not easy to correctly assess the role and significance of collective violence on a territorial basis by youths from the Antwerp neighbourhoods. Two possible explanations exist for the discrepancy between the image given in local folkloristic writings and the relative silence of the archives. On the one hand, it is not impossible that nostalgic folklorists have inflated a real phenomenon of limited size, but of eye-​catching character, to unreal proportions. It is possible that, starting from the concept of the homogeneous working-​class area, heimat writers preferred to minimize internal conflicts and to emphasize conflicts with the “outside world”. In this context, it may be significant that Jenneke Christiaens concluded in her in-​depth research on juvenile delinquency in the province of Antwerp during the nineteenth century that there was a lack of “direct indications of the existence of such a thing as a special violent criminality by youth gangs”.204 2 00 saa, MA 32243-​B, police orders of the day, 5-​5-​1944. 201 saa, MA 31526, report district 5, no. 2132, 1-​9-​1912. 202 saa, MA 31586, report district 5, no. 1642, 29-​11-​1918. 203 saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 891, 21-​4-​1912. 204 Christiaens, De geboorte, 105.

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On the other hand, one could argue that there are objective reasons why group battles between young people rarely found their way into the reports. Gita Deneckere identified the same discrepancy for nineteenth-​ century Ghent: hardly any traces were found in police or judicial sources of the neighbourhood battles that, according to newspapers and other publications, were the order of the day.205 Apparently, the police and population showed a large degree of tolerance towards group battles among youths, which were viewed as an unproblematic fact of life. For the boys involved, no honour was to be gained by lodging a complaint that would undoubtedly expose them to the accusation of cowardice. Despite the fact that a large proportion of the Antwerp population consisted of first generation immigrants, and the high degree of mobility of the urban population, many residents experienced the neighbourhood, the space in which they lived their daily lives, as a constituent element of their identity. The warning that a housewife from the Falconrui, nicknamed Finne de Platte, received after a scrap with the nicknamed Mottige Mie from the Paradijsstraat in the Kattenkwartier from the latter’s son, indicates that forms of micro-​local identification, even in strictly interpersonal conflicts, could lead to violent solidarity of the neighbourhood dwellers concerned.206 The threat from the son was couched in the following terms: “Finne, you mustn’t enter the Paradijsstraat any more or they’ll kill you, girl.” Such territorial rivalry also existed between the regular frequenters of different taverns.207 When a group of drinkers known as regulars of another tavern entered a certain tavern, they risked a confrontation with the regulars. Such disputes in taverns with a territorial charge found their way into the sources more frequently, since the landlords would file complaints with the district police with a view to possible compensation. The resentment towards other taverns had a reverse side of the medal in the form of feelings of solidarity between regular drinkers at the same tavern. The feeling of belonging to the same group did not stop the regulars from sometimes having it out against each other. It was precisely because of its function as the focal point of informal social life that the tavern formed a favourite arena for conflicts fought out mainly by people who knew each other. It is therefore perhaps no coincidence that in the thousands of registered statements, only once did a hoodlum invoke membership of the group of regulars to make his own innocence appear more likely. Seaman Jean M. substantiated his claim that he had not affronted 2 05 Deneckere, Kinderen van de straat, 320–​321. 206 saa, MA 29317, report district 2, no. 550, 19-​4-​1944. 207 Cf. infra.

200 Chapter 2 worker Maria H. with the argument that he had known her for a long time in the tavern and that, like her, he was one of the regular customers: “Je suis du café.”208 2.6

The Rules of the Duel

Once the confrontation had actually been set in motion by a linguistic or physical provocation, the ensuing violence usually also displayed ritual characteristics. Fights are in fact complex sequences of body postures and gestures. When analysing the selected conflicts, the similar nature of many violent confrontations catches the eye. In particular, the popular duel, that is, a fight between two men from the lower social groups in the street, or in a tavern or its immediate vicinity, had such a stereotypical course as to acquire a distinctly ritual character.209 Body language played an equally essential role here, as did verbal communication. Popular duels in the early twentieth-​century Antwerp neighbourhoods took place, like those of their disappeared elite counterparts, following a more or less fixed scenario and a number of implicit rules. The codes that regulated the popular duel reflected opinions about the permissibility or not of certain actions. So it was by no means an accidental or untargeted clash. The reconstruction of the codes that applied to the popular duel is only possible through the analysis of the sanctioning of the violations of the same. By focusing on the (public) reactions to people who do not follow the rules, the researcher can get behind the norms of a particular social group.210 British anthropologist Julian Pitt-​Rivers writes in this connection: “Moral values are best examined through the sanctions that operate against their violation, and honour is most clearly defined at the moment when it is lost.”211 From all the following paragraphs, it will be clear that the popular duel in many ways corresponds to the following characteristics that Charles Tilly concisely attributes to ritual violence: Violent rituals consist of damage-​dealing interactions involving public scripts, known scorecards, fixed and finite stakes, defined perimeters, 2 08 saa, MA 29219, report district 2, no. 293, 19-​2-​1928. 209 For the ritual character of the popular duel in various historical contexts in town and countryside, see:  Carter Word, Self-​Policing, 112–​118; Rooijakkers, Rituele repertories, 401–​404; Sleebe, In termen van fatsoen, 267; Spierenburg, Knife Fighting, 103–​127. 210 Van Eck, Door bloed gezuiverd, 37. 211 Pitt-​Rivers, The Fate, 83.

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stylized enactment of us-​them boundaries, clear definition of proper participants and targets, and sharp distinctions between those participants and either monitors or spectators.212 Roughly outlined, most popular duels went according to the following scenario, but of course with individual popular duels at times departing significantly from this ideal-​typical sketch. Initially, the attacking party opened hostilities. The objective was clearly to force the intended opponent into a reaction. The attacker often hoped to achieve this by attacking his opponent’s reputation with the help of insults or derogatory gestures. That is why the first phase of the popular duel often took place in public places such as taverns. This was all about putting pressure on the opposing party in the face of relevant informal social networks. Anyone disregarding humiliating attacks in public ran a real risk of reputational damage. The more public interest there was, the more difficult it became for the intended opponent to avoid a confrontation. The need for a public response forced him to safeguard his reputation. The following statement by upholsterer Antoon V. clearly illustrates this: “I’m not a fighter, but if you want me to, I will do it in the presence of the public because you challenge me.”213 Obviously, the need to proceed to action was less important for the initiator. If he succeeded in humiliating his opponent in public without it actually coming to a duel because the attacked person refrained from reacting, then he undoubtedly emerged victorious. The presence of the public was therefore a necessary condition to force the intended counterparty into single combat. The initial verbal altercation was therefore very functional: being for a large part aimed at arousing public interest. In the second phase, the intended opponent was challenged to single combat. The challenge was usually expressed using body language. The attacker indicated with his own body that he was out for a fight, adopting a “challenging posture,” including spread legs, “come and get it” arm movements, and a provocative facial expression. The removal of a jacket was the ultimate sign that the challenger was serious and that he was ready to fight. Housekeeper Maria H. stated to the police about the undisputed body language of her landlord, metalworker Domien de H.: “… he pulled off his overcoat, ready to fight”.214 In a street dispute between three fitters, one of them responded to an alleged insult with a telling combination of words and gestures: “B. got angry, half took off his coat, saying: ‘if you want, come on’.”215 The removal of one’s own cap 2 12 Tilly, The Politics, 101. 213 saa, MA 32666, report district 11, no. 2792, 13-​10-​1944. 214 saa, MA 29218, report district 2, no. 5, 1-​1-​1928. 215 saa, MA 31560, report district 5, no. 462, 21-​2-​1928.

202 Chapter 2 had the same symbolic meaning as the removal of the jacket.216 If this was not sufficient to move the intended counterparty into a reaction, the action area of the gestures was shifted to the opponent’s body. Humiliating gestures such as throwing off the opponent’s cap, grabbing and tearing his clothes at chest level, treading on his toes or pouring beer on him were appropriate strategies for obtaining a reaction. The humiliating character lay in the strongly symbolically charged public claim of superiority that such activity carried.217 The targeted person’s personally territory was invaded in the hope of eliciting a reaction. Landlady Maria P. described this mechanism strikingly in her statement about a fight in her tavern: “Then they started calling C. names, came up very close to him, speaking, so to speak, in his face, to get him to answer so as to start a fight.”218 It sometimes took a lot of persistence to eventually move an unwilling opponent to a fight. Tavern-​keeper Petrus P., in his own words, fell out with his landlord after the latter had been tormenting him for a long time in the full tavern: “He even insulted me by saying that I have to leave this house because I don’t pay my rent on time. Twenty-​five times he called me a coward, while threatening to hit me without, however, carrying out this threat.”219 The second phase of the popular duel also usually included an explicit invitation to settle the dispute in front of the tavern or even outside the city gates. For example, plumber Petrus L. challenged the regular drinkers of a tavern on the Hessenbrug with the words “Come outside, we’ll have it out there behind the Ekerse gate.”220 Customs official Ludovicus J. did this to his brother-​in-​law, baker Hendrikus O., with the words: “We’ll go for a little walk together.”221 The often used request to “go outside” needed for most people no further explanation. If the challenge phase took place on the street, then the intended opponent was asked in a provocative way to move closer as a proof of courage: “Do you dare to come here?”222 The insult “coward” was equivalent to an implicit invitation to a fight, by deliberately appealing to specific notions of male honour. A real man was expected to show courage and physical strength. A person avoiding a physical confrontation was particularly vulnerable to this reproach. For example, mechanic Frans L.  shouted to his opponent, night watchman Gustaaf de V., who was trying to avoid a fight: “Coward, you’re going to run;

2 16 217 218 219 220 221 222

saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 2132, 1-​9-​1912. Things were no different in eighteenth-​century Paris: Garrioch, Neighbourhood, 43. saa, MA 31627, report district 5, no. 58, 21-​2-​1928. saa, MA 24632, report district 2, no. 4607, 29-​7-​1912. saa, MA 29218, report district 2, no. 197, 1-​2-​1928. saa, MA 31709, report district 5, no. 3655, 1-​8-​1938. saa, MA 31730, report district 5, no. 3717, 2-​8-​1938.

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show or say what you want of me.”223 The accusation of cowardice therefore constituted a powerful means of pressure to force the intended opponent into a confrontation. Given the importance of courage and physical strength for the reputation of men in particular, it is not surprising that the challenge as such was sufficient to generate a reaction from the intended opponent. In a number of conflicts, the explicitly denigrating phase was therefore omitted. The third phase of the popular duel consisted of the actual fight that took place on the street, often just outside the tavern door. Often it was settled in the presence of the public from the tavern that had witnessed the challenge and that had come outside with the fighters to see the sequel. Where they had been regularly involved in the preparatory hostilities, once it became clear that the outcome was going to be single combat, they usually retreated to an observer position. As witnesses, they fulfilled the same function as seconds in élite duels, with the difference that their presence was not arranged in advance.224 Popular duels were par excellence public shows. A school of bystanders spontaneously formed around the fighters. Their role, however, was usually limited to the noisy encouragement of their favourite party. Visibly there was a tacit rule that in a popular duel the public was to abstain from intervention as long as both warring parties stuck to the codes. Anyone ignoring the rules of the man against man, for example, by drumming up a number of friends to help him against a single opponent, placed his own reputation in jeopardy by what was, de facto, a public confession that he was unable to stand up for himself, a central notion of male reputation and honour. This exposed the men in question to the accusation of the opposing party that they were “cowardly”. The following dispute between two dockers is an extreme illustration of the principle that the single combat must actually be fought between the two persons involved.225 The cause of the dispute was the fact that Jacobus S. had sent Jan W. home from his work at night for not performing it properly. Whereupon, the following evening, Jan W. showed up with two mates in Jacobus S.’s regular tavern to settle the account, intending to repay the night without work and the associated loss of income in the same currency. With reference to Jacobus S. he said, according to witnesses in the tavern, “today I want to fight, and tomorrow night we won’t work”. He roused James S. with the words “hey, rag-​bag”, whereupon his opponent picked up the gauntlet. He said with reference to the outer clothing “what, if you have to have it off, take it off” and “coward, come outside”. The duel then took place on the street in front of the tavern. Remarkably, 2 23 saa, MA 29369, report district 2, no. 940, 9-​4-​1949. 224 The same applied in early modern Amsterdam: Spierenburg, Knife Fighting, 113. 225 saa, MA 31536, report district 5, no. 2753, 25-​11-​1912.

204 Chapter 2 Jan W.’s mates watched carefully to ensure that none of the other regulars interfered in the duel, taking up positions inside the door and letting no one out until they indicated with the word “finished” that the battle was over. The way Jan W.’s mates acted suggests a certain degree of planning, possibly motivated by Jan W.’s wish to injure his opponent without being disturbed, which was explicitly his objective. Possibly they wanted to prevent Jacobus S.’s supporters, scandalized by the deliberate injury that was not common in popular duels, intervening to his benefit. Bystanders actively watched to ensure that the rules of single combat were respected. For example, asoldier immediately intervened to prevent a third person from joining one of the warring parties.226 But as long as the rules were respected, the public had to refrain from intervention. The extent to which bystanders were not allowed to intervene in normal circumstances in a popular duel is also shown by the often violent response to an intervention deemed to be unjust. A tavern-​keeper or friend of one of the parties involved, who tried to put an end to the fight by separating the fighters, ran the real risk of his intervention being anything but appreciated and attracting a beating. An intervention always involved the risk of a duel between two persons escalating into a collective fight. The statement of a diamond polisherabout the escalation of his fight with sailor Guillaume B. indicates this: “Other boys came in and said that he had to let me go, which led to a general fight.”227 In a number of cases, an intervention was perceived to be so inappropriate that the fighters ceased their battle with one another and turned against the intervening party with united forces. Ship’s carpenter Theophiel van L. was kicked to pieces for stepping up to two fighters in the street and telling them “that they were wrong to fight”.228 Intervention was permitted, however, from the moment that one of the parties violated the rules of conduct that regulated the duel.229 The most fundamental rule was that it had to be a fair confrontation between equal parties. Infringements of this were denounced as proof of cowardice. To begin with, it clearly had to be a two-​man fight. There was no honour to be gained with a victory due to numerical superiority. Thus it becomes understandable that two nineteen-​year-​old friends dismissed the challenge of a peer (“I’ll give you a thrashing, alone against the two of you”) in the context of rivalry over two 2 26 227 228 229

saa, MA 24630, report district 2, no. 830, 4-​2-​1912. saa, MA 31651, report district 5, no. 1501, 17-​6-​1912. saa, MA 29274, report district 2, no. 1607, 23-​7-​1938. Where exactly the limits of the (un)acceptable lie, varies depending on the cultural context. See: Lacour, Faces of violence, 650–​651.

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girls.230 One of them retorted: “one against two is not allowed, do it against one”, and the other accepted the challenge with the words: “I take it”. Diamond polisher Maurice W. said in the same vein to a clerk who wanted to assist one of the parties to a duel:  “No two against one or I’ll beat you up.”231 Only by a single fight with a powerful opponent could honour be strengthened. The demand from commercial traveller Antoon T. to fight with the strongest of a group of drinking brothers must be seen in this light.232 A person trying to provoke a duel with an older man, a child or a woman, also did his reputation more harm than good. As in the codes of honour in rural areas around the Mediterranean, children, women and elderly men were not considered potential fighters.233 A  duel had to be fought between two equal parties, in the form of two grown men. A man who did not comply with this rule put his own reputation of virility at risk. A twenty-​year-​old clerk who attacked a 77-​year-​old man on the Stuyvenbergplein was reprimanded by a neighbour: “You bandit, aren’t you ashamed to attack such an old man?”234 With their limited physical strength, children were not considered equal parties either. Newspaper vendor Franciscus C. made an unmistakable appeal to the reputation of fitter Walter van R. when he shouted to him on the street: “You should be embarrassed to hit a little child like that.”235 Such rhetorical questions often included an implicit challenge to measure oneself against the questioner rather than continue the unequal struggle with the weak counterparty. This was the meaning of the question of mechanic Jan de S.: “can you get it from a woman?”, which led at once to his girlfriend’s assailant letting go of her and turning against him.236 The same line of reasoning can be heard in the indignant statement by coachman Frans van B. about the harsh treatment of his wife by the police. He reinforces the idea of the unfair, because unequal, confrontation by emphasizing the fact that his wife is ill, i.e. weak: “Of course I became angry when I saw that my sick wife was being mistreated and then I may well have spoken a rough word, as would the best person in the world if his wife was mistreated.”237 Clerk Georges B. motivated the fact that he had intervened in a fight with the double argument “because it was a woman against

2 30 saa, MA 31716, report district 5, no. 6188, 11-​12-​1939. 231 saa, MA 29696, report district 7, no. 100, 12-​4-​1912. 232 saa, MA 31630, report district 5, no. 2271, 9-​8-​1928. 233 Gould, Revenge as Sanction, 688. 234 saa, MA 31709, report district 5, no. 3652, 29-​7-​1938. 235 saa, MA 29826, report district 7, no. 912, 29-​3-​1938. 236 saa, MA 31787, report district 5, no. 1075, 9-​4-​1944. 237 saa, MA 31582, report district 5, no. 1342, 7-​8-​1917.

206 Chapter 2 an entire band”.238 In the same complaint from a caretaker against one of the male tenants in her building, the opponent was depicted as a transgressor of norms on two counts: “… because I cannot accept that a person in his thirties can behave badly towards an old woman with impunity”.239 A fair fight also assumed that both parties were fighting with equal weapons. In contrast to the practice of fighting with knives, which continued in a number of rural areas in Belgium during the first half of the twentieth century, weapons were usually not used in the popular duel in the city of Antwerp. In the vast majority of cases, duels were fought with bare fists. If one party took out a knife against an unarmed opponent, this action was considered unjust,240 as a fair fight was impossible under these conditions. Bystanders pulled away the attacker of night watchman Joannes B. from the moment he began to threaten with a knife.241 Joannes B. stated that the awareness that there was an audience that could potentially intervene prevented his attacker from effectively using his knife. He put it back in his pocket “because there were too many people around”. Nor was it considered fair to continue a fight if one of the parties lost his glasses. Baker’s assistant Gerardus S. explained, with respect to his conflict with coffeehouse waiter Julien D.: “… we then fought until Julien’s glasses fell to the floor. He then said that he could no longer see me, and then I left him alone.”242 A fight between a drunken and a sober person was also not seen as honourable. Fitter Josephus de C. parried with this argument the challenge of joiner Carolus van den B. to “come outside”: “You’re drunk and I won’t hit a drunk. We’ll sort something out when you’re sober.”243 The public concern for the rule that it had to be a fair confrontation between two equal parties was partly motivated by the desire to avoid escalation (such as serious injuries or even death). If one party in such a situation is much stronger, the risks of potentially life-​threatening developments increase exponentially. The bystanders also assumed that they were entitled to intervene when a fight threatened to get out of hand. When an attacker, for example, put his opponent in danger by using a weapon, the bystanders could intervene. The statement made by baker’s mate August B. about the intervention in favour of an attacked fishmonger is meaningful in this respect:

2 38 saa, MA 31560, report district 5, no. 732, 24-​3-​1912. 239 saa, MA 30020, report district 7, no. 1901, 4-​5-​1949. 240 This element was also part of the code observed in popular duels in nineteenth-​century Rome, Manchester and Salford: Boschi, Homicide, 148; Davies, Youth Gangs, 664. 241 saa, MA 24633, report district 2, no. 4831, 26-​8-​1912. 242 saa, MA 31710, report district 5, no. 3717, 2-​8-​1938. 243 saa, MA 31710, report district 5, no. 3789, 9-​8-​1938.

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I was passing by with my bakery cart (…) when I saw that (…) this person held an open knife in his hand and was striking Jan S. in the forehead with it. Seeing this, I left my cart, walked in and pulled the knife out of his hands by force. (…) With the help of the passers-​by we put the person out of action.244 A trader who intervened in a brawl with the words “it’s cowardly to stamp in this person’s face”, was clearly trying to get at the attacker’s sense of male honour.245 When wagoner Camiel V. turned with excessive force against a tavern-​ keeper, people in the neighbourhood proceeded to collective punishment.246 A witness stated: “The bystanders, outraged by that fellow’s harsh behaviour, pounded and beat him.” Both men and women could pull apart the warring parties. There are even examples of women intervening and stopping fights between men.247 The participants in fights were not only aware of the presence of the public and adjusted their behaviour accordingly, but also counted on social control limiting the risks of a fight. The specific form of the popular duel in the presence of informal social networks made it possible to settle disputes without too many injuries.248 The gradual, highly predictable structure and the public character of the combat meant that, during the course of the process, the parties involved could still avoid confrontation and that the public could intervene whenever there was the threat of a breach of norms. Unlike in other historical contexts where, for example, knife fighting was the rule, the popular duel did not normally result in potentially life-​threatening injuries. In the corpus of selected reports, there is no indication of such publicly ritualized violence ever resulting in a fatality. Serious danger was associated with locations where such social control was lacking. For example, fear came over Cornelia K. when she was led to a cinema on Den Dam by a boy she had just met, through the slaughterhouse and the “lonely streets there”.249 The practice of fighting popular duels outside the city gates becomes meaningful only if understood as a conscious strategy to withdraw from the eyes of others. Possibly the party who suggested the idea of settling the battle in desolate places, such as outside the Schijnpoort or the Ekerse

2 44 245 246 247 248

saa, MA 29697, report district 7, no. 297, 21-​11-​1912. saa, MA 31885, report district 5, no. 3648, 7-​8-​1949. saa, MA 24630, report district 2, no. 1337, 24-​3-​1912. saa, MA 31710, report district 5, no. 3717, 2-​8-​1938. In this case, the situation in twentieth-​century Antwerp was not fundamentally different from that in eighteenth-​century Paris: Garrioch, Neighbourhood, 52–​53. 249 saa, MA 29736, report district 7, no. 2783, 27-​9-​1928.

208 Chapter 2 Poort (old city gates), wished to indicate that he was very sure of himself. From this perspective, this suggestion is equivalent to a provocative appeal to the virile courage of the intended counterparty: implying the question of whether the latter is man enough to measure his strength outside the control of informal social networks, with all the risks this entailed. The mind-​set that danger lurks in dark corners and places where there is no social control also appears from countless threats. Death threats were often explicitly linked to desolate places. Worker Catherine van B. purportedly said to her friends in the street when her husband’s mistress, factory worker Maria W., passed by: “It’s a shame we didn’t have her in the dark alleyway, then we would have destroyed her.”250 Tripe processor Constant T.  threatened the policeman who warned him to leave the passers-​by alone with the words: “You goddamned rags, if you come to the slaughterhouse, I’ll kill you.”251 Fundamentally, the rule was that in single combat both parties had to agree to the violent confrontation. The fact that the attacking party did not simply resort to violence, but on the contrary ritually sought to elicit an equally stereotypical response from his intended opponent (which for those with ears to hear was equivalent to an agreement to fight), clearly indicates this. An unforeseen attack, for example in the back, was considered “cowardly”.252 As long as the targeted party did not give the sign, there was no question of a duel. That in certain cases the confrontation was preceded by a real process of negotiation on the practical terms of the single combat, indicates once again that it cannot be reduced to an outburst of uncontrolled anger. Before the fight could start, the parties involved had to agree and the agreed conditions had to be fulfilled. The next dispute between a dyer and a sailor with a woman as stake is an extreme illustration of this.253 The former tapped the seaman on the shoulder in the street and asked him: “Will you go with me to the Schijnpoort, and I will arrange your affair there?” The sailor agreed, and both set out, together and peacefully, to the agreed spot of confrontation. Only when the seaman reconsidered after a few steps and said “if you would prefer to go to the Schijnpoort, then rather do it here” it immediately came to a fight. Another rule that the participants had to observe in single combat was the respect for the tavern-​keeper. The already-​mentioned practice of leaving the tavern once it became clear that the confrontation would turn violent is a clear indication of this. To save the tavern-​keeper from possible damage and trouble 2 50 251 252 253

saa, MA 31559, report district 5, no. 31, 25-​11-​1911. saa, MA 31560, report district 5, no. 538, 4-​3-​1912. saa, MA 30031, report district 7, no. 5879, 14-​12-​1949. saa, MA 31712, report district 5, no. 4690, 13-​9-​1938.

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with the police, the tacit rule was that duels had to be fought outside the door. The existence of that rule is also apparent from the practice that regular customers regularly used force to evict fighters from their tavern. The tavern-​ keeper, for his part, usually did not have a problem with fights as long as they took place outside the tavern door. For example, for tavern-​keeper Adriana A., the affair ended with the departure of the disputing customers. Since they had respected the rule of no fights inside the tavern, in her view there was no problem: “There had been a small exchange of words between the consumers inside my house (…) as I feared that it could turn troublesome, I asked all these persons to leave my tavern. About what happened on the street I know nothing, because I stayed inside.”254 However, it was not so much the fear of intervention that prevented participants of popular single combats from breaking the rules of behaviour. More fundamental was the concern for one’s own reputation. Fighters kept to the theatrical, ritualized scenario of the popular duel, being very aware that deviation from the report would not do their name any good, with the risk of exclusion from relevant informal social networks as the inevitable consequence.255 An “unfair” fight, in which one of the parties violated the implicit behavioural rules of the popular duel, literally “dishonoured” the overstepper of the rules. The description by the police of the reputation that market vendor Joseph I. enjoyed in the neighbourhood illustrates that uninhibited brutality contributed to anything but a good name: “Joseph I. is a champion fighter and the most brutal guy on the streets. He is the terror of the tavern-​keepers and inhabitants of the Lange Pothoekstraat.”256 Similar statements made in connection with a brawl involving a dockworker named Alfons E., with the nickname Carbouche, clearly show that a reputation for knife fighting was anything but positive in the Kattenkwartier.257 Tobacco worker Gerard K. declared about the former’s behaviour: “… I know that Carbouche is quick to pull his knife”. Docker Lodewijk A., with whom Alfons E. got into a fight, explicitly referred in his statement to the latter’s bad reputation in the neighbourhood: “Carbouche is generally known as a knife fighter. I was therefore afraid of him.” Significant in this connection is the way the term “knife fighter” was felt to be a strong insult.258 Since the popular duels were aimed precisely at the establishment or

2 54 255 256 257 258

saa, MA 24632, report district 2, no. 4622, 29-​7-​1912. In this connection, see the inspiring consideration of: Blok, The Enigma, 29–​30. saa, MA 31582, report district 5, no. 1702, 11-​10-​1917. saa, MA 24630, report district 2, no. 830, 4-​2-​1912. saa, MA 31699, report district 5, no. 169, 25-​12-​1937.

210 Chapter 2 defence of a good reputation, the fighters themselves were careful not to take any action that could jeopardize this. When all is said and done, the popular duel was a show of force. Both parties wished to test their ability to defend themselves strongly, and in doing so demonstrate their masculine honourability in front of everyone. What was ultimately at stake was their status within informal social networks. The popular single combat was stopped as soon as a clear winner emerged. Chef’s apprentice Albert van de W., for example, immediately ceased the violence once his opponent, shutter maker Amandus W., was on the ground and said, under the threat of a raised fist: “I surrender.”259 Whereas in other contexts, such as early modern Amsterdam, such combats regularly ended with the death of one of the parties involved, in twentieth-​century Antwerp a fatal outcome of single combat was extremely rare.260 The homicide ratios for Antwerp and Belgium in the twentieth century are so low that it can be concluded that the daily practice of the popular duel only accidentally resulted in death.261 The fact that, certainly in the urban context, most fighting was with bare fists is possibly part of the explanation. These were not fights to the death, but until the moment it was publicly clear that one of the parties had been defeated. This signal could, for example, consist of an inflicted wound, a sudden flight or an immobilization by the opponent on the ground. For the victorious party, such a public victory was sufficient, and the need for further violent action was eliminated. For that matter, the necessary attention to the decisive significance of reputation should not be allowed to place in the shade any other functions of the popular duel. Obviously, it was first and foremost a form of informal conflict resolution originating in a real sense of anger or indignation about an alleged violation of reputation. A priori, however, it cannot be excluded that the popular single combat also played a recreational role.262 For a contemporary observer coming from a cultural environment in which every form of violence is completely unacceptable, the association of a fight with a frivolous notion such as play is undoubtedly astonishing. Today there seems to be a taboo on the idea that violence can be a source of pleasure, even lust, under certain circumstances.263 Studies touching this taboo also kick up a lot of 2 59 saa, MA 31716, report district 5, no. 6188, 211-​12-​1938. 260 Spierenburg, Knife Fighting. 261 See:  Rousseaux, Vesentini and Vrints, Violence and War, 184–​193; Van Kerckvoorde, Strafrechtsbedeling, 103–​104; Van Kerckvoorde, Van kwelling tot telling, 234–​252. 262 Inspiring in this respect is Conley’s study on the recreational aspect of violence in nineteenth-​century Ireland. See: Conley, The agreeable recreation, 57–​72. 263 Blok, The Enigma, 33. Even in killing, pleasure can be found under certain circumstances: Bourke, An Intimate History, 1–​31.

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dust.264 Viewed from the perspective of the actors involved, however, there are a number of clear indications that, for example, the play element was indeed a factor of importance in the popular single combat of early twentieth-​century Antwerp. The question “shall we fight?” that drunken dockworker Henri M. put to the casual passer-​by sailor Ludovicus C. at a funfair on the Tunnelplaats indicates that he was initially out for a scrap without there being any concrete conflict to settle.265 The same applies to the fight between two sailors in the Zavelstraat.266 The one was pushing for a fight (“I want to fight with you”) without cause, to the astonishment of the other (“but where’s the quarrel: we’re two friends”). Once the mechanism was ignited, however, there was no way back, because it came to a fight. These statements show a clear degree of kinship with certain combat sports. In a number of cases, the popular duel can be regarded as an informal, unscheduled form of sport. As with boxing, the actors enjoyed measuring their strength in a regulated manner where the risks were limited. The popular duel took place in front of the congregated crowd that in a sense acted as an arbitrator by determining the victor. For the public in the Antwerp working-​class neighbourhoods, watching single combats could also be a pleasant pastime, comparable to a certain extent with watching sports competitions.267 The relationship between certain forms of violence and play also appears in other cultural and historical contexts. In his Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga decisively qualifies fighting as a form of play: “Any fighting that is bound by restrictive rules already bears, by that limiting ordo, the formal character of a game, a particularly intensive, energetic and at the same time extremely obvious form of play.”268 In particular, Huizinga describes the duel as a “competition for prestige”, with which he concisely indicates that the concern for reputation and the element of play in a fight are not mutually exclusive.269 In contemporary anthropological, historical and sociological research, a broad relationship is clearly established between sport and violence.270 From this perspective, sport is seen as a socially accepted violent contest, an outburst

2 64 265 266 267

This is the case, for example, in: Schinkel, The Will to Violence, 5–​31. saa, MA 29273, report district 2, no. 1252, 12-​6-​1938. saa, MA 31560, report district 5, no. 793, 2-​4-​1912. Things were no different in nineteenth-​ century British working-​ class neighbourhoods: Davies, Youth Gangs, 664. 268 Huizinga, Homo ludens, 117. 269 Huizinga, Homo ludens, 122. 270 Aijmer, Introduction, 15; Spierenburg, De verbroken betovering, 230–​234; Tilly, The Politics, 81–​86.

212 Chapter 2 of violence in controlled form with agreed rules. Based on that definition, the popular single combat can simply be regarded as a form of sport. From the charge of the provocations that initiated the duel and the implicit codes of conduct that governed it, the close connection between virility and violence is clearly apparent. The ubiquitous notion of “cowardice” is a factor of the utmost importance in this. “Cowardice” explicitly meant unmanly behaviour. The accusation of being “cowardly” implied the negation of the man’s virile identity. A contrario therefore the notion offers a privileged access to prevailing views on masculine identity and identification. On the one hand, it indicates that, for men from the less prosperous population groups, the willingness to engage in physical confrontation was still valued positively. For them, courage, strength and bravura were a constitutive part of masculine identity. In the build-​up phase of the duel, men were explicitly put up to a fight: by avoiding the violence, they would expose themselves to the accusation of being “cowardly”, i.e. non-​virile men. The specific connection between male honour and violence meant that men were forced to give a violent response out of concern for their reputation as men. The room for manoeuvre of men from the lower social groups to formulate an alternative non-​violent response to a denigrating provocation was therefore relatively limited. The simple claim of superiority in the field of courage and physical strength was in itself perceived by the intended opponent as sufficiently threatening to his own reputation to justify a violent response. When diamond polisher Frans P.  learned that dockworker Jan J., nicknamed the Prussian, had put about that he would wring his neck, he took this verbal intention as an attack on his masculine honour.271 He immediately took his hammer, went to see the Prussian in his street and hit him on the head there. On the other hand, the notion of “cowardice” also determines the limits, coloured by machismo, of the possibilities of upholding one’s virile reputation through violence: the elderly, women and children were not seen as equal partners. Other forms of unfair confrontation (for example, through the use of weapons or numerical force majeure) were also strongly disapproved of as cowardly acts. The view that only two adult men could and should fight a duel indirectly indicates that the parties involved experienced the physical test of strength as a test of their respective masculinity. The outcome of such a test of strength was determined by the right of the strongest: those who were bested in the fight had their virile reputation damaged, while the victor’s was strengthened solely on the basis of his physical superiority. Without wishing to deny the general long-​term dynamics of the diminishing intensity of the 271 saa, MA 24632, report district 2, no. 4518, 20-​7-​1912.

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relationship between male honourability and the physical person in Western European societies, questions can be raised as to the universality of this process. The central position that notions such as courage, bravura and physical strength continued to take in the virile honour of Antwerp men from the lower social groups in the twentieth century points to the need to also have an eye for social differences in this area. The ritual formal language and intrinsic connection with virile honour makes it clear that only adult men could use the duel as an instrument for informal conflict resolution. Between a man and a woman it was not a valid option, given the perceived inequality of the parties. A man engaging in a violent confrontation with a woman put his male honourability at stake. Housekeeper Antoinette C. made a statement about a dispute with her neighbours that is an almost absurd illustration of the rule that men should not hit women: “The man seeing me, said to his wife: ‘I won’t hit a woman, but you grab her and beat her to death.’ ” The woman L. grabbed me at once.”272 Tram conductor Theodoor de D. referred to the same view when his sister-​in-​law scolded his mother in the street: “… that she was lucky to be a woman, because otherwise I would not have let these words pass”.273 In a single confrontation between a man and a woman, the roles were completely reversed, with the public giving precedence to the principle of equal balance of power over the sex of the parties involved. A fifty-​year-​old woman was forced to stop violence against an eighty-​ year-​old man under the pressure of the neighbourhood: “She had to stop because the neighbours called ‘you can’t take it out on such an old man’.”274 The only exception to the rule that a man could not beat a woman without jeopardizing his reputation was a husband’s right of chastisement. Sailor Hendrik P. expressed this right to the police, without mincing his words: “I’ll hit my wife if I want to.”275 Such views are in line with the disciplinary right of the husband as laid down in nineteenth-​century legislation and with the high tolerance threshold that existed in legal practice with respect to marital violence against women.276 As long as it did not lead to excesses (and, as stated earlier, persistent noisy squabbles), twentieth-​century Antwerpenaars tended not to intervene in marital disputes. Plumber Alexander V. motivated his initial restraint towards the beating that his neighbour, worker Paulina J., received from her husband, diamond polisher Alfons C., who had left her three and a 2 72 saa, MA 31630, report district 5, no. 2341, 22-​8-​1928. 273 saa, MA 31710, report district 5, no. 3981, 18-​8-​1938. 274 saa, MA 31702, report district 5, no. 981, 18-​2-​1938. 275 saa, MA 24648, report district 2, no. 597, 16-​5-​1917. 276 Ferket, Zwijgen als vermoord, 285–​304.

214 Chapter 2 half years before: “On my way home with my friend B., we saw a man giving a few slaps to a woman. We didn’t pay much attention because we thought it was a marital issue.”277 The choice of the innocent word “slap” is perhaps not coincidental here; he apparently considered such a mild form of chastisement as acceptable within the marital relationship. Incidentally, the word “slap” is used in the statements of men about violence between spouses to describe such a justifiable chastisement. Only when the call for help from his female neighbour made it clear that Alfons C. had barred his wife from entering her own home did Alexander V. and his friend step in to curb the man. The statement by housewife Prudentia V. about the violence she was subjected to by her lover, plasterer Alexander B., also seems to imply that bystanders did not intervene in cases of partner violence until the limit of acceptable chastisement had been overstepped in the direction of outright brutalization. … in the Pesthofstraat he started to beat me, so violently that I fell and broke my arm because of the fall. With me on the ground, he continued to beat me so that passers-​by intervened, upon which he took to his heels. With the help of citizens I went to the Stuyvenberg hospital.278 The right of chastisement was not absolute:  the tolerance threshold was reached when there was serious violence that exceeded the level of what was considered legitimate chastisement. This perception of the right of chastisement corresponded to the general Western European pattern as it had defined itself since the early modern period: a man had the right to punish his wife physically as long as it was a well-​founded and “reasonable” correction which, moreover, was done discreetly in a domestic circle, without disturbing the life of the community.279 However, the willingness to intervene depended not only on the severity of the violence committed, but also on the degree of familiarity between the target of marital violence and the potential intervening parties.280 Familiarity meant that neighbours, good friends and family members were quicker to jump into the breach for a beaten wife than vague acquaintances, unknown

2 77 saa, MA 31582, report district 5, no. 1609, 24-​9-​1917. 278 saa, MA 31632, report district 5, no. 3378, 19-​11-​1928. 279 For “moderate correction” see:  Bourke, Working-​Class  Cultures, 75; Philips, Putting Asunder, 324–​328; Schwerhoff, Aktenkundig, 161; Stone, Road to Divorce, 204–​205. For early modern England, see:  Capp, When Gossips Meet, 103–​104. For early modern Burgundy, see: Garnot, La violence et ses limites, 101–​102. 280 See for comparison: Garrioch, Neighbourhood, 5; Leheman, ‘A tyrant and tormentor’, 43–​45.

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persons and accidental passers-​by. In the corpus of selected reports, there is no trace of any single marital conflict that was terminated by people unfamiliar with the parties involved. The complaint lodged by housewife Martha M. against her husband is significant in this respect.281 She stated that she had been beaten twice in one day with meaningful divergent public reactions as a result. The first time she was beaten in the face by her husband in the street and far from her home, but none of the unknown passers-​by appeared to be willing to testify to this. The second time she was beaten on the stairs in her house, and at her cry for help the downstairs neighbour came upstairs at once and called the police. The simple fact that the majority of intra-​familial violence took place in the domestic context is certainly not unrelated to the finding that it was in particular acquaintances that intervened for the benefit of a beaten wife. Earlier it was indicated that neighbourly assistance for a beaten wife was not rare and that the very awareness of the gaze of others was one of the few means of pressure with which a brutalized woman could slightly curb her violent husband. The willingness to intervene was not, as stated above, an expression of pure altruism. The desire to avoid noisy squabbling in the house was an important motive for the interventions. Nor was the prohibition on hitting children any more absolute than that on striking women. Just as in the case of violence against women, a reserve must be made for the right of chastisement by older family members. The assumption that the chastisement of children by family members was permitted is evident from the intervention that a newspaper vendor undertook in favour of a child who was being beaten in the street by an eighteen-​year-​old boy.282 In his statement to the police he described his own position as follows: “I asked him ‘is that your little brother’. He said no, and I answered, ‘then you should not hit him like that, you should be embarrassed to hit such a small child’.” In the same direction is a teacher’s statement about the beatings he administered to his children: “I sometimes give them a slap, but for me I can do this as a father.”283 However, some caution is required in stating that a man’s right of chastisement towards his wife or children was generally accepted and shared by everyone. There are a number of indications that the mentalities in this area were shifting and that there was a greater polyphony than would seem at first sight from the many reports of marital violence. It goes without saying that failure to apply the right of chastisement never appears in the police sources. In view of the silence of the sources on the matter, it is impossible to indicate, even 2 81 saa, MA 31880, report district 5, no. 2117, 28-​4-​1949. 282 saa, MA 29829, report district 7, no. 912, 29-​3-​1938. 283 saa, MA 30014, report district 7, no. 372, 20-​1-​1949.

216 Chapter 2 approximately, how widespread was the non-​acceptance of the right of chastisement. Only a single time in the corpus of recorded conflicts does a man invoke the code of conduct of the popular duel to indicate that he had not beaten his wife. Warehouse worker August K. stated that, after being attacked by his wife, housewife Charlotte M., in a marital dispute, he had not responded and had left his home, “since I do not want to beat a woman”.284 The fact that hitting women outside the marital context was dishonourable for a man did not, however, prevent the occurrence of violent confrontations between men and women in the public sphere. Relatively speaking, mixed violence was, on the contrary, a very significant category, even leaving aside partner violence.285 Because violence between men and women was deemed fundamentally impossible in the context of the popular duel, there was no comparable, highly formalized language in which the conflict could take shape.286 The lack of codes that could regulate violence between men and women therefore increased the risk of conflict escalation. Instead of the gradual and predictable build-​up of the popular duel, with opportunities for a strategic retreat and aimed at summoning the “tribunal of the street”, violence between men and women involved to a much greater extent sudden attacks, therefore outside the control of informal social networks. If a woman was attacked by a man, she could attempt to shame the attacker publicly because of his dishonourable action in the hope of making him back off. Women deliberately used the rule that men were not allowed to beat women to put pressure on the reputation of their male counterparty. In particular, they insisted that it was anything but honourable to target a female –​and thus physically weaker –​ counterparty. In the context of a conflict between neighbours over the beating out of a dust rag, housewife Mathilda S. parried the threat of violence by her neighbour, driver Lodewijk de M. (“you tom-​fool, if you don’t hold your mug, I’ll hit it”) with such an appeal to the prevailing codes in this regard: “Would you dare to hit a woman?”287 The neighbour’s response, consisting of hitting her several times in the face, shows once again that the male code of honour on not striking a woman was by no means always respected. A waitress told her assailant that he was “cowardly to be so brutal against women”.288 In such cases, women turned their limited physical forces to a strategic advantage. But 2 84 saa, MA 29374, report district 2, no. 2406, 30-​8-​1949. 285 Cf. infra. 286 See the pertinent remark by P. Spierenburg that also applies to the Antwerp neighbourhoods: Spierenburg, Knife Fighting, 118. 287 saa, MA 29319, report district 2, no. 1072, 19-​8-​1949. 288 saa, MA 30026, report district 7, no. 3407, 8-​8-​1949.

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there are also examples of women who rejected the instrumentalization of their allegedly physically weaker position. When a stoker said to a housewife, who came to kick up a stink in front of his door for supposedly treating her daughter impolitely, “I don’t want to hit a woman”, she would not allow herself to be reduced to the “weak race,”289 and riposted very self-​consciously: “I don’t need a man, do it to me.” Older men, in principle another category of non-​combatants, who became embroiled in a fight with a younger man were also able to launch an appeal to male honour to put an end to the brawl. When 37-​year-​old docker Pieter B. got into a fight with his much older fellow docker Michel van N. in front of the café Rugby, the latter explicitly appealed to the codes of honour to be observed in fighting: “Aren’t you embarrassed to knock about a sixty year-​old man?”290 Such a strategy served a dual purpose. On the one hand, to place the opposing party under pressure through concern for his public reputation so as to have him refrain from further violence. On the other hand, by playing to public indignation at the claimed overstepping of norms, to provoke an intervention that would put an end to the fight. In the last-​mentioned dispute this also worked. For greengrocer Adrianus L., who had left the tavern on hearing the noise in the street, Pieter B.’s attack was such a “cowardly act” that he intervened. He asked the younger man “you there, aren’t you embarrassed to hit an old man?”, whereupon Pieter B. turned his anger on him, enabling the old docker to escape. In the case of violence among adult women, a perception of inequality between the parties did not stand in the way of the use of the popular duel as a form. Although the popular duel in its highly stylized form was mainly a man’s business, there are effectively a number of examples of confrontations between women which approximate very closely to it both formally and functionally.291 In such confrontations, just as in the male duel, the local residents gathered together to act as a “street tribunal”. When two housewives from the Van Luppenstraat flew at each other, the neighbours who wished to intervene were told by other persons present: “Let them do it, let them fight it out.”292 The rule that any confrontation be equal be equal in terms of number of persons involved and their relative strength also applied to a fight between 2 89 saa, MA 24630, report district 2, no. 2379, 29-​3-​1912. 290 saa, MA 29374, report district 2, no. 2405, 5-​9-​1949. 291 Ellen Ross points out that in the poorest working-​class streets in London during the Belle Époque, the folk duel was also used by women, without specifying its frequency: Ross, Survival Networks, 15. 292 saa, MA 29834, report district 7, no. 2539, 19-​9-​1938.

218 Chapter 2 females. The threat that housewife Hortensia R., on her own admission, had made to her neighbours, sack seamstress Maria van den B.  and dockworker Josephus W., clearly refers to this: “With two you can away with it, but if just one of you comes against me, I’ll skin you with my knife.”293 When housewife Angelina van E., outraged by the outnumbering, wanted to intervene on behalf of her friend who was besieged by six women, she was told by worker Catharina van B.: “I know you’re friends with her, but don’t get involved, because you’ll get as much as she’s got.”294 The argument that housewife Anna B. developed to counter the accusations of her grandmother refers to the view that a fight between a younger and an older person can never be fair: “Who could be so cruel as to hit or mistreat his eighty year-​old grandmother?”295 In the case of a perceived overstepping of the norm, bystanders intervened just as in a male duel. Housewife Maria G. intervened in a dispute between two women neighbours because one acted too cruelly: “… I saw (…) the complainant being beaten cruelly by Mrs C. (…). The latter had grabbed the complainant by the hair and was kicking her at the same time (…). I went up to her and asked if she was not embarrassed to beat someone like that.”296 The statement of shopkeeper Antonia van W. indicates that the intervention of bystanders was able to prevent serious misfortune: “After that, both of them went back to my shop and attacked me, while T. pulled me by the hair and held it, V. hit me hard on the head. People who stood at the door intervened, otherwise I would have ended up in hospital.”297 Fights between two women have, however, a less pronouncedly ritualized character. The entire ritual preparation of the duel among men with the explicit challenge to a fight was lacking in female confrontations. In the case of confrontations between women, for example, there is no trace of the verbal invitation, as with disputes between men, to settle the difference with the fists. The cause of this difference is obvious: bravado, courage and physical strength were not constitutive elements of female honour. The notion of “cowardice” was not a suitable instrument for putting pressure on the reputation of a female opponent and was therefore not used towards women. The concern for virile honour that often obliged men to resort to violence lacked a female counterpart. While disputes between men usually ended up with a challenge to a violent trial of strength, with the virile reputation of the involved parties 2 93 294 295 296 297

saa, MA 24648, report district 2, no. 657, 30-​5-​1917. saa, MA 31559, report district 5, no. 31, 25-​11-​1911. saa, MA 31581, report district 5, no. 845, 131-​5-​1917. saa, MA 31700, report district 5, no. 427, 15-​1-​1938. saa, MA 31560, report district 5, no. 574, 4-​3-​1912.

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at stake, there was no question of such an explicit orientation towards violence in quarrels between women. The symbolic charge of violence was much less in conflictual interaction between women than between men since, unlike men, it was not a decisive factor for their name and reputation. Women were not obliged by their reputations as women to use specific violence and therefore had greater room for manoeuvre in informal conflict resolution to apply other means of action. This observation does not imply at all that women never used violence, but only less often because, in informal conflict settlement, they had greater freedom to appeal to other means of action. The relatively small share of violence among women in conflicts recorded in the corpus is in part a reflection of this.298 2.7

Conclusion

Daily interaction in the poorer neighbourhoods of Antwerp was permeated by ritual. In order to maintain their reputations within informal social networks, people used a refined, explicitly theatrical, visual language. Anything that could upset the credibility of this “performance” was perceived as a threat to one’s own social position. It was precisely that sensitivity that offered starting points for opponents to proceed to attack, drawing on a repertoire of ritual forms of action to convey a convincing message of humiliation. The challenged party also had to use an intelligible formal language, if it wished to repel the attack with an adequate response. Violence in the context of informal conflict regulation was therefore anything but “blind”, but took place with due regard to implicit behaviour-​regulating codes. The frequently advance proposition that rituals are characteristic primarily of relatively closed and small-​scale (understand:  “traditional”) communities can no longer be upheld.299 The dichotomy Gemeinschaft (community) versus Gesellschaft (society) reaches its limits here. The underlying assumption that rituals can be effective only in a stable, small-​scale Gemeinschaft, since only long-​term contact between people in a fixed environment can purportedly produce a generally shared formal language, is explicitly not confirmed by research into the praxis in twentieth-​century Antwerp. Paradoxically enough, it was precisely the fundamentally open and transparent social life in Antwerp’s neighbourhoods, necessary to permit the integration of the mobile population,

2 98 Cf. infra. 299 For this position, see: Van den Brink, De grote overgang, 453–​454.

220 Chapter 2 that was characterized by informal regulation mechanisms with a pronounced ritual character. Just as little as lifelong familiarity was required to establish social relations, did people need to have been born and bred in the neighbourhood to appropriate and apply the ritual formal language. Moreover, the pronouncedly ritual character of informal conflict resolution in early twentieth-​century Antwerp in no way implies that the interaction there was, overall, more ritualized than today. Nowadays, it is generally assumed that social interaction is ritualised to a similar extent in all societies.300 It is not the intensity of the ritualization, but the concrete ritual practices that differ from one society to another. Thus, the impression that foreign cultures, like the British or the Balinese ones, are more ritualised is often based, not on any objective comparison, but on the failure to recognize and account for the ritual element in one’s own society. Ritual elements in the behavioural repertoire of a foreign cultural circuit strike the eye more than forms of behaviour from one’s own social environment, the symbolic charge of which is so obvious that one does not take account of its ritual character. Also with regard to the past, one should beware the imminent dangers of such ethnocentrism. The extinction or weakening of certain strongly eye-​catching rituals, such as cockfighting or the popular duel, does not lead to a decrease in the total ritual content of a particular society taken as a whole. The place of these old rituals is taken by numerous new rituals that did not exist beforehand, but which are so familiar and self-​evident as to be hardly noticed as such. Constantly certain rituals become obsolete over time, while others see the light. Moreover, the charge of rituals is not always fixed, with different meanings being attributable to the same forms over time. Given that social interaction shows ritual traits in every society, there can be no de-​ritualization in a general sense. Scientific analysis can concern itself therefore only with the varying meanings and positions of specific ritual patterns of action. 300 For an overview of this area, see: Burke, The Repudiation, 223–​224.

­c hapter 3

Men’s and Women’s Roles 3.1

Introduction

The most important acquis of the renewed anthropological and historical interest in the feeling of sense of honour is perhaps the critical questioning of the previously dominant views of male and female honour.1 For a long time, distinct dichotomies and static ideas dominated with respect to the sense of honour of the two sexes. Concepts developed by anthropologists when examining rural communities in the Mediterranean continued to determine the image. The work of anthropologist Anton Blok may be seen as the high point of this dichotomous approach to male and female honourability.2 He defends the position that honour is a purely male affair.3 In his vision, women only have shame. They pose only a potential threat to men’s honour. A man’s honour in turn is based on his ability to demand respect in public from the local community. An honourable man must display a high degree of self-​control and exercise control over his possessions and over the women under his authority. If he does not succeed here, for example by being unable to prevent his wife from having an extra-​marital relationship, he becomes the object of mockery and loses his honour. Women, on the other hand, lack self-​control, being particularly vulnerable to the risk of seduction. Continuous external control by men is therefore necessary to protect them from this danger. As they do not, fundamentally, possess honour, the main contribution of women is not to cause offence here, thereby bringing shame on their male relatives. The best strategy for this consists of a discreet, home-​based lifestyle that avoids the risk of shame for the family by avoiding the public space as much as possible. In the classical anthropological approach to the concept of honour in the Mediterranean region, male good repute equivalates to activity and female good repute to passivity.4 The active-​passive dichotomy naturally also has implications for the relationship between violence and honour. Since the primary concern for women was to maintain their virginity or chastity by means of a discrete lifestyle, there 1 De Waardt, De geschiedenis van de eer, 339–​344. 2 Blok, Eer en de fysieke persoon, 173–​209. 3 For a similar approach, see: Nye, Masculinity, vii. 4 Peristiany and Pitt-​Rivers, Honor, 226.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004416932_005

222 Chapter 3 was no positive appreciation of violence. For men, however, the situation was completely different. For them, honourable behaviour was formulated primarily in terms of physical strength and bodily integrity. In order to maintain his good name within the local community, a man had to be ready to show publicly his physical resilience, courage and strength. In other words, a reputation of violence and bravura was a major determinant of male honour. Notions like honour, virility and violence were inextricably linked in such a cultural context. The pronouncedly dichotomous approach to the honour of men and women has, over the past two decades, been subjected to critical review from various angles. Not least, criticism by anthropologists has called into question the alleged co-​incidence of the honour-​shame dichotomy with the men-​women opposition in Mediterranean cultures.5 Historical research into the way honour is understood in various contexts points to the need for a degree of caution towards an overly dichotomous approach. The active-​passive opposition appears already much less absolute in the early modern era in Western European and Mediterranean contexts than an uncritical espousing of the honour-​ shame model might suggest. Women in early modern cities in Western Europe and around the Mediterranean did take action to preserve their reputations. Strikingly enough, it appears that in this process women were far from always scared of using violence against other women or even against men. Although violence is predominantly a male matter in almost all historical contexts, the association of violence with the male sense of honour is patently too exclusive. In many cultural contexts, the relationships were less sharp than the active-​ passive scheme suggests, and moreover subject to change. Pieter Spierenburg explicitly adds the historical dimension to the debate about the content of male and female honour in Western European societies.6 In his estimation, since the early modern era, a gradual convergence has taken place of the notions of honour of men and women, without, however, their becoming completely identical. Spierenburg distinguishes two key components in this process. On the one hand, the active-​passive contrast between gender roles lost much of its sharpness over time. On the other hand, sexual self-​control was increasingly demanded of men, thereby weakening the former identification of extensive sexual activity with manly honour. Also, the complex relationship between honour, body and violence did not escape the shifting definition given to men’s and women’s honour. A new definition of masculinity, including a more domestic and softer attitude, came about. 5 For an overview of this area, see: De Waardt, De geschiedenis van de eer, 339–​341; Driessen, Een kwestie van mediterrane eer, 201–​205. 6 Spierenburg, Masculinity, Violence, and Honour, 5–​7.

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223

The debate about the honour of men and women raises many questions with regard to informal conflict resolution in the twentieth-​century Antwerp neighbourhoods. Does a possible positive appreciation of bravura and strength for male honour translate into an over-​representation of men in the recorded violence? Or had the male and female sense of honour grown so close that we no longer find significant differences in this area? Does a possible female under-​ representation in the registered violence indicate that the old active-​passive distinction had not yet completely disappeared, or were the relationships much more complex? Thus, one might question whether a possible gender-​ specific under-​representation or over-​representation in cases of violence forms an ipso facto proof of passivity or activity. In this context, it is important to underline that physical violence was only one of the possible means of action in informal conflict resolution. A gender-​specific under-​representation in cases of violence can thus be explained by the strategic preference for another means of action. In order to assess the validity of the gender-​specific active-​ passive distinction in informal conflict resolution, it is therefore important to include other means of action in the analysis. In addition to the use of physical violence, the use of language by both sexes is analysed. 3.2

Men and Women in Battle

Violence, men and masculinity are often mentioned in the same breath in scientific analyses and the broader social debate.7 “Virility” has become a loaded term in the eyes of many, being deemed responsible for the disproportionate representation of men in acts of violence. To enforce their claim to virility, tough men, it maintained, were dependent on a credible threat of violence. It takes little imagination to see here a continuation of the previously mentioned connection between virile honour, the physical person and violence. In the social debate about violence, men therefore often get the blame. For example, it is significant that all kinds of campaigns targeted at domestic violence place men in the aggressor and women in the victim role. In the broader debate on the relationship between violence and women, it is often unquestionably assumed that violence is against women. In Western European societies today it is still not easy to recognize violence by women as a real social phenomenon. Society’s inability to give a meaningful place to violence by women points to a 7 For an overview of the debate, see:  Spierenburg, Men and Violence; the review article by Schumann, Gewalt als Grenzüberschreitung, 379–​381; and the important studies by Emsley, Hard Men and Wiener, Men of Blood.

224 Chapter 3 conflict with the prevailing reference frameworks. As a result, female violence is, for the sake of convenience, neglected or ridiculed as an irrelevant foreign body (Fremdkörper) due to insufficient seriousness. The origin of this failure to fully perceive violence by women may lie in the fact that it does not match older and newer views about women and femininity. The supposed “soft”, non-​ violent nature of the woman can be found in widely different traditions. In addition to the classic active-​passive dichotomy between male and female senses of honour, there is the influence of biological or evolutionary-​psychological insights.8 Women are supposedly less violent than men due to differences in body strength, hormone levels and broader genetic factors. In addition, the effects of the hunter-​gatherer and warrior-​feeder dichotomies which long prevailed in the history of human development were deemed to still be felt. Moreover, men were supposed to have increased their lead in fighting power, based on physical factors and experience in joint hunting and further through gender-​specific cultural development (for example, in the production of weapons), leading ultimately to a male monopoly on the use of organized violence.9 In order to gain an unbiased view of female violence, it is therefore important not to interpret such approaches in a deterministic sense. However obvious and banal it may sound, the first absolute prerequisite for analysing the use of violence by women is the recognition that female violence is a real social phenomenon. Historians repeatedly addressed the issue of the importance of violence by women.10 Often this occurs, however, in the context of a wider investigation into female criminality as a whole, which does not always contribute to conceptual and analytical sharpness. It is not correct to explain the level of women’s participation in very diverse phenomena such as theft, infanticide and insulting behaviour without differentiation for the simple reason that they are all criminal offenses. A global analysis threatens to obscure the fact that very different motives, aspirations and values also underlie the various forms of criminalized behaviour. Even so, the significant degree of uniformity of the results of historical research into the female part in violence allows one important conclusion to be drawn. Globally speaking, quantitative research,

8 See for an in-​depth discussion and references: Monkkonen, Murder in New York City, 57–​59. 9 Goudsblom, De paradox van de pacificatie. 10 See in particular:  The Criminality of Women, 82–​89; Capp, When Gossips Meet, 217–​ 224; Castan, Criminelle, 469–​480; Chesnais, Histoire de la violence, 384–​385; Roets, Vrouwen en criminaliteit, 363–​378; Van der Heijden, Women and Crime; Schwerhoff, Geschlechtsspezifische Kriminalität, 83–​115; Spierenburg, How Violent were Women?, 9–​ 28; Wiener, Sex Roles and Crime, 38–​49.

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225

based on judicial sources from the most diverse contexts, confirms that the female portion in prosecutions for violence was a minority phenomenon. However, this minority proportion appears less pronounced in urban areas, a fact that most specialists have attributed to the greater degree of autonomy and freedom of movement purportedly enjoyed by women in cities compared with the countryside.11 An important problem in a number of women’s violence studies, however, is the way that male and female homicide numbers serve as a basis for drawing much wider-​reaching conclusions. Indeed, it is wrong to assume that a low degree of female involvement in homicide automatically implies the subordinate importance of women’s roles in other forms of violence. But even when a broader range of behavioural forms are brought into the analysis, the empirical basis of much of the historical research into the importance of violence by women is a fundamental problem. The choice of records of prosecuted violence as sources of information poses the risk that the gender-​specific glasses of the generally exclusively or predominantly male repression apparatus will colour the final research results. That this risk is not a figment of the imagination is apparent from the repeated finding that judges and other persons in authority in various historical contexts experienced violence by women as less threatening to public order than that of men.12 The establishment of the state’s monopoly on violence was aimed primarily at men. It is therefore very likely that the perception of violence by women as harmless bickering by the male-​dominated repression apparatus resulted in no priority being given to its prosecution. As the sources move further along the criminal justice chain, the intensity of the distortion as a result of such gender-​specific perceptions undoubtedly increases. It is therefore preferable to use sources that have come into being at the earliest possible stage of the chain, in order to be literally ahead of as many selection rounds as possible. Viewed from this perspective, the special value of police reports is obvious. Obviously, it is possible and even very likely that the exclusively male police officers responded differently to the violence of men and women and that these different gender-​specific perceptions also affected the format of the reports.13 However, it is likely that the degree of distortion

11 See:  Johnson and Monkkonen, Introduction, 13; Van de Pol, Vrouwencriminaliteit, 148–​155. 12 See, inter alia: Schwerhoff, Aktenkundig, 151; Lindenberger, Strassenpolitik, 72. 13 For a case study of gender-​specific perceptions of a male police apparatus, see: Bretas, The Sovereign’s Vigilant Eye?, 55–​71.

226 Chapter 3 table 15

M F 100% = N

Percentage distribution of the accused by sex and by relational category

Total

Neighbours

Family Lovers Encounters Police-​ citizens

74.6 25.4 1272

53.9 46.1 258

80.3 19.7 402

86.7 13.3 83

78.3 21.7 526

100.0 0.0 3

source: corpus of selected police reports

due to such attitudinal differences in series of police reports is significantly smaller than in criminal records. Does the analysis of the respective proportion of men and women on the basis of police reports lead to fundamentally different results than the many studies conducted on the basis of criminal records? If, to begin with, we break down by gender the number of persons (1082) accused of violence in registered complaints, then the following image emerges: of the 1272 accused persons, 949 are male and 323 female.14 This masculine predominance is found in all relational categories, albeit least strongly in cases of violence against neighbours (Table 15). The vast majority of men we see among those accused appears to indicate that violence in the Antwerp neighbourhoods, like in almost all human societies, was predominantly a male matter. At the same time, the female share cannot be considered negligible: if a good quarter of the people who were accused of violence by the population belonged to the female sex, it is absolutely wrong to label women’s violence as an irrelevant and marginal phenomenon. Incidentally, the female share of the accused persons corresponds strongly with the figures presented by historian Nicole Castan for the towns during the ancien régime: she estimates that 20 to 25 percent of those accused of violence in this historical and geographical context belonged to the female sex.15 In any event, such a share is difficult to rhyme with the exclusive connection of femininity with passivity, non-​violence and dependence. Strangely enough, the ratio of three accused men to one accused woman is only slightly lower than that found in criminal statistics, which at least partly 14

The number of persons accused exceeds the number of complaints because several people can be accused in a single complaint. 15 Castan, Criminelle, 474.

227

Men’s and Women’s Roles table 16

Complaints classified according to the sex of the actors involved in violence

men only women only men and women total

Abs.

Rel.

282 143 657 1082

26.1 13.2 60.7 100.0

source: corpus of selected police reports

refutes the earlier hypothesis that the choice of police reports as source material would produce fundamentally different results. During the inter-​war years and the first post-​war decade, the respective proportion of men and women in the number of persons convicted for murder, manslaughter and intentional bodily harm remained noticeably constant at 78% and 22% respectively.16 It is now time to ask what was the nature of the interaction involving the accused men and women. Did the complaints registered in the corpus relate mainly to confrontations between people of the same gender, or were the contenders mainly of mixed gender? A classification of complaints into exclusively male, exclusively female and mixed confrontations gives a telling pattern (Table 16). On various points, this picture offers interesting perspectives. To begin with, it indicates that violence in the Antwerp neighbourhoods was by no means the exclusive interaction mechanism of men confronting each other in a contest of strength. The proportion of inter-​male violence in the complaints was not disproportionately high. Still, it is twice as high as the proportion of violent arguments among women, which seems to confirm the position that men are significantly more violent than women. Although the percentage of inter-​ female violence is relatively low, it is far from completely insignificant. The element that stands out most strongly, however, is undoubtedly the pronouncedly high proportion of the disputes in which both men and women were actively involved. The high number of mixed-​gender disputes may be interpreted in two very different ways. On the one hand, it could imply that men and women

16 Anonymous, De criminaliteit van 1930 tot 1944, 730–​733; Viaene, Doodslagen, 1866–​1877.

228 Chapter 3 table 17

M F N = 100%

Percentage distribution of the complainants by sex and by relational category

Total

Neighbours Family

Lovers Encounters Police-​ citizens

39.3 60.7 1105

30.6 69.4 229

13.9 85.1 79

23.8 76.2 378

62.5 37.5 416

100.0 0.0 3

source: corpus of selected police reports

were involved in disputes without much distinction of sex: a hypothesis that would underline the equality of both sexes. On the other hand, one could see in this the result of systematic and massive violence by men against women using their physical superiority. The clear male overweighting among those accused of violence is a possible indication in that direction. Nevertheless, the interpretation of such figures calls for a high degree of caution. Indeed, they are not necessarily faithful reflections of the violent disputes that actually occurred. Undoubtedly, a significant portion of the conflicts were settled informally or there were other reasons for not bringing in the police. In the interpretation of complaints, it is certainly important to bear in mind the strategic considerations of the persons making them. In addition, there are good reasons to assume that men and women reacted differently when considering whether or not to file a complaint, and that this consideration was also influenced by the sex of the person or persons who might be charged. It is therefore of obvious importance to include the sexes of the complainants in the analysis. The numerical ratio between men and women among registered complainants was almost four to six: 434 men compared to 671 women.17 Particularly in the relational categories of amorous, family and neighbours, the number of female complainants in respect to violence is high (see Table 17). In the other categories, male complainants dominate. However, when linking the gender-​specific profile of the complainants with the classification of complaints according to the gender of the actors involved, as shown in Table 3, one faces the problem that the number of complainants exceeds the number of complaints. This complication is due to the fact that

17

The number of complainants exceeds the number of complaints because a number of complaints were filed by several complainants.

Men’s and Women’s Roles

229

several complaints were submitted by multiple persons at the same time. However, the overrun is so limited (23 in absolute numbers or 2.1% extra) that the general image can only be slightly distorted as a result. Comparison of complainants’ gender-​specific profile with that of those complained against tells that men twice as frequently filed complaints against one or more other men than they did with respect to violence by one or more women or by a mixed company. With female complainants, the relationships are completely different: at most a quarter of the complaints submitted by women were exclusively directed against other women. Three-​quarters of female complainants reported violence by men or by a mixed company. The numerical ratios tell us that three-​quarters of the mixed-​sex violent disputes were reported by women. Based on the strong male numerical predominance among the accused, in practice, in such mixed disputes the tendency was rather for women to file complaints against men. These relationships, too, were no accurate reflection of social reality. The gender-​ specific relationship between complainant and person complained against undoubtedly influenced the readiness to report violence. For example, it is highly likely that in the case of male (potential) complainants, concern for their reputations within informal social networks was a factor that could in certain circumstances prevent them from filing a complaint. In the case of violence among men, in particular, the view that a man had to be able to stand for himself had an impact on the readiness to report. There are many clear indications that the connection between strength, courage and male honour, at least among men from the lower social groups in early twentieth-​century Antwerp, was far from having been erased. In such a climate, it is certainly not unthinkable that a man lodging a complaint against a man was seen as a sign of weakness, doing the complainant’s reputation more harm than good. An indication in this direction is the finding that men accused of violence regularly sought to shame the male complainant by publicly accusing him of cowardice. Only within a cultural circuit where physical courage and power determine the male honour does the expression of such a reproach have any meaning. The concern for their reputation possibly acted as an even stronger brake on men’s willingness to report cases of their sustaining violence from women. The fact that men submitted many fewer complaints against women than against other men is not entirely a reflection of the real higher frequency of inter-​male violence. The shaming effect of the image of the man being bested by a woman is equally important. A man reporting being beaten by a woman ran the real risk of becoming the laughing-​stock of the entire neighbourhood, in particular

230 Chapter 3 when the woman in question was his wife.18 A man who made public the fact that his wife beat him wrote his own certificate of incapacity as a spouse. A respectable man was expected to be able to keep his wife under control and, if necessary, to exercise “moderate” discipline to achieve that goal. A reversal of normal relations, as was the case when a man was beaten by his wife, was a source of mirth and mockery. In view of the danger of ridicule, it is not surprising that there are hardly any examples to be found of men accusing their spouses of violence. Men accused of violence towards their wives also rarely attempted to parry the accusation by declaring in their turn that they themselves had become targets of violence by their wives. In other words, the prevailing views did not allow men to invoke violence by their wives as a useful argument in the context of marital disputes that ended up in the police station. In this regard, it may not be coincidental that the proportion of male complainants in the case of violence was lowest in conflicts with family members or partners, both categories that a man was in principle expected to be able to keep under control. A man who was actually beaten by a woman other than his wife gained little benefit from filing a complaint against her with the police. In itself, it was perhaps less humiliating for it to be known that one had been beaten by a “non-​family” woman than by one’s own wife. The perception in such a scenario was, however, largely dependent on the reaction of the man in question. The best strategy for a man to safeguard his reputation after a physical attack by a woman was undoubtedly to keep cool and respond as little as possible. Any reaction, whether in the form of blows or a complaint to the police, would indicate that he indeed felt threatened by the woman’s aggression, which could be seen as a sign of unmanly weakness. By way of conclusion, we have every reason to assume that the number of men who became the target of female violence was significantly higher than the low level of readiness to report could suggest in this connection. In reporting violence, women from the lower social groups ran a lower risk of reputational loss than men. Particularly in the case of inter-​female violence, there is no valid reason to believe that women feared for their good name when setting out to the police office. There was in general among Antwerp women no positive appreciation of physical strength and courage in terms of honour comparable with that of men. However, this in no way implies that, for women, passivity was the best option for safeguarding their reputations. Antwerp women felt as much as their male neighbours the need to actively defend their reputations, and showed considerable autonomy in doing so. Since 18 Chauvaud, Les passions, 36. Lis and Soly, Te gek om los te lopen?, 98.

Men’s and Women’s Roles

231

their reputation, unlike that of the men, was not largely dependent on physical strength, women had more freedom of movement to choose other non-​violent means of resistance. One of the options open to women was to report persons to the police. A woman filing a complaint against another woman for violence instead of entering into physical confrontation damaged her reputation to a much lesser extent, because physical strength and courage were not seen as a constitutive element of female honour. There is therefore a good reason to assume that the relatively small proportion of inter-​female violence in the corpus of registered complaints indeed corresponds to a certain social reality. How else can one explain the fact that, despite the lesser restraint on women’s readiness to report, the number of complaints of inter-​male violence exceeds complaints of inter-​female violence by a factor of two? Unlike with men, for a woman to report a person of the other sex represented no intrinsic danger to her own reputation. Certainly with regard to men with whom the injured woman had no relational or family ties, there was little standing in the way of reporting them. On the contrary, it was the reputation of the violent man that was threatened, for having committed the “cowardly” act of striking a woman. A  report by the struck woman could only increase that pressure. Obviously, the relationships were somewhat different in cases of violence by male relatives or acquaintances. The desire to hold up the shining image of an exemplary family life could undoubtedly prevent women from reporting. The finding that, in many complaints about family or sexual violence, women report a long pre-​history of violence, cannot be explained as a mere rhetorical figure. The detailed descriptions of the tribulations undergone indicates that women sometimes put up for months or even years with beatings before filing a complaint with the police. Undoubtedly, many abused women did not even take this step. However, one cannot sidestep the fact that the vast majority of the complaints lodged for family and marital violence were from women. Visibly, the shame that women undoubtedly felt in exposing the uncontrolled character of their family lives played ultimately a less dominant role than men’s macho-​based fear of the potential damage to their reputation from a complaint for violence against a woman. The willingness of women to report men for violence was generally higher because women used reporting to compensate to a degree for their lesser physical strength compared to men.19 As soon as it came to a physical confrontation with a man, there was often no other way out for a woman than to call on male neighbours, relatives or the police to resist the greater physical force. 19 See: Garrioch, Neighbourhood, 47.

232 Chapter 3 table 18

Accounts classified according to the sex of the actors involved in violence

men only women only men and women total

Abs.

Rel.

133 22 140 295

45.1 7.4 47.5 100.0

source: corpus of selected police reports

The degree to which the nature of the sources may be decisive in the relative importance of gender-​specific categories of violent interaction becomes clear when the pattern shown in the complaints (Table 3) is compared with that exhibited in the accounts (Table  18). On the one hand, the higher proportion of inter-​male violence appears to confirm the hypothesis of an under-​representation of this category in the corpus of registered complaints as a result of the relatively low enthusiasm of men to prosecute other men for violence. On the other hand, the small proportion of violence between women seems to indicate that the equally unimpressive share of this category in the complaints cannot be attributed to a possible low readiness to report. Globally, the proportion of violence by men in the accounts appears significantly higher than in the complaints. However, the comparison is hampered by the fact that the account does not allow a binary classification of the actors involved (such as the opposition complainant-​complainer as in the case of a complaint). In the producing of the document, the persons involved in the violence are not ascribed a particular status as is expressly the case in the complaints. The global overview in the accounts of all actors involved in violence (that is, both as “perpetrator” and as “victim”), broken down by gender, is very significant in itself: of the 615 actors, there were 450 men (73.2%) and 165 women (26.8%). Faced with these naked figures, there is little doubt that the overwhelming majority of the violence that found its way into an account was the work of men. There are also very different possible explanations and interpretations for the pronounced male over-​weighting of the actors mentioned in the accounts. Given the nature of the source, it is likely that the gender-​specific perception of the violence by the exclusively male police corps was a significant factor. It is quite possible that the police felt less need to intervene in disputes involving only women, as they experienced male violence as something much more

Men’s and Women’s Roles

233

serious. Their attitude here possibly fits the pattern of “persecution of men” encountered by specialist historians of criminal law in various contexts.20 With the Antwerp police officers, the animus to enforce on their own initiative the state’s monopoly on violence was in any case relatively limited, but when it comes to violence between women, the figures suggest it was particularly lukewarm. Only 22 of 295 of registered accounts relate to inter-​female violence. Arlette Farge establishes a similar approach for the eighteenth-​century Paris police force, and in so doing asks whether their non-​intervention in cases of violence between women is because they did not take “women’s squabbling”, seen as not dangerous, quite au sérieux.21 With the relatively high proportion of inter-​male violence, it should be borne in mind that a major portion of the accounts were drawn up after violent collisions between one or more citizens and the police. As has been previously indicated, violent resistance to the police was predominantly a men’s matter. Women’s greater readiness to report finds its pendant, so to speak, in the greater readiness of men to enter into confrontation with the police. Among men of the lower social groups there existed a gender-​specific tradition of animosity against the (male) police officers which was not shared by women from the same groups.22 In breaking down the overall corpus of registered charges according to the gender-​specific relationships of the actors involved, one arrives at a telling ­picture (Table  19), which largely correlates with the pattern of complaints, which obviously is to be expected, given the numerical over-​weighting of this category of documents. With these proportions, one can ask oneself to what extent the over-​ weighting of violence between men and women is attributable to the proportion of the specific category of “partner violence”, where the complainants are predominantly women. Indeed, over half (416 cases) of the recorded cases of violence involving both men and women are in fact conflicts between marriage partners or (former) lovers. When partner violence is removed from the figures (Table 20), this indeed seems to be the case. In violence outside the relational atmosphere, violence between men is the main category. Nevertheless, based on the figures, it cannot always be said that women appear as actors only in the context of relational conflicts: even after leaving out partner violence, women appear to be involved in a very significant 20

For bibliographic references to the research in the field: Schwerhoff, Aktenkundig, 156, footnote 5 and Wiener’s case study Men of Blood. 21 Farge, Vivre, 137–​139. 22 For the hostility to the police in nineteenth-​century Amsterdam, see: Bos, Waarachtige volksvrienden, 35–​36.

234 Chapter 3 table 19

Complaints and accounts classified according to the sex of the actors involved in violence

men only women only men and women total

Abs.

Rel.

415 165 797 1377

30.1 12.0 57.9 100.0

source: corpus of selected police reports

table 20

Complaints and accounts classified according to the sex of the actors involved in violence, excluding partner violence

men only women only men and women total

Abs.

Rel.

415 165 381 961

43.2 17.2 39.6 100.0

source: corpus of selected police reports

portion of the conflicts. Thus, the involvement of women in violence cannot be reduced to conflicts in the private, intimate circle. In the case of conflicts taking place rather in the public sphere between neighbours, acquaintances or casual passers-​by, women were indeed a significant party. In particular, the proportion of women complained against in the “neighbourhood” category is very striking. In essence, numerical analysis of the reports does not refute the existing views on the respective proportion of both sexes in violence. There is every reason to believe that violence in the Antwerp neighbourhoods was predominantly a men’s matter. This does not mean that violence by women was an irrelevant and marginal phenomenon. While the proportion of violence among women was considerably smaller than that of violence among men, the percentage was anything but negligible. It is therefore important not to

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235

be carried away by the macho-​coloured perspective of male contemporaries who dismissed it as insignificant. Disparaging statements such as those of a neighbour with respect to a dispute between female neighbours should not blur our vision: “I didn’t interfere further, not wanting to involved in women’s squabbling.”23 Women may have made less use of their fists than men, but a qualitative analysis of the reports for violence between women quickly shows us that the use of physical force was by no means an excluded option for women. On the contrary, disputes between women regularly led to relatively serious violence resulting in injuries. Reading of the reports of violence between women gives short shrift to moralizing and idealizing considerations about the supposedly “gentle” character of women. Neither does the connection of female sense of honour with passivity and submission withstand confrontation with the documentary evidence of these animated disputes between women. On the contrary, many of the violent confrontations between women can be explained by the wish to use a public reaction to undo a threat to their good name. Also, women’s choice of language about violence in the police statements is in stark contrast to an overly sweet and nice view of women. Thus, threats of violent retaliation were by no means a male exclusivity. A housewife got to hear that her neighbour was spreading around that she would give her “a slap on her jaw” because she no longer tolerated her behaviour.24 The following dialogue that purportedly came about in a dispute between a housewife and a pedlar is also very revealing in this regard: “She replied (…) that I’d better disappear, if not she’d hit me. On my answering that she should then be ready to withstand the rebound, she flew at me.”25 The complaint that landlady Maria R. filed against a female tenant whom she had turned out two months before responds just as little to the passive image of women: Since then, this woman has constantly been bothering me and threatening to beat me. (…) Yesterday (…) while sitting here at the De Coninckplein, Henriëtte V. passed by, saw me and said, ‘If you don’t leave me be, I’ll hit you.’ (…) She then came up to me and hit me in the face four times with her handbag. (…) She then went off, shouting: ‘You’ll get more besides.’26

23 24 25 26

saa, MA 31889, report district 5, no. 4936, 26-​9-​1949. saa, MA 29834, report district 7, no. 2539, 9-​9-​1938. saa, MA 31707, report district 5, no. 2754, 7-​6-​1938. saa, MA 31788, report district 5, no. 1361, 11-​5-​1944.

236 Chapter 3 The accused woman, while admitting beating and threatening the complainant, laid the blame for the battle with the latter. Housewife Maria van den B. declared that she had been struck by her neighbour after being threatened with the words: “Now I’ll knock your face in.”27 A housekeeper described the threat of violence from the housewife living above her as follows: “… she said, ‘I’ll give you one’, and at the same time struck my hand with a stick.”28 Even women summoned to the police station to explain their behaviour, and who had therefore every interest in minimizing or totally denying any possible violence from their side, sometimes admitted without shame to having fought hard. The frank confession of cleaning lady Maria D. about the way she hit her neighbour, housewife Paulina van der H., is the most impressive illustration of this: “I acknowledge the fact; I did what I wanted to do and was pleased to hit her one.”29 A factory worker described her behaviour towards her opponent, a female street-​seller who had grieved her by insinuating that she was not particularly faithful to her boyfriend, in scarcely disguised terms: “Then I grabbed her by the hair and she too grabbed me tight.”30 The statement of cleaning lady Catharina M., who had been attacked by a group of women in the neighbourhood because of her alleged immoral behaviour, goes in the same direction: “I was definitely chased by a large number of women who grabbed me, but I hit out at them. It’s the first time I’ve fought against four women, but I’m not sorry, because I took a beating from them, you can be sure of it.”31 In the conflicts involving violent mixed-​gender interaction, one should not automatically identify the women concerned with the victims and the men with the perpetrators. Obviously, given the difference in physical strength between men and women, it is very likely that the numerous complaints of women about intimate-​relational violence reflected an all too real social reality. Without fundamentally doubting the vulnerability of women within such a context, some sense of nuance is also appropriate. On the one hand, it must be acknowledged that men may well have had to endure being beaten by their partners more often than the small number of traces in the police archives suggest, but kept silent to save themselves from public humiliation. On the other hand, it is by no means the case that women, under pressure from greater physical strength, always passively accepted the beatings from their husbands. On the contrary, there are countless traces of women who resolutely defended 27 28 29 30 31

saa, MA 31877, report district 5, no. 1615, 6-​4-​1949. saa, MA 31562, report district 5, no. 1783, 26-​7-​1912. saa, MA 31562, report district 5, no. 2090, 17-​8-​1912. saa, MA 31560, report district 5, no. 451, 21-​2-​1912. saa, MA 31582, report district 5, no. 1382, 16-​8-​1917.

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themselves and even went as far as acts of violence against their husbands. Thus, in many conflicts, it came to mutual violence. At the same time, mixed-​ gender violence outside the intimate-​relational atmosphere can, to an even much lesser extent, be explained from an unambiguous perpetrator-​victim perspective. On the contrary, in the case of conflicts in the public space, we frequently see women acting as self-​conscious and anything but passive actors. Regularly, the initiative of the violence against a man clearly comes from the woman’s side. Moreover, the many examples of mixed-​gender violent interaction in public should not be understood only in terms of violence between an individual man and woman. In many cases what we have are confrontations involving mixed-​gender teams. For example, in the event of disputes between neighbours, it regularly happened that an argument between two people escalated into a collective tussle as relatives or friends came to the defence of one of the parties. In such relatively large-​scale disputes, women certainly did not play a subordinate role, with the altercation in this case regularly turning to violence. In other words, they revealed what for the early modern period was called a sociabilité agressive and did not differ fundamentally from men in this regard.32 To talk of unambiguous victimization of women fails to do justice to the complexity and obstinacy of historical reality. The identification of women with the victim role conceals the fact that women in the Antwerp neighbourhoods actively took care of and defended their interests and honour. In these actions, women from the lower social groups also regularly resorted to violence alongside other means. Violence was not an exclusively male instrument in the early twentieth century. The frequency of the use of violence by men was undoubtedly higher, which is to be put down not only to biological-​physical factors, but also to the positive appreciation of strength and courage in terms of male honour. For women, violence did not carry such a cultural burden, so that in a certain sense they had greater room for manoeuvre for applying other strategies as well. 3.3

Men’s and Women’s Language

Many commonplaces continue to do the rounds in contemporary Western European societies about the difference in language between men and women. The bipolar character of these gender-​specific clichés is very noticeable. To 32 Castan, Criminelle, 474.

238 Chapter 3 begin with, there is the image of the gossip (a concept for which, significantly enough, no male equivalent exists) who fills her existence with superficial babbling about people she both knows and those she knows less well. This cliché is a late expression of a centuries-​old undercurrent in Western European culture that tends to disqualify the language of women as an inferior form of human communication.33 From that logic, less significance was attached to women’s words, given that they lacked the supposed intrinsic weight of men’s words. The purported inferior character of the female word ultimately led to the idea that, for a respectable woman, silence remained the best option (“sois belle et tais-​toi” –​be pretty and keep quiet). This silence may be understood quite literally, because until recently women, for reason of their gender, were denied the right to be heard in a host of formal structures. Women were not viewed as full people and that perception applied also to their language: while men discussed business, women were supposed only to chatter. The cliché mirror image of the hollow female word is the measured and efficient word-​use of a man that is meaningful and binding. After all, a man is obliged by honour to keep his word (in the Dutch-​language expression “a man is a man, a word a word”). Although these few clichés are far from having completely faded over the horizon, new images have, over the past few decades, come into being under the influence of the shifting relationships between the sexes, about the respective qualities of the male and female word, with verbal ineffectiveness seen today as a male failing. The verbal skills of women are today often positively evaluated as the ability to adequately express emotions, thoughts and aspirations. Men’s language talents are now often rated considerably less: men being less able to express themselves in words. This male verbal inability is said to explain, among other things, the weaker results of boys in the very much language-​oriented  –​and female-​dominated  –​educational system. Even the greater tendency to violence in men is said to be traceable back to this: given their lesser ability or willingness to express themselves in words, they are quicker to argue with their fists. Especially in the Anglo-​Saxon world where alarm cries continue about the alleged “crisis of masculinity”, this relationship is strongly asserted.34 Such unequivocal image-​making fails to do justice to a complex reality, absolutizing the differences between men and women into perfect opposites and exhibiting a blind spot with regard to the social, ethnic and cultural variations within the sexes. But as often happens, clichés are not completely accidental.

33 For references, see: Tebbutt: Women’s Talk?. 34 See: Coates, Men Talk, 194; Johnson and Meinhoff, Language and Masculinity.

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The ultimate basis for this, namely that differences exist between men and women in the field of verbal communication, is indeed confirmed by scientific research.35 Sociolinguistics shows us that the linguistic interactions of men and women differ markedly in a number of essential areas such as register, intonation, choice of subjects and objectives. On the origin of these differences, however, much less agreement exists. The explanations given can be situated along an axis with two extremes. On the one hand are (feminist) linguists who take a purely socio-​constructivist view of possible differences between men’s and women’s use of language: any differences that exist are ascribed to social and ideological factors.36 Gender, social categorization, and not sex, the biological factor, are given as an explanation. At the other end of the spectrum are a number of neurologists and evolutionary psychologists who explain the differences precisely by reference to neuro-​anatomic factors.37 However different the views about the causes of differences in language use between men and women, both flows of thought are agreed on one thing: that in the field of language use, men need to recognize women’s superiority. From the finding that men and women use language differently in their daily interactions, the question arises whether, in the case of informal conflict resolution, both sexes use verbal forms of action (such as insults or gossip) in the same manner and to a similar degree in order to threaten the opponent by placing pressure on his reputation. Historian Jan Peters asked the same question and, for a German region in the early modern period, came to the conclusion that, verbally speaking, women performed better than men, also applying verbal means of action with greater intensity.38 Only a quantitative analysis makes it possible to assess the respective importance of the male and female voice in twentieth-​century Antwerp neighbourhoods. In 26 of the violent conflicts recorded, there are indications that they were caused by the desire of the target of the badmouthing to call the gossip to account (Table 21). Broken down by sex, we see a clear pattern among the identified gossips : 19 women, as against just 7 men, were accused of badmouthing. If

35

Influential, but distinctly dualistic, were two studies by Deborah Tannen: Tannen, Gender and Conversational Interaction; Tannen, You just don’t understand. 36 In the Anglo-​Saxon countries in particular, scientific production from this perspective is enormous. See, among many others: Bergvall, Bing and Freed, Rethinking Language and Gender Research; Crawford, Talking Difference; Hellinger and Bussmann, Gender across Languages; Mills, Language and Gender; Wodak, Gender and Discourse. 37 For a concise introduction from the pen of a linguist, see: Dewaele, “Thank God, I’m a woman!”, 54–​59. See also: Godijns, Vrouwelijke taal, 67–​74. 38 Peters, Frauen vor Gericht, 231–​258.

240 Chapter 3 table 21

Abs.

Cases of gossip forming the basis for a recorded violent conflict, classified by the sex of the speaker and the recipient

Men

Woman-​ Man-​ Man Woman

Women

3

6

13

4

source: corpus of selected police reports

the sex of the target is also taken into account, the image becomes even more meaningful: It seems that the greater the active female role, the more examples that are available. In this regard, a significant finding is that half of the total number of registered cases of gossip giving rise to a violent confrontation concerned only inter-​female forms of interaction. The small proportion of cases of badmouthing among men ending in violence is the perfect mirror image of this. Also interesting is that male targets of gossip, based solely on the numbers, took badmouthing by women at least as seriously as gossip spread by persons of the same sex. Given the relatively limited empirical basis available for the quantitative analysis of gossip, it is advisable to display caution with respect to the obvious conclusion of the power of the female voice. Were the gender-​specific pattern to be confirmed, however, by the quantitative analysis of the use of insults, then its empirical foundation is greatly widened, which would greatly increase its validity. As mentioned above, 34.9% of the selected violent conflicts involved insulting language. The number of registered insults largely exceeds the number of reports in which there is mention of insults, given that in each case all insults traded in a violent conflict were recorded. In several conflicts, this number was high, with the actors involved applying multiple insults. In total, a corpus of 1374 individual insults was collected, in which a gender-​specific distinction was made according to the sex of those at the giving and receiving ends of the insult (Table 22).39 The numerical point of departure, therefore, is not the number of cases of insulting language, but the total number of individual insults mentioned in the corpus of registered violent conflicts. Unlike in

39

The manner in which the insults were numerically selected and processed is described in Chapter 5.

241

Men’s and Women’s Roles

most studies on insults, the empirical basis does not consist of police or judicial sources created specifically in the context of cases relating solely to insults, but from the insults drawn from a set of violent conflicts. Striking at first glance in the figures on the gender-​specific relationship between insulter and intended target is the strong degree of resemblance to the pattern established for gossip. Here too, the figures give a picture of intense linguistic interaction between women:  in absolute numbers, the number of insults traded between women within the same corpus of violent conflicts is more than twice the number expressed between men. As with gossip, in both single-​sex categories we find the largest and the smallest number of cases in the corpus. But unlike in the numerical overview of gossip, the number of insults of women by men exceed the number of insults of men by women. Whether this distinction is meaningful, or can be explained by the (too) limited empirical basis of the numerical overview of gossip, is difficult to make out. With small differences between the categories, a small numerical shift can completely reverse the ranking. In general, the over-​representation of insults expressed against women immediately hits the eye. The number of registered insults against women exceeds in each year the number of insults against men. It is important to check who is speaking in the registered insults. In this way, one can ask whether men and women used insults equally as a weapon. Among the speakers, the female over-​weighting is just a little less pronounced than among the targets. On the basis of the figures, the cliché of the table 22

1912 1917 1928 1938 1944 1949 total

Insults, cited in the corpus registered violent conflicts, in absolute numbers per year, classified according to the gender of giver and receiver

Men

Woman-​ Man-​ Man Woman

Women

Total

73 18 59 45 13 42 250

87 23 26 61 30 40 267

126 79 46 113 46 104 514

350 151 177 299 149 248 1374

64 31 46 80 60 62 343

source: corpus of selected police reports

242 Chapter 3 fiery female tongue that holds its environment in check appears to be closer to reality than that of the slandered woman in whose reserved passivity the cornerstone of her respectability is to be found.40 The predominance of the female speakers may be clear, but it is somewhat less pronounced than with the targets of the insults. As certain caution in the analysis is therefore important. Generally speaking, in interpreting the recorded corpus of speakers, one must always bear in mind that their presence in the sources usually reflects the strategies of individuals wanting to place them in a bad light with the police commissioner and local public opinion. Only in a negligible number of cases do those involved admit to having themselves expressed insults. The qualification of a person as the “proferror” of insults in the charges is ultimately in a very large part the work of the counterparty in a conflict. Viewed from this perspective, it is striking that the strategic choices of individual men and women lead to a completely different overall picture of the “profferors” group. Men’s statements mention nearly as much their having been insulted by a man as by a woman, while women clearly claim much more frequently than men to have been verbally abused by a person of their own sex. Based on the selected insults, there is therefore no reason to assume that men would take an insult by a woman less seriously than an insult by a man. Measured by the number of statements in front of the police commissioner, a man saw in an insult by a woman at least as great a danger to his reputation as in an insult by a man. In a sense, this finding serves to acknowledge the equivalent power of the male and female voice. Unlike what Bernard Capp suggests for early modern England, there is no reason in respect of the situation in Antwerp in the twentieth century to assume that men would take insults less seriously simply because they were expressed by a woman.41 Obviously, all these figures are not absolute. For example, it cannot be ruled out that in fact men were actually insulted by women as often as by other men. It should be borne in mind that, for example, conflicts on the workfloor, which in many cases belonged to the almost exclusive male sphere, rarely found their way to the police office. However, the very divergent figures for insults and

40

From judicial sources about a rural area during the long nineteenth century, Vincent Sleebe came to a completely different conclusion: Sleebe, In termen van fatsoen, 261. Eva Lacour conducted a comparative quantitative research for a West German rural region and reached proportions that are almost the mirror image of the twentieth-​century Antwerp figures: Lacour, Faces of violence revisited, 661–​662. Both established a predominance of the male voice. Is this contrast in line with the statement that women in Western European cities had greater freedom of movement than in the countryside? 41 Capp, When Gossips Meet, 262.

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gossip in conflicts among actors of the same sex could, nevertheless, constitute a useful indication of the opposing preferences identified by the two sexes in the choice of means of action. In the case of conflicts among men, a single wrong word or a false move was often enough to provoke a violent reaction, leading to a fight. The few words uttered in inter-​male conflicts explain the low numbers of insults. This low figure is all the more visible when compared to the much higher portion of inter-​male violence. Conflicts between women, on the other hand, often featured lengthy dialogues in which the parties used all their inventiveness to heap upon their opponents the most hurtful words, without this necessarily being followed by a violent confrontation. At least in part, the high number of different inter-​female insults is explained by the long accumulations of insults that women flung at each other. A good example of such dialogue, which immediately illustrates the linguistic creativity and inventiveness that many women possessed, is the exchange of words that occurred between two housewives on the street in the Kattenkwartier.42 The cause of the conflict was a reprimand –​violent or not, depending on the source  –​from Joanna L.  to Maria L.’s grandson, after he had come to blows with Joanna L.’s daughter when playing in the street. Maria L., who was hanging out of the window and witnessed the reprimand to her grandson, was not ready to not accept that Joanna L. unequivocally took her daughter’s side, in her eyes unjustly. Whereupon Maria L. came downstairs and spoke to Joanna L. about her behaviour, telling her, as she herself said, “she should either keep her hands off, or clip both children’s ears.” In Maria L.’s version, Joanna L. began to abuse her without her having pronounced insults herself. Joanna L. was stated to have thrown successively the following insults at her: “Dirty whore, how dare you say something to me, you got VD from screwing with Germans. You’re still rotten, because you still have rotten legs from this.” From Joanna L.’s statement about the same conflict, a very different picture emerges, and the actual exchange of words is much more pronounced: Maria L. (…) told me I’ve been nasty to her little grandson for two years now. She then went further and began to insult my mother saying: ‘Your mother took her own sister’s gold and went and placed it in the pawnshop. Your mother lay dirty with a lover in bed’. She then said: ‘I’m blushing, but you’re white from lechery.’ I said then: ‘How is it that you have a stiff leg, from falling downstairs (i.e. having sex) with your lover?’

42

saa, MA 29273, report district 2, no. 1351, 28-​7-​1938.

244 Chapter 3 Among men, it almost never came to a verbal exchange of comparable length, indicating women’s superiority over men in verbal interaction. Not only did they make more intensive use of the repertoire of verbal action, but extended its possibilities. The outcome of the gender-​specific analysis of the insults appears therefore to conform with the findings of linguists who emphasize that women’s linguistic talents are on average more developed than men’s. Moreover, the female numerical superiority in the registered insults is a contraindication to the proposition of certain linguists who emphasize that women among themselves express conflicts explicitly to a much lesser degree than men and prefer to use obscure and indirect language to express their grievances. Women were very much aware of the ability of their voices to determine local opinion and therefore made full use of it as an instrument of power. The finding that women deployed their verbal strategies with the greatest intensity and inventiveness in conflicts with other women points to the fact that their linguistic talents cannot be explained solely by the need to provide a sophisticated response to males’ greater physical strength. It is precisely in interaction among women, where there were no major differences in strength and therefore, at first sight, there was no objective reason to use language strategies as a weapon of the weak, that conflict resolution appears to display the most pronounced verbal character.43 The female preference for verbal means of action is shown not only from the observed predominance of women’s voices in the individual cases of gossip and insult. In a certain sense, one could see, in women’s notably greater readiness to report, an expression of the same basic attitude. Filing a complaint to the police is a verbal deed, comparable to a certain degree in terms of goal and effect to the conscious launch of gossip or public insulting of an opponent. Even leaving aside the risk of the potential penal consequences of the declaration, a complaint to the police commissioner was also perceived as a public attempt to blacken the opponent’s –​whether male or female –​reputation. Given its pronounced linguistic character, a complaint to the police was closer to women’s preferences regarding the choice of means of action than was the case in men. Given that men, in using the same repertoire (containing both physical and verbal components), were on average less inclined than women to verbal means of action, they also made lesser use than women of the complaint as a means of pressure. Further detailed investigation could possibly reveal whether men and women not only used the complaint in varying degrees as a verbal means of action, but also expressed themselves differently in 43

In the well-​known terminology of Scott, Weapons of the Weak.

Men’s and Women’s Roles

245

front of the police.44 Such a study would bring to the surface gender-​specific differences regarding the length, style and motivation of such complaints. The general picture emerging from the reading of women’s complaints already does not correspond to what one might tend to expect. Just as little as Arlette Frage established for eighteenth-​century Paris did Antwerp women play predominantly on their supposed timidity and defencelessness to arouse the police commissioner’s pity and sympathy. On the contrary, an observer without preconceptions is struck by the powerful and self-​conscious character of the female voice. Once again, the question arises: how do we rhyme our observation of the power of the female voice with the passive and subordinate role ascribed to women in a male-​dominated society? Women in Antwerp in the first half of the twentieth century undoubtedly found themselves in a subordinate position in a number of social areas. Men indisputably dominated social, cultural, religious and political life. Access to public, official life was denied to women by means of statutory regulations and social conventions. To describe the existence of women, in such an undoubtedly highly patriarchal society, as a uniform history of victimization, improperly reduces them to historical objects that merely underwent everything calmly and lacked any room for manoeuvre.45 The historian who wants to achieve a balanced view of the role and position of women in a particular society should not limit himself to an analysis of gender-​specific power relationships within formal structures, but must also consider informal practices. Without in so doing necessarily attacking or rejecting the fundamental principles of patriarchal power relationships, women in early twentieth-​century Antwerp knew how to acquire a certain degree of autonomy and certain dominant positions outside of the official circuits, both in the home and in their neighbourhoods.46 The preponderance of the female voice in the insults is, for example, one of the factors that require women to be regarded as independent historic players. It indicates that women, who had literally little or nothing to say within formal structures, solidly and regularly had a major voice in informal social networks. In spite of the propagated image that a woman’s respectability could be guaranteed only by restraint and passivity, Antwerp women of the lower social groups did not hesitate to loosen their tongues to gain an audience when they felt the need for it. The feminine word was used with a 44 45

In eighteenth-​century Paris this was apparently the case; see: Farge, Le goût, 47. See the pertinent comments of Farge, Le goût, 54 and Perrot, Pouvoir des hommes, 213 and 221. 46 Capp, When Gossips Meet, 24.

246 Chapter 3 great deal of freedom; little restrained by bourgeois reserve and church morality, areas such as sexuality and physicality were anything but shunned. Gossip and insult represented important mechanisms of informal power in the neighbourhood for women from the lower social groups. Women invested a lot in such informal networks, not only because of the human warmth and intrinsic benefits of good neighbourly relations, but also because in the patriarchal society they were denied access to all kinds of formal bodies. The major significance of female verbal interaction in conflicts indicates that women played a more than important role within local informal social networks. In this regard, relations in twentieth-​century Antwerp seamlessly match the conclusions of two historians of neighbourhood life in the eighteenth-​century city of Paris.47 Arlette Farge wrote about the relationship between a woman and her environment: “… through her the neighbourhood comes to life”.48 In David Garrioch’s eyes, owing to the specific nature of their work, their subordinate social and economic position and the relative degree of segregation between male and female sociability, working women were the driving forces par excellence of the local community. In his eyes, within the informal networks of neighbourhood social life, the role of women was more decisive and more comprehensive than that of men.49 It is possible that, in a twentieth-​century Western European city as a result of the spread of the breadwinner model, women played an even more significant role in neighbourhood life than had been the case during the ancien régime. Talja Blokland points out that the differences in employment levels between men and women in a contemporary Rotterdam neighbourhood cause both sexes in the course of their lives to use the neighbourhood as a spatial unit to varying degrees.50 In particular, she establishes that the pattern of the housewife who stays at home to take charge of the children’s upbringing and the man working away from the home causes men to be much less visible than women in the neighbourhood. In her eyes, daily neighbourhood life is therefore largely a women’s matter. Women’s pivotal function in neighbourhood life implies that they largely determined local public opinion. Gossip, rumours and news made their way mainly through female informal networks. It was mainly women who watched

47 Garrioch, Neighbourhood, 203. 48 Farge, Le goût, 48. 49 Things were no different in the French and British working-​class neighbourhoods during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; see: Perrot, La Femme, 165–​171; Bourke, Working-​ Class, 154; Roberts, A Woman’s Place; Ross, Survival Networks, 4–​27; and see:  Farge, Evidentes emeutières, 485–​486. 50 Blokland, Urban Bonds, 38–​42.

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247

to make sure that everyone in the neighbourhood behaved in an acceptable manner, and took action against people who transgressed the shared values and standards.51 It was primarily women who watched over good morals. The established predominance of the female voice in gossip and insults indicates that in particular, women attempted in this way to put pressure on persons deemed to be transgressing the norms. Informal female networks often determined the attitude of public opinion in a neighbourhood towards them, especially when the subject was other women.52 Just as in so-​called “traditional” societies, characterized by oral cultures, the female voice in the Antwerp neighbourhoods was an important regulatory and control mechanism.53 Of course, women’s pivotal function in the neighbourhood is not to say that men did not interact verbally at all. There are any number of references in the Antwerp police reports to groups of men chatting on the street or in the tavern. Gossip was by no means a female exclusivity, but men’s chatter exhibited an important difference in comparison with the discussion among women. Melanie Tebbutt’s assertion that the men’s gossip contributed to a much lesser extent to the formulation and enforcement of local standards probably explains why the male voice was less dominant in the recorded conflicts.54 According to Tebbutt, this had everything to do with the orientation of the male gossip: this was focused not on what was happening in the neighbourhood, but on the outside, on paid work and more organized forms of leisure activities. In her estimation, men’s gossip played only an ancillary role in the ongoing exchange of news that was necessary for the effective functioning of neighbourhood life. It was primarily women who forged the ties between neighbours through their daily informal contacts, formulated the shared norms and values of the neighbourhood community and kept watch on compliance with them. The diverging orientation of male and female gossip is consistent with findings from recent linguistic research. Stylistic analysis shows that the language used by women is aimed, to a greater extent than that of men, at creating social connections between the interlocutors (rapport talk), while in the language used by men, the pure communicative aspect, that is, the transmission of a message, takes precedence (report talk).55 Research on gender-​specific choice of subjects goes in the same direction.56 It appears that the discussion topics of 51

For comparison, see: Cavallo and Cerutti, Female Honor 88–​89; Van Honacker, Lokaal verzet en oproer, 485; Perrot, Pouvoir, 215; Zedner, Women, 15–​16. 52 Capp, When Gossips Meet, 59. 53 Perrot, La parole, 259; Perrot, Public, privé et rapports de sexes, 389–​390. 54 Tebbutt, Women’s Talk?, 49. 55 Tannen, You just don’t understand, 88–​89. 56 See: Coates, Men Talk, 136–​137; Coates, Women Talk.

248 Chapter 3 adult British men and women differ significantly on average: men appear to centre their narratives on action (sports, cars, politics, drink …) while women talking among themselves are relatively much more focused on people and relationships. The finding that women, in the majority of cases, accused other women of insults points to the strength and importance of specific female informal social networks. In other words, women talked in particular among themselves.57 Assuming that the observed over-​weighting of inter-​female insults responded to social reality, this implies that women spent much of their time maintaining a specific female social life. This is in line with the gender-​specific conclusions of Melanie Tebbutt regarding verbal interaction in British nineteenth and early twentieth-​century working-​class neighbourhoods.58 Although there was, from her viewpoint, no immutable degree of segregation between the sexes, she states that workers’ wives spent their (scarce) time separately from the men, and that their daily conversations could be classified as inter-​female rather than mixed. Even if we assume that the gender-​specific relationships do not reflect reality, but rather result from the priorities and preoccupations of the actors involved, the preponderance of inter-​female insults points to the great importance that women attached to their position in informal female networks. Viewed from this perspective, women more often accused other women not only because indeed they were more regularly insulted by women than by men. Decisive here was the perception that an insult by a woman belonging to the same social networking group formed a greater threat to one’s reputation. However, there is no convincing unambiguous explanation to which to ascribe the imbalanced gender-​specific ratios. Apart from the assumption that women were particularly sensitive to insults, seeing that they attached greater importance than men to their position within informal networks of neighbourhood social life, other hypotheses may be formulated to explain the female predominance here. Perhaps a combination of several factors was in play here. For example, one could ask whether different gender-​specific notions of honour and shame made women’s reputations more vulnerable to insults than those of men. Further (in ­chapter 5) we shall see that the male concept of honour was pronouncedly multipolar, while the female concept of honour was almost unipolar. Since a woman’s good name largely depended on her reputation in one particular area, a verbal attack at that level could well have been experienced as additionally threatening. For a man whose reputation was

57 Perrot, La parole, 259. 58 Tebbutt, Women’s Talk?, 3.

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249

dependent on a much wider palette of facets, an insult to one of them might have had a less all-​embracing effect. The numerical predominance of insult and gossip among women may also be due, in part, to the fact that women still lived to a greater extent than men in a largely oral world. It is equally impossible to rule out the fact that the different attitudes of men and women towards the police was a factor of importance. As mentioned above, women resorted to the police more frequently within the framework of conflict settlement. Men showed greater restraint, as bringing in the police could in certain circumstances lead to a loss of status. It is therefore likely that the generally greater degree of distance of men towards the police translated not only into a lesser degree of reporting, but was also reflected in the quality of their statements as such. Thus, it is not excluded that men, given their more reserved attitude towards the police and gender-​specific notions of honourable behaviour, were less inclined than women to relate a conflict in detail, including the insults traded. Strategically speaking, it was much more interesting for women than men to explain to the police commissioner that they had been insulted. 3.4

Men’s and Women’s Places?

In nineteenth-​century bourgeois ideology, the separation made between the public and the private sphere, between society and family life, between the dangers of the street and the intimacy of the family, played a central role.59 Both spheres were explicitly gender-​charged. Women, according to the dominant view, came to their rights best in the atmosphere of the home. By nature, they were deemed unsuitable for public functions, and were supposed therefore to devote themselves to their nature-​given tasks of virtuous housewife and loyal wife. A public role for women was not (any longer) deemed respectable. Men were therefore seen as the natural breadwinners and managers of the public sphere and also had the final word in family life based on patriarchal authority. In a certain sense, the spread of the breadwinner model in the twentieth century would bring the gender-​specific separation of the spheres to a temporary peak. It is therefore worthwhile investigating whether traces of the gender-​specific separation of the spheres can be found in the spatial distribution of the recorded conflicts.

59

For the two spheres: Hall, Sweet Home, 53–​87; Knibhieler, Corps et coeurs, 375–​380; Nye, Masculinity, 47–​48. In British labour districts, a sharp separation of the two spheres was also not a reality; see: Tebbutt, Women’s Talk?, 182.

250 Chapter 3 table 23

Percentage distribution of the inter-​female conflicts by location.

REL. indoors tavern tavern-​street other semi-​public space street shop 100% = N

22.4 9.1 0.6 1.2 24.2 35.7 6.7 165

source: corpus of selected police reports

A rigid gender-​specific separation of the spheres certainly did not feature among Antwerp citizens from the lower social groups. For a variety of reasons, the ideological identification of the woman with the private sphere and of the man with the public sphere applied only partially. Contrary to the assumptions about their spatial behaviour, the Antwerp women from the lower social groups were particularly visible in public life. They had relatively high freedom to circulate in public without too much risk to their reputations. In addition, major practical objections stood in the way of adopting the woman-​at-​home ideal as the expression of a respectable lifestyle. The shaky livelihoods of households from the lower social groups made a stay-​at-​home existence a distant dream for the woman. Many women worked to provide a life-​critical contribution to the combined family income and to limit the risks of dependence on a single source of income. This included maintaining a shop or pub, serving in the catering industry or in the houses of wealthy citizens, or doing factory work. Performing such forms of work away from the home inevitably resulted in participation in public life. Given the tight living resources, any woman wishing, as stated above, to maintain essential reciprocity with her neighbours needed to exhibit openness and transparency, the complete opposite of privacy. While we cannot talk of a sharp distinction between male and female spheres in the popular quarters of Antwerp, the respective spatial focal points of male and female social life exhibit significant differences. The geographical distribution of conflicts fought out between members of the same (Tables 23 and 24) sex points in this direction. If one can assume that the location of

251

Men’s and Women’s Roles table 24

Percentage distribution of the inter-​male conflicts by locationa

REL. indoors cinema-​dance hall tavern tavern -​street other semi-​public space street workplace shop 100% = N

10.3 2.7 22.1 5.6 2.7 9.6 42.3 3.4 1.2 407

source: corpus of selected police reports a  For 8 out of 415 registered interpersonal conflicts, the location is unknown.

conflicts is in no way coincidental, but on the contrary relates to the geographical pattern of social life, gender-​specific locations of violence point to possible differences in the use of space by men and women. The frequency of fights between men and between women at one and the same location differs because, given the divergent gender-​specific geographical centres of social life, the two sexes had different preferences as to “arenas” for informal conflict resolution. In other words, what are the precise indications that inter-​male and inter-​ female violence had differing territorial dynamics? To begin with, it is apparent that conflicts between women were fought much more in and around the (semi-​public parts of the) house than were exclusively male disputes: almost half (46.6%) of the cases of violence between women, as against under a fifth (19.1%) for inter-​male violence. Men were again much more inclined to settle their mutual fights in a tavern or in the immediate vicinity. Here the proportion of disputes fought out in and around the tavern was three times as high as in the case of violence between women. The workplace was the exclusive domain for inter-​male disputes, while apparently the (local) shop played the mirror role (neighbourhood) for women. It is extremely tempting to see in this gender-​ specific geographical pattern (which is broadly in line with the spatial analysis of conflicts in

252 Chapter 3 eighteenth-​century Paris by historian David Garrioch) a confirmation of the classic dichotomy pair of female-​male, private-​public.60 Such an approach would, however, underplay the explicit public role of women in informal networks of local social life. Instead of interpreting gender-​specific differences as evidence that the public domain was purely a male world and the sphere of the home was the domain of the woman, it is more rewarding to analyse them from the perspective of the diverse spatial orientation of the –​intrinsically public –​social life of both sexes. The findings of Melanie Tebbutt, who for the British working-​class districts establishes differences in the “mental landscapes” of men and women, provide useful starting points here.61 In particular, her research shows the social lives of women from the lower social groups to have played out within more limited boundaries than those of men, but that this smaller range of action produced, to a certain extent, more deeply-​layered social ties among women from the same local area. Men had more opportunity to enter into informal relationships at more or less institutionalized locations such as the workplace, the sports field, the tavern or at trade union meetings, all of which shared the common feature of being off the street. For a variety of reasons, women had less access to such specific settings. Women’s social lives were consequently focused more on the immediate neighbourhood, and more particularly on the semi-​public areas of the house and on the street. The fulfilling of all kinds of domestic and other tasks required women to make an intensive use of the street: watching over playing children, bringing pupils to and from school and daily shopping. In Tebbutt’s view, the entering into and maintaining of the necessary reciprocal relationships between neighbours was also primarily a woman’s task. The previously established finding that, among the persons accused of violence, only in the “neighbours” relational category is the female proportion substantially the same as that of men, is certainly significant here. To attribute the more limited geographical range of action of women from the lower social groups to a supposed privatization of their lifestyles fails to do justice to the crucial importance of their participation in neighbourhood life. As the main bearers of relations between neighbours, they played a pronounced public role. The differences established between the geographical distribution of inter-​ male and inter-​female violence, respectively, appear in general to confirm Tebbutt’s view. The female predominance in conflicts in the immediate vicinity of 60 Garrioch, Neighbourhood, 21–​24. For the nineteenth-​century Seefhoek district, see: Van Houtven, Een studie, 83 et seqq. 61 Tebbutt, Women’s Talk?, 179. Comparable studies for late nineteenth-​ century London: Ross, Survival Networks, 5; Garrioch, Neighbourhood, 58–​59.

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the home and of the shop, another focal point par excellence of local social life, indicates the importance women attached to reciprocity relationships with neighbours. The significant portion of the conflicts in and around the home does not serve in any way to support the assumption of a privatized lifestyle but, on the contrary, points to the fundamental openness of the home to the neighbourhood. The semi-​public character of the stairwell, the corridor and the courtyard, which played a crucial role in living together between neighbours, is significant in this regard. The relatively high proportion of cases of violence in the shop is in line with research findings into the spatial dimension of social life in a French working-​class quartier: daily shopping was predominantly a woman’s affair and often gave rise to meetings and conversations among women.62 The finding that men, proportionally speaking, much more often than women fought out their mutual disputes in and around the tavern or at their workplace, appears also to corroborate Tebbutt’s views. In particular, the tavern was a focal point par excellence of the social life of men from the lower social groups.63 While, unlike in other historical contexts, the tavern in twentieth-​century Antwerp was not a male-​only location, it seems clear that the focus of female informal social life lay elsewhere. In his survey of Antwerp workers’ use of their leisure time in the interwar years, Aloïs Sledsens describes the tavern explicitly as a meeting place for men.64 Problematic with regard to Tebbutt’s position is the finding that the share of street violence in inter-​male conflicts was even greater than was the case with the reported inter-​female violence. The naked figures here seem to suggest that the orientation of male social life towards specific, partially extra-​neighbourhood spatial compartments was less absolute in the Antwerp neighbourhoods than research shows it to have been in British working-​class districts. Qualitative data from the reports also confirm that the street  also had a more than just traffic function for men. Many are the references to groups of men who, weather permitting, spent the evenings chatting at street corners or on doorsteps. Aloïs Sledsens described that practice in his survey: “The men lie outstretched on the ground, or gather in groups on the corner of the street and talk about the next Sunday’s ‘Quiévrain’ (pigeon race)”65 For men of the lower social groups in twentieth-​ century Antwerp, the street was an important focal point of informal social life. A public attack on the street to one’s reputation was taken very seriously by men also, often eliciting a violent response in order to save face. Rather than 62 Burdy, Le Soleil noir, 160. 63 In the Berlin of the Belle Époque, this was also the case: Lindenberger, Strassenpolitik, 137. 64 Sledsens, Het gebruik, 66–​67. 65 Sledsens, Het gebruik, 66.

254 Chapter 3 a predominantly female location, the street can be labelled, in the words of Jean-​Paul Burdy, as an entre-​deux frequented by both sexes.66 This being said, male social life on the street played a relatively minor role in the formation of reciprocity relationships with immediate neighbours and in maintaining shared morality. Given the crucial importance of the participation of the Antwerp women from the lower social groups in street life, it is not possible to qualify the street as an unequivocally male place, as historian Thomas Lindenberger proposes for Berlin during the Belle Époque.67 His statement that women on the streets were dependent on being accompanied by men for safeguarding their honour contrasts strongly with the finding that women in Antwerp enjoyed a high degree of autonomy when it came to informal conflict resolution in the public sphere. In addition, such an approach misses the fact that women’s par excellence public and prominent role in informal networks of local social life enabled women from the lower social groups to build a real power base. It was mainly women who determined the name and fame of people from the street and thus the social hierarchy among residents of the same neighbourhood. Lindenberger’s neglect of women’s public role maybe derives from an uncritical taking over of the perspective of the elites and social middle groups, who saw an active street life for women as the negation of their own domestic, bourgeois vision of female respectability. While women from the lower social groups may have enjoyed a relatively large freedom of movement in the Antwerp neighbourhoods, it was not absolute. The freedom of men and boys to go and stand wherever they wanted was in any case significantly greater than for women and girls. Thus, the practice of parents watching more closely over the behaviour of girls than of boys included spatial components.68 Parents imposed on their daughters more stringent rules about when they had to be home at night or the places and people they frequented. In particular, girls hanging out on the street at night was much less tolerated. Significant in this regard is the finding that the offence of “streetwalking” had no male equivalent. The double morality in the area of sexuality was the basis of this difference: in order to safeguard their respectability, a greater degree of sexual reserve was demanded of girls than was required of boys. Under certain conditions, the “street” could produce a danger for the sexual reputation of girls and women, a danger from which boys and men appear to have been immune. Apart from the general danger, in the absence of social 66 Burdy, Le Soleil noir, 155. 67 Lindenberger, Strassenpolitik, 68. 68 De Koster, Klachten, 112.

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control, of contacts deemed to be dishonouring, women’s staying on the street could be specifically associated with street prostitution. “Trimster” (streetwalker) was a commonly used reproach to attack women’s sexual honour. It would, however, be going too far to conclude from this that a woman entering the public domain without male accompaniment would ipso facto be placing her reputation at risk. While a number of restrictions existed on women’s spatial room for manoeuvre, these were not absolute, but related to the age and status of women, the time of day and the places frequented. For example, there is every reason to assume that a young woman who attached importance to her respectability would avoid the environs of the Central Station, especially at night. Based on the connection that was made in insults between “hustling” and “station”, broad layers of the population viewed the immediate station area as a prostitution zone. The pattern of women from the lower social groups enjoying a relatively high degree of freedom of movement, provided certain well-​defined reserves were respected, is also apparent from women’s frequentation of taverns. Although the spatial analysis of male and female violence clearly indicates that taverns played a much more important role in men’s social lives than in women’s, there is no reason to believe that they were in principle out-​of-​bounds to women from the lower social groups. As to whether or not and since when women have been an integral part of tavern life in Western European cities, the specialists are far from unanimous.69 Some assert that this was already the case during the early modern era. Others emphasize that the tavern was a distinctly male place and that only much more recently has this changed to a certain extent. According to this latter view, women could visit a tavern only in the company of their husband or a family member. Entering on their own, they risked being taken for prostitutes. However, in the entire corpus of police reports for twentieth-​century Antwerp, there is not a single indication of a female visitor being denied access to the tavern or called names there solely by reason of her sex. On the contrary, there are numerous signs of female consumers coming to the fore as an accepted and integral part of tavern life. The fact that a significant portion of Antwerp’s taverns were run by women, per se meant that the public premises were not exclusive male places. For example, the police reports repeatedly mention cases of women entering the bar for a chat and a drink with a tavern-​keeper friend. While there seems to have been little resistance to the presence of mature women in taverns, a much stricter 69

For this debate and a detailed discussion of the role of women in the tavern life of nineteenth-​century Paris, see:  Scott Haine, The World of the Paris Café, 180–​192. For Antwerp, see: Vrints, De codes van de kroeg.

256 Chapter 3 attitude may have been taken to the presence of unmarried girls in taverns.70 The fear of unwanted contacts jeopardizing their daughters’ respectability could not only mean parents not allowing their daughters to stay out late, but also forbidding them to enter taverns or dance halls. Nevertheless, a number of traces in the sources confirm that unmarried working girls who earned their own keep enjoyed a considerable freedom of movement here and went out dancing or to a cinema. The presence of women in taverns was seen as so unproblematic that people in their statements to the police never paid particular attention to this. Although the tavern was in the first instance a focal point of male social life, and women were undoubtedly a minority among tavern visitors, their presence was never questioned as being dishonourable by consumers or relatives. The woman’s presence could produce problems, however, when the purpose of the woman’s presence was to take her husband home. Even more than an unpermitted transgression, the man in question experienced such an act as an affront:  his wife had shamed him in the presence of his drinking brothers. Obviously, the relative tolerance of women in taverns concerned only the familiar, respectable tavern around the corner and not a venue of suspicious moral alloy, a distinction very sharply made by Antwerp citizens from the lower social groups. A woman’s presence in such a tavern could not but have a devastating effect on her sexual reputation. Men hearing of their wives being seen in such a tavern, whether as serving girl or a customer, felt obliged to take action. Indeed, should it be known that a man’s wife had been seen in such an establishment, not only would her reputation be jeopardized, but also his own name would suffer serious damage. A transport worker motivated his action in preventing his wife from working in “taverns of ill repute” with the words: “… in the Vleeshouwerstraat, where I learned she was working somewhere in a tavern, I fetched her out yesterday as it is unfitting for a woman with two children to be in the Schipperskwartier.”71 The prospect of a woman’s bad sexual reputation rubbing off on them continued to pursue men even after a (de facto) separation. Fireman Willem S. defended his decision to retrieve his wife, from whom he lived legally separated, from a suspicious bar with the argument that “she is still my wife”.72

70 71 72

See also in this context: Carlier, Mentaliteitshistorische, 245–​248. saa, MA 31875, report district 5, no. 805, 16-​2-​1949. saa, MA 31789, report district 5, no. 1739, 22-​6-​1944.

Men’s and Women’s Roles

3.5

257

Conclusion

An unequivocal active-​passive scheme fails in many ways to do justice to the complexity of gender roles in Antwerp’s popular quarters. While the social life of men and women could have different spatial centres of gravity, this is no evidence of a rigid gender-​specific separation of the spheres. Men and women each played their part in the fundamentally open-​to-​the-​world neighbourhood life. Nor can the under-​representation of women in violence be taken as evidence of the effect of the idea of female passivity. On the contrary, the intense language used by women in informal conflict resolution indicates that they had a decisive voice in informal social networks. The contrast between the gender-​specific profile of the violent actors and that of those involved in verbal interactions suggests that, for informal conflict resolution, the two sexes had differing strategic preferences as to the means of action used.73 An Antwerp woman from the lower social groups maintained the same preferences as during the ancien régime: “… (she expresses herself more by word and gesture, many times obscene, than with a knife”.74 Men seem generally more inclined to argue with their fists. The established predominance of women in the use of verbal repertoire and that of men for physical violence is in line with the gender-​specific role distribution as determined by numerous specialists in the analysis of collective action.75 Men and women both draw from the same repertoire, but generally the two sexes did not opt in identical manner for specific means of action. It is not surprising that the preference of both sexes reflects their respective strengths. However, this does not mean that certain means of action belonged exclusively to the domain of one or the other sex. In the area of informal conflict resolution, men and women were not, in the words of Arlette Farge, “prisoners” of gender-​specific expectations and role patterns –​nor of a clear dichotomous biological programming.76 Determinism, based on either gender or sex, is not in place here. In the same way as the use of violence was not exclusive to males, it was not only women who used verbal communication in informal conflict resolution. The preference for one or the other means of action was dependent on the estimation of the power relationships within the concrete situational context of the conflict and gender-​ related views on (dis)honourable behaviour. Almost all research on violence 73

The findings for the nineteenth-​century Seefhoek district provide a similar picture: Van Houtven, Een studie, 191–​208. 74 Castan, Criminelle, 474. 75 For biographical references, see: Van Honacker, Lokaal verzet en oproer, 490. 76 Farge, Proximités pensables, 77.

258 Chapter 3 (this study included) shows that men use violence more often than women in conflicts. The male predominance in the use of violence relates not only to biological-​physiological factors, but also to the specific link that exists in many cultural contexts between physical strength, violence and notions of male respectability. On the one hand, it is not unlikely that in a socio-​cultural context in which the use of violence was not exceptional, a physically powerful person could literally afford to be a “man of few words”.77 On the other hand, also in early nineteenth-​century Antwerp, men from lower social groups and even the lower middle groups felt obliged by their status to respond to certain provocations with violence. Given that with women the ability to defend themselves with violence was, to a much lesser extent, if at all, deemed decisive for their reputations, they lacked an additional incentive to resort to violence. All in all, body language therefore played a much lesser role in conflict situations for women than for men. Women, on the other hand, made more intensive use of the repertoire of verbal means of action in informal conflict settlement.

77

For bibliographical references, see: Tebbutt, Women’s Talk? 39.

­c hapter 4

Repertoires of Respectability 4.1

Introduction

Cultures are not monoliths. People can assign very different meanings and functions to similar cultural forms. Misunderstandings caused by this kind of cultural difference are the order of the day. In early twentieth-​century Antwerp, considerable divergence existed in the practices and perceptions of public violence. More striking is the fact that these differences run largely along social lines. There was clear social differentiation in the significance given to public violence. That observation merits further reflection. How does one explain the way practices and opinions differed so much from one social group to the next? The conclusion that a clear connection existed between social structure and action must not lead to a static view of culture. Culture is not a coagulated end product of a completed development, but a process that takes shape in the concrete interaction between people, and in particular between social groups. Since culture is always in motion, a cultural analysis by its very nature calls for a dynamic approach. Behaviour-​influencing processes are what such analysis seeks to isolate and explain. Once we assume that the meanings attributed to forms of behaviour within certain cultural circuits are not fixed but are, on the contrary, subject to change, it goes without saying that attention needs to be paid to the historical dimension. Since the thematic structure of the previous chapters did not allow the time dimension to be explicitly included in the analysis, this will now change. In concrete terms, the question arises whether there were shifts in the use of violence in the period of just under half a century under study. Do possible shifts in this area point to shifts in the meaning of violence within cultural circuits? Did behavioural influence take place between the various social groups? Do possible shifts in interpretation reflect structural social developments in the medium term or is such a connection overly reductionistic?1

1 On the necessity of the long-​term analysis of the relationship between structure and action, see: Tilly, As Sociology meets History, 212; Burke, Overture, 11–​12.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004416932_006

260 Chapter 4 4.2

Group-​Specific Behavioural Patterns

Public violence was almost exclusively a matter of the lower social groups in twentieth-​century Antwerp, with the élite and upper middle social groups hardly involved. The meaning given to violence differed strongly according to social class. Various sections of the population in the same city attributed different or even entirely opposite meanings to the same behaviour. Roughly and consciously oversimplified, the difference in meaning boiled down to the following. The more prosperous population groups saw in public violence a barbaric characteristic of the way of life of the lower social groups. They qualified it as “common” or uncivilized, the opposite of a respectable (“dignified”) standard of behaviour. The functionality of public violence for the lower social groups passed them by completely because they did not master its codes. In this sense this situation bears strong similarities to ethnocentric misunderstanding. Simply, there was no place for public violence within the standards of bourgeois behaviour. For the less prosperous layers of the population, however, public violence was –​within well-​defined conditions –​an accepted mechanism of informal conflict resolution, one of the instruments that allowed them to uphold their name and reputation and their own definition of respectability in their particular public environment. The diverging meaning given to public violence points to the existence of two models of respectability within the same urban society.2 Each of the models included a number of behavioural standards and regulations. These had to be respected if one wished to acquire social capital within the social groups that applied them. In the one model, described here as the “codes of the street”, a good reputation depended largely on openness, participation in reciprocity relations and the ability to uphold one’s good name vigorously in the public sphere. In the other model, which can best be qualified as the bourgeois respectability model, everything that produced a good name in the “codes of the street” was seen as “common”. Such behaviour was therefore out of the question. Instead of participation in the life of the street and neighbourhood, a privatized lifestyle was paramount. This consisted of various components: the breadwinner model, the ideology of domesticity and the ideal of purity.3 Gossiping on the pavement and participation in violent informal conflict resolution on the streets were totally ‘not on’. Asserting a credible claim to respectability 2 The resemblance to the distinction between decent and street in the black neighbourhoods of the American inner cities is striking and served as a source of inspiration here: Anderson, Code of the Street, 33. 3 See: Davidoff et al., Das Paradox der Familie, 364; Perkin, Women, 229–​233; Ross, “Not the sort”.

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in a bourgeois sense required one to take on board all these components of the respectability model. Any shortcoming in one of these rendered all efforts on all fronts vain. Respectability is, when all is said and done, indivisible. In the bourgeois model, “discretion”, “reserve” and “control” were the order of the day. The street and its life were literally kept outside the door, an intention that according to a contemporary also could be read from the architecture : “Bourgeois houses (…) give an impression of secret intimacy. The heavily draped windows, which are never opened to ventilate the rooms and inexorably keep out the gaze of the passers-​by, involuntarily awaken our curiosity.”4 Those who aspired to “gentility” in a bourgeois sense needed not only to avoid all behaviour that could be classed as “common”, but also had to maintain, literally, a distance from people who lived according to the “codes of the street”. Anyone failing to do so risked loss of status. For example, fear of contamination prevented parents from letting their children play on the street. Frans Smits wrote as follows about his childhood in what he called emphatically, in contrast to the surrounding lively working-​class districts, a “quiet bourgeois neighbourhood” between the Van Maerlantstraat and the Vondelstraat:  “But how rarely did it happen that we, children from neighbouring streets, could really enjoy ourselves together. After all, the street is not a playground for children from good families. They get dirty, learn bad ways and ugly words”.5 In this way, fear of contamination restricted contacts and thus the chances of direct conflict between people with different respectability models. If, despite this, a conflict occurred, “respectable” people could claim their moral and social superiority with regard to the “common” people. The following dispute is a rare example in which the parties played different repertoires of respectability against each other. Fitter Petrus L.  was standing on the pavement in the morning with two colleagues waiting for the workshop to open.6 Car driver Herman P., who had previously worked for the same boss and with whom Petrus L. had been on bad terms for a long time, passed by in a slightly befuddled state. He wanted to settle the conflict with Peter L. by appealing to notions of male respectability strongly associated with the physical person, strength and courage. He repeatedly shouted at him: “Cowardly Belgian, come out now, if you won’t, I’ll come and fetch you myself!” Peter L. refused to accept the challenge and parried the possible reputational damage by referring to the bourgeois definition of respectability. He told his attacker that he was “not so 4 Arents, Het stille Sint-​Willebrords, 138. 5 Smits, Een stille burgerwijk, 131. On the “dangers of the street” for “respectable” children, see: Anderson, Code of the Street, 39; Perrot, Figures et rôles, 144. 6 saa, MA 24633, report district 2, no. 4980, 7-​9-​1912.

262 Chapter 4 common as to fight in the street”. Peter L. explicitly claims here the superiority of the bourgeois notion of respectability vis-​à-​vis the notion that physical courage and masculine honour are inextricably linked. The opponent is stigmatized for appealing to a repertoire of respectability that is associated with the dregs of the population. In front of the police, bourgeois respectability was, for “respectable” people, a useful weapon for casting doubt on the counterparty’s claim of having been beaten or scolded. This was not something that people like them did. In this way, housewife Maria B. from the bourgeois seventh district appealed explicitly to her respectability in a bourgeois sense to reject the complaint of a shopkeeper from the street that she had scolded her: “I have not uttered any insults towards the inhabitants of Boomgaardstraat 7. I never utter insults. I’m more civilized than that.”7 A female teacher explicitly referred to the status of her husband, also a teacher, to plead his innocence in a confrontation with three tram drivers: “My husband only defended himself, as well as he could, and, given his social position, certainly did not take a fighter role. The tram drivers, on the other hand, acted as fighters.”8 The different value attached to (public) violence can be seen from practice. As mentioned above, only a very small proportion of the registered violence was committed by members of the élite and upper middle social groups. A number of data indicate, however, that the lower social groups cannot simply be treated here as an undifferentiated whole. For example, the relatively high proportion of unskilled workers among accused males in the particularly public category of “encounters” (compared to other relational categories) suggests that they performed “the theatre of the street” more frequently than other groups. The same applies to the high share of small-​scale self-​employed persons and craft workers among accused females in the same relational category. This indicates that they more than other social segments held to the “codes of the street”. The factor that closer housing conditions or their professional activities forced them to spend more time in the public space than other groups probably plays a role here. In spatial terms too, the social distinction stands out sharply. The following overview (Table 25) from the middle of the century indicates that in poorer neighbourhoods, people were arrested for violence with much greater frequency than in the bourgeois parts of the city. Of course, we must also bear in mind that police attention remained focused on the classes dangéreuses. One fact pleading for the reliability of the figures

7 saa, MA 29922, report district 7, no. 2818, 16-​10-​1944. 8 saa, MA 31790, report district 5, no. 2139, 27-​7-​1944.

263

Repertoires of Respectability

is the observation made earlier that the majority of the recorded violence was reported by the population. The highest ratio of arrests for violence as a percentage of the population were, not coincidentally, recorded in the first, fourth and part of the twelfth district (Dam, Eilandje and Docks), all neighbourhoods with predominantly working-​class populations. In particular, because of their geographical location, these were popular with dockers. Noteworthy is the high score of the second district that includes the attached polder villages of Oorderen, Austruweel and Wilmarsdonk. The author of the criminological study from which these figures were drawn saw in the high ratio for the polder villages a confirmation of the assumption made at the time that the countryside was on average more violent than the city. Nor is it a coincidence that in the distinctly bourgeois neighbourhoods such as the third, seventh and tenth districts the police made relatively few arrests for violence. The absence of population figures from the seventh police district minus the Zurenborg subsection unfortunately limits the possibilities of making table 25

Ratio per 1,000 residents of the number of persons over 21 years arrested by the City Police for crimes and offences of an aggressive nature in 1950, 1951 and 1952 by district

Persons arrested 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Dam, Eilandje, Docks Luchtbal

0.55 0.26 0.17 0.42 0.27 0.14 0.12 0.24 0.08 0.06 0.22 0.52 0.26

source: j. van den brande, sociologische studie van de criminaliteit te antwerpen, olv, leuven, 1954

264 Chapter 4 comparisons between the three districts studied, preventing us from exposing differences by comparing population-​related ratios of recorded violent offences per district. What is possible, however, is a comparison of the spatial dimensions of the registered violence in the respective neighbourhoods (Table 26). It thus becomes clear that in spatial terms the predominantly bourgeois seventh district differs from the profile of the mixed second and fifth districts. The share of conflicts fought out indoors or in the semi-​public parts of the home is significantly higher than in the other two districts. The share of conflicts on the streets and in taverns is therefore much lower. These differences display the spatial impact of the coexistence of various models of respectability within the same urban society. One can see an indication of this in the fact that in the predominantly bourgeois seventh district with its more highly privatized lifestyle the weight of the “theatre of the street” in the recorded violence was smaller than in the heterogeneous second and fifth districts. The divergent evaluation of (public) violence in various cultural circuits leads to a paradoxical observation: an act that contributes to a good name in one circuit is viewed in another as a threat to respectability. The Goffmanian logic that presupposes universal behavioural codes within the same society clearly hits its limits here. Of a generally shared code in early twentieth-​century Antwerp, there was no question. In the various cultural circuits, diverging formal repertoires were played to achieve the same goal, that of producing a favourable public impression. The one respectability model was no more theatrical than the other; only the nature of the performance that one had to perform to gain respectability was different. Judging from the differences in the value attached to public violence, the division of Antwerp society into distinct cultural circuits had a distinct social dimension. The social groups maintained here table 26

Percentage distribution of locations of registered violence

District District District 2 5 7 indoors semi-​public public 100% = N

25.4 11.8 62.7 448

28.3 14.9 56.7 723

33.7 21.8 44.6 193

source: corpus of selected police reports

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their own group-​specific behaviour repertoires. Depending on the respectability model that people adopted, they assigned different meanings to the same form of behaviour, so much so that it could even lead to mutual incomprehensibility. This observation shows once again the problematic nature of the notion of “folk culture”. Judging from the differences in the value attached to public violence, there was hardly any question of a shared cultural basis.9 Every social group was recognizable by its behavioural patterns that also created socially distinctive characteristics. The bourgeois qualification in early twentieth-​century Antwerp of the use of violence by the lower social groups as “mean” and “common” and their own refraining from violence in the public sphere as “distinguished” is a striking illustration of this. The identification of important “contrasts” between the behavioural patterns of higher and lower social groups undeniably reminds one of the work of Norbert Elias. Bearing in mind Elias’ s thesis that behavioural standards are subject to change and that such changes are related to shifts in the pattern of connections between people, the question now needs to be addressed as to whether the period under study was one of change. 4.3

Shifts over Time?

Making hard and fast statements about changes in behavioural patterns over time on the basis of police or judicial sources is a tricky business. Specialists on the history of violence agree that in this area only data about murder (especially on the basis of autopsy reports) form sufficiently hard criteria to make statements about the long-​term evolution. In the case of lighter forms of violence, the difference between the violence committed and the recorded violence is undoubtedly many times higher in almost all circumstances than in the case of fatal violence. Not only will it always remain unclear how great the difference is (the so-​called dark number), but the extent of this difference can also evolve over time, under the influence of various factors. Rising figures for certain offences do not necessarily point to a real increase (though they may do), but can be caused, for example, by increasing willingness to report or to changing police priorities. For this reason, any attempt to make statements about real behavioural changes based on police sources has a distinctly hypothetical character. The present case is no exception.

9 The definition is borrowed from Frijhoff, Inleiding, 28.

266 Chapter 4 table 27

1912 1917 1928 1938 1944 1949 Total

Mutual relationship of actors involved in violence per sample year in absolute and relative terms

Neighbours

Family

Lovers

Encounters

Police-​ citizens

69 (20.3) 24 (17.1) 32 (16.7) 39 (14.1) 31 (16.5) 42 (17.3) 237 (17.2)

69 (20.3) 49 (35.0) 45 (23.6) 86 (31.2) 64 (34.0) 110 (45.4) 423 (30.7)

22 (6.5) 10 (7.1) 10 (5.2) 21 (7.6) 15 (8.0) 19 (7.8) 97 (7.0)

150 (44.1) 37 (26.4) 94 (49.2) 120 (43.5) 72 (38.2) 68 (28.1) 541 (39.3)

30 (8.8) 20 (14.3) 10 (5.2) 10 (3.6) 6 (3.2) 3 (1.2) 79 (5.7)

source: corpus of selected police reports

table 28

1912 1917 1928 1938 1944 1949 Total

The locations of registered violence per sample year in absolute and relative terms

Public

Semi-​public

Indoors

242 (72.2) 73 (52.5) 114 (59.7) 161 (58.8) 83 (44.9) 104 (43.3) 777 (57.0)

40 (11.9) 22 (15.8) 36 (18.8) 40 (14.6) 26 (14.0) 39 (16.2) 203 (14.9)

53 (15.8) 44 (31.6) 41 (21.5) 73 (26.6) 76 (41.1) 97 (40.4) 384 (28.1)

source: corpus of selected police reports

Various parameters from the selected corpus of sources could potentially indicate behavioural change during the period under study. The profile of the violence selected for this study changes over time in several respects. Relatively speaking, the centre of gravity clearly shifts in the direction of intra-​family violence (Table 27). From a spatial point of view, an evolution emerges from the public to the private sphere (Table 28). As far as the gender

267

Repertoires of Respectability table 29

1912 1917 1928 1938 1944 1949 Total

Violent conflicts according to the sex of the actors per sample year in absolute and relative terms

Men

Both sexes

Women

123 (36.2%) 25 (17.9%) 78 (40.9%) 86 (31.2%) 37 (19.9%) 66 (27.3%) 415 (30.1%)

180 (52.9%) 75 (53.6%) 97 (50.8%) 164 (59.4%) 131 (69.7%) 150 (62.0%) 797 (57.9%)

37 (10.9%) 40 (28.6%) 16 (8.4%) 26 (9.4%) 20 (10.6%) 26 (10.7%) 165 (12.0%)

source: corpus of selected police reports

perspective is concerned, one notes a shift from violence between men to violence involving both sexes (Table 29). Only the war years of 1917 and 1944 seem to deviate from this pattern. Exceptional circumstances (such as the relative absence of men and the curtailment of the tavern culture owing to scarcity and curfews) may have meant that the pre-​eminently public category of “encounters” temporarily lost importance. The decline in police capacity during the war may also have played its part in this phenomenon. Overloaded with work, it is not inconceivable that the police gave low priority to the honour-​based “theatre of the street”.10 For these reasons it seems better to exclude the war years in seeking to determine long-​term developments. The coherent complex of developments over time could point to real changes in behavioural patterns that possibly originate in changing notions of respectability. The declining proportion of public violence between men without mutual family ties would then point to the fact that the repertoire of respectability, largely based on the active, public and often violent defence of one’s good name, lost its force over time. If this is the case, one would expect the explicitly communicative “theatre of the street” to be presented with decreasing intensity in the focal points of informal sociability. The steady decrease of the proportion of conflicts that were fought on the street or in the tavern is a possible indication of this, as codes of the street were exchanged 10

In Amsterdam this was the case during the Second World War: Meershoek, Dienaren, 473.

268 Chapter 4 for the more reserved, bourgeois respectability model that would gradually gain strength. Within this repertoire of respectability, there was no room for public violence, which was perceived as “uncivilized” or “common”, that is, specific to people who were less respectable. But apart from the specific aversion to public violence within this model of respectability, it was mainly its core values that were possibly responsible for the shifts in the medium-​term in recorded physical violence. The ideology of domesticity, the dissemination of the breadwinner model and the ideal of intimate family life formed the core points of a privatization process that ipso facto implied withdrawal from the public existence of the working-​class neighbourhoods. For social climbers, withdrawal from the informal networks of neighbourhood sociability was the necessary sacrifice on the altar of the bourgeois respectability model. Although the evidential value of the reports for behavioural change is not very solid, such an evolution would fit in with the general feeling that neighbourhood life lost momentum in the last century as a result of the ongoing privatization process. This privatization process, influenced by the spread of the ideal of domesticity and of the breadwinner model, would fundamentally change the function and perception of the public space in general and of the street in particular. Where the street had previously been, also and above all, a focal point of informal sociability, it would increasingly be reduced to its traffic function.11 The weakening of the societal function of the street and with it the “codes of the street” that regulated human interaction would also lead to a changed perception of the street. The “street” would increasingly be associated with danger, with crime and also with the negative aspects of car mobility. The fear of and aversion to the street that typified the bourgeoisie of the Belle Époque would subsequently grip ever broader sections of the population. This increasingly negative perception of the street had little to do with any real increase in risk, but everything to do with the mentioned loss of function. In the heyday of the “theatre of the street”, public violence was by no means less frequent, rather the contrary. But public violence took place within a fixed behavioural repertoire in the context of a specific model of respectability. As a result, the inhabitants of the less prosperous neighbourhoods of Antwerp could assign it a meaningful place within their own frames of reference. As familiarity with the codes of the street decreased, the perception of public violence would become much more threatening than before. In the absence of a frame of reference, it was increasingly interpreted as an elusive, unpredictable and meaningless 11

See the inspiring reflections of Pooley, Patterns, 443.

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phenomenon, all qualifications that would never have arisen in the heyday of the “theatre of the street” in the minds of the Antwerpians from the lower social groups. In another respect too, the privatization process would have assisted in the deteriorating perception of the street. Earlier it was pointed out that, when street codes were still fully alive, the lack of informal social control (for example in remote locations) was generally associated with danger. The demise of the social functions of the street is seen as leading to a breakdown of social control over large parts of the public space, resulting in the spread of unease. Ever broader layers of the population of Antwerp would align their behaviour on the bourgeois respectability model and no longer on the codes of the street. Translated into Norbert Elias’ s terminology, the outcome would be a “reduction of contrasts” between the behavioural standards of the various social groups. Ali de Regt states that during the same period in the Netherlands a convergence of family forms and thus also of the underlying respectability models took place between the various social groups as a result of the “bourgeoisification” of working-​class families.12 Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that the first half of the twentieth century is a snapshot of a process that had already commenced and continued on afterwards. The process of appropriation of the bourgeois respectability model by the lower social groups started much earlier. In eighteenth-​century London and Frankfurt the frequency of public violence had already begun to fall, an evolution that historians ascribed to a changing interpretation of (male) respectability.13 The traditional connection between honour, reputation and public violence gradually made way, under the influence of various factors, for new codes of conduct, characterized by “refinement” and “control”. It is worth noting that this process was by no means exclusive to élites and middle social groups, but also gained ground among the lower social groups. Pieter Spierenburg identified a similar development for Amsterdam between 1651 and 1810, but on the basis of the relational profile of the victims of homicide. The proportion of intra-​family violence increased considerably over time, attributable to the declining importance of pronounced ritual, public conflict resolution through violence played out in the context of informal social networks.14 Studies show that in the behavioural norms of British urban workers during the last decades of the nineteenth century there was less and less room for public violence as a respectable strategy

12 De Regt, Het ontstaan, 219–​220. 13 Shoemaker, Male Honour, 190–​208; Eibach, Städtische Gewaltkriminalität, 359–​382. 14 Spierenburg, Long-​term trends, 91.

270 Chapter 4 for resolving conflicts.15 The possible growing weight of the bourgeois respectability model between 1910 and 1950 does not mean that the model of respectability that supported the “theatre of the street” had completely disappeared by the middle of the twentieth century. Overly definitive statements are out of the question here. Even before 1949, there are cases of violent conflicts that were fought entirely in the spirit of this respectability model. There is one argument that can be adduced against the interpretation that increasingly broader layers of the Antwerp population exchanged the codes of the street for the bourgeois respectability model. The declining share in the corpus of recorded conflicts of public violence as an informal regulation mechanism could also be attributed to a change in the composition of the population over time. If we posit that, in the three selected neighbourhoods, a process of gentrification took place between 1910 and 1950, with the social displacement of poorer by more affluent populations, then the entire hypothesis of the change of respectability model by certain social groups rests on weak foundations. In this case the shifts observed would not reflect changing behavioural patterns, but in the first instance the increased share of certain population groups with their own standards of behaviour. As indicated earlier, a thorough socio-​geographic analysis of twentieth-​century Antwerp has still to be written. In its absence it is no easy task to test whether the socio-​professional profile of the population of the three selected districts changed substantially over time. The only available parameter is the professional profile of the registered complainants and complainees in the complaints for the selected sample years (Tables 30-​33).16 Analysis of the professional profile of the male complainants andcomplaineesin the complaints over time shows that relational, spatial and gender shifts with respect to the recorded violence are too well-​defined to be able to attribute them to changes in this area. The professional profile of the male complainants hardly changes, if at all, as the sample years progress. The only significant trend perceptible in the professional profile of male complainees is that the share of lower-​grade civil servants and clerks rises from 7 to 17% over the years. While this increase possibly reflects changes in the social composition of the population, it is too small to fully explain the extent of interrelated shifts. However, it cannot be ruled out that the possibly slightly increasing representation of clerks and low-​grade civil servants in the overall socio-​professional profile has partly contributed to the aforementioned

15 Bramwell, Public space, 45–​46; Weinberger, Urban and rural, 208. 16 Cf. supra.

Repertoires of Respectability271 table 30

Percentage distribution of male complainants per professional category per sample year

officials /​employees management level officials /​employees clerical level domestic staff skilled workers unskilled workers large-​scale self-​employed /​ entrepreneurs small-​scale self-​employed /​ craftsmen free professions private income no official occupation N = 100%

1912 1917

1928 1938 1944 1949

1.0

0.0

5.6

5.1

1.8

1.4

20.4 2.9 19.4 23.3 1.9

6.7 0.0 26.7 6.7 0.0

16.9 7.0 18.3 23.9 2.8

15.3 5.1 14.3 22.5 2.0

31.5 3.7 22.2 9.2 1.8

14.1 4.2 26.8 16.9 2.8

28.1 1.0 0.0 1.9 103

46.7 6.7 0.0 6.7 15

21.1 0.0 0.0 4.2 71

28.6 0.0 0.0 7.1 98

22.2 0.0 1.8 5.6 54

22.5 4.2 0.0 7.0 71

source: corpus of selected police reports

table 31

Percentage distribution of female complainants per professional category per sample year

1912 1917 1928 1938 1944 1949 officials /​employees management level officials /​employees clerical executive level domestic staff skilled workers unskilled workers small-​scale self-​employed /​ craftsmen private income no official occupation 100% = N

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

1.1

0.8

1.6

5.9

3.0

5.1

3.2

7.5

13.4 3.9 28.3 30.7 0.8 21.3 127

16.4 7.5 13.4 17.9 0.0 38.8 67

21.2 3.0 18.2 21.2 0.0 33.3 66

14.5 3.4 13.7 16.2 0.0 47.0 117

7.4 1.1 9.6 16.0 1.1 60.6 94

7.5 3.3 13.3 8.3 0.0 59.2 120

source: corpus of selected police reports

272 Chapter 4 table 32

Percentage distribution of male complainees per professional category per sample year

officials /​employees management level officials /​employees clerical level domestic staff skilled workers unskilled workers large-​scale self-​employed /​ entrepreneurs small-​scale self-​employed /​ craftsmen free professions private income no official occupation 100% = N

1912 1917

1928 1938 1944 1949

1.0

0.0

3.5

1.2

1.0

5.6

7.0 2.0 25.1 40.7 1.0

13.1 0.0 34.4 23.0 0.0

12.3 2.6 21.9 36.0 0.9

12.5 3.7 19.4 38.1 0.0

14.7 1.0 29.5 21.0 1.0

17.5 1.4 17.5 28.0 1.4

21.1 0.0 0.0 2.0 199

24.6 1.7 1.6 1.6 61

18.4 0.9 0.0 3.5 114

18.1 1.2 0.0 5.6 160

22.1 1.0 0.0 8.4 95

21.0 0.0 0.0 7.7 143

source: corpus of selected police reports

table 33

Percentage distribution of female complainees per professional category per sample year

officials /​employees clerical level domestic staff skilled workers unskilled workers large-​scale self-​employed /​ entrepreneurs small-​scale self-​employed /​ craftsmen no official occupation 100% = N

1912

1917

1928 1938

1944 1949

1.7 11.7 8.3 13.3 0.0

0.0 30.2 7.0 16.3 0.0

0.0 21.6 2.7 13.5 0.0

3.2 6.4 0.0 19.3 0.0

2.3 7.0 4.6 16.3 0.0

2.3 4.5 0.0 22.7 2.3

36.7

18.6

13.5

25.8

11.6

6.8

28.3 60

27.9 43

48.6 37

45.2 62

58.1 43

61.4 44

source: corpus of selected police reports

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273

shifts. The socio-​professional profile of the female complainants andcomplainees shows no significant shifts over time. The proportion of women with no official profession (i.e. housewives) increases spectacularly in the various categories. In combination with the relative stability of the professional profile of the male complainants and complainees, no valid argument can be seen to invalidate the hypothesis that the bourgeois respectability model was practised with increasing intensity by the lower social groups between 1910 and 1950, rather the contrary. The breadwinner model, which implied the withdrawal of women from the formal labour market, formed an integral and important part of this model of respectability. The increasing share of women exercising a domestic role is in line with the general Belgian trend.17 The participation rate of adult women in the formal labour market reached its low point around 1950, roughly the end point of this study. The explosively growing share of housewives during the period under study supports the thesis of the appropriation of the bourgeois respectability model by the lower social groups. The abandonment of public violence in the context of informal conflict resolution and married women’s remaining at home are two divergent consequences of the same phenomenon. Since respectability is indivisible, it is nonsensical to comply with the “respectable” standards of behaviour in one area but not in another. While the shifting repertoires of respectability might have the effect of reducing the frequency of violence in the public space, there was certainly no such reduction behind the scenes. Violence remained an integral part of domestic interaction among family members, though in the face of increasing social intolerance towards violence, it was probably even more than previously kept indoors.18 The following table does not seem to contradict this: Given the gender-​specific dimensions of public and private violence, a possible privatization process was not necessarily to women’s advantage.19 Indeed, it could be argued that the appropriation of aspects of the bourgeois respectability model by increasingly broader sections of the population markedly increased the vulnerability of women in the social groups involved. On the one hand, the intensification of domestic-​family bonds logically led to a proportionate increase in the risk of intra-​family violence. Starting from the observation that violence is not necessarily a crisis phenomenon, but is in the

17 See: Vanhaute, Breadwinner models, 59–​77. 18 For a comparison of developments in nineteenth-​century England, see:  Hammerton, Cruelty and Companionship. 19 See: Muchembled, Une histoire, 341.

274 Chapter 4 table 34

Location of family violence per sample year in absolute and relative terms

indoors semi-​public public total

1912

1917

1928

1938

1944

1949

33 (48.5) 8 (11.8) 27 (39.7) 68

26 (53.1) 7 (14.3) 16 (32.6) 49

27 (60.0) 5 (11.1) 13 (28.9) 45

43 (50.0) 13 (15.1) 30 (34.9) 86

51 (79.7) 2 (3.1) 11 (17.2) 64

78 (71.6) 6 (5.5) 25 (22.9) 109

source: corpus of selected police reports

first place an interaction mechanism between people who know each other, it is plausible that shifts in the centre of gravity of the relational connection between people also impacts the relational allocation of violence in a certain society. In practice, the domestication of women turned out badly for them as the physically weaker party in the partner relationship, exposing them to a greater risk of violence. On the other hand, the spread of the breadwinner model and the ideology of domesticity had the effect of strongly eroding the formerly prominent role of women in informal social networks. A certain social isolation was often the price to be paid for the transition from one model of respectability to another.20 For men, this was less so because, in particular, they continued to participate in the paid labour circuit outside the home. The withdrawal of women from the public sphere implied a weakening of the previously crucial reciprocity relations with other women from the neighbourhood and thus the loss of an external power base. The unravelling of the informal networks of neighbourhood sociability undoubtedly led to a weakening of the social control of violent spouses. Although the patriarchal right of chastisement was not fundamentally disputed, social control in this respect and the willingness to intervene in the event of excesses limited it somewhat. In the context of privatized family life, consciously withdrawn from the gaze of the others, these braking forces ceased to exist. The result of these developments was that women were forced to call on the external authority of the police to put an end to the ill-​treatment they had to suffer from their menfolk. Finally, one may wonder whether the ideological charge of the breadwinner model did not de facto support the praxis of patriarchal right of chastisement. A rapid analysis of interrogations of men about violence against their wives 20 Pooley, Patterns, 443; Ross, “Not the sort”, 51–​52.

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shows that they often legitimized their behaviour by pointing to the failure of their wives to fulfil their household duties (cleanliness, cooking and children). Further investigation of partner violence in private circles could reveal whether the breadwinner model did not, by emphasizing the domestic role of women, provide additional legitimacy to the husband’s right of chastisement. Needless to say, alternative interpretations of the increasing share of intra-​ familial violence, with complaints mainly made by women and housewives, in the overall corpus of recorded violence, are possible. For example, the increasing willingness of women to report intra-​familial violence could point to a growing degree of intolerance with regard to mistreatment by their husbands. It could be argued that the legitimacy of the male right of chastisement came under increasing pressure during the period under study. According to this reasoning, the practice of violence between married persons did not change much over time, but in 1912 women were more resigned to being struck by their husbands than in 1949. In a certain sense, women’s increasing readiness to report domestic violence can be seen as indicating an emancipatory trend, prefiguring the fundamental undermining of the patriarchate during the subsequent decades. Apart from the latter, for which hard evidence is difficult to adduce, the proposition that women were becoming less tolerant towards violence by their husbands certainly does not contradict the thesis of the dissemination of the bourgeois respectability model. The growing intolerance of the male right of chastisement could, on the contrary, be interpreted as a consequence of it. The fact is that the ideal image of a harmonious, loving and intimate relationship between the spouses was an integral part of the bourgeois family model. The confrontation between the ideal image and the often harsh reality of living together undoubtedly encouraged the willingness to report violence here. 4.4

Possible Explanations for Behavioural Shifts

How is it possible to explain the hypothesis that it was precisely during the first half of the twentieth century that the process of appropriation of the bourgeois respectability model by less prosperous sections of the population gathered pace? An intensification of top-​down disciplinary and civilizational offensives is a possible explanation for the spread of the bourgeois respectability model.21 The democratization process that took place during the period

21

For comparison, see the civilization offensives aimed at the working class in the Netherlands between 1870 and 1940: De Regt, Arbeidersgezinnen.

276 Chapter 4 under study was accompanied by a greater intensity of socio-​political interventions. The introduction of compulsory education, the tightening of alcohol legislation and the introduction of film censorship are just some of the legal measures taken during the period in question. The moral panic that the experience of the First World War had aroused among élites and middle social groups had reinforced these socio-​political interventions.22 But it is not only from a statutory-​legal perspective that the reins were tightened. The importance of the coming to full flower of the so-​called “pillar” system (verzuiling), that is the various philosophical or politically inspired intermediary structures that framed their adherents from cradle to grave, can hardly be underestimated.23 Such structures expressly sought to model the behavioural standards of their members according to predefined standards of decency that often showed a high degree of affinity with the bourgeois respectability model. The ambitions of the Roman Catholic church with its widespread network of social organizations in Belgium are well known in this context. The powerful ideological support of the breadwinner model is only one part of this. Faced with new socio-​ cultural phenomena such as sports, radio and cinema attendance, the church developed strategies during the interbellum to protect the faithful from these perceived threats.24 But the socialist labour movement too preached standards of behaviour based on its penchant for respectability, including in the areas of sexuality, alcohol consumption and family life, which were largely in line with bourgeois morality.25 Attributing possible behavioural changes to the intensification of socio-​ political interventions (“civilization offensives”) from above remains, however, highly problematic. Such an approach would be wrong in assuming that such interventions are always effective because the targeted social groups cannot but passively undergo them. Historical analysis of social policy has shown, rather, that not all interventions are effective.26 Their effectiveness depends on various factors. The most important among these factors is the reaction of the target groups themselves. These can respond to socio-​political interventions in very different ways. There are behavioural alternatives to passive submission. The options are not reducible to the dichotomous adjustment-​resistance 22 Depauw, Paniek in context; François, Guerres et délinquance. 23 For a contribution that specifically links pillarization, institutionalized social control and pacification for the Netherlands, see: De Rooij, Geweld in de polder, 62–​70. 24 De Borchgrave, God of genot, 189. 25 See: Savage, Urban History, 77; Perrot, La famille triomphante, 100–​103. Specifically for the desire for respectability in the Belgian socialist labour movement, see: De Wilde, Seks, 167–​171. 26 See: Lis, Soly and Van Damme, Op vrije voeten?, 14–​17 and 34–​37.

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277

pattern. Possibilities include more complex positions such as appropriation, transformation or purely instrumental use. The question of whether groups can integrate the socio-​political interventions from above into their own existence or survival strategies is often the deciding factor in whether or not they accept them. In concrete terms, the claim that the bourgeois respectability model was propagated with great intensity during the first half of the twentieth century does not adequately explain the hypothesis that the lower social groups in Antwerp neighbourhoods effectively aligned their behavioural standards more and more with this model. The origin of possible behavioural changes lay in the first instance in the (changing) attitude of the social groups involved. They began to accept and embody the bourgeois model of respectability more and more because it became increasingly connected with their own interests, aspirations and ideals. If one assumes that behavioural change is primarily related to the aspirations, interests and ideals of those involved, the question arises as to what could potentially have led the population of Antwerp’s popular neighbourhoods to adopt the bourgeois norms of behaviour. Public violence is an interaction code, a language. For the lower social groups, public violence was, to a certain extent, a means of communication, an appropriate instrument for expressing norms and values, objectives and expectations. The behavioural forms that were considered “civilized” or “decent” within the bourgeois cultural circuit were, however, also elements of a communicative code. Ultimately, completely different behaviours such as flexing one’s muscles or scrubbing the pavement fulfilled a similar communicative function within the respective cultural circuits: that of maintaining or acquiring respectability in the eyes of the immediate social environment. The form and content can be very different, but the function is fundamentally the same. The appropriation of a new behavioural repertoire and the associated interpretation of respectability by social groups that previously had different standards of behaviour is therefore, in a sense, comparable to a process of language change. Moreover, language use is precisely one of the behavioural forms that indicate the boundaries of cultural circuits. The comparison is all the more valid since processes of language change are often driven by a similar dynamic as shifts in behavioural standards. Change within a language and its most radical variant, adopting a new language, are often motivated by the desire to distinguish oneself from other social groups.27 The use of French by the eighteenth-​century élites in much

27 See: Burke, History and Social Theory, 97; Burke, Languages and Communities, 7 and 29–​ 32; De Swaan, Zorg en de staat, 85–​92; Bourdieu, La distinction, 390.

278 Chapter 4 of Europe was strategically interesting not only because it extended the communication network of those élites to other parties in other countries, but also because of its pronounced exclusive character. The long-​term dominance of French among the Belgian élites is a textbook example of this mechanism, which proved more powerful and tougher than in other countries.28 For his part, Yves Castan emphasizes that the acquisition of the langue d’oïl by the southern French élites at the same time was, given the wide distribution and internal intelligibility of the langue d’oc, in no way motivated by the need for a more powerful means of communication, but by the desire to distinguish oneself from a vernacular that was increasingly deemed vulgar.29 The use of French, the prestigious language of the court and the big city, formed an important part of honnêteté, the elitist respectability model. Incidentally, the élites’ desire for linguistic distinctiveness does not necessarily imply exchanging the mother tongue for another, more prestigious, language. The development of variants of the mother tongue into élite group languages is also possible. For example, in the course of the seventeenth century the everyday language of the élites of The Hague and Amsterdam increasingly differed from that of the vast majority of the population, which was perceived by the former as ‘low’ (plat).30 Characteristic of the potential use of language as a distinguishing marker is the qualification of the Standard Dutch that grew out of the élite group languages of the Dutch cities as “General Civilized Dutch” (Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands). Within a constellation in which the standard language or a foreign language is associated with respectability and the élites, and the vernacular with vulgarity and the lower social groups, it is not surprising that the “civilized” language code has a strong attraction for social climbers. Mastery of that code is indeed an absolute pre-​condition for social promotion within such a context. The acquisition of the dominant language is an appropriate strategy for the subordinate groups to realize their aspirations, even if this implies the loss of their own language. The functionality of language change for such groups explains the relative speed of the language change that took place in the nineteenth century, via a transitional stage of bilingualism, for example in the Irish and French countryside or –​closer to home –​in Brussels. The close relationship between processes of language change and upward social mobility is evident from the temporal dynamics of such processes. The appropriation of

28 See: Boeva, Pour les flamands. 29 Castan, Honnêteté, 17 and 27. 30 De Vries, Willemyns and Burger, Het verhaal van een taal, 75–​76.

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the “civilized” language code originally developed by the élites as a distinctive mechanism by increasingly broad population layers begins only when there is a real prospect of social promotion. In a society where there is little to no room for social mobility, parents gain little if anything by keeping their children in school for years to master the dominant language. Moreover, the precarious basis of existence of broad sections of the population within such a context often makes it impossible to postpone the entry of children into the labour process for any length of time. In a sense, language is an economic ware: the question of whether people remain with their own codes or, on the contrary, take over codes with a higher status is ultimately answered on the basis of a cost-​benefit analysis.31 The language relations in nineteenth-​century Brussels are a clear illustration in this respect.32 Despite the undisputed status of French as an elitist language, the Frenchification of the Brussels working class, unlike the (petty) bourgeoisie, remained very limited for a long time. As long as there was no realistic prospect of social progress for Brussels workers in segregated nineteenth-​century class society, they remained faithful to their Brabantine form of Dutch. Only when, at the end of the century and under the influence of a combination of factors, social segregation became less sharp and opportunities for upward social mobility arose for the working class did the Frenchification of Brussels workers finally get under way. French was and remained the language of social promotion. The fact that, more or less simultaneously, French-​speaking education was made much more accessible to the working class made it possible to breach the formerly impenetrable social language wall within a couple ofgenerations. Analogous to processes of language change, the appropriation of the bourgeois model of respectability in all its components (breadwinner model, ideology of domesticity, withdrawal from the physical focal points of informal sociability and rejection of violence in the context of informal conflict resolution) forms an appropriate strategy of existence for subordinate social groups, a strategy with social ascent as its aim.33 The process of appropriating bourgeois standards of behaviour began only from the moment that a real prospect of upward social mobility arose. This process could get off to a good start only once the benefits of such a step began to outweigh its costs. As long as the precarious economic basis of the lower social groups required a dependence on reciprocity relations, there could be no question of a withdrawal from informal 31 32 33

De Swaan, Words of the World, 33–​40. See: De Metsenaere, Taalmuur. For the notion of the existence strategy, see:  Heerma van Voss, Why is there no Socialism, 9–​11.

280 Chapter 4 social networks. The vital participation in those networks implied the acceptance of the codes of the street. A standard of living above a certain minimum limit and especially the perception of a certain stability of the livelihood base are therefore absolute pre-​conditions for withdrawal from the life of the street and the appropriation of the bourgeois respectability model. Before the First World War, these conditions were at best only partly met for the majority of Belgium’s working population. While the main workers’ categories saw their purchasing power rise after 1850, for most of them the increase only amounted to a recovery of the decline undergone during the blackest days of the proletarianization of the first half of the nineteenth century.34 The increase in purchasing power was also traversed by often significant fluctuations. Only a few categories (in particular miners) were able to significantly increase their purchasing power around 1900. It was only in the first half of the twentieth century that the overall rise in the purchasing power of the lower social groups (which, among other things, translated into a more calorie-​rich and varied menu) reduced the dependence on reciprocity relations.35 Specifically for Antwerp, there was the positive impact of the city’s industrial and maritime expansion in the period under study.36 In this way, for example, the intensity of the crisis of the 1930s was less pronounced in Antwerp than elsewhere in Belgium.37 Perhaps more fundamental was the gradual intensification of social protection mechanisms during the first half of the twentieth century, which would ultimately cumulate in the Social Pact of 1944.38 However, the post-​war social security system did not come from nowhere. The compulsory child benefit and pension systems, for example, date back to the interbellum. In addition, voluntary insurance against sickness, disability and unemployment had already become increasingly popular between the wars, before becoming compulsory in 1944. The introduction of the pay index mechanism contributed equally well to the reduction of subsistence uncertainty. The gradual coming the full strength of social protection mechanisms undoubtedly reduced the need to maintain reciprocity relations for times of need. Incidentally, this does not mean that the minimum requirements for changing the repertoire of respectability were very high. For example, it is known from research that already from a relatively low 34 See: Scholliers, Loonindexering, 31–​33. 35 See: Scholliers, Arm en rijk. 36 Suykens, The Major Breakthrough, 19–​101; Devos, De goederenbehandeling, 47–​52; Sas, Van suikerraffinaderij, 53–​63. 37 De Brabander, Na-​kaarten, 122–​123. 38 See: Luyten and Vanthemsche, Het Sociaal Pact.

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level of well-​being, working class families opted not to have married women work outside the home.39 If it is permitted to judge from the rapidly increasing proportion of housewives among the complainants and complainees, this evolution may have been under way in the early twentieth-​century Antwerp neighbourhoods. Just as one cannot learn a language without coming into contact with it, nor can one acquire an alternative model of respectability in a situation of socio-​ cultural isolation. Obviously, in early twentieth-​century Antwerp, there was no complete isolation of those people who respected the code of the street, despite the pronounced degree of social segregation between “respectable” and “common”. Serious cultural contact existed, occasions when they came into contact with the bourgeois model of respectability, if only because of the live example of people from their neighbourhood or from further afield who sought to incarnate it. The introduction of free compulsory education (de jure from 1914) at primary school level undoubtedly intensified the cultural contact and thus also the possibilities to appropriate bourgeois standards of behaviour at relatively low cost. For example, there was no room at school for violence between children. Schoolboy Theo van L. explained about the disciplinary strategies regarding school violence: “At school itself he does not leave the students alone and also hits them in such a way that he has to stand in punishment several times.”40 The transfer of bourgeois behavioural models to children and young people from the lower social groups in the context of disciplining strategies of the élites and government could be effective only if they replied to the desire for upward social mobility of those involved. Linguist H. Smout established in 1905 that many children from the slums were no longer speaking the dialect of “the lowest class” under the influence of education, but “bourgeois … in order to conceal their lesser descent”.41 Language was just one form of behaviour with which one could distinguish oneself. Young people also appropriated other elements of the bourgeois respectability model they had acquired at school. The improvement of education in Antwerp during the interbellum due to the introduction of compulsory education and the expansion of technical and vocational education, achieved, according to economist Guido de Brabander, real effects; he described these measures as a “decisive factor for positive social mobility”.42

39 40 41 42

See: Heerma van Voss, Why is there no Socialism, 25. saa, MA 29318, report district 2, no. 672, 24-​5-​1944. Quoted in: Thijs, Burgerlijk Antwerpen, 136. De Brabander, Antwerp, 112–​113.

282 Chapter 4 Earlier it was indicated that it is reductionistic to ascribe the public nature of the existence of large parts of the Antwerp population solely to the shortage of housing. On the other hand, this does not alter the fact that the ideology of domesticity is practicable only if the material context allows it. In overcrowded, cramped homes, a domestic lifestyle is obviously not an obvious option. A decrease in population pressure logically increases the possibilities to physically withdraw behind the scenes. With the flight to the suburbs that started in the early 1920s, population pressure clearly declined in Antwerp during the period studied.43 Between the two outer sample years of 1912 and 1949, the Antwerp population, despite annexations and increases in the built-​up area, decreased from 312,884 to 262,037, representing a drop of 19.4%. This decrease was most pronounced in the densely populated districts of the old city centre. A  massive move started towards the new workers’ districts outside the nineteenth-​century belt (especially in Deurne).44 The prospect of building up a respectable, more privatized existence in the relatively larger dwellings there was probably one of the pull factors of this migration movement. The emigrants thus acted de facto in the footsteps of the élites and social middle groups who had largely withdrawn from the old inner city to the respectable (new) neighbourhoods to distance themselves from the “less civilized popular classes”.45 The interplay of a relatively sharp population decrease with a virtually stable number of houses led to a reduction in population pressure. While the average number of residents per house for the entire city was 7.7 in 1912, in 1949 this average had dropped to 6.1 (Table  35). The decline was common to all districts, though comparisons are hindered by the splitting and merging of certain districts. The fall in the real population pressure was also perhaps more significant than the comparison of house counts suggests. Apartment buildings, which were undoubtedly more numerous in 1949 than in 1912, are counted as one “house”. In reality, the available living space increased more than the decreasing figures of the number of residents per house suggests. Inspired by the insights into language change, one can ask whether the transition point in which the old respectability model was traded for the new one was not preceded by a transitional phase of bilingualism. We pointed 43

Loots and Van Hove, Stadsvlucht?, 57–​64; Loyen, Demografische ontwikkeling, 16–​19. Before 1920, despite the steady expansion of the city, this had not happened since the most prosperous population groups had taken the lion’s share of the extra space. De Brabander, Na-​kaarten, 119. 44 See: Buyst, Bijdrage tot de Antwerpse urbanisatiegeschiedenis. 45 De Brabander, Na-​kaarten, 111.

283

Repertoires of Respectability table 35

Average number of residents per house at district level in 1949

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 2nd district Total

Population Houses

Residents per house

14,078 11,877 11,308 21,959 29,622 14,456 32,016 40,585 22,874 15,113 31,459 15,392 2482 263,221

6.5 5.3 4.4 7.7 5.4 6.6 6.2 6.3 6.1 5.9 6.4 7.1 3.5 6.1

2148 2254 2545 2853 5524 2178 5136 6412 3727 2523 4904 2160 708 43,072

source:  saa, annual reports of the city services, report on the activities of the services under the management of mr. j. cornet, 1949

earlier to the possibility that individuals or groups applied specific codes of conduct and expectation patterns depending on the circumstances. This capacity for code switching presupposes mastery of at least two different codes of conduct. Such mastery of various behavioural standards can be particularly functional in certain contexts. In particular, this is the case when the social constellation does not allow the prevailing behavioural standards to be publicly dropped, but the future can already be prepared by appropriating distinctive standards of behaviour in private. Elijah Anderson pointed out in his brilliant study of life in black ghettos of the American city that the “respectable” poor who raised their children at home according to the norms of bourgeois decency also taught them –​albeit reluctantly and for the sake of survival –​the dominant code of the street.46 Such an attitude accords with the observation that parents, despite lip service in public to the language that is common in society, nevertheless familiarize their children with another language with a higher distinctive value. Just as with language, the need for public lip service 46 Anderson, Code of the street, 33 and 36.

284 Chapter 4 to the old model of respectability lapses as more and more people (also) master the new code. As bilingualism becomes general, the awareness of the added value of the old code also decreases proportionately. At the moment of generalized bilingualism, the demise of the former model of respectability is no longer far off. People wishing to take the step towards bourgeois respectability have not only to change their own standards of behaviour, but also keep a distance from relatives and neighbours who remain faithful to the values, norms and beliefs of the social environment to which they had previously belonged. The most important price to be paid in the process of appropriation of the bourgeois respectability model is the withdrawal from informal networks of (neighbourhood) sociability. Pierre Bourdieu rightly observes that the realization of petty-​bourgeois aspirations always presupposes a break.47 Not only do former pattern of values and behaviour need to be exchanged for the (petty) bourgeois model, but sacrifices are demanded especially in the area of informal sociability. The potential social climber experiences the reciprocity relationships that are particularly functional in times of adversity as a brake on individual mobility. He breaks with them to make all available resources available for the social progress he aims at. In addition to the fact that maintaining reciprocal relations would melt away any material surpluses that are indispensable for upward social mobility, the fear of contagion is an important factor in this context. After all, it is a well-​known phenomenon that the reputation one enjoys depends to a large extent on the people whom one publicly frequents.48 To be seen with people who, from a (petty) bourgeois perspective, had a rather disrespectful lifestyle could jeopardize all the hard work of appropriating the bourgeois norms of behaviour. Increasingly wider population layers experienced fundamental public informal sociability as a threat to respectability. Through this process, the once intense street life lost much of its vitality over the decades under study, being sacrificed on the altar of the desire for social promotion. British and Dutch research shows that gossip among women on the street or in the shop, once crucial for forging informal social bonds and maintaining a shared morality, lost momentum for that reason.49 Moreover, the fact of whether or not people chatted on the street served as an indicator for the respectability or lack of respectability of a neighbourhood. The

47 Bourdieu, La distinction, 389. 48 For social avoidance behaviour, see: Wouters, Van minnen en sterven, 142–​146. 49 Tebbutt, Women’s Talk, 37 and 91–​96; Blokland, Urban Bonds, 105–​108.

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wish to literally leave behind an “unruly life” is clearly expressed in the statement of a woman who, with her child, had left her husband, a riveter from the second district, and had settled in the bourgeois Lange Lozannastraat: “I demand that he leave me in peace at home. I work to earn my daily bread and provide for myself and my child. I  now live in a good neighbourhood and do not want him to discredit me there.”50 A precondition for social mobility was therefore not only the symbolic distancing from earlier standards of behaviour, but also the physical distancing from social ties that could endanger the (petty) bourgeois status pursued. In his classic study Street Corner Society, American sociologist William Foote Whyte described the dilemma faced by the residents of an Italian slum in Chicago.51 By holding on to the ties with the residents and the specific codes that supported community life, they forfeited any chance of social promotion in the “respectable” outside world. If they opted for a “respectable” lifestyle, they were struck off informal networks of neighbourhood sociability and could no longer rely on reciprocity relations. Specialists point out that processes of appropriation and behavioural influence cannot be reduced to a top-​down diffusion model.52 In other words, standards of behaviour do not penetrate only in a downward direction. Research has shown that in many ways the nobility too has appropriated the bourgeois respectability model. Yet it is undeniable that the behavioural standards of each social group do not have the same influence and attraction.53 This attraction is directly related to the position of the group within social stratification. As a result of the unequal power and property relations, the standards of behaviour of dominant social groups enjoy greater social status than others. The motor behind behavioural change is the desire for social distinction. The conclusion that people from the lower social groups abandoned the “codes of the street” and opted for the bourgeois respectability model, once structural conditions allowed it, is significant. It suggests that the desire for various aspects of this model (such as family, marital and personal intimacy), had long been coveted by the poorer layers of the population and that it was only circumstance that had prevented them from effecting the transition.54

50 saa, MA 29318, report district 2, no. 827, 23-​6-​1944. 51 Foote Whyte, Street Corner Society, 273–​274. 52 See the appropriate remarks by Frijhoff, Toe-​eigening, 13. 53 Hall, Sweet Home, 73–​74. 54 See also: Perrot, Manières, 319–​321; Tebbutt, Women’s Talk, 165–​182.

286 Chapter 4 4.5

Conclusion

There was no consensus in early twentieth-​century Antwerp as to the significance of violence in the public sphere. This ambiguity points to the coexistence of various models of respectability within the same society. In one model, the so-​called codes of the street, the use of physical force could, in certain well-​defined circumstances, positively affect the reputation of the person in question. Public violence occupied a prominent place in informal conflict resolution in working-​class neighbourhoods. In the bourgeois respectability model, there was no question of a possible positive view on violence under any circumstances, quite the contrary. Violence in the public sphere was emphatically rejected as “common”, a qualification that indicated everything that departed from “respectable” standards of decency and at the same time suggested social inferiority. In this way a clear link existed between the social position in which one spent one’s daily existence and the respectability model that one embodied. The codes of the street and the bourgeois respectability model can, with overlaps and transition zones, be situated at the one and the other end of the social ladder. During the period under study, a number of inter-​related shifts took place in the recorded violence that may indicate that the bourgeois model of respectability was gradually gaining ground among Antwerpians from the lower social groups, at the expense of the “repertoire of the street”. Spatially, the centre of gravity of registered violence shifted from the public to the private space. In terms of the relationships involved, the proportion of intra-​familial violence became increasingly important. Gender-​wise, one sees a shift from violence between men to violence between men and women. The “theatre of the street” appears to have been staged with decreasing frequency, with informal sociability oriented towards the public sphere l­ osing momentum. The explanation of a possible process of bourgeoisification of the lower social groups lies, not in an intensification of the socio-​political interventions from above, but in the strategies, aspirations and ideals of the groups concerned. By analogy with processes of language change in which the “vulgar” vernacular language is exchanged for the “respectable”, distinctive language codes of the élites, the process of appropriation of the bourgeois respectability model by the lower social groups came into full swing once it was functional for them. With the desire for social ascent as the driving force behind the changing of repertoire of respectability, appropriation took place once real prospects for social promotion came into being. Factors such as the rise in living standards,

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the development of social protection, the decline in population pressure and the introduction of compulsory education provided the context in which such changes could take place. In order to be able to make conclusive statements, the hypothesis of the process of bourgeoisification needs, however, to be tested by further research.

­c hapter 5

Values behind Words 5.1

Insults, Values and Identification

In the “theatre of the street”, violence served usually to prevent or undo an attack on a person’s honourability. The mechanism whereby shame is eradicated by violence may be clear, but this does not yet tell us what precisely was and was not experienced as a threat to respectability. Only a substantive analysis of the values and norms, and of the notions of honour and shame that existed in the Antwerp neighbourhoods can bring insight here. Did the loading of these concepts remain constant throughout the period under study or did significant changes occur in their content? Insults constitute a privileged access path to patterns of norms and values. This makes them an interesting object of study. Sociolinguistics tells us that various cross-​connections exist between language use and social structure.1 In this way, language can be understood as a reflection of society, and can tell us much about a particular society. Peter Burke formulated this specifically with regard to insults: “insults (…) offer us a key to the history of mentalities or value-​systems”.2 Insults do not come into being out of thin air, but like all linguistic phenomena are products of the society in which they are uttered.3 The “trivial” phenomenon of insult, in other words, opens up a rare access to the mental world of populations that otherwise have not left any written traces. The vocabulary of insults contains beliefs about social norms, individual and group identities, and honourable and dishonourable practices. Behind an insult lies the explicit intention of attacking the reputation of one’s opponent. To achieve this goal, the opponent is publicly accused of conduct or qualities that could discredit him in his immediate environment. The insult, in other words, targets actions or characteristics that are negatively connoted within the group or society to which the targeted party belongs. By carefully analysing the accusations, one also gains a view of the prevailing moral codes in a group or society. Most societies do not have a single generally shared pattern of norms and values. The diversity of content in the use of insults points in the opposite direction: that different social groups maintain their own, albeit 1 In this connection I mainly support the accessible introduction of Burke: Introduction, 1–​20. 2 Burke, Insult and Blasphemy, 90. 3 Garrioch, Verbal Insults, 104.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004416932_007

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at times overlapping, value patterns. Societies are also subject to change. In line with social evolutions, important substantive shifts also take place within the repertoire of insults.4 A clear connection exists between the charge of the insults used in a particular society and the broader social context. The image of language as a mirror of society is, however, somewhat misleading and in any case incomplete, wrongly suggesting that language plays a purely passive role. On the contrary, language is an active force in society. Individuals or groups use it deliberately to further their own agendas. In this way, language can be used to gain control over others or to push through certain social changes. In this perspective, language cannot be viewed separately from the balance of power in a society.5 A well-​known example in this connection is the proposition of feminist linguists that male and masculinity-​oriented language not only reflects male dominance in society, but also perpetuates the existing balance of power. Others go even further and emphasize the autonomous power of language: in their eyes it is not so much the speakers who use the language, but it is the language itself that determines the structure of thought. Without falling into this extreme that leaves no room for agency, it is wise to take into account a certain degree of autonomy of language. A particular item of attention for historians is the ability of language to influence social relations. The relation between language and power also deserves special attention in the specific case of insults. On the one hand, to its target an insult represents a real threat of loss of status. The potentially heavy impact of words on power relationships in a social unit like a neighbourhood points to the power of language. On the other hand, substantive analysis of insults unveils the power relationships hidden in the repertoire of insults, relationships that, moreover, are reconfirmed with every insult. With virtually every insult, the speaker attempts to highlight the inferiority of the opposing party, and humiliate it, seeking to distance himself publicly from his target’s behaviour and social rank. The connection between the assessment of behaviour and social rank is part of a broader pattern. Norbert Elias defends the proposition that “people who belong to groups that are stronger in terms of power than other groups they are dealing with, think of themselves as better than others in human terms”.6 The analysis of insults therefore offers not just a perspective on the prevailing moral codes. The standards and attitudes to which insults refer inevitably bear the traces of the social condition of the parties involved.7 It is therefore 4 De Waardt, De geschiedenis van de eer, 338. 5 McNay, Foucault, 2–​4. 6 Elias, Een theoretisch essay, 7. 7 Garrioch, Verbal Insults, 118.

290 Chapter 5 important to accurately identify the actors, make their mutual relationship explicit and analyse their specific forms of expression. This makes it possible to, for example, investigate in greater depth the relationships between social groups, between established persons and outsiders, and between men and women. Given that in insults the negative image of the other person is contrasted with a positive self-​image, these form an access not only to individual but also to group identifications. For the person proffering the insult, it is important to clearly mark the difference with the counterparty. Every individual insult is aimed at affirming the border between respectable and non-​ respectable persons and groups. Such a border demarcation is one of the core elements of every form of social identification. The sentiment of belonging to a particular group not only implies a positive feeling of solidarity between the group members, but also a negative feeling of exclusion towards the outsiders.8 In his definition of the concept, sociologist Abram de Swaan emphasizes that social identification must be situated within the context of group relationships. Social identification is the process whereby people feel that some people are ‘the same’ as they, and others are very different. This happens wherever group formation occurs, in a dialectic of inclusion and exclusion, in a dynamic of mutual competition. Identification is a cognitive and an affective process: the observed similarities and differences lead to emotional involvement and distancing, and vice versa.9 For the analysis of the insults used by the residents of the studied Antwerp neighbourhoods, individual insults were combed out from the sources. The selected insults were drawn from the corpus of recorded conflicts that forms the empirical basis of the entire study. As mentioned earlier, 34.9% of the selected violent conflicts involved insulting language. The number of registered insults largely exceeds the number of reports in which there is mention of insults, given that in each case all insults traded in a violent conflict were recorded. In total, a corpus of 1,374 individual insults was collected, in which a gender-​specific distinction was made by sex of those at the giving and receiving ends of the insult. There were important differences in the definition of male and female honourability. Insults constitute an important access to such distinctions, as they target the gender-​specific potential weaknesses of the counterparty’s

8 Zwaan, Civilisering en decivilisering, 87. 9 De Swaan, Identificatie, 6. See also: Jenkins, Social Identity, 4.

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reputation. In many cases, insulting nouns are strengthened by adding an adjective. Since such adjectives have a very specific charge that can clearly differ from the noun with which they are related, they are regarded here as independent insults and counted as such. Obviously, there is no absolute guarantee that the selected swear words reflect the actual insults exchanged in reality. What we have are only those insults cited in statements to the police. It is possible that certain types of insult were not mentioned because found to be insufficiently weighty or simply too offensive. Moreover, the same insult could be experienced very differently depending on the circumstances. A major influencing factor was the relationship between those involved. There was a world of difference depending on whether a word was exchanged between friends, strangers or within a hierarchical relationship. Some insults were particularly grievous to women, while lacking any effect on men. The place of the confrontation was also important: a public insult was undoubtedly experienced as worse than one proffered indoors. The way (intonation, gestures, volume) in which an insult was expressed also largely determined its effect. In other words, the assessment of the severity of an insult depended on a complex interplay of factors. Unlike most existing studies, it is not the swear words giving rise to a complaint, but all the insults expressed in violent conflicts that serve as the basis here. Not only those insults explicitly cited in the complaint, but also the statements of the other parties are included in the analysis. In this way, the selected material undoubtedly gains in reliability and, in particular, reach. Certain social groups are less inclined than others to report to the police. But their voice can be heard in statements from witnesses or accused persons. In many cases one finds a high degree of similarity between the insults quoted by the various parties involved. Nevertheless, in a number of cases the various versions clearly differ from each other, which is not surprising given the opposing interests and strategic choices of those involved. A factor that speaks for the depth and breadth of the selected material is that it is not drawn solely from conflicts based exclusively on insults, but from a corpus of violent conflicts, thereby opening up a lateral view of the phenomenon of “insult”. Nevertheless, this statement must be nuanced immediately. For those people involved, the insult was anything but a secondary phenomenon in relation to physical violence. In many cases it seems as if physical and figurative offensiveness were regarded as equally serious. Unlike in today’s social climate, in which insult is regarded as a less serious “offence” in comparison with physical violence, such an assessment did not exist in the culture of the early twentieth-​century Antwerp

292 Chapter 5 working-​class districts, which were preoccupied with reputation.10 Even in the context of a statement about a violent conflict, the parties involved took insults very consciously. The insults quoted were by no means casual marginal notes. It is precisely the importance that complainants, witnesses and complainees attach to what is in their eyes an accurate representation of the insults expressed that allows us to assume that the collected corpus does indeed provide usable access to widespread views and values. The phenomenon of “insult” becomes a valuable key to the views, values and aspirations of broad sections of the population only through the substantive analysis of individual insults. Faced with a multitude of insults in many variants, a thematic grouping appeared to be a valid option. Such an operation is far from unproblematic. Inevitably, the straightforward categorization of the insults fails to do full justice to the ambiguous and nuanced character of this linguistic form. Despite the intrinsic limitations and deficiencies, the thematic categorization of the insults allows a certain degree of quantification that makes it possible to recognize trends and patterns. For thematic grouping to be possible, it is indispensable to acquire a good prior insight into the meanings that the contemporaries attributed to individual insults. Despite the small distance in time from the period under study, one cannot automatically assume that no significant shifts in meaning have occurred in the course of the past decades. Using as diverse a range of sources and resources as possible, an attempt is being made to reconstruct the meaning that the Antwerp population attributed to insults in the first half of the twentieth century. An unsurpassed tool here is the impressive Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal that accurately reflects shifts in meaning of Dutch words and their regional variants. For the Brabantine-​Antwerpian vocabulary specifically, dialect dictionaries are also available. Finally, the context in which insults are uttered is a source of information that is at least as important as the published reference works. An important problem in the thematic classification of the insults is the fact that swear words often comprise multiple layers of meaning. In the classification, the dominant meaning is always chosen so that, at least in the quantitative analysis, the additional meanings are not taken into consideration. Another problem is the fact that a number of taunts have, partly due to their frequent use, largely lost their specific meaning. For example, insults like “nietsnut” (good-​for-​nothing) “schandaal” (scandal) or “crapuul” (riff-​raff, 10

In that sense, the assessment of the relative severity of insult and physical violence was rather similar to that in early modern Cologne:  see Schwerhoff, Köln in Kreuzverhör, 270–​275.

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lowdown person). Simply including them in the thematic category to which they belong, based on their original etymological meaning, could undoubtedly lead to a distortion of relationships. To avoid this risk, insults that were generally used without a specific charge were categorized as curses with a generally offensive character. This category also served to place those insults which, because of their unclear meaning or rare occurrence, could not easily be attributed to clearly defined content categories. All 1,374 recorded insults were divided into the following categories: 1. generally offensive 2. poverty 3. profession 4. collegiality: violations of mutual obligations and solidarity between employees of the same company or industry 5. handling of property: theft, unfair trading practices and debts 6. physical characteristics or defects 7. cleanliness 8. sexuality 9. mental illness 10. alcohol use 11. cowardice 12. parenting 13. crime 14. politics 15. outsider Alongside the insults of a general character, two major clusters stand out: insults with a socio-​economic charge, and insults with a physical-​sexual charge. Before going deeper into the different thematic fields, it is advisable to pay attention to possible gender-​specific differences in the overall picture of the insults used. In almost all known societies, there are often very large differences between opinions about the respectability of men and women. In particular, but not exclusively, this difference of estimation generally concerns the importance attached to the sexual behaviour of men and women respectively. In Mediterranean and Western European societies, until recently, the pattern was widespread whereby women’s honour, virtue and reputation were determined almost exclusively by their sexuality, while the good names of the menfolk were dependent on a multitude of factors.11 Martin Dinges speaks sharply about the distinction between women’s unipolar honour and men’s 11

For example, see: Van Dülmen, Der ehrlose Mensch, 9.

294 Chapter 5 multi-​polar honour.12 In view of the above-​mentioned thesis of a gradual convergence of male and female concepts of honour in Western European societies, it is worth examining whether this pattern also continued to apply in twentieth-​ century Antwerp districts. When comparing the relative weight of the various thematic categories in the insults proffered against both sexes, it quickly becomes clear that this question cannot simply be answered in the affirmative or in the negative (Tables 36-​38). There was certainly no complete convergence of the honourability of men and women. The respective weight of the various thematic categories clearly differs for both sexes. On the basis of the thematic distribution of the insults towards men, it is clear that the honourability of a man in the Antwerp neighbourhoods was multi-​polar in nature. Men were mainly attacked with respect to their virility, their treatment of property, lack of cleanliness and sexual behaviour. There is certainly no question of any one overriding thematic category that puts all the others in the shade. The respectability of women is difficult to define as multi-​polar. While we cannot speak of a unipolar female honourability, determined entirely by sexual reputation, the dominance of the sexual factor is more than obvious. Especially when one considers that the discourse on dirtiness also had an implicit sexual component, it is clear that a woman’s reputation remained most vulnerable on her sexual flank. The divergent weight of the various thematic fields in insults towards men and women indicates that the insult formed an important mechanism in the creation and consolidation of gender-​specific role and expectation patterns. 5.2

The Sexual Reputation of Men and Women

From the thematic overview of the insults, it is clear that a very different weighting was attributed to the sexual factor in the gender-​specific notions of the honourability of men and women. The overall figures in the Antwerp neighbourhoods tell us that the sexuality of men and women were viewed very differently. The diverse significance attributed to the sexuality of both sexes in twentieth-​century Antwerp fits in with the broader European tradition of the social construction of gender-​specific sexual role patterns that are presented as objective characteristics of the biological sex.13 The most important acquis of the constructivist, anti-​essentialist definition of sexuality from a historical perspective is the prima facie banal observation that it has a history at all. An

12 Dinges, Geschlecht und Ehre, 171–​196. 13 Ground-​breaking in this context was the thinking of Foucault in his Histoire de la sexualité.

295

Values behind Words table 36

Percentage distribution of recorded insults (total) by thematic category

REL. general poverty profession collegiality treatment of property body cleanliness sexuality mental illness alcohol use cowardice parenting crime politics outsider N = 100%

31.0 0.4 2.3 0.6 7.9 1.7 15.4 27.7 0.5 0.5 5.9 0.4 2.2 2.7 0.9 1,374

source: corpus of selected police reports

essentialist view of the relationship between sexuality and gender difference makes a historical analysis superfluous and unthinkable, since from that point of view it is by definition immutable.14 The physiological drive model, which provides the starting point of many researchers with an essentialist view of sexuality, allows the social historian to distinguish at best periods in which more space was allowed for sexual urges, and others characterized by pronounced repression of people’s sexual affectivity. A constructivist view of sexuality, on the other hand, really offers room for the historical dimension: the approach to sexuality as a social construct, a result of specific social and cultural circumstances, which naturally implies the possibility of change.15

14

For the debate between essentialists and constructivists in the field of sexuality, see: Van der Meer, Sodoms zaad, 41–​58. 15 See: Blok, Epilogue, 255–​261.

296 Chapter 5 table 37

Percentage distribution of recorded insults (towards men by both sexes) by thematic category per sample year

general poverty profession collegiality treatment of property body cleanliness sexuality mental illness alcohol use cowardice parenting crime politics outsider N = 100%

total

by men

by women

36.2 0.0 4.1 1.5 11.6 0.6 7.9 12.6 0.6 0.8 14.1 0.0 4.8 3.3 1.9 517

30.4 0.0 4.8 3.2 10.4 0.0 8.4 7.2 1.2 1.2 20.0 0.0 4.8 5.2 3.2 250

41.6 0.0 3.3 0.0 12.7 1.1 7.5 17.6 0.0 0.4 8.6 0.0 4.8 1.5 0.7 267

source: corpus of selected police reports

In Western European societies, views on what constitutes honourable and dishonourable sexual behaviour have shifted markedly in the last five centuries. According to Pieter Spierenburg, the difference between male and female reputation in the sexual field was originally characterized by the contrast of active-​passive.16 A woman who wished to go through life as a respectable person desperately had to preserve her sexual purity. A pure woman was modest and sexually passive. The man’s sexual reputation, on the other hand, benefited from an active approach: a respectable man was expected to protect the women under his authority against potential rivals and to outsmart other men if possible. A man who was unable to do so saw his reputation threatened. The unequal criteria used in assessing the respectability of the sexual behaviour of 16 Spierenburg, Masculinity, 5.

297

Values behind Words table 38

Percentage distribution of recorded insults (towards women by both sexes) by thematic category per sample year

general poverty profession collegiality treatment of property body cleanliness sexuality mental illness alcohol use cowardice parenting crime politics outsider N = 100%

total

by men

by women

28.3 0.7 1.0 0.0 5.6

28.3 0.3 1.7 0.0 5.5

27.6 1.0 0.6 0.0 5.6

2.3 19.9 36.7 0.5 0.3 0.9 0.7 0.6 2.3 0.3 857

2.3 20.4 34.4 0.9 0.6 1.5 0.3 1.2 2.6 0.0 343

2.3 19.7 38.3 0.2 0.2 0.6 1.0 0.2 2.1 0.6 514

source: corpus of selected police reports

men and women is known as the “double standard”.17 According to Spierenburg, since the early modern period, there has been a gradual convergence of the notions of female and male sexual honourability. In the process, the active-​ passive model has lost much of its original strength, and men too were increasingly accused of extramarital sexual adventures. Partly under the influence of “civilization offensives” by (religious) moralists, a slow shift came about in the direction of more “restrictive” views on male sexuality. By the nineteenth century, male honour, at least in the social middle groups, was also defined in terms of sexual “self-​control”. The nineteenth-​century bourgeoisie saw in 17

Based on Thomas’ term, The double standard, 195–​216.

298 Chapter 5 “respectable” sexual behaviour, also for men, an increasingly useful strategy to distinguish themselves from the frivolous lifestyle of the decadent nobility and the immoral bestiality of the lower social groups. In its desire for respectability, the labour movement in turn would later embrace the bourgeois moral discourse.18 It is evident that, in this context too, terms like “control” and “morality” do not constitute a value-​free description of an actual situation (with a net “restriction” of the social space for sex), but formed the buttresses of a strongly value-​loaded discourse that produced a specific definition of sexuality. The work of historian Lotte van de Pol provides valuable nuances to Spierenburg’s model. She points out that during the early modern period there were important differences between the Mediterranean and Western European societies in terms of the definition of men’s and women’s sexual reputation.19 In the Mediterranean societies, a man’s reputation was predominantly dependent on the sexual purity of his wife and of the other family members falling under his authority. In the Mediterranean cultural sphere, a woman had almost no independent honour and therefore did not actively have to take care of her reputation. It was up to the husband to protect her sexual reputation. According to Van de Pol, relations in early modern Western European societies were very different. There, a woman’s sexual reputation was an independent quality that was linked to her own person, and women could defend it themselves. Insults denouncing a man’s inability to control female sexuality were very rare. According to Bernard Capp, the double standard of the social middle classes and the respectable poor was less pronounced in the early modern period than appears in earlier historical works.20 Admittedly, he acknowledges the deep-​rooted character of the double standards and their negative effect on the starting position of women in conflicts with men. An even more important objection to the idea that a gradual convergence took place of the notions of male and female sexual honourability is formed prima facie by the nineteenth-​century bourgeois sexual ideology.21 In spite of the redefinition of sexual norms based on new arguments, it was, as much as its predecessors, permeated with double standards. Vulgar biological insights formed a new basis for the old active-​passive distinction. A greater degree of sexual self-​control was required of women than of men, with reference to “natural” differences. The man was seen as a being with drives who needed to satisfy his desires for health reasons, while the woman had to accept herself as a 18 Cf. infra. 19 Van de Pol, The Burgher and the Whore. 20 Capp, The Double Standard Revisited, 70–​100. 21 For the general tenor of the bourgeois sexual ideology, see: Weeks, Sex.

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299

sexually passive being in her “natural” role as a housewife and mother, if she did not want to pass as a prostitute. Despite the large degree of persistence of the double standards, it is true that the longing of bourgeois to distinguish themselves by “respectable” sexual behaviour led to –​at least in the public eye –​ marriage increasingly becoming the only acceptable context for fundamentally reproduction-​oriented sexuality for a bourgeois man. While the bourgeoisie might see the mirror image of their own “civilized” sexual behavioural standards in the amorality of the lower social groups, the little that is known about the sexuality experience of the Belgian working class in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries makes it clear that it was very far from unbridled debauchery.22 On the contrary, the lower social groups maintained their own sexual reference frameworks, which did not necessarily correspond with the bourgeois morality as propagated in particular by the Roman church. At the same time, bourgeois sexual ideology exercised an unmistakable attraction on the lower social groups. The desire for respectability led to broader strata of the population appropriating the bourgeois view on sexuality as being socially functional for them, that is, backing their claims to higher social status.23 This process did not equal a slavish takeover, nor was it complete. Research shows that the sexual praxis was far from always corresponding to formal regulations. This was perhaps also the case for the bourgeoisie. The period studied, the first half of the twentieth century, is a particularly interesting period for the analysis of norms, values and views on sexual matters, one characterized by a high degree of ambiguity.24 On the one hand, there is the effect of the bourgeois sexuality ideology, which, among other things, made important progress through the spread of the breadwinner model. On the other hand, certain observers perceive in the period in question cautious first signs of a less rigid sexual morality that could, with a bit of goodwill, be seen as foreshadowing the post-​war “sexual revolution” (and in particular also the end of the sexual double standard). Moralists of all sorts pointed during the Interbellum to the “moral decay” of that time, for them the after-​effect of the First World War. In what way did the standards differ with which the inhabitants of Antwerp’s neighbourhoods judged the sexual behaviour of men and women? In other words, did both sexes have similar room for manoeuvre in the sexual area, or did a double standard exist? The analysis of insults offers important

22

For the sexual experience of the lower social groups in Belgium, see: Carlier, Fragmenten; Carlier, Een seksuele geschiedenis; De Wilde, Seks; Dupont and De Smaele, Orakelen. 23 Tebbutt, Women’s Talk?, 50. 24 See: Weeks, Sex, 199 ff.

300 Chapter 5 access to processes of social construction of gender-​specific sexual role patterns.25 Insults reflect not only the views that existed about the sexual reputation of men and women in society, but are also an important instrument of gender-​specific role assignment in daily practice. With 27.7% of the total number of registered insults, accusations with a sexual character are the most extensive thematic category after the insults of a general nature. With respect to insults expressed towards women, the share (36.7%) of sexually charged accusations is three times higher than for insults directed at men (12.6%). In the insults in which the dirtiness of the counterparty is criticized and which, in particular with respect to women, have a clear sexual connotation, the proportions are almost in the same order of magnitude: 7.9% of all insults against men, rising to 19.9% of insults against women. Adding the two related categories together, they represent one-​fifth of the total insults against men, but more than half of those against women. Women were much more strongly criticised in respect of their sexual behaviour. This double standard was thus far from having disappeared. While a man’s reputation consisted of a multitude of facets, a woman’s good name was largely coterminous with her sexual reputation. There is a great temptation to see, in the marked contrast between the multi-​polar definition of male honour and the predominantly sexuality-​based definition of female honour, simply an expression of the prevailing patriarchal power relations in society. The subordinate position of the woman during the first half of the twentieth century in the legal, socio-​economic, religious and political structures of Belgian society was, according to this logic, reflected in the limited space assigned to her within the repertoire of insults. Such an approach ignores the relative degree of autonomy and the room for agency from below. Certainly in the area of the position of both sexes within society, there was no complete concordance between the exclusively male “legal” country and the mixed-​sex “real” country. For a good understanding of the “double standard” regarding male and female sexuality, instead of starting from the premise that these reflect the prevalent social discourse, it is much more rewarding to examine the practice of insults from the perspective of the Antwerp population. Taking the recorded insults as our starting point, it would appear that women’s reputations were largely defined sexually. Even in conflicts having nothing to do with sexuality at all, the word “whore” regularly served as an insult against women. Sexually charged insults, as it were, absorbed every form of 25 Dinges, Geschlecht und Ehre, 189.

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301

violation of the norm by women.26 Historian Annemieke Keunen observes a similar pattern for Amsterdam in the first half of the nineteenth century, but argues for a degree of caution in interpreting it.27 In her view it is simplistic to conclude from the observation that women were always scolded as prostitutes, that this was the worst insult that could be addressed to women, or that a woman’s reputation was determined exclusively by her sexual purity. Keunen rightly warns of a too literal interpretation of the insults traded and points to the risk of other meanings disappearing from the field of vision. Less convincing is Keunen’s question of whether women viewed the reproach of impurity as being the most damaging to their honour. The ability of sexually charged insults to embrace all possible violations of standards by women is precisely an indication of the strength of such insults. It is now important to examine who is responsible, in the insults, for the assignment to women of the role of sexual beings. Is it purely the expression of masculine views about female reputation or are the relationships more complex? In insults towards women by both men and women, sexually charged insults are by far the most important category. In conflicts with women, men frequently used a woman’s sexual behaviour as an attack strategy. When using such charges, men started from a favourable position, given the multi-​polar nature of their honour. Any riposte from the woman in question focused on the man’s sexual honourability could not possibly have the same effect, as a man’s reputation was determined to a much lesser extent by his sexual behaviour. The potential damage was limited as the image evoked by the woman of male sexual reputation did not correspond with the man’s own self-​image. Nevertheless, this was less the case in twentieth-​century Antwerp than in early modern London, where men could scold women as “my whore” with no real risk to their own reputations.28 However, it would be wrong to attribute the predominantly sexual definition of female honourability entirely to the machismo of Antwerp men. An even higher percentage of insults traded between women appears to be sexually charged. 38.3% of the recorded insults by women against women have an explicit sexual charge, as against 34.4% of insults against women by men. There is no question here of women’s resistance to the definition of women as sexual beings. On the contrary, the surprising numerical proportions reveal the extent to which women accepted the reference to their own role and actively reproduced it with even more force than men. Starting from the corpus 26 Gowing, Domestic dangers, 118. 27 Keunen, ‘Ongaarne beticht en bevlekt’, 424–​425. 28 Gowing, Domestic dangers, 110.

302 Chapter 5 of recorded insults, the question of whether the predominantly sexual formulation of the female reputation is an expression of the prevailing patriarchal power relations must be answered in a nuanced manner:  while of course men attributed a well-​defined role to women by means of insults, women, by their own praxis, reinforced the predominant sexual definition of their own ­reputation.29 In studies on Mediterranean societies, the emphasis is generally on the male perspective on a woman’s sexual reputation.30 An honour system in which the wife’s purity occupies a central position is, following this logic, ultimately focused on the husband’s interests: helping him secure his wife’s fidelity and in this way guaranteeing that he raises his own children and leaves any inheritance exclusively to them. However, such a reductionist perspective fails to do justice to the complex reality that existed in Antwerp in the first half of the twentieth century. It is more than clear that the prevailing views on female sexual reputation were applied not only by men, but even more so by women. Women’s role in maintaining sexual morality was clearly not exclusively ­passive. The women of Antwerp had to watch over their own sexual respectability, as a bad reputation in this context also seriously jeopardized the position of their spouse, children and household. But they saw their role more generously than reluctantly safeguarding their own respectability, which would mainly amount to the restriction of their own freedom of action. On the contrary, they actively countered potential attacks on their own sexual reputation. On top of that, they considered themselves entitled to watch over the sexual behaviour of other women. Women set themselves up as the guardians par excellence of the moral codes of conduct in the field of sexuality. While women were allowed to occupy only subordinate positions in the formal institutions that determined and enforced the official boundaries of sexual (in)decency (such as church, politics, police and justice), the lack of institutional power in no way implied that they lacked any say in the matter. In their daily lives, women played a key role in informal networks, making them indeed a significant power factor in this area. Much more than men, women set the boundary between honourable and dishonourable practices in the sexual field.31

29 30 31

Martin Dinges came to strikingly similar findings for eighteenth-​century Paris: Dinges, Geschlecht und Ehre, 191. Laura Gowing’s criticism served to give direction here: Gowing, Domestic dangers, 113. Things were no different in early modern England: Capp, When Gossips Meet, 59.

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303

Women had to be circumspect in their contacts with men in view of their sexual reputation. A  woman who took too many liberties in this area was quickly labelled as promiscuous. Such a “loose” woman stood in a bad light and could be ridiculed with terms such as “mattress”, “blanket”, “street walker” or with the sneer “you go to bed with everyone”. The absence of similar terms with regard to sexually over-​audacious men indicates that the unspoken behavioural rules with regard to sexuality were significantly more stringent with regard to women. Men could clearly allow themselves to be freer in this field without risk of reputational loss. The aversion to “streetwalking” evokes the image of an unauthorized transgression by a woman of the border between the feminine, domestic sphere and the masculine, public sphere.32 Nevertheless, a certain degree of caution in this respect is called for. Although the ideal of the woman at home was indeed prominent in society and was propagated in particular (but not exclusively) by church bodies,33 there are no indications in the corpus of recorded insults that contacts outside the home posed a potential threat to a woman’s respectability. The idea that work or informal social contacts outside the home posed a risk to a woman’s reputation is not present in any insult. In neighbourhoods where the tight housing conditions of the majority of the population almost literally forced the inhabitants into the streets and where female labour and the maintenance of informal contacts with neighbours were often a compelling necessity to make ends meet, the opposite would be more surprising. Women from the lower social groups therefore largely escaped for practical reasons the impact of the ideology of the separate spheres.34 Adultery, on the other hand, was a serious matter. Insults frequently speak of “having a lover” which included adultery by or with a married person. It brought with it the risk of disrupting established households and could therefore count on general disapproval. The image of the adulteress as upsetting regular family life comes through strongly in the insult shouted by tavern-​ keeper Maria T. to her neighbour, housewife Ida K., after discovering that she had slept with her husband: “You are the pestilence (literally ‘plague whore’) of my husband, you make my household unhappy and yours too.”35 In line with the double standard, it was mainly women who were accused of adultery. A number of insults (as in the latter example) came from women wanting to 32 For the association of private-​ female-​ public-​ male association, see:  Van Dülmen, Historische Anthropologie, 97–​98. 33 De Borchgrave, God of genot, 41. 34 See in this connection: Clark, Whores and Gossips, 234. 35 saa, MA 31559, report district 5, no. 94, 9-​1-​1912.

304 Chapter 5 get their direct rivals to change their ways by publicly (and sometimes with the help of other women) accusing them of adultery. Often in such cases, the argument was cited that the woman starting a relationship with a married man jeopardized the existence of an established household (and with it the fate of any children). The danger to the household’s economic chances of survival was paramount: the money that the husband spent on his mistress no longer went to his wife and children, placing them at risk of poverty. Thus housewife Joanna B. described her husband’s mistress, cleaning lady Catharina M., as a “scandalous bitch who deprives me of my husband and my children of their father and their food”.36 Housewife Palmyre B.  waited every day for her husband’s lover, office clerk Louisa P., in the street at the station to shame her.37 This she did not only with the traditional insults “dirty whore” and “scandal”, but also with phrases like “you should be ashamed, stealing my child’s father”. That in a number of cases the deceived wife assumed that the adulteress did not know that the man in question was married, points to the deep-​seated nature of the intolerance of such behaviour. Housekeeper Josephina de J., for example, reacted with utter surprise on discovering that her husband’s mistress, factory worker Maria H., had been aware of his marriage for seven months: “I thought you didn’t know he was married.”38 By playing on the moral contrast between the faithful housewife and the depraved adulteress in front of informal female sociability networks, the deceived woman could use public indignation to place the adulteress under pressure. This strategy too involved risks. Given the predominantly sexual definition of the female reputation, there was a danger that the deceived woman could find the ball thrown back at her. Sometimes surprising forms of argumentation were used, as shown by Maria H.’s reaction to Josephina de J.’s question as to whether she knew that her husband was married: “Yes, I know that he’s married and I’ll continue to do so, and I can, because you’re having it off with a baker.” But in a number of cases, the relations were reversed and a mistress delighted in rubbing into the deceived woman that the married man chose her over his wife. Within that specific context, the term “keeping” (aanhouden) could also be used in a non-​offensive way. Cleaning lady Regina L. was reported to have exposed cleaning lady Catharina van B. to public gaze by declaring: “Yes, dirt rag, I’ve been your husband’s lover for so long already, and I’m continuing.”39 Paradoxically, it is the deceived party who becomes the butt of laughter 36 37 38 39

saa, MA 31582, charge, district 5, no. 1382, 16-​8-​1917. saa, MA 31703, report district 5, no. 1566, 29-​3-​1938. saa, MA 24648, report district 2, no. 502, 28-​4-​1917. saa, MA 31559, report district 5, no. 31, 25-​12-​1911.

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here. Visibly, the accusation of sexual inferiority was an alternative strategy that also proved effective under certain circumstances. This is also clear from the wording of the already-​quoted dispute between Josephina de J. and factory worker Maria H.. According to Josephina de J., Maria H., who was chatting with other women on the street, had publicly laughed at her because Josephina’s husband preferred Maria H. to his wife. This playing on the idea of sexual superiority is at odds with the dominant image of the respectable woman, but was also applied in contexts other than between rivals for the same man. Most of the verbal accusations of women for adultery were voiced by other women, but there are also a number of examples of men denouncing the adultery of their own wives. Contrary to the case with women, such accusations took place exclusively in domestic circles. Whereas women deliberately sought the public arena for taking their husbands’ mistresses to task, a man who accused his wife of going with another man preferred to do so indoors. This preference for the private settlement of such problems is not surprising, since the relationship between a man and a woman had in any case a more domestic character than the relationship between a deceived wife and her husband’s mistress. In addition, the man in question risked jeopardizing his own reputation by making public his inadequate control over his wife’s sexuality. Tavern-​keeper Richard van S., for example, beat up his wife, tavern-​keeper Johanna A., accusing her of having a pimp, after he had heard the gossip in the tavern that his wife “has had it off with everyone who wanted to take advantage of it”.40 Nevertheless, the connection between specifically male respectability and the control over women’s sexuality was less absolute than was the case in, for example, Mediterranean societies. In this way it was tavern-​keeper Melania M. who insisted on continuing the dispute in the kitchen “so as not to have a scandal in the café”, after her friend firefighter Marten B. had reproached her in a full tavern for having a lover.41 Another more powerful counter-​indication for the statement that fear for their own reputations prevented men from speaking publicly about the infidelities of their own wives in every circumstance can be found in the following dispute. This is the only example in the corpus of recorded insults in which a cuckolded man accuses a woman of having sexual contacts with his spouse.42 Dockworker Jan C. felt provoked by the remark of tavern-​keeper Joanna M. that she was pleased to see him, together with his girlfriend, cleaning lady Anna W. Jan C., who apparently already had his suspicions about his girlfriend’s lesbian contacts, replied: “You’re my woman’s cunt-​licker, 40 41 42

saa, MA 31560, report district 5, no. 846, 9-​4-​1912. saa, MA 31709, report district 5, no. 3509, 14-​7-​1938. saa, MA 29272, report district 2, no. 1167, 11-​6-​1938.

306 Chapter 5 you’d better give me an export (beer) for everything that’s in it and a hundred francs on top, or you won’t be able to lick my woman’s cunt anymore.” For Jan C., the desire to rebuke Joanna M.’s behaviour appears to be based on possible concerns for his own reputation. Jan C.’s approach is significant, because it seems to go against the idea that, if a woman commits adultery with another woman, it was perceived as destructive for a man’s reputation from a traditional conception of honour. The suspicion of prostitution was never far from the accusation of “having a lover”. Certainly this was the case when there were multiple “lovers”, the ultimate proof that love was insincere, because motivated by financial intentions. For example, the succession of insults that tavern-​keeper Emilia de C. claims to have endured from her waitress Maria C. is significant here: “Dirty rag, you’re going to deal with me, you go upstairs for just one mark and you have two lovers.”43 The sneer that tavern-​keeper Rosalia van H. directed at her neighbour, tavern-​keeper Anna van H., to counter the accusation that her daughter was a whore, expresses the equivalation of multiple lovers with prostitution in so many words: “… I didn’t do as she did, having it off with five or six men, because it’s whores that do that”.44 Not to be misunderstood was the accusation that a woman was “being kept” by a man. An unmarried woman who could get a man to provide for her living must be a prostitute. In the reproach, one hears the image of a prostitute whose activities allow her to lead an easy life of luxury, her assumed standard of living being based on dishonestly gained money, money earned without actually working. Prostitution was one of the few possibilities for women from the lower social groups to earn better money, and in addition to gain a greater degree of freedom of action.45 Women from those groups who wished to preserve their honourability often had no alternative than to work hard for modest pay. The cost of maintaining a good reputation was therefore high. It is therefore not fantasy to imagine that the resentment towards “kept” women was motivated, at least in part, by envy of these women’s –​albeit dishonourably achieved –​higher standard of living. “Trimmer” (trimster) was a frequently used insult that referred to street prostitution. Street prostitution was associated with certain geographically circumscribed parts of town. In insults, explicit references were made to such dishonourable zones to hit the other party particularly hard. Especially the area around the station with its many bars, hotels and other entertainment 43 saa, MA 31581, report district 5, no. 823, 30-​5-​1917. 44 saa, MA 24633, report district 2, no. 5013, 16-​9-​1912. 45 Bourke, Working-​Class Cultures, 38.

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venues was considered a major prostitution area. The countryside just outside the nineteenth-​century city walls was also known as an important rendezvous for street prostitutes. The insult par excellence to strike at a woman’s sexual reputation, however, remained “whore”. It would not be correct to see in every allegation of “whoring” a direct accusation of actual prostitution. Of course this was indeed the case in a (relatively limited) number of conflicts, but the insult “whore” covered a much wider field, encompassing any exceeding of the sexual norm by women. It served as a reference to “impurity”, a word which covered any sexual activity outside marriage. Adultery, a dissolute youth before marriage, and prostitution all fell within this category. The accusation of being a whore was therefore essentially an accusation of sexual untrustworthiness. It was in this sense that the accusation was frequently used within the framework of conflicts that originally had nothing to do with sexual transgression. The image of the whore brought together all the qualities of a woman who is not respectable in sexual matters. This image was recognizable by certain behaviours and external characteristics (such as clothing or a certain facial complexion). Sexually respectable women did everything in their power to distance their behaviour and body language from the generally shared image of the whore. Every risk of association with “whoring” was to be carefully avoided. To some extent, the fearsome example of the whore functioned as a guideline for every woman who sought sexual respectability. Just as views on prostitution itself, the alleged consequences of sexual misconduct were included in insults.46 With a great sense of plastic description, people pointed out the physical consequences of illegitimate sexual behaviour. It was strongly believed that illegitimate sexual behaviour such as prostitution left irrevocable traces on the body of the woman in question. Moral and physical decline were two sides of the same coin. Disease was viewed as the ultimate –​visible to everyone –​evidence of an improper lifestyle. The association between venereal diseases and prostitution was very strong. Both men and women were potential targets for accusations of suffering from a venereal disease. In women, venereal diseases were seen as a consequence of prostitution, whereas they were seen in men as a result of a visiting whores. However, one should not rush to conclusions. It is abundantly clear from the figures, broken down by sex, that the female body was associated with venereal diseases in an incomparably higher degree. For example, the accusation of being “rotten” was directed three times more often at 46

Inspiring in this respect is the work of Gowing, Domestic dangers, 87 ff.

308 Chapter 5 women (39) than at men (13). The female body held out many more opportunities for insults than the male body. The following finding by Laura Gowing for early modern London therefore applies in full force to twentieth-​century Antwerp: “In the language of insult, the effects of whoredom upon women’s and men’s bodies were distributed as exactly as was sexual blame.”47 The image of venereal disease as physical externalization of the violation of norms in the sexual field is an old cliché in Western European cultures. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the existing fear among the elites had grown into a panicked obsession that matched the ongoing medicalization of sexuality and the growing preoccupation with hygiene.48 Campaigns were launched to arrest the alleged danger of degeneration of the nation and to help discipline the lower social groups by forcing them to adopt a “respectable” lifestyle. The moral panic about venereal disease reached a new high during the First World War.49 At a time when the nation’s continued existence was perceived as being at stake, every risk of national degeneration had to be vigorously opposed. In particular, the idea that mass mobilization had thoroughly shaken up existing sexual relations was the basis of that preoccupation. The vocabulary with which women were accused of suffering from a venereal disease was extremely diverse. Only in a limited number of cases was syphilis referred to as such, such as twice “Venus disease”50 and just once “syphilis basin”51 and “syphilis mug”.52 The adjective “rotten” and the derivative nouns largely outnumbered the direct references to syphilis. According to the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal the word ‘rot’ (generally translated here as ‘rotten’) can mean “infected with a venereal disease” and it is in this sense that the notion was frequently used in many offensive turns of phrase.53 The notion could be used as an independent insult (for example “you are rotten”), but was used at least as often to reinforce other accusations that usually already referred to illegitimate sexual intercourse (such as “whore”). Men and women from the Antwerp neighbourhoods applied a richly graduated “rhetoric of rottenness” to measure the sexual behaviour of women in particular. The origin of the notion lies in the supposed destructive effect of syphilis on the genitals. 47 Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 90. 48 Sohn, Du premier, 109. 49 Le Naour, Misères, 127–​155; Majerus, La prostitution, 33–​36. 50 saa, MA 31559, report district 5, no. 31, 30-​12-​1911 and saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 934, 10-​4-​1912. 51 saa, MA 31787, report district 5, no. 1075, 9-​4-​1944. 52 saa, MA 31793, report district 5, no. 2845, 29-​9-​1944. 53 wnt, dl. 13, cols. 1424–​1425. For the similar loading in the Brabant-​Antwerp dialect, see: Cornelissen and Vervliet, Idioticon, 1045.

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In the collective image, “rottenness” stood for the physical degeneration that was the irrevocable consequence of excessive promiscuity. The “rhetoric of rottenness” was permeated with the double standard in the field of male and female sexuality, because the degeneration of women occupied an infinitely more important place in this discourse than that of men. The image of the affected, fallen woman was a powerful collective representation and lacked an equivalent male counterpart. In women, collective perception of the physical consequences of venereal diseases took on grotesque, almost fantastic proportions, which was almost never the case with men. Women were reproached with being “rotten from bottom to top”54 or “rotten from head to toe”55 and of having “rotten legs”.56 Just as during the early modern period, “leaking” women formed an important trope in sexually charged insults,57 with the source of the leak located in the female genitals. When factory worker Maria D. was posed the provocative question “So, nothing falls out?”, by her father’s mistress, factory worker Clementina M., in a dance hall, she stated in front of the police that her opponent was implicitly referring to her “femininity”.58 But the decay could also extend to other parts of the body. For example, housewife Francisca W. shouted to her neighbour, housekeeper Jeannette R.: “The rottenness runs out of your paws.”59 The disintegration of the female body was central to this discourse. Affected women were literally supposed to lose fragments of rotten flesh. The slightest shock, like climbing a staircase, was enough in the popular imagination to lose pieces of flesh, as seen in the sneer “dirty whore, you’re falling apart from rottenness whenever you mount the stairs”.60 This widely disseminated view formed the basis of the threat to make the woman in question’s sexually transmitted disease public by giving her a blow. Thus a woman from the Seefhoek shouted out to the woman she thought to be her husband’s mistress: “If I push you, the rottenness will fall out from under your skirt.”61 Given the widespread disgust-​arousing image of the physical consequences of venereal diseases, it is not surprising that fear of infection ran high among the Antwerp population. The conclusion of Anne-​Marie Sohn, that broad sections of the population did not share the fear of health implications

54 saa, MA 24630, report district 2, no. 1122, 4-​3-​1912. 55 saa, MA 31712, report district 5, no. 4729, 21-​9-​1938. 56 saa, MA 29273, report district 2, no. 1351, 28-​6-​1938. 57 Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 81. 58 saa, MA 29221, report district 2, no. 2115, 26-​11-​1928. 59 saa, MA 31579, report district 5, no. 47, 6-​1-​1917. 60 saa, MA 29221, report district 2, no. 1939, 1-​11-​1928. 61 saa, MA 31559, report district 5, no. 31, 25-​12-​1911.

310 Chapter 5 from sexual intercourse, seems to be a bit short-​sighted.62 Moreover, the fear responded to a real danger. Figures indicate that in various European cities around 1900, between 5 and 15% of the adult population was infected by some kind of venereal disease.63 The female body in particular was viewed as a potential source of infection. Hardly any mention was made of the male body. In addition, we find in the sources only examples of women accused of transmitting venereal diseases to a man. The absence of such accusations against men shows once again that sexual responsibility and guilt were predominantly placed on women. Men were invariably portrayed as passive objects who were “smeared” with venereal diseases by immoral women,64 but never as active disseminators of such ailments. This was not an isolated expression of popular belief. Governments also assumed for a long time that only women could transmit venereal diseases.65 A characteristic of the unbalanced allocation of responsibilities is the following exchange of words between two cleaning ladies from the Seefhoek.66 According to Regina L.’s complaint, Catharina van B. snorted at her: “You’re having it off with my husband and with Mr W. from the Sint-​Jansplein. (…) You’ve given my husband VD.” Although Catharina van B. returned the ball in her statement, she too assumed that women were responsible for the spread of syphilis: I asked her husband if he knew that his wife was having it off with my husband. I asked her if she could deny this now, because my husband has confessed everything to me. She said ‘Yes, because he has never touched my body.’ I  went outside and she called:  ‘Your husband caught the VD from you.’ To which I replied: ‘No, from you, for if someone shoves you, the rottenness falls from under your skirt and you’ve given it to your husband as well’. As evidenced by a number of insults, there was a conviction that the infection of parents (and in particular of the mother) was transferred to the children. An ailment from which a child suffered was a useful argument for ultimately questioning the sexual morality of the parents. For example, housewife Maria O. purportedly snarled at her neighbour Maria S.: “What your child has in the 62 Sohn, Du premier, 109. 63 Pittomvils, Tussen repressie en permissiviteit, 217. 64 saa, MA 31580, report district 5, no. 577, 20-​4-​1917. 65 Pittomvils, Between repression and permissiveness, 217–​218; François and Massin, ‘Ces virus ambulants’. 66 saa, MA 31559, report district 5, no. 31, 25-​12-​1911.

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face is the result of the rottenness of you and your husband.”67 In a number of cases, people went one step further, with the death of a child seen as the ultimate proof of “rottenness”. No misinterpretation was possible of the accusation “to have been in hospital”.68 This referred to an enforced stay in hospital for treatment of a venereal disease. Such a stay was generally seen as proof of a promiscuous lifestyle. A  woman’s temporary absence for a forced admission did not go unnoticed by the neighbours, making the illness that had been kept secret with some difficulty until now irrevocably public. The stay in the hospital was stored in memory and could, in the event of a conflict, be presented as an extremely honour-​depriving argument. The credibility and thus the effectiveness of such an attack was all the greater when the speaker could adduce more details about the stay in the hospital. The prima facie surprising emphasis on repeated admission (“you’ve already been in hospital twice”) is understandable from this perspective. However clear to everybody the reasons why the targeted party had visited the hospital, to put her even more in the spotlight this was occasionally made explicit by stating that the opponent lay “muug” (tired) or “rotten in the hospital”. When there was no concrete stay in the hospital to recall, the accusation could also be changed to “you need to go and be cured by the doctor”.69 Moreover, less publicly visible elements than a visit to a doctor or a stay in the hospital were enough to induce the suspicion of rottenness. A jaded impression, pale complexion or, worse, a long stay in bed also provided usable arguments in a conflict to accuse the opposing party of suffering from venereal disease. The image of the “tired” or “decrepit” woman is clearly based on the idea that a woman who goes beyond the pale of sexual legitimacy has to pay the price with her health or at least her energy. A reproach such as “you lie on your back day and night” is therefore an insinuation of prostitution.70 In a conflict between women from the poverty-​stricken Kattenkwartier ghetto, Maria W, according to the opponent’s statement, made a direct connection between a pale skin colour and illegitimate forms of sexual behaviour: “I’m rosy-​ cheeked, but you’re white from lechery.”71

67 68 69 70 71

saa, MA 29221, report district 2, no. 1939, 1-​11-​1928. In eighteenth-​century Paris too, this accusation was used in a sexual sense: Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 243–​244. saa, MA 29269, report district 2, no. 180, 23-​1-​1938. saa, MA 29220, report district 2, no. 1318, 6-​8-​1928. saa, MA 29273, report district 2, no. 1351, 28-​7-​1938.

312 Chapter 5 In the discourse on the physical consequences of women’s moral defects, ‘bastardy’ in the broader sense formed a second important component. The accusation of giving birth to a bastard child was a powerful means of impugning a woman’s honour. Housekeeper Joanna G. snapped at her landlady in the context of a rent dispute that “that child sitting there is not your husband’s”.72 Particularly vulnerable to this category of insults were women who had given birth to children before their marriage. The existence of such “pre-​children” was visible to everyone and fuelled the suspicion of a promiscuous past. The series of sexually charged insults that housekeeper Maria of E.73 from the Seefhoek was the butt of, according to her own account, from two women from the neighbourhood is a good illustration of the vulnerability of women with “pre-​children”:  “They shouted at me that I  had lain tired (“muug”) in hospital and had infected my husband and that I have three children from before my marriage and don’t know whose they are as I slept with everyone.”74 The explicit reference to her pre-​marital behaviour is an indication that past violations could continue to define the relationships within a neighbourhood for a long time. Women could hardly keep pregnancies hidden in the poorer neighbourhoods with their tight housing situation and sharp social control. A pregnancy deemed illegitimate was quickly the talk of the local residents. A pregnancy at a suspicious moment could be seen as an ultimate proof of adultery or prostitution in an age of at best imperfect contraception. For example, worker Johannes B. accused his wife Anna V. that the child she was bearing was “from the boss”,75 and would as such be a bastard. References to termination of pregnancy were also related to the reproach of illegitimacy. Undoubtedly, the aversion to abortion that emerged from the insults was to a certain extent a reflection of the strict doctrine preached by the Roman Catholic Church in this matter.76 Abortion was experienced as shameful and therefore took place well behind the scenes. Yet the image of complete congruence with public and especially church morality is somewhat exaggerated. Interesting in this respect is the observation that a woman was never accused of abortion on its own. Invariably she was accused in the same breath of illegitimate forms of sexual intercourse. For example, housewife 72 73 74 75 76

saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 1091, 15-​2-​1912. For comparison, see: Capp, When Gossips Meet, 191. saa, MA 31580, report district 5, no. 577, 20-​4-​1917. saa, MA 31875, report district 5, no. 852, 21-​2-​1949. For church campaigns against abortion during the interbellum, see: De Borchgrave, God of genot.

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Rosa J. was, according to her account, first verbally insulted by her neighbour with the words “you’re a dirty bitch” before having the killer insult thrown at her “you need to go to the police and tell them you’ve aborted a child”.77 The accusation of terminating a pregnancy was never made on its own, but was used only to verbally reinforce the accusation of adultery and prostitution. Women who maintained a respectable sexual lifestyle were apparently never bothered with the accusation of having had an abortion. This pattern may indicate the existence of a tacit consensus that such women could count on general discretion. The rejection of abortion seemed, based on the use of the insults, to be less absolute than the superficial resemblance with church morality suggests at first sight. The reproach of abortion was not directed primarily against abortion as such, but as a variant of the reproach of having children out of wedlock. The main objective was to accuse the target of improper sexual behaviour. The various articulations of the reproach of abortion can be found in the following conflict. Mother and daughter De H. had got into a fight with Florentina V. because the latter was unable to pay her debt, since her husband had been without work during the previous days.78 According to Florentina V.’s statement, mother and daughter De H. did not accept this excuse and went onto the attack: “They shouted ‘street walker, give us our cents back’. (…) They shouted that I had had a miscarriage from a Russian, that I had taken black pills, asked if I  hadn’t gone again to earn five francs at the Schijnpoort and whether I would take pills again for what I was bearing now.” It is clear that here too the accusation of having had an abortion did not stand alone. It was brought up following a dispute involving money and also fitted into a broader attack on the opponent’s sexual honourability. The image is created of a prostitute who systematically gets rid of foetuses which are the result of her business. Interesting in this chain of insults is the connection made between a miscarriage and an abortion. Viewed from this perspective, this makes the alienating nature of the cruel accusation understandable. Just as with the reproach of abortion, behind the accusation of having had a miscarriage is the desire to accuse one’s opponent of illegitimate sexual intercourse. In practice, such a miscarriage was considered the result of an abortion. A  miscarriage as such was not considered dishonourable. Only with women who stood in a bad light in terms of sexual honour was a miscarriage seen as an additional and ultimate proof of their dishonourable behaviour. For example, even five years after the Liberation, the accusation of

77 78

saa, MA 31880, report district 5, no. 2273, 11-​5-​1949. saa, MA 31562, report district 5, no. 2028, 18-​8-​1912.

314 Chapter 5 having had “a miscarriage from a German”, had lost little of its force.79 The reproach of having had a miscarriage bears a strong substantive resemblance to the rebuke of having a bastard child. The connection between the two categories of insults is shown by the way they served to neutralize each other in a verbal battle. The next confrontation between two women neighbours from the Boomgaardstraat clearly shows how the claim of a suspected miscarriage could be countered by a counterclaim of having illegitimate offspring.80 After Thérèse van L.  had repeatedly complained to the neighbours that Christine S. always played her radio too loud, the latter had had enough. She ran into the street, shouting in front of Thérèse van L’s apartment that her radio was staying where it was, accusing Thérèse’s husband of drawing unemployment benefit and working at the same time. Thérèse came outside furious, asking if those insults were directed against her. Christine S. replied: “Yes, that must have been done, I can play the radio whenever I want, have you forgotten that I cleaned up all the miscarriages from the old man?”, to which Thérèse van L. retorted “you should just look at your Juul, he’s a child of D.F.” This sneer referred to the view that children should resemble their rightful father. The suspicion of bastardy did not disappear when this was not the case. The gender-​specific interpretation of the reproach of bastardy enables a claim of a miscarriage to be, so to speak, neutralized by a counterclaim of bastardy. Women were hardly ever reproached for being the result of an extra-​marital relationship. An exception to the rule is the shout “you don’t know who your father is”, which was thrown at housekeeper Germaine W. after she had asked her father’s mistress if she was not ashamed.”81 Women were accused only of having carried and given birth to illegitimate children. Hence the kinship with the accusations about abortion and miscarriages voiced in the context of supposedly illegitimate sexually intercourse. Judging from the repertoire of sexually tinged insults, a number of significant thematic white spots catch the eye, which may also provide relevant information on the values and views of the lower social groups. Perhaps the most important is the absence of any offensive reference to the unmarried cohabitation of partners. In the practice of those social groups whose insults were brought to the police, it appears that, in spite of church rules in particular, there was a large degree of indifference or even tolerance with regard to the concubinage of unmarried people. This is in line with Michelle Perrot’s 79 80 81

saa, MA 31883, report district 5, no. 2929, 12-​10-​1949. saa, MA 29835, report district 7, no. 2953, 14-​10-​1938. saa, MA 31704, report district 5, no.  1837, 11-​4-​1938. For the only traced example, see: saa, MA 29319, report district 7, no. 2, 20-​7-​1944.

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observation that, from the second half of the nineteenth century, the premarital cohabitation of young people among the lower social groups in the cities was increasingly tolerated.82 Nevertheless, a certain degree of caution in this respect is called for. The dispute that cleaning lady Joanna de W. had with her divorced tenant, gold embroideress Emma van E., is an indication that ecclesiastical morality did not remain entirely without influence.83 She denied Emma van E.’s lover access to the home because she “no longer tolerated such an irregular household”. The sneer a housewife directed at her mother points in the same direction: “… that I was better behaved that she was, pointing to the fact that she already had me when she was seventeen and is still not married”.84 In this area too, the bourgeois-​church respectability model appeared to have been not without its attraction. The innumerable insults about women’s sexual misconduct could erroneously lead to the conclusion that female sexual respectability was completely equivalated to sexual passivity. The high incidence of insults in which women were accused of unlawful forms of sexual traffic does not imply that, unlike men, they were immune to the accusation of poor sexual performance. In the street, waitress Julia de J. told her suitor’s mother that “her husband was sleeping with another woman”, after the latter had scolded her as a “dirty whore” and tried to put an end to her son’s relationship with her.85 In so doing she was clearly attempting to counter the accusation of a lack of sexual honourability with a counterclaim aimed at her opponent’s inability to keep her husband faithful to her. More than with men, however, it is not the pity-​arousing and laughable fact of being deceived that is central, but rather the targeted woman’s sexual inability. The insult “nun” or “discarded nun” formed the perfect instrument for a woman to accuse an opponent of abnormal frigidity. In particular, between rivals for the same man, the accusation of sexual under-​performance formed a powerful weapon. It offered a woman accused of snatching a man from another woman the possibility of parrying that charge with the claim that it was logical that the man in question, being unsatisfied, had sought refuge with another woman. After office clerk Helena P.  had insulted her husband’s (alleged) lover, tavern-​keeper Nathalia V., with the words “come back to your lover, dirty whore, rotten whore”, the latter shouted at her 82 Perrot, La jeunesse ouvriere, 132–​134. There are also indications that this relative tolerance already existed in eighteenth-​century Paris:  see Farge, La vie fragile 90; Carlier, Mentaliteitshistorische, 310. 83 saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 1283, 3-​6-​1912. 84 saa, MA 31885, report district 5, no. 3899, 29-​7-​1949. 85 saa, MA 31700, report district 5, no. 359, 17-​1-​1938.

316 Chapter 5 “you nun, you’ve been sleeping I don’t know how long with your bloke like a (…) quail”.86 Closely related to the reproach of frigidity is the claim that the targeted woman did not easily find a man, if at all. Within the framework of a rent dispute, tenant Antoinette C. insulted her landlady, Elsa H., with the following words: “Scandal, you can be happy you’re off the street, otherwise you’d still be on it. That’s why you took a bloke with three children.”87 Insults about limited sexual activity were not only exchanged among women. Husbands also used them to point their wives to their marital obligations. For example, technician Jan-​Baptist D. purportedly accused his wife of being a “reheated corpse” and a “nun” because she refused to have “intimate relationships” for fear of becoming pregnant.88 Outside the marital relationship, there are no examples of men insulting women with the accusation of frigidity. It can therefore be assumed that this category of insults in public was mainly used by women against ­women. A sense of one’s own honourability was never far away when women accused sexual partners of “whoring”. An attack on another woman’s sexual reputation immediately implied a claim of virtue for one’s own person. Women used insults to create a clear contrast between their own virtue and their opponent’s blackened reputation. In a number of cases of insults between women, the comparison was even made explicit. Comparison provided a devious way to throw offensive elements from the opponent’s sexual life onto the street. Such comparisons start from the notion that female honour is closely linked to competition among women. The conclusion of the dispute between fashion designer Anna van M.  and housekeeper Maria S.  is telling in this respect.89 After a long-​lasting quarrel, Anna bit:  “Je suis trop honnête pour m’occuper de personnes de votre genre. Vous n’avez été que serveuse depuis votre jeune age.” (I’m too honest to concern myself with people like you. You’ve been only a waitress since you were a girl.”) In so many words she claimed her superiority in the area of ​​sexual morality, which, in her own words, offered the possibility of not reacting to Maria S’s provocations without losing face. The competitive spirit that often characterized female honourability is perhaps even more apparent from the insults that two female tavern-​keepers from the Falconrui exchanged with each other.90 Rosalia van H. parried a verbal and physical attack from Anna van H. with the phrase that “unlike her, she did not have five or 86 87 88 89 90

saa, MA 31887, report district 5, no. 4548, 16-​9-​1949. saa, MA 31630, report district 5, no. 2341, 22-​8-​1928. saa, MA 29370, report district 2, no. 1496, 1-​6-​1949. saa, MA 24631, report district 2, no. 3109, 7-​5-​1912. saa, MA 24633, report district 2, no. 5013, 16-​9-​1912.

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six lovers, because it was whores who did so”. An alternative way to explicitly enter the competition was through comparison of the virtue of offspring and especially of daughters. For example, housewife Anna F. supposedly provoked her opponent by shouting on the street “your daughter sits with men in cars”, to which the latter purportedly replied “my daughter hasn’t been thrown out of school like yours and doesn’t need to paint her lips and colour her hair to look for one.”91 But there are also less obvious comparisons to be found in the sources than the traditional opposition of one’s own feminine virtue (purity and motherhood) with the suggested sexual dishonourability of the adversary. In the analysis of the sexually charged insults directed at women, we have already pointed to the existence of a minority contrarian tradition, in which the accusation of a lack of sexual performance was considered as dishonourable. Especially in conflicts between a deceived wife and her husband’s mistress, the latter party explicitly won the sexual competition. Illustrative in this connection is the dispute between housewife Joanna B. and cleaning lady Catharina M., which took place in the Gasstraat in the Seefhoek in August 1917.92 According to Joanna’s statement, her husband had left his family in the lurch for Catharina. In her statement, she accuses Catharina of taking pleasure in bragging about her conquest and the material advantages attached to it: “She comes regularly every day to laugh at me in front of my apartment. On the fourteenth of this month she appeared again before me and after tormenting and laughing at me, she called out to me mockingly: I get embroidered blouses from your husband and you don’t and will not. You’ve asked your husband for a dress for your child, but I’ll make sure you don’t get one. I wear gold rings from him, boots costing 70 francs and clothes worth over 100 francs. Look here, you can go hungry. I may have been rotten, but he still likes me, he’s tired of you. And when I’m tired of him, I’ll send him back, but it’s not certain he’ll come. The usual competition between women for respectability is completely reversed in this example. In spite of the dominant values, the mistress claims her superiority over the deceived woman since she has succeeded, despite a past history of venereal disease, of sexually binding the man in question in opposition to the unattractive wife.

91 92

saa, MA 31704, report district 5, no. 1850, 9-​4-​1938. saa, MA 31582, charge, district 5, no. 1382, 16-​8-​1917.

318 Chapter 5 Men’s sexual reputation was much less a subject than that of women’s, in both absolute and relative terms. This does not mean, however, that a man was completely immune to insults of a sexual nature. But broadly speaking, sexually charged insults aimed at men fall into two clearly distinguishable –​and at first sight contradictory –​categories. The first group of insults do not focus on the man’s own sexual behaviour, but that of the women in his immediate social environment. In most cases, such accusations are about the lack of control over female sexuality. In the second category of insults, the man is indeed directly attacked in terms of his own sexual respectability. Women in the Antwerp neighbourhoods were not dependent on their fathers or husbands for defending their sexual honourability. The notion that it was a man’s job to keep watch over his wife’s honour was nevertheless present. A wife’s adultery posed an important potential threat to the man’s social esteem. While male adultery was perceived in the first place as jeopardizing the survival of the family (also and above all in the material sense), female adultery was seen primarily as an attack on the respectability of the husband. This distinction shows the persistence of opinions about unequal power and property relationships within the marital relationship. In this connection, the repertoire of insults used in twentieth-​century Antwerp is certainly meaningful. While a man could be ridiculed for his wife’s supposed adultery with the word “horn-​wearer” (cuckold), an equivalent for the deceived wife was almost completely absent. The use of the word “horn-​wearer” for the deceived husband is anything but specific to Antwerp in the first half of the twentieth century. On the contrary, the term was widely disseminated in many variants in various European and Mediterranean societies.93 Anthropologist Anton Blok was the first to formulate a convincing hypothesis about the origin of the “horn-​wearer” insult.94 Rejecting the frequently put forward idea that the horns refer to the devil or are a phallic symbol, he sees the horns as a metaphor that refers to the behaviour of he-​goats which, in contrast to rams, tolerate other males with their females. Blok suggests that the term “cuckold” in Western European societies has been completely covered up by the dust of time. As a result of urbanization, state formation and democratization, the honour concept, once strongly bound to the physical person, has for him lost much of its importance. Only in peripheral rural areas in the Mediterranean region would a notion like “cuckold” be fully understood. Viewed from this perspective, the persistence of the term 93

For the Republic, for example, see:  Leuker and Roodenburg, ‘Die dan hare wyven laten afweyen’, 61–​84. 94 Blok, Mediterranean Totemism, 173–​209.

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“horn-​wearer” in a twentieth-​century medium-​sized city in an established Western European state is all the more surprising. The Antwerpians from the lower social groups fully understood the word and used the accompanying gesture (two curved fingers behind the head) to ridicule an opponent. Illustrative is the confession of a housewife from the Koeikensgracht who admitted having offended workman Henricus B.’s honour with this gesture on the street: “I said ‘horn-​wearer’ to Henricus B. (…) and I placed my fingers above my head. The fingers represented the horns.”95 Remarkably, both men and women used this sign as an insult to men. While the Antwerp population might still be familiar with the notion of “cuckold”, the abuse was anything but a catch-​all term as were “whore” or “wretch” (schoelie). Only in four of the selected violent conflicts was the reproach word “horn-​wearer” (cuckold) used. It seems strongly that the word “horn-​wearer” was only used when there were at least real suspicions of extramarital sexual intercourse by a married woman. Apart from that specific context, it was almost never used. In three of the four selected reports in which the word “horn-​wearer” is mentioned, there are indications that this was actually the case. For example, Emiel D.W. scolded his brother-​in-​law Lucine V.R. for being a “voluntary cuckold” for tolerating their two wives going on a spree at night with two other men.96 Perhaps the ultimately rare occurrence of the insult “cuckold” is at least partly related to the omnipresence of the accusation “whore” with regard to women, which provided a very apt way of indirectly harming a man’s reputation.97 For anyone wanting to hold a man up to ridicule by reproaching him for lack of control over his wife’s sexuality, it was sufficient to call his wife a “whore”. The accusation of bastardy also belongs to the same group. While women were insulted by accusing them of carrying or giving birth to an illegitimate child, the accusation of being a “bastard”, was used almost exclusively against men. In this connection, men were also not held accountable for their own sexual responsibility. There are no examples in which men are accused of fathering a child outside of matrimony. An illegitimate child apparently did not pose a threat to a man’s honour. Perhaps this is still a leftover of the old connection between male honourability and a high degree of sexual activity. In contrast it was highly threatening to a man’s reputation to be accused of being a bastard. Here a man’s sexual reputation is determined not so much by his 95 96 97

saa, MA 29221, report district 2, no. 1707, 8-​10-​1938. saa, MA 31874, report district 5, no. 507, 29-​1-​1949. For this mechanism, see: Farge, La vie fragile, 135–​136.

320 Chapter 5 own behaviour, but by that of his mother. In other words, the full sexual responsibility for a pregnancy lay with a woman. The frequency with which men were accused of bastardy was limited. Meaningful in this connection is the observation that we find no recorded insult of a man in this way in monolingual Dutch or, more accurately, Brabantine-​Antwerpian-​speaking company. From the reports in question, it appears that French or English-​speaking persons were involved in the conflicts. In three cases there was even clear evidence of xenophobic coloured friction between, in particular, passing sailors and local residents, as is apparent from the adjectives: “Belgian bastard”,98 “foreign bastard”99 and “English bastard”.100 It is clear that this group of insults did not contradict the double standard of morals between men and women. On the contrary, it confirms that the focus of sexual responsibility and guilt lay irrefutably with the woman. In contrast to earlier periods, however, twentieth-​century Antwerp did indeed have a clearly defined group of insults specifically aimed at the sexual activity of men. This observation seems to confirm that a gradual process of confluence of the notions of masculine and feminine honourability was indeed taking place. The fact that men in twentieth-​century Antwerp were also the target of insults related to their own sexual behaviour is a clear indication that, even in the lower social groups, double standards were gradually becoming less absolute. Striking in this respect is that it was mainly women who tried to damage men’s reputations by accusing them of illegitimate sexual practices. In contrast to earlier periods, Antwerp women in the first half of the twentieth century had an extensive vocabulary available to them with which to hit men’s sexual reputations.101 In the case of adultery, for example, they no longer directed their arrows, as in the past, exclusively at their female rivals, but also at their unfaithful husbands. As when it came to a fight between housewife Joanna R. and retired Karel van A. after she had called him “scoundrel, skirt-​chaser, you’re having it off with the woman in the rear house”.102 Women also acted with word and deed in respect of other forms of men’s overstepping sexual normality. In disputes between men and women involving sexual reputation, women were by no means purely passive and defenceless victims. They were independent players who attempted to impugn the male counterpart’s sexual reputation. Contrary to the conclusions of Bernard Capp 98 99 100 101 102

saa, MA 29221, report district 2, no. 2043, 14-​11-​1928. saa, MA 29275, report district 2, no. 2033, 23-​9-​1938. saa, MA 29376, report district 2, no. 3128, 21-​11-​1949. By way of comparison, see: Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 76. saa, MA 29371, report district 2, no. 1790, 31-​5-​1949.

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for early modern London, there are virtually no insults in the corpus of recorded insults by women who cite their own sexual experiences with a man to put pressure on him.103 It did not belong at all to the usual course of events that, with this aim in mind, prostitutes revealed secrets about customers, mistresses about adulterous husbands or victims about rapists. Such activities apparently presented too great a risk for the sexual reputation of the woman herself. Even in cases of paedophilic abuse, the fear of losing status usually prevented the parents of the abused child from publicly accusing the perpetrator. When, with sexually charged insults towards men, a distinction is made between the deprecations pronounced by men and women, it is clear that the views of both sexes about male sexuality are anything but the same. In the registered insults of men by women, sexually charged accusations represent 17.6% of the total, while this percentage is limited to 7.2% in the insults between men. The fact that women attack men’s sexual reputations more often than men do themselves confirms the image of women as sexual beings for whom sexuality was of great significance. These would appear to be in the first instance women from the lower social groups who picked up the bourgeois moral discourse on male sexuality and with it the gradual flattening of the double standard. In the atmosphere of men among themselves, sexually charged insults appear largely to have missed their goal. Male-​only sociability networks did not yet see any significant threat to respectability in pre-​and extra-​marital forms of sexuality. Among men, the old connection between male honourability and sexual activity was still true to a certain extent. It can be imagined, for example, that young males talking among themselves in the tavern tended to boast more about their frequent (whether or not imaginary) conquests than about their undying loyalty to the women in their lives.104 However, it is unlikely that such sounds would be heard outside of that informal context. Among older married men or men from social groups who, out of respect for respectability, had embraced the bourgeois ideal of morality, such approaches would find little traction. Unlike for a woman, a man’s own sexual honourability was not decisive for his self-​image. It is revealing to compare in this context the sexually charged insults expressed against men by women and men respectively. Clearly dominant reproaches in the insults coming from women are the visiting of whores, venereal diseases (a consequence of the foregoing) and adultery (33 out of 47), while the same categories represented a maximum of 4 out of 18 insults in 103 Capp refers to such practices as examples of “sexual blackmail”:  Capp, The Double Standard Revisited, 90. 104 Capp, The Double Standard Revisited, 71–​72.

322 Chapter 5 men’s insults to men. Men mainly blamed each other for sexual inability, inferiority and bastardy. Therefore, men not only insulted other men with sexually charged imprecations to a much lesser extent than women, but when they did, their line of argumentation differed substantially from that of women. While women mainly attacked men for sexual activity that was deemed illegitimate, men did this very rarely. Among men, the accusation of whoring, venereal disease or adultery visibly made little or no impression. Even in the rare cases of such a sexually charged insult from one man to another, it is not entirely certain whether the sexual reputation of the man in question was always the real target. An example is the dispute between the Van R. brothers, who ran a greengrocery store together.105 Jan was upset with Aloys because the latter did not care about the common business and left his brother to do all the work. For Jan, one day the cup ran over, and he gave his job-​shy brother a good beating with the words: “You spend all your time with those whores in the Korte Nieuwstraat.” This insult, which at first sight appears to be a pure attack on the male sexual reputation, when viewed in its broader context takes on a completely different charge: Jan is denouncing not so much Aloys’ dissolute behaviour but the fact that this is at the expense of the common business. Incidentally, it is questionable whether the female attacks on male sexual honourability did indeed have much effect. Since sexuality was of subordinate importance for male reputation, the chances are real that the female attack could simply be ignored. Earlier it was pointed out that men were familiar with the potential power of a female voice. The low need for response lay not in the fact that the attacker was a woman, but in the content of the insult. In the absence of concordance between the man’s self-​image and the image that the woman in question had of the man, the risk of reputational loss was probably less pronounced for the man. Conversely, a man’s self-​image prevented him from accusing other men of certain oversteppings of the sexual norm. This was particularly true of adultery. A man who attacked a male rival for extramarital sexual intercourse with his wife ran the real risk of jeopardizing his own reputation. To make one’s wife’s adultery public was to admit in so many words that one had lost control of her sexuality and thus failed to fulfil the obligations of a respectable man. The registered corpus of insults contains only a single mention of a man accusing his rival of adultery with his wife. Travelling salesman Antoon T. challenged shopkeeper Jan V. to fight in front of the entire tavern, saying that “he was having it off with his wife”.106

1 05 saa, MA 24633, report district 2, no. 5554, 12-​11-​1912. 106 saa, MA 31630, report district 5, no. 2271, 9-​8-​1928.

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Significant in this context is the use of the “rhetoric of rottenness” towards men. As indicated earlier, men and women diligently used the suspicion of infection with syphilis to damage women’s sexual honour. Women followed the line logically and also turned the accusation of “rottenness” –​albeit to a much lesser extent than towards members of their own sex –​against men who had strayed sexually beyond the boundaries. In half of such cases they linked the accusation of a venereal disease with the term “(street) dog”. The combination “rotten dog” makes very clear the link between illegitimate sexual intercourse and venereal disease. The basis of this is the association of the image of a roaming street dog with excessively promiscuous sexual behaviour.107 While women applied the “rhetoric of rottenness” much more towards their own sex, it is clear that they also considered it to be applicable to the other sex. Women declared whore-​runners and adulterous men to be “rotten”. In this field there was only a gradual difference in the moral yardsticks against which they measured women and men. With men, the situation was completely different. For them the “rhetoric of rottenness” applied only to the opposite sex. There is no example of men accusing each other of suffering from a venereal disease. This gap is consistent with the observation made earlier that men’s visits to whores or adultery were not deemed worthy of note. Potentially more dangerous for a man’s reputation were insults in which venereal diseases were linked to impotence. Such a combination was aimed both at the traditional image of the man as a sexually active being as well as more recent views of male honour where extramarital sexuality was rejected. The broadside of insults that dockworker Adolf R. had thrown at him by his wife Maria de C. is telling in this context. Maria de C. suspected her husband of adultery, refused to allow him into the house any longer and scolded him with the following words: “Bundle of rottenness, filthy inside and out, you can no longer pull the wool over my eyes, you whores’ dog, you spend all your time with the whores.”108 The accuracy with which Adolf R.  reconstructed these words in his statement and the fact that he, as a man, took the trouble to lodge a complaint against his wife, indicates that he felt his honour to have been seriously damaged. Such a feeling is also strongly expressed in the following statement by workman Jan P., accused by cigar roller Charlotta V. of inciting her husband against her:

1 07 For the meaning of the image of the dog, see: Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 238. 108 saa, MA 31710, report district 5, no. 4096, 30-​8-​1938.

324 Chapter 5 … there, Mrs V. reproached me in a full tavern and in the presence of several persons ‘you have been rotten twice, you are as rotten as field mushrooms, you can’t have a lover any more, as there is nothing left there’ (…) and she went on to say that I’d twice had an accident, by which she meant that I had had VD.109 A similar case took place between grinder Jaak V. and his ex-​lover Clementina A. who called at him with poetic cruelty on the street: “Dirty bastard (literally ‘cleaning rag’), I don’t want to go any more with you, you are too rotten to hang in the closet.”110 Jaak V. felt his reputation so impugned that he presented a medical certificate at the police station showing that he did not suffer from syphilis at all. While the image of female genitals affected by venereal diseases recurs in many insults, these plastic descriptions of the destructive effect of syphilis on the male member were single examples. In accordance with the double standard, a man’s body apparently offered few starting points for attacking his sexual honour. The use of the words “rotzak” (literally ‘bag of rottenness’) and “smeerlap” (pervert, lecher –​literally ‘greasing rag’) towards men could also be an indication that the double standard towards male and female sexuality had lost at least some of its force in twentieth-​century Antwerp. According to the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, “bag of rottenness” must be understood in the first place as a “common abuse for someone who is infected by a venereal disease”.111 There is therefore no discussion about the origin of the word: the rottenness refers to syphilis, the bag to the testicles. The imprecation “bag of rottenness” originally contained the reproach of illegitimate sexual traffic. While today the meaning of “rotzak” has shifted to “common, underhanded chap”, in the first half of the twentieth century this was possibly not entirely the case. In the Idioticon van het Antwerpsch dialect of 1901 the only explanation is “someone who is afflicted by scrofula, venereal disease or a chest disorder which makes him cough and throw up phlegm”. Given the frequent use of the strongly sexually charged notion of “rotten”, it is not at first glance fanciful to suggest that the Antwerp populace was still familiar with the literal meaning of a “rotzak”. In the broader sense, according to the wnt, “rotzak” could also be understood as a “dirty, grubby fellow”. Given the well-​known sexual connotation of the binary opposition cleanliness-​dirtiness, it may not be a fundamentally different charge. The insult “smeerlap” (greasing rag), originally used 1 09 saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 1352, 3-​6-​1912. 110 saa, MA 31559, report district 5, no. 56, 24-​12-​1911. 111 wnt, dl. 13, The Hague and Leiden, 1924, cols. 1423–​1426.

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only with regard to men, evokes equally the close link between uncleanliness and supposedly illegitimate sexual traffic. According to the wnt, “smeerlap” also has a double meaning: “Someone who makes or has made himself or his environment filthy, someone who works very dirtily”, or “someone who does dirty things in the sexual area”. However, nothing in the corpus of insults explicitly tells us that both insults were still being used in a sexual sense in early twentieth-​century Antwerp. An important indication in this connection is the fact that both of them, in spite of their masculine origins, were also used towards to women. It therefore seems that the original meanings of “bag of VD” and “sexually dirty person” had worn away; for safety’s sake they too have been placed in the category of insults with a generally denigrating character. Only very rarely were men accused of homosexuality in early twentieth-​ century Antwerp. Only once do we find the word “jeannette” and a man accused of: “You prefer men.” The almost complete absence of such insults in the anything but prudish Antwerp repertoire of insults is not easily explained.112 It is difficult to tell whether the rare nature of accusations of homosexuality is an indication of a high degree of implicit tolerance towards homosexuals or whether this is proof that homosexuality was still very much taboo. In this connection it is probably significant that in the sample from the Antwerp police archives, almost no traces of violence specifically directed against homosexuals can be found. There is no question of structural violence against homosexuals by reason of their sexual orientation in Antwerp for the period studied. From this perspective, it is perhaps not coincidental that the only example of explicit violence against a homosexual because of his sexual orientation was committed by a man with a different cultural background.113 Greek stoker Stavan D. had found shelter for the night in the room of his compatriot and colleague Andreas A. Both stokers shared the same bed and Andreas A. saw his chance to make sexual advances towards Stavan D. The latter did not like this and gave Andreas an angry beating and threatened him with death. In order to clear any doubts about his own sexual orientation, Stavan proceeded to a remarkable ritual sanction. He expressed the logic of his behaviour in front of the police in this way: “With my penknife, I cut off the points of his moustache to show him that I am not a woman.” Evidence of such ritual castration by the indigenous population is not available. Clearly sexually charged is the exclamation “kiss my balls” used by men to disparage their opponent. The small number (5)  of registered cases is 112 Cf. Garrioch, Verbal insults, 108; Keulen, ‘Ongaarne beticht en bevlekt’, 425–​426; Morris, Sodomy, 383–​407. 113 saa, MA 24629, report district 2, no. 188, 21-​1-​1912.

326 Chapter 5 undoubtedly related to the fact that men expressed this imprecation only among themselves. In many Mediterranean cultures, the testicles are seen as a symbolic key point of virility.114 The frequent use of the word “kloot” (testicle/​ ball) in many expressions of the Brabantine-​Antwerpian spoken language suggests that the testicles occupied a special position in the mental universe of the Antwerp popular neighbourhoods. In the shout “kiss my balls” or “I wipe my balls on you”, the testicles clearly express the male superiority of the speaker towards the opponent. The opponent is symbolically castrated and humiliated. The explicit language with which Antwerpia,s from the lower social groups depicted their opponents as violators of sexual norms, nuances in itself the frequently proffered proposal that the sexual expressiveness of the Belgian population during the first half of the twentieth century was completely “restricted” by bourgeois Catholic standards of sexual decency.115 The taboo on sexuality motivated by Counter-​Reformist Catholicism (in fact a sexual discourse like any other) as depicted by numerous Flemish literati, may well have been generalized in the (petty) bourgeois circles to which they belonged, but was not shared by the population as a whole. As the very bodily-​oriented vocabulary of the insults used clearly shows, the sexual views of the “real” world of the lower social groups did not necessarily correspond to the sexual ideology of the bourgeois “legal” world. The bodily approach to sexuality as expressed in the insults is not necessarily a foreshadowing of the post-​war shifts in sexual morality. The direct language use can instead be seen in the light of cultural continuity. It testifies to the relative tenacity with which the lower social groups held to their own views on sexuality, in spite of behaviour-​regulating offensives from above. During the first half of the twentieth century, sexual attitudes among the Antwerp population were more diverse than the unambiguous official discourse might suggest. The fact of encountering contradictory traditions that mirror broader-​based sexual values and norms indicates that the values of the lower social groups were not a monolithic block. The moral double standard towards men’s and women’s sexuality was a common feature of the official sexual ideology and of the attitudes expressed by the insults. There was certainly no total convergence of views on the sexual honourability of men and women. For a woman, sexual honourability was much more important than it was for a man. The definition of women as primarily sexual beings was not just the work of men. Women insisted on this definition even

1 14 See: Driessen, Mannelijkheid in gebaren, 272. 115 See here Van Ussel’s legendary study:  Geschiedenis van het seksuele probleem and also Vandenbroeke, Het seksueel gedrag, 193–​230.

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more strongly. The double standard was not absolute, in the sense that women also held men to account in terms of their sexual honourability. 5.3

Purity and Respectability

Closely related to the sexually charged “rhetoric of rottenness” are the insults which denounce the impurity of the targeted party. Since anthropologist Mary Douglas’ pioneering work, the realization has grown that “dirt” does not exist in an absolute sense.116 On the contrary, it is the spectator’s view that determines what is dirty and what is not. This explains the absence of any global consensus about the precise limits of purity and impurity. Mary Douglas does, however, see a clear connection between dirt and social order in various societies. Anything that infringes on that order is considered dirty or impure. Dirty or impure is, in other words, everything that is out of place. Impurity and uncleanliness were also important concerns in twentieth-​ century Antwerp. The preoccupation of the Antwerp population with cleanliness cannot simply be attributed to the spread of modern ideas about hygiene. The frequent occurrence of insults in this sphere, for example, points to a strong connection between a person’s (un)cleanliness and his or her social acceptability. Behind accusations of uncleanliness and impurity lie two partially overlapping, yet clearly distinguishable fields of meaning. To begin with, the accusation of being unclean or impure had a clearly sexually tinted undertone. Physical uncleanliness was associated with illegitimate sexual intercourse. Shame was connected to the physical person and therefore literally stuck to the offender. The kinship with the insult “rotten” speaks for itself. From the perspective of the double standard on sexuality, it is not surprising that most of the insults related to uncleanliness were aimed at women. But the accusation of “dirtiness” potentially threatened the respectability of the person in consideration not only in terms of sexual morality. In the broader sense, it formed an instrument with which to highlight the target’s socially inferior status.117 Uncleanliness was associated with the poorest in society. In Great Britain, around 1830, the term The Great Unwashed found its way into language use to indicate the dirtiness of the lowest social groups in the industrial cities. Given the appalling living and working conditions in which 116 Douglas, Purity and Danger. A comparable perspective from a historical perspective can be found in: Perrot, Le travail des apparences, 13. 117 Burke, History and Social Theory, 63; Elias, Een theoretisch essay, 19–​20. Perrot, Le travail des apparences, 107–​137.

328 Chapter 5 people in pauper ghettos had to survive, the connection between poverty and filth probably corresponded to a certain reality. In the nineteenth century, the streets in the Antwerp working-​class districts were considerably dirtier than in bourgeois neighbourhoods because the population threw its garbage onto the street.118 In the course of the nineteenth century, the aversion to garbage, smell and uncleanliness had become a true obsession for the bourgeoisie.119 Panicked ideas about the assumed risk of contamination caused by impurity led to the increasing identification of the poor with harmful fumes and excrement. In the eyes of Catherina Lis, on a symbolic level, behind this distaste lay the deep-​seated fears and uneasiness of the bourgeoisie about the excesses of the explosive urbanization and industrialization processes. In order to allay these fears, the bourgeoisie set up cleansing offensives intended to get the lower classes to live neater and tidier lives. Characteristic of the spirit of the times was the underlying view that, with stricter hygiene, the social problem arising from poverty and poor housing would also be eliminated. Established social groups literally and figuratively attributed to themselves tidier lifestyles than socially less well-​placed groups. Not only elites and the social middle groups associated uncleanliness with social inferiority. British studies show how much, among the working population, cleanliness of home and clothing was interwoven with notions of respectability.120 The emphasis on the cleanliness of the house and hearth is a strategy of the respectable poor to distinguish themselves from the dirty poor. Being associated with the behaviour and lifestyle of the “dirty” underclass represented a powerful attack on the respectability of the person concerned. This observation once again indicates that the distinctive mechanism also played a role among and within the lower social groups. From the desire to distinguish themselves from the behaviour of the socially threateningly close underlayer, and to align with the lifestyle of the higher social groups, people imposed the ideal of purity on themselves with considerable conviction. By the first half of the twentieth century, this cleanliness ideal that had appeared in the early modern period as a distinctive mechanism of the elites121 had spread to broad sections of the population. The lower social groups also started using the ideal of cleanliness as a distinctive behavioural standard.122 Perhaps it was mainly those groups that still used it 1 18 Uit de geschiedenis, 34. 119 Lis, Proletarisch wonen, 348–​350. 120 Ross, Not the Sort; Tebbutt, Woman’s Talk?, 80–​83. 121 Matthews Grieco, Corps, 60; Muchembles, L’invention, 386; Vigarello, Le propre et le sale, 1985. 122 This was largely the case in the Rotterdam working-​class neighbourhoods during the first half of the twentieth century. See: Blokland, Urban bonds, 99–​105.

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as a distinctive mechanism. Pierre Bourdieu emphasizes that social groups invariably use the most recently acquired “difference” as a distinctive element.123 He illustrates this proposition with the empirical observation that the various social groups have different preferences when it comes to their home interiors. Workers emphasize the cleanliness and comfort of the home. Among the middle groups, for whom such qualities have long been acquired, the intimacy and the well-​kept character of the interior are central. In turn, the elites emphasize the importance of socially and aesthetically perceived standards like harmony and composition. These class-​related preferences illustrate that qualities, once they are no longer pursued but have become self-​evident, lose their distinctive value over time. The most commonly used insult concerning uncleanliness (both for men and women) is without doubt the adjective “dirty”, eventually joined with a noun as in “dirty creature”. From the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal it is clear that “dirt” carries the two semantic fields of uncleanliness.124 Dirty is described among other things as “violating the moral principles; inclined to illicit sexual acts; also where(by) good morals are violated or illicit sexual acts practised; lewd, unchaste; of coarse morals resp. exhibiting this: common, uncivilized, ungainly”. The sexual connotation of the notion is evident from the fact that it was often used to reinforce the reproach of prostitution. If the insult “whore” or “street-​girl” was provided with an adjective, this was “dirty” in the vast majority of cases. Witnesses described sexually charged acts (“doing something dirty”)125 and also the genitals often as “dirty”. This also applies to the “dirty disease” of syphilis. It can thus be assumed that the accusation of being “dirty” is, to a certain extent, related to the accusation of “rottenness”. The connection between uncleanliness and physical decay regularly arose in disputes. Clerical employee Augustine C., in response to his request to resume marital life, had the following meaningful phrase slung at him by his wife, cleaning lady Antonia G.: “Bag of rottenness, dirty, worthless creature, you decay in your own filth.”126 In the insults shouted by retired solider Emiel S. to his wife, housewife Anna R., the same connection between “dirt” and “rotten” occurs: “Whore, street-​woman, you’re rotten, I’m sick of you. With my decorations I do everything and I win everything against such a dirty race.”127 But equally the accusation “dirty” served to highlight the social inferiority of the 1 23 Bourdieu, La distinction, 274–​275. 124 wnt, dl. 23, Leiden, 1987, cols. 1188–​1230. 125 saa, MA 24631, report district 2, no. 3056, 7-​5-​1912. 126 saa, MA 24633, report district 2, no. 5298, 16-​10-​1912. 127 saa, MA 29733, report district 7, no. 913, 25-​3-​1928.

330 Chapter 5 opposing party. Meaningful in this connection are combinations such as “dirty docker”, “dirty wretch” or “dirty peasant”. A striking example of the use of the ideal of purity to express feelings of social superiority is contained in the series of imprecations that clerical worker Jan K. repeatedly shouted at his wife and mother-​in-​law: “Wash your dirty rags, because you stink, dirty creatures, dollop, debauched animal, dirty girl from Zundert.”128 Jan K., a native of Antwerp, put down his mother-​in-​law, innkeeper Anna van H., born in Zundert, for her rural and humble origins in as many words, but added even more strength to his claim of social superiority by accusing her of an unclean lifestyle. The reproach “to stink” was an alternative for highlighting the unclean character of the opposing party. It illustrates that in the twentieth century the gradual “lowering of the smell tolerance” that Alain Corbin distinguished, had in Antwerp also penetrated the lower social groups.129 The noun “dirty creature” also carries a double meaning. A “dirty creature” is not only “a dirty person”, but also and in particular in Antwerpian Brabantine dialect, above all, an “immoral, indecent person”. The insult “dirty person” was used both to denounce the physical dirtiness and the supposedly unacceptable sexual behaviour of the opposing party. In early twentieth-​century Antwerp, a person’s physical appearance was inextricably linked to his or her position on the social ladder. Much information on the person’s social status could be gleaned at a glance from their clothing. It is no accident that the pure Dutch translation of the English term ‘reputation’ is aanzien (appearance). Repeatedly in the reports, witnesses try to situate unknown perpetrators socially on the basis of their external appearance. Perpetrators like dockworkers, clerical workers or girls of easy morals were identified purely on the basis of external characteristics. Thus trader Florent D. described the unknown man who had attacked him as “looking like a horse dealer”.130 Stoker Georges M. described to the police the men who had attacked him as “dressed as dockers”.131 Lock-​keeper Leo D.  went into even more detail and described his unknown assailants as “dressed like workmen in their Sunday clothes”.132 Apart from the specificity of certain external characteristics for certain professional groups, a well-​groomed appearance was generally associated with respectability, and an unkempt appearance with a lack of it. The police too labelled people with a well-​cared-​for appearance as “distinguished”. 1 28 saa, MA 24649, report district 2, no. 1034, 19-​8-​1917. 129 Corbin, Le miasme et la jonquille, 169. 130 saa, MA 31563, report district 5, no. 2924, 15-​10-​1912. 131 saa, MA 24633, report district 2, no. 5006, 17-​9-​1912. 132 saa, MA 24631, report district 2, no. 3342, 2-​6-​1912.

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Anyone who strived for respectability had to take care of his or her outward appearance. How one ran around indoors was of minor importance, as long as one looked respectable when one went outdoors. Cleanliness was a central element of a respectable appearance. An unkempt and unclean body was seen as the externalization of a non-​respectable lifestyle and a lower social position. An unclean body therefore formed a suitable anchor point to attack people’s respectability within the framework of insults. For Pieter Spierenburg, honourability can be oriented both inwardly and outwardly.133 The starting point for an external orientation is the view that the external appearance of the body reflects inner qualities. According to a more spiritualized conception, honourability is connected in the first instance with inner virtues. In this context, whether a person is regarded as honourable depends primarily on the assessment of his or her moral qualities and to a much lesser extent on his or her outward appearance. Spierenburg emphasizes that the exclusively internal and exclusively external orientation of honour are the extreme ends of a sliding scale. He suggests, however, that since the early modern period in Western Europe a gradual spiritualization of honour has taken place, and that the link between honour and the physical person has become weaker. The distinction made in the Antwerp neighbourhoods between respectable, “clean” people and non-​respectable, “dirty” people indicates that in a twentieth-​century society the ultimate stadium of a spiritualized honourability was far from being achieved. The reputation of an individual or a social group was still connected in many different ways to the physical person. With regard to women, “klodder” and “lodder” were, (apart from the adjective “dirty”) the most used insults to expose the unclean character of the body. The word “klodder” (literally: splodge, dollop) refers to a “dirty, unkempt female, an untidy woman”.134 “Lodder” could be used in most dialects for both men and women and referred to lewd and debauched behaviour.135 In the Antwerpian-​Brabantine dialect, however, it was used exclusively for women and in the first instance referred to an “unkempt, shabby woman”. Nevertheless, it can be deduced from numerous examples that both “klodder” and “lodder” (two terms that were used practically interchangeably) also had a sexual undertone in the Antwerpian dialect. In particular, the frequent juxtaposition of “lodder” and “klodder” and the accusation of prostitution within a single series of insults points to a substantive relationship. Only once was the sexual charge explicitly mentioned. Housewife Marie R. had the following insults 1 33 Spierenburg, Masculinity, 5. 134 wnt, dl. 7 stuk 2, The Hague and Leiden, 1941, col. 4173. 135 wnt, dl. 8 stuk 2, The Hague and Leiden, 1924, col. 2540.

332 Chapter 5 thrown at her by her husband, government clerk Arthur G.: “Klodder (…) that I busy myself with all kinds of klodder (…) and with all kinds of men, even the doctor who looks after me.”136 In this way, the double layers of meaning of words like “lodder” and “klodder” reflected the double loading of the charge of uncleanliness in general. “Luiszak” (sack of lice) is the male equivalent of “(k)lodder”. According to the Idioticon of the Antwerp dialect, this refers to a “poor, dirty fellow”.137 Here again we find the connection between uncleanliness and a lower social position. Numerous expressions and comparisons connect lice to poverty, with the louse itself presented as poor or with allusions made to the frequent occurrence of lice among the poor.138 Users of the term “luiszak” therefore wished to stigmatize the targeted party as belonging to the very lowest social groups. The possession of lice was seen as the externalization of the unrespectable, dirty lifestyle of the poorest. At first sight there is no sexual connotation. The insult was strikingly often used against police officers. Thus, on being arrested for noisy conduct at night, Maria van S. harangued the policemen leading her away as “lice, cheap-​jacks, lousy dogs, pieces of sh …”139 Because of the explicit gender-​specific undertones of the insult “luiszak”, it was used solely with regard to men. This does not mean, however, that women were not susceptible to the reproach of carrying lice. The direct attack “you have bedbugs, body lice or wall lice” could be used against both men and women, but was much less common than the operational insult “luiszak”. In many societies, all body secretions (such as saliva, urine or faeces) are viewed as potential sources of uncleanliness.140 This was also the case for the Antwerp population in the first half of the twentieth century. “Piece of shit” was seen as a particularly provocative insult. It was the most common insult that sought to highlight the uncleanliness of the adversary by relating him or her to human bodily secretions. Other insults in this genre that were found only once were “brown hole”, “shit in your hat and go shit in your father’s hat”, “pisser” and “pisspot carrier”. In addition to the cleanliness of body and members, the orderliness of the house in particular was a constant source of concern. The frequent in-​passing references in reports in the police archives to the cleaning of stairs, doorways, facades and pavements indicate that the cleanliness of the public parts of the 1 36 saa, MA 29318, report district 2, no. 605, 6-​5-​1944. 137 Cornelissen and Vervliet, Idioticon, dl. ii, 783. 138 wnt, dl. 8 stuk 2, The Hague and Leiden, 1924, col. 3256. 139 saa, MA 31559, report district 5, no. 111, 8-​1-​1912. 140 Douglas, Reinheid, 50.

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house received a lot of attention. A clean home externalized the desired respectability. It was an excellent way of making a favourable impression. Certainly when socially higher placed persons were expected to enter the house, cleanliness was paramount. For example, housewife Anna B. stated that she had scoured the shared doorway of her home at the Geelhandplaats “as I was waiting for the doctor for my sick child”.141 Whoever wanted to be known as respectable had to keep their house (or at least the visible parts of it) clean. The cleanliness of the house was seen as a signal that the residents knew what was important and were therefore trustworthy in many other areas. People scrubbed and waxed not only because of the satisfaction that a clean house brought with it, but also and especially because it fitted within the coping strategy of the household concerned.142 According to Melanie Tebbutt, British workers implicitly even made a connection between a dirty home and illegitimate forms of sexuality.143 There is no clear trace of such a link in the Antwerp source material. However, it is clear from the large number of conflicts between neighbours, owners and tenants about the cleanliness of the house just how much “dirty” was considered harmful to the reputation of the residents. For example, worker Prosper T. accused his neighbour, cleaning lady Maria K., of “having a dirty room” and “being a dirty woman”.144 Housewife Maria van der H. felt very much insulted because her sister-​in-​law, housewife Octavie P., had made the following reproaches to her in the neighbourhood shop in the Boerhaavestraat in the Seefhoek: “Go and clean your mess in the attic, grease bag, it stinks at your place.”145 In a dispute between two female neighbours from the Maatstraat in the Seefhoek, the accusation of uncleanliness of house (and body) was fully played out for the “theatre of the street”.146 For half a year there had been a disagreement between them because housewife Coleta B. suspected cleaning lady Maria D of forcing her to move. In revenge, Coleta B.  now in turn tried to get Maria D. turned out of her house by blackening her reputation in front of the owner’s children. Maria D. reacted by pouring a bucket of dirty water over Coleta B. in the middle of the street and scolding her with the words “dirty whore, dirty trimmer, dirty scandal, clean your room of bedbugs”. The bucket and the insults were clearly focused on the outright social stigmatization of the 1 41 saa, MA 31583, report district 5, no. 2094, 24-​12-​1917. 142 See: Heerma van Voss, Why is there no Socialism, 10–​11. 143 Tebbutt, Women’s Talk?, 83–​84. 144 saa, MA 30013, report district 7, no. 203, 13-​1-​1949. 145 saa, MA 31879, report district 5, no. 1844, 20-​4-​1949. 146 saa, MA 31702, report district 5, no. 981, 18-​2-​1938.

334 Chapter 5 opponent. Given the close connection between respectability and cleanliness, it is not surprising that dirtiness also gave rise to conflict within the household. Keeping the house clean was an important task for a good housewife. In twentieth-​century Antwerp, the lower social groups shared to some extent the bourgeois ideal of the “good mother” (who, among other things, keeps close watch on the cleanliness of her home and family), as it had developed during the early modern period.147 If a woman failed to meet expectations in terms of cleanliness, she would fall short as a housewife in the eyes of her husband. For example, in her statement to the police, housewife Rosalia M. pointed to the fact that her husband, furniture maker Petrus S., had beaten her up because she was not prepared to immediately remove a dog’s turd from the doormat.148 The strict social control over the cleanliness of a neighbour’s body and home is a meaningful indication that domestic work such as cleaning was by no means a strictly private matter.149 On the contrary, the neighbourhood looked on closely. Particularly among housewives, mutual control often involved an element of competition. The way in which everyone’s domestic work was spoken about determined to a large extent the hierarchy between the women of the neighborhood. Anyone failing to meet in particular the standards regarding cleanliness could become the target of gossip or ridicule. The sanctions against such unacceptable behaviour could ultimately result in the social ostracism of the person concerned. People literally wanted to keep a distance from the “dirty poor”. There was a real fear that social intercourse with such people would lead to a loss of status. “Uncleanliness” was contagious in character. To avoid this danger, a cordon sanitaire was placed around the “dirty poor”. For the reputation of those involved, it was devastating to end up on the wrong side of this protective circle. Norbert Elias points out how established groups with a certain power surplus attribute to themselves a distinctive group charisma.150 Everyone who belongs to the group shares this charisma, but at the price of respecting the applicable group norms. As a matter of course, the members of the group assume that “outsiders”, that is people who do not belong to the group, do not meet these standards. Contact with them is avoided for this reason:  the outsiders pose a danger to the maintenance of the prevailing morality within the group. Respectability within the group depends on compliance with the prevailing standards, so that contact 147 For the definition of the “good mother” in the French bourgeoisie and aristocracy, see: Perrot, Le travail des apparences, 77–​78. 148 saa, MA 31699, report district 5, no. 212, 10-​1-​1938. 149 See the pertinent comments by Bourke, Working-​class cultures, 94 and 161. 150 Elias, Een theoretisch essay, 15–​20.

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with outsiders who do not respect the group norms involves the risk of loss of status. A person maintaining closer contact can open himself to the suspicion of failing to respect the standards of the group. According to Elias, the “fear of blemish” of the established members of the group is motivated not only by their disapproval of alleged offenders against the standards, but also by their aversion to the unclean character of the “outsiders”. Maintaining contacts with them was experienced as unclean and avoided as much as possible. The avoidance of “unclean” individuals and families indicates the great importance for the reputation of those involved of the people in whose company they were and were not seen. The question of whom one enters into relationships determines to a large extent an individual’s social identity.151 Anyone wishing to cut a good figure needs to monitor closely the relationships he maintains. Since a good name is never definitively acquired, one must keep one’s distance with fear and trembling from “unclean” people. Contact with such people can jeopardize a position of respectability that has been built up with difficulty. The following conflict in the infamous poor ghetto of the Zwanengang is a good illustration of the avoidance of unclean individuals and families. It also indicates well the importance of the cleanliness of children for the status of the mother. On 27 July 1949, a violent confrontation ensued between housewives Anna V. and Joanna Z. because the latter had forbidden her children to play any longer with Anna’s children because they were “very dirty” and had moreover purportedly transferred lice to her own children.152 The practice of parents forbidding their children to play with children from non-​respectable families was also known in other contexts.153 Anna regarded this prohibition as an attack on her respectability and attempted to counter it by shouting out in the street that Joanna herself was “crawling with lice” and “dirty”. She experienced the claim that her children had lice as a personal humiliation.154 In the end, the ban led to a feud lasting for weeks, in which the immediate family members of those involved also ­participated. Also in the previously mentioned dispute between Coleta B. and Maria D., the accusation of uncleanness was closely linked to the desire to stigmatize and isolate the targeted party. Particularly telling in this connection is the following version of the tirade of insults by Maria D.: “Dirty whore, the bedbugs walk over your mug, clean up your bedbugs, you’d be better off spending your

1 51 Jenkins, Social Identity, 50. 152 saa, MA 29372, report district 2, no. 2042, 27-​7-​1949. 153 See: Blokland, Urban bonds, 105. 154 For a similar reaction in England, see: Bourke, Working-​class Cultures, 160.

336 Chapter 5 time on that than on coming into the street.”155 It is perhaps no coincidence that here too the accusation of lice was brought to the fore. Given the easily transferable nature of lice, it was the best strategy for encouraging people to avoid the targeted person. The connection between sensitivity to the accusation of uncleanness and the fear of social isolation is clear from the dispute between furniture maker Jan U. and his upstairs neighbour, Carolina O., over the latter’s “sloppiness”.156 In particular, he accused her of emptying buckets of dirty water into the toilet and sink rather than down the floor drain. He complained about this to another neighbour. This provoked an angry reaction from Carolina. Jan, however, tried to parry it with the side-​swipe: “I have nothing to do with you, you are dirty creatures”. Particularly sensitive to “uncleanliness” were tavern-​keepers who operated so-​called “better” catering establishments.157 To distinguish themselves from “vulgar” taverns, they kept a close eye on the composition of their clients. Customers whose outer appearance could endanger the standing of a public place had to be kept outside. This was especially true for the “dirty” people from the very lowest social groups. In the smarter premises, fear of crossing the threshold was sufficient to prevent them from entering. For this reason, it was mainly the keepers of workers’ taverns who needed to keep away people deemed to be unclean. The reasons given by innkeeper Gerard G. for keeping dockworker Ludovicus van N. outside the door of his tavern in the Lange Zavelstraat, a true working-​class street in the heart of the Seefhoek, are significant here: “Van N. who is viewed in the neighbourhood as a fool, may not come into my tavern because he is very dirty.”158 Unkempt clothing was another common motive for refusing customers. Peter H. ran into trouble in this way with a group of Scandinavian sailors because he denied one of them access to his dance hall on the grounds that “he was far from properly dressed”.159 The accusation of uncleanliness was a useful strategy for stigmatizing and isolating someone socially. During the ancien régime, people expelled by their colleagues from the guild due to professional unreliability were “declared dirty”.160 Such a “dishonest” person was avoided and therefore ran the risk of social isolation. According to the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, the concept of “declaring or maintaining to be dirty” was also used of workers or 1 55 saa, MA 31702, report district 5, no. 981, 18-​2-​1938. 156 saa, MA 31706, report district 5, no. 2320, 10-​5-​1938. 157 See: Vrints, De codes van de kroeg. 158 saa, MA 31630, report district 5, no. 1914, 15-​7-​1928. 159 saa, MA 31630, report district 5, no. 2566, 17-​9-​1928. 160 Roodenburg, De notaris en de erehandel, 377; Roodenburg, Eer en oneer, 144–​145.

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workplaces which were boycotted and declared “contaminated” by strikers because of their workers’ readiness to continue working.161 Within the specific context of social conflicts, the Antwerp worker population also used the notion. The following dispute that took place against the background of a port strike in 1928 clearly shows the need to exclude workers who have been declared “dirty” from informal sociability networks.162 Goods marker Joannes van K. shouted at dockworker Ludovicus van N. in a tavern in the Lange Zavelstraat that “such dirty people ought to go outside” after accusing him of being a scab and of working during the strike. The double charge of impurity is a powerful illustration of the entanglement of moral and physical aspects of respectability. It is precisely this entanglement which results in the social fear of contamination that compromises the interaction with every alleged transgressor of standards being most pronounced in the treatment of this thematic category:  uncleanliness is something that is literally visible. The use of the ideal of cleanliness by the lower social groups is an example of the “narcissism of minor differences”: applied to emphasize their difference with respect to people who are very close to them in social terms.163 The fact that it is women in particular who were accused of being unclean comes as no surprise. Women are more vulnerable to both components of the accusation of uncleanness than men because of the double sexual morality and the prominent position of the ideal of cleanliness in the respectability model of the good housewife. 5.4

The Established and the Outsiders

Ethnically loaded deprecations represent only a very small proportion of the registered corpus insults. This is surprising for a port city that was visited by sailors from the four corners of the world and where a significant proportion of the population in the period studied consisted of non-​Belgians.164 Did forms of ethnic identification play only a limited role in social traffic? However, the relative rarity of ethnically coloured conflicts does not mean that ethnic identification was of secondary importance in twentieth-​century Antwerp society. Among the Antwerp population we find a solid positive identification with the 1 61 wnt, dl. 23, Leiden, 1987, pp. 1189–​1190. 162 saa, MA 31630, report district 5, no. 1914, 15-​7-​1928. 163 Blok, Het narcisme, 159–​187. 164 For the portion of non-​Belgians in the Antwerp population during the studied period, see the introductory chapter of Saerens, Vreemdelingen, 2000.

338 Chapter 5 “indigenous” population. While the word “indigenous” or similar expressions may have remained largely unspoken, this identification was no less real. The frequent qualification of outsiders in statements to the police as “foreigners”, “Dutchmen” or “Brusselaars” points a contrario to the existence of a form of identification among the established population. As with any form of identification, boundaries were inevitably drawn between established inhabitants and outsiders.165 It is only in this border area that ethnic identification gains importance as a factor of social categorization and distinction.166 The sentiment of being “indigenous” therefore has a latent character. In the day-​to-​day interaction between established inhabitants, ethnic group identification did not play a meaningful role.167 Only in confrontations with “foreigners” do we observe the transition from a latent to a more explicit interpretation.168 To what extent the feeling of being “indigenous” in contrast to “foreign” had received a distinct national charge over time as a result of the advancing Belgian nation-​building is high on the current research agenda.169 Outside the war periods, the references to Belgian identity in the statements to the police can be counted on the fingers of one hand, but this does not mean that the Belgian national sentiment was a negligible factor among the lower social groups. For example, it is a valid hypothesis that being Belgian was so obvious as not to need being made explicit. Moreover, in the majority of conflicts this fact was unusable as a distinctive element, since they were fought between Belgians. Only in conflicts with “foreigners” did the invocation of being Belgian –​to express social superiority –​have any meaning. Such references to Belgian identity may be rare, but they were not entirely lacking in conflicts recorded in the corpus. In a tavern quarrel, a mason from Borgerhout shouted at a car driver “you are not a Belgian” and challenged him to prove the opposite by showing his identity card.170 Possibly it was the dialect of the car driver, who had been born in Roeselare, that had elicited doubts as to his Belgian-​ness. One of the other, rare times that Belgian identity was explicitly quoted to express social superiority through nationality difference, paradoxically enough took the form of a side-​swipe by a Czech of Jewish origin, who had been naturalized Belgian, against his wife’s relatives who still

1 65 Zwaan, Civilisering en decivilisering, 83. 166 Jenkins, Social Identity, 98–​99. 167 For the ethnic identification of the “Dutch” population of a Rotterdam neighbourhood, see: Blokland, Urban bonds, 167–​168. 168 Van Ginderachter, Het rode vaderland, 22–​23. 169 See: Van Ginderachter, Het rode vaderland. 170 saa, MA 31715, report district 5, no. 5817, 17-​11-​1938.

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had Czech nationality.171 He parried the intervention of the family members involved who wished to protect his wife from her husband’s blows, with a remark that is strange to say the least: “He also said that he was Belgian and was allowed to do what he wanted and that we as foreigners were not allowed to do anything here and that Belgians were allowed to beat their wives.” Perhaps more significant than those rare explicit references to Belgian identity in conflicts between Belgians and non-​Belgians was the use of the abusive “cowardly Belgian” in disputes between Belgians. Notions of virile bravura and national identity ran into each other in this insult that Belgians used only among themselves. The attacked party was accused of falling short both as a man and as a Belgian by avoiding the confrontation. A similar connection between virile and national honour can be traced in all established states, especially in the military or sporting contexts.172 The observation that in everyday conflicts, even before the height of the Belgian national feeling at the outbreak of the First World War, it was considered offensive to question the national identification of the opponent, is an indication that the Belgian national sentiment was by no means absent in the Antwerp population. The Belgian national feeling may have played a modest role in the corpus of recorded insults, but even less significant was a possible Flemish identification. The rare times that “Flemings” are mentioned, it is clearly within a political context: with the notion “Fleming” addressing not so much the ethnic identification, but the political choice of the opponent. In practice, the concept was synonymous with “Flemish-​nationalist” or “vnv”. The same also applied to the notion of “German”, which served to censure, not the opponent’s nationality, but his pro-​ German attitude during one of the two occupations. Given their predominantly political charge, both notions were included in the political insults. The relative rarity of ethnically charged insults and conflicts does not prove that ethnic group identities were of negligible significance in the Antwerp society of the day. Paradoxically, the very lack of conflict between “immigrants” and “indigenous” is a possible indication of the power of forms of ethnic identification. Conflicts born out of concern for reputation are fought out precisely between individuals and groups who are very close to each other in social terms. Disputes involve people with only small differences between them. Between clearly distinguishable groups, such forms of conflictual interaction do not make sense, since the relationships are fixed. Just as violence rarely occurred between the elites and the lower social groups, where the social 1 71 saa, MA 31712, report district 5, no. 4570, 21-​9-​1938. 172 See the conclusion of Nye, Masculinity, 216–​228 and Blok, Mediterranean Totemism, 207–​209.

340 Chapter 5 distance was undeniable and clearly visible to everyone (and not because of any absence of class identification), confrontation between clearly defined ethnic groups tended not to take place for the same reason. Keeping of distance or indifference, rather than open conflict, characterized the relationship between “natives” and “immigrants”.173 The “established” preferred to limit contacts with the “outsiders” as much as possible. People were not avoided for their individual qualities or defects, but because they belonged to a group that was collectively considered different and even inferior.174 The limited interaction rather refers to the relative strength of ethnically tinted identities than to the contrary. Outsiders par excellence were the Antwerp Jews who, because of their deviant religion, language, customs and even outward appearance, could most easily be identified as not belonging to the established group. This applied to a greater extent to recent immigrants from Eastern Europe than to Jews of Dutch or German origin who were perhaps more likely to be identified with their country of origin than with their religious adherence. Witnesses qualified in this way a group of Amsterdam Jews who came to blows with the personnel of an inn who saw them as “Hollanders”.175 Although one of the three police districts (the seventh district) had a very large Jewish population, there are hardly any traces of anti-​Semitically charged conflicts in the selected police reports. The identification of Jews as outsiders usually remained unspoken and translated mainly into avoidance behaviour. A rare example in which the conscious limitation of contacts with the Jewish population by the “established” population happened to be made explicit can be found in a statement by diamond worker Abraham S., a Jew of Dutch descent.176 Abraham S. complained that his upstairs neighbours, with reference to his religious background, had told his new maid that she would be better off looking for another job: “I had already asked them not to speak to my new maid and they told her the first day she was with us that we were Jews and that she could have better positions elsewhere for forty francs.” The underlying logic is clear that a good financial reward was needed to remain in contact with Jews voluntarily on a daily basis. Only in 1938 are there clear indications that the aversion to Jews translated not only into avoidance behaviour, but also into violent acts and insults. A border was crossed from the latent aversion of Jews, which expressed a great degree of aloofness, to active expression of anti-​Semitism. The long-​term analysis 1 73 See: Blokland, Urban bonds, 168–​169. 174 Elias, Een theoretisch essay, 12. 175 saa, MA 31559, report district 5, no. 613, 25-​2-​1912. 176 saa, MA 31562, report district 5, no. 1807, 30-​7-​1912.

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of the conflicts in the Antwerp neighbourhoods confirms the radicalization of anti-​Semitism in the second half of the inter-​war period that Lieven Saerens established.177 The vocabulary with which Jews were insulted forms an additional indication that they were viewed as outsiders. As is the case with groups of outsiders in many societies, the Jewish identity was connected in insults with uncleanliness. It is a well-​known phenomenon that not only lower social groups but also foreigners were associated with “dirt” by the established groups. Uncleanliness could mean both “low” and “foreign”. “Dirty Jew” was the standard insult towards Jews. Incidentally, the association of Jewishness with uncleanliness corresponded to widespread opinions in Antwerp society.178 Inspired by the same scheme of “established” versus “outsiders”, the question arises whether established city people were keen to know the origin of people from the countryside. It is a well-​known phenomenon that people from outside enjoy a bad reputation in cities. The use of the insult “peasant” to denote a brutal and uncivilized person testifies to this to this day. Specifically for Antwerp society during the first half of the twentieth century, the two war periods led to an intensification of the urban aversion to people from the country. The assessment that farmers (and by extension all the inhabitants of the countryside) had enriched themselves on the backs of the starving urban population during the scarcity of the war years was widespread and pushed the hatred towards them to unprecedented heights. The realization of being a city dweller might be real, but it was rarely played out in insults towards persons from outside visiting the city. In all the conflicts recorded in the corpus, there is just one example of a confrontation between urbanites and persons from outside in which urban identification clearly played a role. Docker August G. from Vremde came to blows with four men unknown to him after he had reacted in a piqued way to a derogatory remark about his rural origin and an insinuation that he had come to town to visit prostitutes (“the peasant will go upstairs, that’s what he’s here for”).179 Perhaps the lack of more examples is related to the fact that insult and violent interaction took place mainly when established persons already known to each other disputed their reputations among themselves. Slightly more numerous, therefore, are the cases of city dwellers who run down other city dwellers on account of their rural origins. Possibly people born or raised in the city and the immediate surroundings continued to regard immigrants from the rural areas as “peasants” to some extent. In so doing they 1 77 Saerens, Vreemdelingen. 178 Saerens, Vreemdelingen. 179 saa, MA 24629, report district 5, no. 460, 29–​1912.

342 Chapter 5 presumed an imaginary boundary between the old, established inhabitants and the relative newcomers, the outsiders. It is a widespread phenomenon that the established population of growing cities sees, in the arrival of new immigrants from the countryside, not only an opportunity but also a threat. Immigrants represent new sources of purchasing power, labour and entrepreneurial spirit, but are also viewed as potential competitors by established workers and entrepreneurs. In addition, established residents often experience in their presence a threat to urban security, since in cases of anonymous theft or robbery they invariably search for the perpetrators first in immigrant circles. The immigrants from the countryside are also credited with harsh, peasant manners that do not correspond with what are considered civilized, urban forms of behaviour. Traces of the tension between established city dwellers and rural newcomers could still be found in twentieth-​century Antwerp. Dialectical differences probably formed a starting point for making this distinction. As long as someone had an audibly rural accent, he was susceptible to the reproach of being a “peasant”. Incidentally, the accusation “peasant” was used mostly in a literal sense. It served exclusively to ridicule people with a rural background and not in the figurative meaning of an uncivilized person. Customs clerk Franciscus G. is said to have shouted at two docker foremen from Antwerp, but originating from the Waasland and Zeeuws-​Vlaanderen, in the café: “you’re two little peasants”.180 Shopkeeper Mathilda de C., who was born in Boom, was dismissed by her neighbour, housewife Flora C., as a “dirty peasant woman”.181 The occurrence of the mechanism whereby the established group ascribes uncleanliness to outsiders is an indication of the feeling of superiority with which the townspeople treated rural people or people of rural origin. Moreover, the existence of insults like “peasant” is an indication of the pressure to conform to which immigrants from the countryside were exposed. It is certainly not inconceivable that the mockery against immigrants contributed to the swift exchange of the dialect of origin for the Antwerpian Brabantine one to reduce recognisability as an outsider. We cannot, however, speak of widespread antagonism between established residents and newcomers from the countryside in early twentieth-​century Antwerp. Only five examples of “peasant”, the insult par excellence to poke fun at the rural origin of the opponent, are on record among the hundreds of registered insults. This small proportion seems to point to fundamentally open social structures in which newcomers were absorbed without much attention

1 80 saa, MA 29318, report district 2, no. 789, 17-​6-​1944. 181 saa, MA 31563, report district 5, no. 2369, 1-​10-​1912.

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to their past or origin. Lifelong familiarity or local descent (let alone being an acknowledged “sinjoor” –​the local term for a well-​established member of the Antwerp population) was therefore not a precondition for integration into informal social networks. The participation of immigrants in informal conflict resolution mechanisms mentioned earlier indicates, on the contrary, that they integrated the prevailing values and behaviour patterns without too many problems. Given that, in the period under study, almost half of the Antwerp population consisted of immigrants, and a large proportion of the “natives” were children or grandchildren of immigrants, this apparent openness towards new immigrants comes as no surprise. In an urban context, where a large part of the population had been born in the countryside or at least was of rural extraction, it made little sense to put forward “urbanity” as an element of distinction. At the political level, too, we appear to see a somewhat similar pattern, with a relative openness towards newcomers in the period under study: historian Dirk Martin explicitly cites the fact that immigrants played a prominent role in Antwerp local political life between the wars.182 5.5

About “coward”, “thief” and Other Insults

We have already dwelled on the bitter necessity for the residents of the popular neighbourhoods of twentieth-​century Antwerp to respond to attacks on their reputation to prevent possible loss of status. For women, the strategic room for manoeuvre in this respect was greater than for men, since physical courage was not a constitutive part of the notion of female respectability. The gender-​ specific use of insults relating with regard to physical strength and courage such as “coward” and “fig” indicates how much such notions were also decisive for male honourability in twentieth-​century Antwerp. Male respectability, and its absence, might no longer be formulated exclusively in such terms, but physical courage still held an important position within the notions of the honourability of men from the lower social groups. The accusation of a lack of physical courage was not an appropriate instrument for attacking a woman’s reputation, and represents an almost negligible percentage (0.9%) of the total number of recorded insults against women. In the case of insults against men, the accusation of cowardice amounts to a substantial 14.1%, making it the most important thematic category after the insults of a general nature. For the recorded insults traded between men specifically, this percentage rises 182 Martin, Regimecrisis, 172–​173.

344 Chapter 5 to 20.0%, which seems to confirm the connection between male honour and physical courage. Noticeable also is the way that women too could accuse men of a lack of physical courage. The share of this category in the recorded insults of men by women is a far from insignificant 8.6%. Indeed, the position of bravado in the male model of respectability might be more important than the share of insults in this category suggests: virile bravado was the element of male respectability par excellence that could be the subject of non-​verbal communication. It is not surprising that insults related to the handling of property occupied an important position, with 7.9% of the total number of registered insults. For the lower social groups, a good reputation in this area was essential. To reduce honour and dishonour to purely moral categories is to ignore the real impact of (a lack of) respectability on a person’s material position.183 A good name was vital to be able to participate fully in the reciprocity relations that local residents maintained with each other. For the lower social groups, participation in informal social networks was of vital importance. In order to be able to buy on credit in the neighbourhood store or to call on the help of neighbours, it was essential to be trusted in one’s neighbourhood. Numerous transactions (such as taking out small loans, renting and purchasing of property) among the lower social groups were conducted orally, making their correct execution entirely dependent on respect for the given word. To check whether someone was worthy of trust, the only thing one could rely on was that person’s reputation in the neighbourhood. Anyone accused of not being too serious about property and material obligations saw his position jeopardized within reciprocity networks. Proportionally, men (11.6%) were targeted twice as often as women (5.6%) in this category of insults.184 Evidently, men’s reputations in this respect were much more vulnerable than those of women. This conclusion matches the findings of Annemieke Keunen for early nineteenth-​century Amsterdam.185 Where women were attacked mainly in terms of their sexual honour, men were mainly accused of rip-​offs, swindling and theft. Even though the disproportion was less pronounced in twentieth-​century Antwerp, it is clear that men placed more weight on their reputation as honest and reliable partners than women did. Part of the explanation may lie in men’s greater involvement in the official economic circuit. 1 83 Garrioch, Neighbourhood, 32–​33. 184 Similar proportions also existed in eighteenth-​ century Paris:  Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 249. 185 Keunen, ‘Ongaarne beticht en bevlekt’, 425.

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With 69 out of 108 recorded cases, “thief” is undoubtedly the main insult in this category. The high frequency of this insult suggests that theft was an important preoccupation for the inhabitants of the Antwerp working-​class districts. Houses were often shared by several families, and living quarters were generally difficult to lock securely. People from the lower social groups had to be able to count on families from their immediate environment respecting their property and also keeping an eye on it to ward off potential ill-​intentioned intruders. The tolerance threshold towards long-​fingered neighbours was low. Often, the insult “thief” was used without further specification. It was clearly a general reproach with a strong conventional character. Only in a limited number of cases is the word “thief” accompanied by an element indicative of the circumstances of the theft and the stolen goods. In this way, “cigarette thief”,186 “pickpocket”187 and “you steal from sailors”188 each appear only once in the selected source material. With the insult “church thief”,189 the opponent was accused not only of infringing property rights, but also a sense of sacrality. Far from rare, however, were real references to concrete thefts. During a dispute between two night watchmen in a tavern in the Hoornstraat, Dirk R. motivated the insult thrown at Joseph L. as follows: “I said that L. is a thief because H. told me that he is the biggest thief in Antwerp and because I myself saw him taking a pot of jam and coffee from the ship on four days in a row.”190 A theft can put relationships in a building or neighbourhood under pressure for a long time, especially if one of the neighbours is under suspicion. For servant Mathildis de G., the single word “thief”, uttered by her neighbour, was enough for her to understand that the reference was to a robbery she had committed against her neighbour two years earlier.191 Five years after the Liberation, a fruit sorter from the Kattenkwartier was accused by her sister-​in-​law of stealing her furniture during disturbances following the end of the occupation from the Café Atlantic, a brothel frequented by German soldiers.192 The insult “thief” cannot, however, be reduced to the accusation of committing property crimes. A person who made himself guilty of theft in a figurative sense, by financially disadvantaging the counterparty in an unacceptable way, was susceptible to the insult of “thief”. Similarly, traders selling bad goods, or

1 86 187 188 189 190 191 192

saa, MA 31582, report district 5, no. 1696, 12-​9-​1917. saa, MA 31579, report district 5, no. 47, 6-​1-​1917. saa, MA 24633, report district 2, no. 5343, 20-​10-​1912. saa, MA 29376, report district 2, no. 3109, 7-​5-​1912. saa, MA 24632, report district 2, no. 4345, 10-​7-​1912. saa, MA 30026, report district 7, no. 3407, 8-​8-​1949. saa, MA 29369, report district 2, no. 982, 29-​3-​1949.

346 Chapter 5 tavern-​keepers who wrote ‘with two chalks’, were berated as “thieves.” More broadly, in all types of conflicts about money and property, the opposing party was attributed a dishonourable role by labelling him “the thief”. When Marie G.  pushed her father-​in-​law somewhat brutally to repay his debt, he angrily threw the requested coins at her, slapped her, and shouted “you profiteeress, stay away from here”.193 The relative rarity of general insults about the failure to meet financial obligations (swindler, bad payer and debt-​maker or debt-​dog) may be explained by the fact that the word “thief” already sufficiently covered this area. Even rarer are references to a past bankruptcy with a view to damaging the counterparty’s reputation. Only one such reference was found in the sources. Shopkeeper Ludovica B. from the Kattenkwartier had the words “look to your mother-​in-​law who has also gone bankrupt” thrown in her face by a fairground client after she told him that people were gossiping that he had cheated a business partner.194 Just as in Amsterdam during the ancien régime, the bankruptcy of a family member apparently harmed the reputation of the rest of the family.195 An important group of insults in this category was aimed at people who always succeeded in obtaining goods, money or services from neighbours without ever offering reciprocal services. Such people who transgressed the implicit rule of conduct, that a gift was not free of obligation and had to be followed by a gift in return, naturally stood in a bad light with local residents. Once someone was marked out for ignoring the mandatory rules of reciprocity, he or she found it much more difficult to avail of informal social networks. The accusation that a person only took and never gave back could also have serious consequences on his or her reputation. The most common insults in this respect were, in order of frequency, grabber (afhaler), wheedler (aftruggelaar), extortionist (uitzuiper) and bum (schooier). Martin Dinges states that, in eighteenth-​century Paris, insults like “thief” had a sexual charge when directed against women.196 Explicit references to such a sexual connotation cannot be found in the selected source material for Antwerp in the twentieth century. The only possible indication in this direction is the fact that women, after being accused of being thieves, were also attacked in respect of their sexual morals in the same breath. It seems too easy, however, to at once assume a substantive relationship from the accumulation of various such attacks. Women’s greatest vulnerability lay in their sexual 1 93 saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 990, 1-​5-​1912. 194 saa, MA 24633, report district 2, no. 5055, 20-​8-​1912. 195 Roodenburg, De notaris en de erehandel, 378. 196 Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 251.

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honourability, making it only logical that, to maximize the effect, the accusation of being a thief be reinforced with an attack on a woman’s sexual honour. With men, there was none of this, as their trustworthiness with property determined their respectability more than their sexual reputation. It is a very different story, however, when it comes to insults for failing to comply with the implicit rules of reciprocity. For women, the suspicion was never far away of diddling men with promises of reciprocal sexual services. This was clearly the case with the word “uitzuiper” (extortionist). For a man to be accused of being a parasite was to be held guilty of violating one of the basic notions regulating (male) social life in taverns: if someone buys you a drink, you have to buy him one back. A parasite in its female variant was something very different. The attack was directed at a woman’s sexual reputation and not any defaulting on the obligations of reciprocity. Poverty was a completely subordinate theme in the corpus of insults. Less than half a percent of recorded insults explicitly mentioned poverty. In this connection, we must bear in mind that the insult “bum” (schoeier, which can also denounce begging, but targets primarily people who do not take their reciprocity obligations too closely) is included under property-​related insults. Whereas in eighteenth-​century Paris, the accusation of poverty was levelled only against men, since the formulation of female reputation in exclusively sexual terms left little room for other insults, the situation in twentieth-​century Antwerp was completely different.197 All (albeit few in number) allegations of poverty were directed against women. Many times, pointed imagery was used to highlight the poverty of the opposing party. Only once was the accusation made explicit with the insult “poverty-​sower” (armoedzaaier).198 However, the targeted party needed no further explicitation to assess the indirect accusations of poverty at their true value. The accusation “dog eater”199 was a reference to the violation, forced by poverty, but for this no less dishonourable, of the taboo on the eating of dog meat. Only people who were poverty-​stricken and starving would have been ready to consume the ‘unclean’ meat of this pet. It is no accident that the one example of this reproach comes from the police archives of 1917. We know also from other sources  –​particularly from the horrified liberal city government at that time –​that during the years of scarcity of the Great War, many people broke the taboo on the eating of dog meat. There was also a taboo on the eating of rats, considered as impure vermin. Anyone ignoring 1 97 Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 253. 198 saa, MA 31787, report district 5, no. 1236, 8-​4-​1944. 199 saa, MA 31583, report district 5, no. 2094, 24-​12-​1917.

348 Chapter 5 this ban had to be a particularly poor person. Housewife Magdalena V. felt her reputation to be severely jeopardized when her sister-​in-​law, seamstress Caroline W., reproached her for “living on rats right through the war”.200 The link with poverty that lies with the accusation ‘ash-​sifter’ (assepoester)201 is at first glance less obvious. It refers, however, to the sifting of ashes with a view to collecting unburned pieces of coal. The residents of a number of poor ghettos (in particular that of the Zwanengang) did this to acquire free fuel. They collected the ashes from the city residents’ stoves, and divided the usable from the unusable material on the pavement in front of their homes. Anyone forced to sift ash was deemed therefore to be particularly poor. Central to a person’s good reputation was the ability to feed oneself and one’s offspring. Whoever failed to do so owing to lack of resources was a social failure. The accusation that the targeted party’s children had to go begging was therefore highly offensive. A reference to the (poor) neighbourhood in which the opponent lived was a neat way of packaging the accusation of poverty, even if it appears only rarely in the recorded insults.202 The fact that the majority of the recorded players came from the lower social groups, and lived in scarcely prestigious neighbourhoods, possibly provides much of the explanation. The sneer “you fat spy from the Seefhoek” slung at a trader in the bourgeois seventh district by a person who had himself previously lived at the Geelhandplaats in the heart of the Seefhoek clearly includes a socially derogatory undertone.203 The insult “villain (…) of the Oude God” that cobbler Henricus de M. threw at his female downstairs neighbours, both born in Mortsel, went in the same direction.204 Also characteristic are the words that a female teacher shouted at her sister, also a teacher, after a violent quarrel in the street: “Villain, you live here in your place among all the other villains.”205 A month before, the person in question had moved in with her sister in a house in the heart of the Seefhoek, but her words tell us that she found this location definitely below her dignity.

2 00 saa, MA 31793, report district 5, no. 2929, 13-​10-​1944. 201 saa, MA 31787, report district 5, no. 1026, 22-​3-​1944. 202 For the symbolic use of belonging to a particular neighbourhood to express status, see: Blokland, Urban bonds, 159–​162. For the mutual influence of class and local identities, see: Savage, Urban History and Social Class, 61–​77. 203 saa, MA 31794, report district 5, no. 3227, 9-​10-​1944. 204 saa, MA 30029, report district 7, no. 4087, 9-​9-​1949. 205 saa, MA 31879, report district 5, no. 2039, 30-​4-​1949.

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All in all, poverty remained quantitatively a subordinate theme in the insults. In order to express one’s social superiority vis-​à-​vis an opponent, people preferred to dwell on his or her lack of respectable behaviour (e.g. uncleanliness) than directly on his or her weak socio-​economic position. It was not so much poverty as such, but the rough, uncivilized lifestyle of the “dirty poor” that was seen as not respectable. Speakers coming largely from the lower social groups, and whose own income position was vulnerable, saw it as more important to bring to the fore their own moral superiority. Given the often threateningly small socio-​economic difference between the two groups, the “honourable poor” had every interest in highlighting the difference in their behaviour with that of the “dirty poor”. Only once do we find an explicit comparison of financial position to humiliate an opponent. A housewife from the Seefhoek took it very badly when her neighbour, cleaning lady Paulina, had shouted to her in the local tavern she “(…) had to suffer poverty on 1,000 francs a month whereas she had plenty.”206 Equally small is the share of insults where a person is belittled because of his or her profession. Such insults could only be effective where a marked difference existed in status between the speaker’s profession and that of his or her target. But since conflicts were fought mainly between individuals and groups that were socially close, room for insults about professions was therefore very limited. Carolina C., for example, parried the humiliating gestures that Rosine de M.  supposedly made at her in a full tavern with the words:  “I’m as good as you, you as a cleaning woman and I as a sack-​sewer.”207 It is therefore no coincidence that it was people from the bourgeois seventh district who were at the origin of the two most pronounced examples of derogatory comments with regard to their opponents’ profession. Their undisputed social prestige allowed them to make derogatory statements about the counterparty’s profession. Clerk Gerard E. insulted Augustus van M. by marking him a “baker’s boy”.208 Housewife Elisabeth van B., the wife of a brewery directory, scolded her son-​in-​law as being a “dirty dockworker”.209 The higher social groups did not often express their contempt for certain professional groups in insults, as that would have contravened the norms of bourgeois conduct and have inevitably led to a loss of status.

2 06 207 208 209

saa, MA 31630, report district 5, no. 2151, 30-​7-​1928. saa, MA 29173, report district 2, no. 1218, 13-​6-​1938. saa, MA 29733, report district 7, no. 1790, 19-​2-​1928. saa, MA 30028, report district 7, no. 3816, 20-​8-​1949.

350 Chapter 5 In many societies, certain occupations are held in higher respect than others. The so-​called “infamous professions” occupy a very special position in this respect.210 These are professions or industries that are often completely respectable today, but which in the past were seen in a particularly bad light. Even in a twentieth-​century Western European urban society such as Antwerp, certain professions were still viewed as anything but honourable. A clear indication in that direction is the fact that certain “dishonourable professions” retained a place in the repertoire of insults. The infamous profession par excellence was obviously that of the prostitute. Since those using the insult “whore” were usually not seeking to denounce an effective professional activity, but rather to accuse their opponent of illegitimate sexual activities, this was placed in the category of sexually charged insults. This classification is, of course, questionable, and does not alter the fact that prostitution as a whole was seen as a “dishonourable” and “unclean” occupation. Keeping a brothel was by far the most important “dishonourable” professional activity that was denounced in insults. The most common one for men was the French term “maquereau” (pimp), which became “makro” in Brabantine dialect. The female equivalent was “maquerelle” corrupted to “makrel”. This reproach was, however, mainly directed against men. It was mainly men who used it among each other, a clear deviation from the general pattern of men rarely attacking each other’s sexual honourability. The supposition therefore seems well-​founded that the accusation of operating a brothel was particularly detrimental to the respectability of men. Its potential harmfulness lay in the complex interplay of loadings that it carried. Keeping a brothel is bad for a man’s reputation not only because of the infamous nature of the prostitution sector as a whole, but because it undermines two crucial notions of male honour. Firstly, a respectable man, in a period leading up to the heyday of the breadwinner model, had to be able to maintain his household or at least himself. Financial dependence on (the labour of) a woman, even if she prostituted herself on his account, did not contribute to a man’s standing. It exposed the man to ridicule for the inversion of the established roles. The accusation “you’re living off the women”, used as a synonym for pimping, makes this view explicit. Secondly, a man making women available to other men for a fee is at odds with the age-​old definition of the sexual reputation of the man who watches over the chastity and fidelity of the woman or women under his control. In this connection, one cannot rule out a certain relationship between the accusation of brothel-​keeping and that of cuckold. Viewed from this perspective, it was of course extra damaging to a man’s reputation to be accused of selling his own 210 Blok, Infamous Occupations, 44–​68.

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wife or daughter. For example, tavern-​keeper Madeleine C. reproached bank employee Fernand F. for “living from your daughter”, because she suspected her husband of an extra-​marital relationship with Fernand F.’s daughter.211 In addition to the accusation of whore-​keeping, only two other insults are available referring to the dishonourable nature of a person’s profession. In the accusation “your father is a beach-​scavenger”, the infamy of an the ambulatory lifestyle is combined with the suggestion of theft, while in the case of “cesspit cleaner”, the physical contact with human excrement is clearly the stumbling block. According to Joanna Bourke, the collectors of human excrement were the most despised professional group in British working-​class neighbourhoods.212 The failing to meet expectations and opinions regarding solidarity among colleagues are denounced in the following category of insults. Unacceptable in particular were working during a strike, or readiness to work for lower wages than one’s colleagues. It is certainly significant that only men among themselves used insults in this sphere. Despite the considerable proportions that women’s work undoubtedly assumed, labour was generally viewed as a male sphere. In a man’s self-​image, his professional activities occupied a much more prominent position than was the case with women. A man’s reputation therefore depended, much more than was the case with women, on the standing he enjoyed among his colleagues. One of the cornerstones of the respectability of a male worker among his working mates was the willingness to participate in the collective defence of the terms and conditions of employment.213 The successful outcome of such collective strategies was obviously largely dependent on the willingness of individual workers to comply with them. Offenders who broke a strike by going to work weakened the position of the workers as a collective body. To limit such practices, there was the threat of (often collective) sanctions. A wide range of strategies were available to place pressure on the offenders: ranging from social ostracism to insults and the ritual daubing of homes to outright violence. We have already cited the example of strikers declaring a person willing to work to be “dirty”. Needless to say, such strategies were practised mainly in periods of pronounced social tension. In the Antwerpian-​Brabantine dialect, two words existed to denounce non-​collegial behaviour. There was the word ‘rat’, applied to people ready to work during a strike. Dockworker Jan C. had this insult slung at him by other dockworkers, with the picturesque addition ‘with a tail’.214 Not only was the 2 11 saa, MA 29366, report district 2, no. 326, 30-​1-​1949. 212 Bourke, Working-​class cultures, 162. 213 See, in this context: Yeo, Gender in labour, 77. 214 saa, MA 29220, report district 2, no. 1179, 21-​7-​1928.

352 Chapter 5 breaking of the necessary solidarity among workers attacked by this reproach, but the workers who were willing to work were also accused of profiting in an unauthorized way from the situation. It went without saying that, while the strikers suffered loss of income due to their willingness to act, those willing to work continued to be paid and afterwards would even reap the benefits of the actions of others. The accusation of having gone through the strike period without material sacrifices was also equivalent to the insult of “rat.” Thus, goods marker Joannes van K.  was challenged, in his own words, to an honour fight, after publicly attacking dockworker Ludovicus van N.’s reputation by declaring in the tavern: “For you it is not striking, because you earn enough by picking up old paper.”215 If we are to rely on his own statement, Ludovicus took this insult as the equivalent of Joannes saying that he “was a rat and had worked during the strike”. Relevant for the social impact of a bad name in this area is the fact that family members could also be held accountable for the willingness of their son, brother or father to break the strike. In a dispute about wood chopping, dockworker Joannes O. insulted his neighbour, housekeeper Elisabeth van H., by calling out in the street that her sons (also dockworkers) were “rats”.216 The insult “onderkruiper” (literally “undercreeper”) targeted workers who did the same work for lower wages outside the collective arrangements. Such behaviour put pressure on the employment conditions of the other workers. As with workers willing to work during strikes, they were often the target of harsh treatment. For example, four unknown persons beat up foundryman Theofiel van U., with the message “this will teach you to undercreep on us”.217 Driver Herman P.  considered it very painful that every day, on the way to work, he was insulted in the street by a former colleague, machinist Petrus, for “undercreeping”.218 Diamond polisher Nikolaas V. came to blows with his colleague Johannes P. because the latter was spreading the rumour that he was an “undercreeper”.219 Irrefutably, motherhood was, within the prevailing social climate, viewed as the destiny of every married woman. In the ideal scenario in the heyday of the breadwinner model, the woman could leave the earning of the family keep entirely to the husband and dedicate herself fully to family life and home.220 In 2 15 216 217 218 219 220

saa, MA 31360, report district 5, no. 1914, 15-​7-​1928. saa, MA 29221, report district 2, no. 1806, 14-​10-​1928. saa, MA 24632, report district 2, no. 4345, 10-​7-​1912. saa, MA 24633, report district 2, no. 4980, 7-​9-​1912. saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 1422, 8-​6-​1912. For the attraction of a life as a housewife on British working-​class women out of considerations for respectability, see: Bourke, Working-​class cultures, 64.

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353

this perspective, the central task of the woman consisted of the upbringing of the children. A good woman was in the first place a good mother. The Roman Catholic Church and its social organizations conveyed this message loud and clear. But also within the mainstream of the socialist labour movement, similar views largely prevailed221 Partly out of a longing for social respectability, the movement did not fundamentally question the identification of women with the mother role. This raises the question of the extent to which the daily practices and opinions of the Antwerp population corresponded to the dominant, fairly unequivocal discourse in the field of motherhood. Analysis of recorded insults shows that motherhood was indeed a core element in a woman’s reputation. Women saw in it a constitutive part of their personal identity. Children, their upbringing and behaviour, largely determined the way a woman was seen in society. Having children who enjoyed a good education and behaved well was an important source of social capital. The zeal with which, in gossip circuits, mothers’ parenting methods and the behaviour of children formed the subject of dismissive and laudatory commentary provides a clear indication in that direction. Women clearly attached great importance to the assessment of their reputation as mothers within female informal networks. This concern appears a contrario from the fact that, in the event of conflict, the questioning of a woman’s maternal qualities was a useful strategy for damaging an opponent’s reputation. The insult par excellence for accusing a woman directly of defective motherhood was the accusation ‘cat-​mother’ (kattemoeier). The comparison with a cat probably points to a disorderly household where the children are more or less left to their own devices. The dispute that occurred on 1 October 1912 between shopkeeper Mathilda de C. and housewife Flora C. from the Lange Beeldekensstraat in the fifth district is a clear indication in this respect.222 It came to a fight and an exchange of words after Mathilda had cancelled Flora’s lease because her child cried too loudly at night and disturbed the owner. According to Flora’s complaint to the police, the owner accused her via insults that it was her fault that the child made so much noise. She purportedly insulted her with the following words:  “You’re a dog for your child, cat-​mother, dirty person.” Mathilda admitted the telling turn of phrase, and that she was accusing Flora of neglecting her child: “A cat is better for her young than some mothers.” The image of a neglected child was above all a powerful weapon against women

2 21 De Wilde, Seks, 163–​164. 222 saa, MA 31563, report district 5, no. 2369, 1-​10-​1912.

354 Chapter 5 who did not take marital fidelity too seriously. Not only was unfaithfulness per se to be condemned by moral standards, but it was considered ipso facto as damaging to any children from the marriage. An unfaithful woman was therefore vulnerable not only in her sexual reputation, but also in her reputation as a mother. A woman was supposed to be there for her children. Thus, housewife Catharina de J., in her own words, parried a tirade of insults from her son’s mistress, waitress Julia de J., with the words “that she should go back to her husband, that she was not a good mother for leaving child on its own”.223 The culmination of neglect is the accusation of children being forced into beggary in the absence of resources from their parents. Pupil Louis van O. reproached Joanna B. that her children had to go begging for her.224 Significant is the absence of a male equivalent to insults such as “cat-​ mother” or “bad mother”.225 Anyone wanting to damage a man’s reputation attacked him in ways other than the exercise of his parenthood. Parenthood was much less decisive for a man’s personal identity and public reputation than for a woman. Nevertheless, caution is required here. While there were no abusive words explicitly aimed at the parental qualities of the male opponent, this does not mean that men were not also insulted in terms of their paternity. For example, men were as sensitive as women to attacks on the sexual reputation of their offspring. Implicitly or explicitly, the targeted parent was accused in such charges of having insufficient control over the sexuality of his children and of failing to take action to halt illegitimate practices. It is true that there are fewer traces in the official reports of men complaining of attacks on the sexual reputation of their children than there are of women, but qualitative analysis shows that they felt their own personal reputations just as much damaged as did women. This is not surprising, since it was part of the traditional concept of paternity that fathers safeguard the sexual reputation of their children. In particular, this applied to daughters whose good name in this area was essential. As from time immemorial, this applied much less to sons who had a much larger room for manoeuvre. As the recorded insults show, the double standard in this area had become largely irrelevant in the eyes of women. Women attacked without distinction the sexual reputation of their opponents’ sons or daughters. The sons were accused of visiting prostitutes and of having syphilis. Fruit sorter Maria L. from the Kattenkwartier purportedly insulted her sister-​ in-​law Mary van B. by calling out to her on the street that her son had “come

2 23 saa, MA 31700, report district 5, no. 359, 17-​1-​1938. 224 saa, MA 31701, report district 5, no. 766, 30-​1-​1938. 225 saa, MA 31561, report district 5, no. 934, 10-​4-​1912.

Values behind Words

355

back rotten from Germany”.226 Maria L. acknowledged saying this in so many words, but only in response to a similar outburst from her sister-​in-​law. Mary van B., according to her statement, had insulted her with the sneer that her “son had come home with blood on his pants from being with the whores”. In the case of daughters, prostitution was the obvious insult. For example, tavern-​ keeper Rosalia van H. had thrown at her by her neighbour, tavern-​keeper Anna van H., that she “allowed her daughter to go upstairs with married blokes”.227 Considering the previously presented hypothesis that a difference existed in the way men and women viewed a man’s sexual reputation, it remains to be seen whether a sexually charged insult against a daughter or a son had the same effect on their fathers. No statements have been found of men denouncing an attack on their son’s sexual reputation. The following dispute points to the fact that men and women’s divergent views on male sexual reputation also had implications on the effect of insults of sons and daughters on fathers.228 Cobbler Henricus de M. filed a complaint against office clerk Maria C. because, in the context of a rent dispute, she had said that his “daughter was a whore”. Maria C.’s statement differed from Henricus de M.’s version of the facts on a number of significant points. According to Maria, Henricus started to make a noise and threatened to discredit her family by spreading abroad the fact that Maria had a lover. Whereupon Maria, according to her own testimony, riposted: “If you do that, then I can tell what has been happening in the Stockmansstraat,” referring to guilty relationships. Furthermore, “I also know that your daughter is divorcing because of such relationships.” When comparing the two statements, one is immediately struck by the contrast between Maria’s statement in which the sexual reputation of son and daughter is attacked on the same foot, and Henricus’ statement, in which only the attack on his daughter’s reputation is picked up. Visibly, Henricus took the damage to his daughter’s sexual reputation more seriously than the similar reproach towards his son. Given the central position children took in the identity formation of women in particular, it is not surprising that third-​party comments about children’s behaviour were badly received. The intensity of the reactions to such criticisms point to more than outrage over an unlawful form of interference. Parents experienced a comment about a child’s behaviour as an attack on their own reputation. It was taken as suggesting that the parents were not up to their task and raised their children like in a manner reminiscent of a Jan Steen painting.

2 26 saa, MA 29369, report district 2, no. 982, 29-​3-​1949. 227 saa, MA 24633, report district 2, no. 5012, 16-​9-​1912. 228 saa, MA 30029, report district 7, no. 4087, 9-​9-​1949.

356 Chapter 5 The number of accusations of a criminal past remained limited. The figures clearly show that this category of insults was used almost exclusively against men. Only 5 of the 30 recorded insults in this category were against women. Relatively speaking, allusions to a criminal past account for 4.8% of the total number of insults against men, while this percentage is limited to 0.6% for insults against women. The three most numerous insults in this category are the accusations “bandit” (12), “murderer” (8) and a prison record (4). There are also the one-​off insults “knife-​fighter”, “deserter”, “smuggler”, “vagabond”, “burglar” and “you gave money to the police”. The following accumulation of reproaches is an abundant illustration of the strategy of damaging a person’s reputation by attributing a criminal or a prison past to him and his family members. “You dirty whore, you murdered your husband, you murdered your daughter. Your brother is in prison in Louvain and your father was a good-​for-​nothing,” servant Jan K. purportedly threw at his mother-​in-​law, tavern-​keeper Anna van H.229 The extent to which the accusation of a prison past threatened the reputation of the person concerned is evident from the complaint of a former prisoner, painter Joannes B., against tavern-​keeper Paulina C.: When I came back to the tavern the tavern-​keeper approach me and told me ‘you get out of here, because I want nothing to do with you because you’ve been in prison in Tournai’. I do not know how this woman learned this about me, but it is true that I have twice been in prison in Tournai and once in the Begijnenstraat. But I’ve served my sentences and do not want this woman to remind me of this or to accuse me of it in public (…). I want the innkeeper to be prosecuted and punished for the malicious disclosure of my imprisonment, especially as this was said in public.230 In a remarkably small number of examples, the opposing party is ridiculed because of physical characteristics or defects. Strikingly, women’s external characteristics are addressed more often than men’s. Here again, the female body appears to offer far more leads than the male one for insults. The more masculine the atmosphere, the fewer the insults related specifically to physical appearance. There is no single example available of men insulting each other with reference to their bodies. Insults ranged over a series of physical defects, from flat feet and obesity, to squints and pallid skin colour, to baldness and grey hair. There is no question, however, of the recurring use of certain

2 29 saa, MA 24649, report district 2, no. 1043, 19-​8-​1917. 230 saa, MA 29277, report district 2, no. 2532, 30-​11-​1938.

Values behind Words

357

insults. Martin Dinges, who noted hardly any insults about physical defects in eighteenth-​century Paris, attributes this blind spot to a large degree of acceptance.231 Only later, with the emergence of ideals of beauty and health did fatalism about one’s own outer appearance recede, and physical defects were brought more to the fore. Viewed from this perspective, in the numerically modest, yet meaningful, appearance of insults relating to bodily defects in the Antwerp of the first half of the twentieth century, one could see an indication of the cautious sprouting of the body and health cults that came into full flower in the second half of the century. Gestures were also a suitable tool for ridiculing deviant bodily features. Factory worker Alfons V.  was scandalized by a suggestive gesture by electrician Jozef de C. in a full tavern: “He expressed with his hands the large size of my wife’s body and laughed greatly.”232 An important contra-​indication to the alleged tolerance towards physical defects is the pattern of nicknames that circulated in the Antwerp neighbourhoods. A significant proportion of these nicknames consist of barely concealed references to physical defects, such as curved-​back (de kromme), red-​haired (de rosse), or big-​nosed (de neus).233 If physical deviations were suitable means of identification, it would be difficult to maintain that the population had no eye for them. In the corpus of recorded insults, we find almost none related to drunkenness, in spite of the ongoing struggle against alcoholism by parts of the bourgeois elites and the socialist labour movement.234 An almost negligible 0.5% of the total number of insults relate to alcohol abuse, the percentage of such insults against women (0.3%) being quite a bit lower than against men (0.8%). Judging by these extremely low figures, there was no question of explicit intolerance towards alcohol consumption.235 Alcohol consumption was generally accepted, which is undoubtedly due to the crucial role played by the shared consumption of alcohol in the establishment and maintenance of (especially masculine) informal social networks.236 But there was also visibly a certain 231 Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 240. Against this proposition, it can be argued that, already at the time of the Republic, pleasure was taken at laughing about physical defects: Dekker, Lachen, 132. 232 saa, MA 31704, report district 5, no. 1819, 10-​4-​1938. 233 For the nicknames, see a list of dozens of persons –​with nicknames added –​who were known to the police as thieves: saa, MA 3009-​B, List of persons living from the proceeds of theft prepared at the request of the Public Prosecutor, 30-​10-​1914. 234 See: Vrints, De codes van de kroeg. 235 David Garrioch concluded on the basis of insults that in eighteenth-​century Paris, drunkenness, at least among the lower social groups, could count on a large degree of social acceptance: Garrioch, Verbal Insults, 113. 236 See: Vrints, De codes van de kroeg.

358 Chapter 5 degree of tolerance with respect to drunkenness. Among men this may reflect the existence of a specific male subculture among the lower social groups in which solid consumption was seen as proof of virility. More difficult to explain is the finding that women also found little material in excessive drinking to attack their opponents’ honour. It is true that there are complaints from women about their menfolk spending too much time in taverns. In such complaints, the focus is not so much on the alcohol as such, but on the fact that the excessive time spent in the tavern compromised the proper functioning of the household. The direct concerns were rather the financial implications, the frequent absences and the making of extra-​marital contacts in the tavern. Also, statements invariably mention the possible drunkenness of a party involved in a conflict. However, these countless mentions should not be taken as evidence of the existence of strong feelings of disapproval towards drunkenness. There is reason enough to assume that the attention in the declarations to the consumption of alcohol by the parties involved is to be ascribed to the strategic options and questions of the police commissioner rather than to a preoccupation of the Antwerp populace with drunkenness. The question of whether a declarant was drunk or not was indeed important from a legal perspective. The rarity of insults in which drunkenness was denounced suggests that the persistent offensives to label excessive alcohol consumption as not respectable had little resonance among the lower social groups. The role of alcohol as a lubricating oil of vital social networks was not alien to this lack of success. Perhaps it is also significant that three out of the seven recorded accusations of alcohol use or drunkenness come from the predominantly bourgeois seventh district. Of subordinate significance were insults in which the psychological health of the opposing party was denounced.237 These represent only 0.5% of the entire corpus of registered insults, mainly with the insult zot (fool, crazy person). Apparently, the mental health of persons (to which witnesses regularly refer in interpreting certain behaviours towards the police) was not a suitable starting point for attacking opponents’ reputations. On a regular basis, mental health was, on the contrary, invoked and accepted as a ground for excuse of certain behaviours that would have never been tolerated from a mentally healthy person. There seems to have been a high degree of tolerance towards the mentally ill. Apparently, more than today, their presence was viewed simply as a fact of life.

237 In eighteenth-​century Paris, references to persons’ mental states hardly occurred at all: Dinges, Der Maurermeister, 240–​241.

359

Values behind Words table 39

Percentage distribution of recorded insults (total) by thematic category per sample year

general poverty profession collegiality use of property body cleanliness sexuality mental illness alcohol use cowardice parenting crime politics outsider N = 100%

1912

1917

1928

1938 1944

1949

total

34.3 0.0 0.9 1.4 8.6 1.7 13.4 30.3 0.0 1.1 6.3 0.6 0.9 0.0 0.6 350

28.5 0.7 3.3 0.0 11.3 0.0 16.6 29.8 0.0 0.0 5.3 0.0 1.3 2.0 1.3 151

34.5 0.0 2.9 1.7 9.0 0.0 11.9 27.7 0.6 0.6 6.2 0.0 2.8 1.7 0.6 177

31.8 0.7 2.6 0.0 8.7 2.3 16.7 25.1 0.0 0.0 6.0 0.3 4.0 0.3 1.3 299

27.0 0.0 2.0 0.0 3.2 3.6 17.3 27.8 2.0 0.8 6.4 0.8 2.0 6.0 0.8 248

31.0 0.4 2.3 0.6 7.9 1.7 15.4 27.7 0.5 0.5 5.9 0.4 2.2 2.7 0.9 1,374

26.8 2.0 2.7 0.0 7.4 0.7 17.4 24.2 0.7 0.0 4.0 0.0 2.0 10.1 1.3 149

source: corpus of selected police reports

Insults with an explicit political charge make up 2.7% of the total corpus of registered insults. However, this global figure tells us little, since the proportion of politically charged insults varies widely according to the sample year. For example, the percentage is 0% for 1912, while running as high as 10.1% for 1944. The high figures for 1944 and 1949 indicate that the political tensions of the Second World War and its aftermath penetrated so deeply into the daily world as to leave their trace also in the repertoire of insults. With a few exceptions, all politically charged insults relate to positions taken during the two occupation periods. As far as the First World War is concerned, it is surprising to note that, even in 1917, during the German occupation, anti-​German insults came to the police’s ears, meaning that they were being used publicly. Opponents were said to be working for the Germans, to have prostituted themselves to them, or simply be German. It may be that the accusation of being pro-​German peaked in the immediate post-​war years, since the risk of repression from the occupying forces had just disappeared

360 Chapter 5 table 40

Percentage distribution of recorded insults (towards men) by thematic category per sample year

general poverty profession collegiality use of property body cleanliness sexuality mental illness alcohol use cowardice parenting crime politics outsider N = 100%

1912

1917

1928

1938

1944

1949

total

39.4 0.0 0.6 3.1 14.4 0.0 10.0 15.0 0.0 1.2 13.7 0.0 1.9 0.0 0.6 160

36.6 0.0 7.3 0.0 17.1 0.0 7.3 9.7 0.0 0.0 19.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 2.4 41

37.6 0.0 4.7 3.5 14.1 0.0 9.4 8.2 1.2 1.2 12.9 0.0 4.7 1.2 1.2 85

35.8 0.0 5.7 0.0 11.3 0.9 5.7 11.3 0.0 0.0 14.1 0.0 10.4 0.9 3.8 106

34.9 0.0 7.0 0.0 4.6 0.0 9.3 4.6 2.3 0.0 9.3 0.0 4.6 18.6 4.6 43

29.3 0.0 4.9 0.0 4.9 2.4 4.9 19.5 1.2 1.2 15.8 0.0 6.1 8.5 1.2 82

36.2 0.0 4.1 1.5 11.6 0.6 7.9 12.6 0.6 0.8 14.1 0.0 4.8 3.3 1.9 517

source: corpus of selected police reports

and the war experience was still fresh in people’s memories. For the sample years from the inter-​war period, the number of insults in this thematic sphere was very limited. The accusation being (pro-​)German apparently lost much of its original force with the passing of the years. The relative boom of politically charged insults in 1944 is largely due to the climate of retaliation against (alleged) pro-​Germans during the first months after the Liberation. The emblematic figures of the “black shirt” and the “Gestapo” enriched the vocabulary. It is remarkable that, five years after the Liberation, reproaches about the attitudes of one or the other person during the occupation were still part of the repertoire of insults. Revelatory of the lack of post-​war consensus on the recent war in Flemish-​Belgian society is the finding that not only pro-​German attitudes, but also sympathy for the resistance (“dirty white-​shirt”) served equally as an insult.

361

Values behind Words table 41

Percentage distribution of recorded insults (towards women) by thematic category per sample year

general poverty profession collegiality use of property body cleanliness sexuality mental illness alcohol use cowardice parenting crime politics outsider N = 100%

1912

1917

1928

1938

1944

1949

total

30.0 0.0 1.0 0.0 3.7 3.2 16.3 43.1 0.0 1.0 0.0 1.0 0.0 0.0 0.5 190

25.5 0.9 1.8 0.0 9.1 0.0 20.0 37.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.8 2.7 0.9 110

31.5 0.0 1.1 0.0 4.3 0.0 14.1 45.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.1 2.2 0.0 92

29.5 1.0 1.0 0.0 7.2 3.1 22.8 32.6 0.0 0.0 1.5 0.5 0.5 0.0 0.0 193

23.6 2.8 0.9 0.0 8.5 0.9 20.7 32.1 0.0 0.0 1.9 0.9 0.9 6.6 0.0 106

25.9 0.0 0.6 0.0 2.4 4.2 23.5 31.9 2.4 0.6 1.9 1.2 0.0 4.8 0.6 166

28.3 0.7 1.0 0.0 5.6 2.3 19.9 36.7 0.5 0.3 0.9 0.7 0.6 2.3 0.3 857

source: corpus of selected police reports

5.6

Conclusion: Substantive Stability?

Insults provide fruitful access to the notions of honour and shame upheld by Antwerpenaars from the lower social groups. Striking for the entire period under study is the contrast between the multi-​polar honour of men and the unipolar, sexually defined, honour of women. Values, norms and views are not, however, fixed for eternity, but are, on the contrary, subject to change. In daily interaction they are constantly confirmed, adapted or completely abandoned according to the aspirations, objectives and needs of the actors involved. People are therefore not entirely determined by cast-​iron frames of reference, but to a certain extent make creative use of them within the context of social interaction. A contrario, insults that denounce violations of the norm provide valuable material for tracking structural shifts in patterns of values and standards. The long-​term analysis of the insults used in the corpus of registered conflicts

362 Chapter 5 table 42

Percentage distribution of recorded insults (towards men by men) by thematic category per sample year

general poverty profession collegiality use of property body cleanliness sexuality mental illness alcohol use cowardice parenting crime politics outsider N = 100%

1912

1917

1928

1938

1944

1949

total

35.6 0.0 0.0 6.8 16.4 0.0 5.5 4.1 0.0 2.7 26.0 0.0 1.4 0.0 1.4 73

38.9 0.0 11.1 0.0 11.1 0.0 0.0 5.6 0.0 0.0 33.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 18

32.2 0.0 6.8 5.1 13.6 0.0 10.2 6.8 1.7 1.7 15.2 0.0 3.4 1.7 1.7 59

24.4 0.0 4.4 0.0 8.9 0.0 13.3 6.7 0.0 0.0 20.0 0.0 11.1 2.2 8.9 45

15.4 0.0 15.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 7.7 0.0 7.7 0.0 7.7 0.0 0.0 38.5 7.7 13

26.2 0.0 4.8 0.0 0.0 0.0 9.5 16.7 2.4 0.0 14.3 0.0 9.5 14.3 2.4 42

30.4 0.0 4.8 3.2 10.4 0.0 8.4 7.2 1.2 1.2 20.0 0.0 4.8 5.2 3.2 250

source: corpus of selected police reports

(Tables 39-​45) enables us to reconstruct the shifting boundaries of what was permissible and what was not in Antwerp neighbourhoods during the first half of the twentieth century. The general overview of the thematic categorization of all recorded insults apparently offers the image of remarkable substantive stability. Two incidental short-​term movements can be distinguished. During the First World War, the massive use of theft as a survival strategy led to insults in connection with ownership increasing at least slightly in importance. Since, however, this limited percentage increase hides a numerical decrease, not too much weight should be attached to it. More convincing is the empirical material for the proposition that the politico-​national opposition among the Belgian population during the two world wars was of such strength as to be reflected in the vocabulary of insults and that this influence continued for years after the war. At first sight, there appear to be hardly any long-​term structural shifts. The only changes appear to be a certain decline in the share of insults in the sexual

363

Values behind Words table 43

Percentage distribution of recorded insults (towards men by women) by thematic category per sample year

general poverty profession collegiality use of property body cleanliness sexuality mental illness alcohol use cowardice parenting crime politics outsider N = 100%

1912

1917

1928

1938

1944

1949

total

42.5 0.0 1.1 0.0 12.6 0.0 13.8 24.1 0.0 0.0 3.4 0.0 2.3 0.0 0.0 87

34.8 0.0 4.3 0.0 21.7 0.0 13.0 13.0 0.0 0.0 8.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 4.3 23

50.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 15.4 0.0 7.7 11.5 0.0 0.0 7.7 0.0 7.7 0.0 0.0 26

44.3 0.0 6.5 0.0 13.1 1.6 0.0 14.7 0.0 0.0 9.8 0.0 9.8 0.0 0.0 61

43.3 0.0 3.3 0.0 6.7 0.0 10.0 6.7 0.0 0.0 10.0 0.0 6.7 10.0 3.3 30

32.5 0.0 5.0 0.0 10.0 5.0 0.0 22.5 0.0 2.5 17.5 0.0 2.5 2.5 0.0 40

41.6 0.0 3.3 0.0 12.7 1.1 7.5 17.6 0.0 0.4 8.6 0.0 4.8 1.5 0.7 267

source: corpus of selected police reports

sphere and a certain increase in the share in the cleanliness category. The question is whether this evolution fits within the further advancement of the ideal of cleanliness as part of a process of appropriation of bourgeois behavioural norms by lower social groups for distinctive purposes. Broken down according to the sex of the person for whom the insult was intended, it is striking that the long-​term shifts referred to above concern mainly insults directed at women. In the thematic classification of the insults against men, there is no clear evolution of the respective share of sexual and cleanliness insults. Apart from the specific situation of the war years, there is a clear distinction in insults towards women between the sample years 1912 and 1928 on the one hand, and 1938 and 1949 on the other, for both thematic fields. The proportion of insults related to cleanliness is lower in the first half of the period under study than in the second half, and the proportions of the sexually charged insults lie in the opposite direction. The sexually charged insults that used to account for just under half

364 Chapter 5 table 44

Percentage distribution of recorded insults (towards women by men) by thematic category per sample year

general poverty profession collegiality use of property body cleanliness sexuality mental illness alcohol use cowardice parenting crime politics outsider N = 100%

1912

1917

1928

1938

1944

1949

total

31.2 0.0 1.6 0.0 4.7 3.1 18.7 35.9 0.0 3.1 0.0 1.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 64

25.8 0.0 6.4 0.0 3.2 0.0 22.9 35.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 3.2 3.2 0.0 31

36.9 0.0 0.0 0.0 2.2 0.0 19.6 39.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 2.2 0.0 0.0 46

30.0 0.0 1.2 0.0 10.0 5.0 18.7 31.2 0.0 0.0 2.5 0.0 1.2 0.0 0.0 80

20.0 1.7 1.7 0.0 8.3 0.0 26.7 33.3 0.0 0.0 3.3 0.0 1.7 3.3 0.0 60

25.8 0.0 1.6 0.0 1.6 3.2 17.7 33.9 4.8 0.0 1.6 0.0 0.0 9.7 0.0 62

28.3 0.3 1.7 0.0 5.5 2.3 20.4 34.4 0.9 0.6 1.5 0.3 1.2 2.6 0.0 343

source: corpus of selected police reports

of all insults against women have dropped to under one-​third. Both shifts can be interpreted as indicators that the female respect of honour has become increasingly differentiated during the period under study. In particular, the ideal of cleanliness became increasingly a benchmark for the distinction between “decent” and “common”. Women were more likely to be targeted here because the cleanliness of home and family was explicitly seen as their responsibility. In observing a relative shift of weight from the ideal of chastity to that of cleanliness, a certain degree of reserve is required, as the concept of (un)cleanliness carries at least an unspoken sexual component. But even if one defines the category of cleanliness as a tidiness-​sexual hybrid, one cannot deny that there has been a net shift away from the purely sexual category. The shifts in the formulation of female respectability took place mainly in the views and behaviour of women themselves. This is clear when the insults towards women are broken down by sex of the speaker. Leaving aside the specificity of the war years, men continued over the decades to accuse women with approximately

365

Values behind Words table 45

Percentage distribution of recorded insults (towards women by women) by thematic category per sample year

general poverty profession collegiality use of property body cleanliness sexuality mental illness alcohol use cowardice parenting crime politics outsider N = 100%

1912

1917

1928

1938

1944

1949

total

29.4 0.0 0.8 0.0 3.2 3.2 15.1 46.8 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.8 0.0 0.0 0.8 126

25.3 1.3 0.0 0.0 11.4 0.0 19.0 38.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.3 2.5 1.3 79

26.1 0.0 2.2 0.0 6.5 0.0 8.7 52.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 4.3 0.0 46

29.2 1.8 0.9 0.0 5.3 1.8 25.7 33.6 0.0 0.0 0.9 0.9 0.0 0.0 0.0 113

28.2 4.3 0.0 0.0 8.7 2.2 13.0 30.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 2.2 0.0 10.9 0.0 46

26.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 2.9 4.8 26.9 30.8 1.0 1.0 1.9 1.9 0.0 1.9 1.0 104

27.6 1.0 0.6 0.0 5.6 2.3 19.7 38.3 0.2 0.2 0.6 1.0 0.2 2.1 0.6 514

source: corpus of selected police reports

the same intensity of uncleanliness, while the proportion of explicit sexual accusations decreases slightly. In insults among women, the same distinction between 1912–​1928 and 1938–​1949 emerges for both thematic categories. Over this period, women started to accuse each other much more of ‘uncleanliness’, and with much less intensity with respect to their sexual honour. The reformulation of the female model of respectability due to the increasing appropriation of the bourgeois cleanliness discourse was therefore primarily a matter for women. Apart from this shift, no other structural changes can be discerned for the insults of women over time. While thematic shifts appear in the insults against women throughout the period under study that point to a possible redefinition of the female sense of honour, chronological analysis of the insults against men indicate a strong degree of substantive stability. There was no question of a radical redefinition of the male concept of honour. The pronounced multi-​polar character of the masculine concept of honour as it existed at the beginning of the period under

366 Chapter 5 study did not change fundamentally. The only significant shift in the long term was the structural decline in the category of insults related to the treatment of property. The term “thief” and related criticisms that sought to cast doubt on an opponent’s economic reliability were used less and less frequently. While research into insults in cities during the early modern period and the nineteenth century reveals that economic reliability formed a central element of male respectability, the proportion of insults of men in this sphere for the years 1944 and 1949 had subsided to a meagre 5%. It is not easy to formulate a conclusive explanation for this remarkable decline. A possible start of an answer could be sought in a presumed reduced material dependence on reciprocity relations. After all, it was mainly persons whose behaviour was found wanting in the system of reciprocal obligation who had the insult “thief” thrown at them. People who did not repay a small loan, never offered for a round of drinks when it was their turn, or were slow in clearing their slate at the tavern, could be pressured in this way to meet their obligations. The decline in the use of such insults may be an indication that their effectiveness as a threat to the opponent’s reputation had decreased. This reduced effectiveness can only be explained by a lower dependence on the continued existence of reciprocity relations.

General Conclusion The social debate on public violence in modern-​day cities regularly flares up in Western Europe with considerable vigour. Spectacular events such as a stabbing in a pub, a case of extortion with violence on the street corner or an attack on a tram driver invariably set off discussion on the subject. However different one incident is from another, similar and closely related platitudes always surface to explain public violence. Violence in the public space of modern-​day cities is usually associated with an advanced stage of social disintegration. The interplay of various mutually reinforcing processes such as individualization, privatization and increased mobility are seen as having brought about an inexorable dismantling of informal social networks in the urban context, with human existence characterized by a pronounced degree of anonymity. It is precisely the supposed weakness of informal social networks in large contemporary cities that is held responsible for the occurrence of violence in the public sphere. In the absence of strong informal social control, external inhibitions on the use of violence have largely been lost, with the law of the strongest prevailing on the streets. According to this viewpoint, the decline of informal social networks logically entails the loss of their ability to enforce shared norms and values. The violence supposedly resulting from these alleged processes of social disintegration is dismissed by observers in a repetitive mantra as “senseless” or “blind”. Violence is then interpreted as an uncontrolled outburst of aggression that inevitably comes about when human beings are no longer able or no longer forced to maintain their controlled, civilized standards of behaviour. It is depicted as completely irrational, impulsive and emotional behaviour that derives from the biological basis of man. When all is said and done, these qualifications can be seen as a kind of denial phenomenon. Linking violence with an “uncivilized” or “beastly” natural state of aggression exorcises it beyond the boundaries of human culture. In other words, the nature of violence as a cultural product is denied. The ubiquity of this discourse in the social and scientific debate on violence does not imply that it is without shortcomings, rather the contrary. The most important is undoubtedly its distinctly moralistic character. Much more than the fruit of balanced analysis, it can be qualified as an expression of fundamental cultural pessimism. Viewed more soberly, it represents a contemporary translation of the old moralistic complaint about the alleged loss of norms and values in the urban, atomized Gesellschaft. According to this approach, urban society compares badly with the moral consensus prevailing in the small-​scale,

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004416932_008

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rurally coloured Gemeinschaft where everyone knew each other and you never had to lock your back door. Since, unlike in other historical periods, violence is, in today’s society, seen as the ultimate violation of the norm, the moral perversion of Gesellschaft is illustrated by connecting urban society with violence and no longer, for example, with loose sexual mores. Equally pessimistic is the view of man that lurks behind this discourse: human beings are portrayed as by nature aggressive creatures to be kept in check by strict social control. In this line of thought, a single external shock seems sufficient to dissolve the thin layer of civilization that man has acquired with great difficulty. The dominant discourse on public violence in contemporary cities is not only based on a pessimistic view of man and society, it is also nostalgic in character. In the public debate, it is generally assumed that social life in the urban neighbourhoods a few decades ago was a lot more harmonious and much less violent than it is today. The intensity and tone of the social debate about violence points to the need for a sober, value-​free analysis. Only by putting aside moral a priori judgements and by taking it as a serious object of study can one arrive at an understanding of the role and meaning of violence in a particular society. The aim of this research is to contribute to the current debate on the basis of a historical analysis of public violence in the city of Antwerp during the first half of the twentieth century, on the basis of official reports of three city district police stations. Is there really a connection between violence in the urban public space and processes of social disintegration? Can the frequently proffered connection between anonymity of life in the city, the lack of informal social control and the appearance of public violence be substantiated? If, on the other hand, it is not a crisis phenomenon, what are the functions of public violence in urban society? What forms did public violence take? Does the statement hold water that public violence in contemporary cities is less ritualistic and more strongly instrumental in character compared to earlier periods? Were all social groups involved in public violence without distinction or was it only the poorest that were affected, as is often posited? If there is indeed a link between structure and action, how can this be explained? Did men and women get involved in violence with comparable intensity, and what factors could explain possible differences? 1

Public Violence and Social Ties: a Theatre with a Message and an Audience

The case study of the city of Antwerp in the first half of the twentieth century shows that the prevailing discourse on public violence does not pass the test

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of empirical facts. The presumed correlation between the occurrence of public violence and the decline of informal social networks does not appear to hold water and must even be reversed to some extent. The nature of public violence in the selected reports paradoxically points precisely to the importance of such networks. The target of violence in the street, in the tavern or in the stairwell was precisely the position a person occupied within informal social networks. Concretely, the use of violence in the public sphere in the Antwerp neighbourhoods was for the most part intended to prevent or undo damage to the reputation a person enjoyed in informal social networks. This makes the recorded public violence extremely expressive and ritualistic in nature. It fulfilled a distinctively communicative function: theatrical performances served to send meaningful messages to a relevant public of informal social networks. Precisely because of the need to convince networks, focal points of informal sociability such as the tavern, the street and the stairwell were the chosen locations for fighting out conflicts. The assumption that public violence in twentieth-​century Western European cities was less expressive because of its supposedly anonymous character, but was very much instrumental (in particular the violent appropriation of goods and forced sex), is not confirmed by the Antwerp research results. Rape and robbery represent only a small proportion of recorded violence. Moreover, the contrast between expressive and instrumental violence is per se particularly problematic, because certain finalities (in particular the safeguarding of one’s own reputation) are aimed at by expressive, ritualized violence. Violence was deployed in the public space in the first place within the framework of strategies of informal conflict resolution, with other forms of action brought into play as well as violence. The development of a fine-​meshed police apparatus therefore did not ipso facto put an end to informal conflict resolution. Government authority’s claim to the right to resolve conflicts –​in particular by enforcing the so-​called “monopoly on violence” –​was less absolute than is often assumed for twentieth-​century Western European societies. What we see rather in the less prosperous Antwerp neighbourhoods is a kind of “pluralism of justice”, in which unofficial forms of conflict resolution continued to operate alongside the official repression apparatus. This indicates that informal social networks succeeded in retaining a certain degree of autonomy through their self-​regulating capacity, despite the disciplinary strategies from above. The relationship between horizontal, informal social control and vertical, official social control was many times more complex than the mere juxtaposition would suggest. For example, when, for strategic reasons, the population brought in the official repression apparatus to enforce informal arrangements. The prominent role of violence within the framework of informal

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conflict resolution is a clear illustration that violence is not necessarily a dysfunctional crisis phenomenon. 2

Public Violence and Social Stratification: Theatre of the Common People

Public violence as part of strategies of informal conflict resolution was not used by all social groups with the same intensity; rather the contrary. In this respect, there was in early twentieth-​century Antwerp a clear connection between social structure and action. The use of public violence in the context of informal conflict resolution was limited almost exclusively to the poorer sections of the population: the working population and the lower social middle groups. For the elites and higher social middle groups, it was emphatically not an option. This distinction can be traced back to the different models of respectability that the higher and lower social groups followed. Revelatory for this divergence is the totally different significance given to public violence. Whereas in the one model, its use could, under certain conditions, be experienced as reputation-​ enhancing, in the other model it was seen as destructive to one’s good name. There was no question here of any universally shared and understood formal language. Within one and the same society there were, stated crudely, two socially differentiated models of respectability, each with such differing codes, standards of behaviour and repertoires that there was hardly any question of mutual understanding, even if the ultimate goal was the same, that is, an optimally favourable self-​representation in the public sphere with a view to a good reputation. The concrete forms that this took, the genre of the “performance” was, however, totally different. In the model of respectability that can be described as the “repertoire of the street”, embodied mainly by the lower social groups, transparency was central. In order to be able, in case of need, to call on assistance based on the principle of reciprocity, it was necessary to (be able to) participate in informal networks of (neighbourhood) sociability. A precondition for this was a good reputation. For the less prosperous population groups, the only place where this could be established, defended or restored was the public arena. The willingness to publicly and proactively uphold one’s good name was viewed positively. For men specifically, physical strength and courage were held in high regard. In the bourgeois respectability model, the highest value was privacy. In the bourgeois neighbourhoods there was no question of an active neighbourhood life. To live respectably, from the bourgeois perspective, meant literally and figuratively distancing oneself from informal public sociability and from the

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codes of conduct that characterized it. The bourgeois behavioural repertoire served socially distinctive purposes, with acting “respectably” serving to set oneself apart from the “common” behaviour of the lower social groups. As long as material uncertainty kept the less prosperous population groups dependent on reciprocity relations, there could be no question of appropriating the bourgeois behavioural repertoire, predicated on the withdrawal from informal networks of neighbourhood sociability. Throughout the period under study, a number of relative, inter-​related shifts took place in the recorded violence that possibly indicate that the bourgeois model of respectability was gradually gaining strength among Antwerpians from the lower social groups, at the expense of the “repertoire of the street”. Spatially, the centre of gravity of recorded violence shifted from public to private. Relatively, the proportion of intra-​familial violence increased. From a gender perspective, we observe a shift from violence between men to violence between men and women. This leads to the hypothesis that the “theatre of the street” was being performed with decreasing frequency, and that informal sociability directed at the public sphere gradually weakened. Further research, based on other parameters, is needed to test this hypothesis. The explanation of a possible process of bourgeoisification of the lower social groups should not be sought in an intensification of the socio-​political interventions from above, but rather in the strategies, aspirations and ideals of the groups concerned. By analogy with processes of language change, in which the “vulgar” vernacular is traded in for the “respectable” and distinctive language codes of the elites, it should be emphasized that the process of appropriation of the bourgeois respectability model by the lower social groups can only really gather momentum once it is functional for them. With the desire to climb socially as the driving force of change in repertoire of respectability, this appropriation occurs from the moment that a real prospect for social promotion arises. In this context, during the first half of the twentieth century, factors like rising living standards, the development of social protection, the decline in population pressure and the introduction of compulsory education were potentially favourable environmental factors for a change of model of respectability. 3

Public Violence and Social Meaning: Honour and Shame at Stake

Analysis of the violence in the Antwerp streets, taverns and porches proves that the qualification “blind” is scarcely applicable to public violence. Violence in the public space can emphatically not be reduced to accidental clashes of impulsive people. In the less prosperous neighbourhoods of Antwerp, it was

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deployed more or less consciously, with specific objectives in mind, predominantly within the framework of informal conflict resolution. In terms of form, violence was not used randomly, but progressed according to well-​appropriated, ritualized patterns. Indeed, the effective use of force in the context of informal conflict resolution demanded that one respect existing ritualized behavioural repertoires with a pronouncedly theatrical character. To convey an intelligible message, one had to use the formal language that was generally understood. Moreover, informal social networks carefully checked that the codes governing the “theatre of the street” were respected. Anyone failing to do so ran the risk of intervention by third parties, reputational damage and, ultimately, social isolation. The assertion that violence is not an irrational or uncontrolled phenomenon does not, though, imply that it is devoid of emotion. As a cultural product, violence is permeated with meaning. Since in the public sphere it was mainly used to inflict, prevent or undo reputational damage, analysis of it teaches us a lot about the notions of honour and shame that applied in early twentieth-​century Antwerp neighbourhood life. In this way, the study of violence provides an indirect, but undeniably privileged, access to the values and norms, the mindsets and expectations of social groups that have left little trace in written sources. One particularly striking feature in the Antwerp case is the completely different expectation patterns that existed with regard to both sexes. A man’s honourability was determined by a wide variety of factors, such as courage, financial reliability or collegial solidarity, and can therefore be described as multi-​polar. A woman’s reputation, on the other hand, was predominantly sexually defined, making it largely unipolar. Not only was the honourability of men and women measured with other standards, but also both sexes held to a certain extent differing views as to the honourability of their own and the other sex. The differing substantive content of male and female honourability is, besides biological differences, one of the explanatory factors for the predominance of men among violent perpetrators. The prominent position of physical strength and courage in the male respectability model allowed men less room than women to avoid physical trials of strength. For this reason, the relative under-​representation of women among the perpetrators of violence cannot serve to prove that Antwerp women from the lower social groups could not defend their reputations autonomously and certainly not that they did not possess their own sense of honour. There was no question of a connection of feminine honourability with passivity. Women simply had more room for manoeuvre to use other means of action (for example, language) than violence, because a positive valorisation of bravura did not form part of female respectability. Over the course of time, we find no major substantive changes in the patterns imposed by the “codes of the street”.

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However, according to the bourgeoisification hypothesis, we can point to the increasing weight of the cleanliness/​purity ideal. 4

Epilogue: Public Violence, from Theatre to Misunderstood Spectacle

Violence, and in particular public violence, is perhaps more strongly than ever at the centre of public debate. One hears constant cries of alarm at the supposed “brutalization” or “roughening” of the social climate in various Western European societies. It is widely assumed that the streets and squares of Western European cities in particular have become increasingly violent in recent decades. The call for a powerful “recovery” of the state’s monopoly on violence in the public space is therefore steadily growing. Whether the perception of an increasingly violent society corresponds to a social reality on the ground is, however, far from certain, and moreover, very difficult to prove. Do the rising numbers of recorded violent crimes not reflect in the first place the fears and preoccupations of citizens and governments? There may well be timid indications that certain types of violence are more common today than a few decades ago, but this is certainly not a general trend. For example, research shows that the recent relative increase in homicide ratios (the only relatively “hard” indicator available for a long-​term analysis) in a country like the Netherlands can be attributed to segments of the population that are very limited in social and spatial terms (mainly in the environment of drug traffickers in Amsterdam). For the vast majority of the population, the chance of being involved in a murder as either perpetrator or victim has not increased at all. It should be emphasized that in comparative and historical perspective contemporary Western European societies are not particularly violent Whether or not more violence is committed now than half a century ago is of little importance for the analysis of prevailing social discourse. This discourse does not seek a sober description of a social reality in the field, but rather to express a sense of unease, an undefined fear of violence. Whereas in a not so distant past moralists saw all sorts of signs of moral decay in the sexual mores, it is violence that takes the lead role in the contemporary climate of moral panic. Increasingly within Western European societies, violence is seen today as the ultimate violation of the norm, something that was not always the case in the past. Telling in this context is the observation that more and more violations of standards are referred to as “violence”, so much so that terms like “violence” and “crime” have become virtually synonymous in daily language practice. Why, in contemporary Western European societies, is violence now

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given the position of the ultimate unacceptable social phenomenon? Undoubtedly, the Europe’s prominent involvement in the distinctly bloody political history of the previous century is largely responsible for this: in the case of political violence alone (war, genocide and ethnic conflict), according to conservative estimates, 187 million people worldwide were killed during the twentieth century. In this connection, reference can be made to the fundamental and ever-​deepening effect of the coming to terms with the Judeocide in Western cultures. Even if the massive experience of large-​scale political violence during the past century may have encouraged the moral qualification of violence as the ultimate violation of the norm, this does not adequately explain why it is precisely the image of everyday violence on streets and squares that evokes such fears. Rather than as a consequence of the shift of the moral checkpoints under the influence of the memory of Verdun, Auschwitz and the Gulag, the fear of violence on the street corner must be understood as an expression of fundamental failure to understand. It is therefore not only the contemporary moral presuppositions that explain the preoccupation with violence. In the Western European mainstream there is a manifest inability to give the exercise of violence a meaningful place within the available frame of reference. Violence transcends people’s ability to comprehend to such an extent that they regularly fall back on platitudes such as the intrinsic fragility of human civilization and the supposed “beastly” nature of man. Where does the perceived inability to place the violence on the street corner come from? The origin may lie in the fact that public violence has become a completely foreign phenomenon for the majority of Western European populations. The inhabitants of Antwerp from the lower social groups during the first half of the twentieth century could give public violence a place because they were familiar with the codes of the “theatre of the street” of which it formed a constitutive part. Today, any knowledge of the meanings assigned to certain forms of behaviour (including violence) according to the “codes of the street” has been almost entirely lost among broad sections of the population. The transition to the bourgeois respectability model, entailing a total ban on the use of violence, especially in the public sphere, and which accelerated during the interwar period, reached full speed during the second half of the twentieth century, in which the prospect of upward social mobility was, for many, more real than ever before. The process of changing repertoire of respectability gathered such momentum that just a few generations were sufficient to arrive at a state in which, after an intermediate phase of diglossia, for the majority of the population the theatrical codes characteristic of the former model of respectability had become a foreign and totally incomprehensible “language”. Unlike the Antwerp residents from the lower

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social groups of just a century ago who were able to interpret public violence from their own frameworks of reference, most contemporary observers, lacking the necessary connection points, perceive public violence, very incorrectly, as a pointless, blind and unpredictable phenomenon. In so doing they fall into the same trap as the nineteenth-​century colonials who qualified Africans as “savage” out of ethnocentric misunderstanding. Today, it is precisely because of its “foreign” and incomprehensible character that public violence generates so much unease for the majority of the population. Violence has changed from being an intrinsic part of the “theatre of the street”, and to a certain degree part and parcel of everyday life, to being a social drama.

Sources and Bibliography

Unpublished Sources Antwwerp City Archive (saa –​Stadsarchief Antwerpen) Modern Archive (MA –​Modern Archief) *Reports from the district police stations District 2 MA 24629–​24634 (1912) MA 24648–​24649, 29181 (1917) MA 29218–​29221 (1928) MA 29269–​29274 (1938) MA 29316–​29321 (1944) MA 29366–​29377 (1949) District 5 MA 31559–​31564 (1912) MA 31579–​31583 (1917) MA 31627–​31632 (1928) MA 31700–​31716 (1938) MA 31784–​31796 (1944) MA 31873–​31893 (1949) District 7-​Main police station MA 29696–​29697 (1912) MA 29699 (1917) MA 29732–​29739 (1928) MA 29824–​29834 (1938) MA 29911–​29925 (1944) MA 30013–​30035 (1949)



Published Sources

Auwermeulen, G.  van der, Handboek voor het stellen van processen-​verbaal en rapporten. Ten dienste van de leden van de gemeentelijke politie, de gerechtelijke, militaire en zeepolitie, de rijkswacht, van veldwachters, boswachters etc., Brussels, 1954. Geirnart, A., Verordeningen van politie te Antwerpen in voege, Antwerp, 1906. Stad Antwerpen. Codex van gemeentelijke politiereglementen, Antwerp, 1921. Statistisch jaarbericht der stad Antwerpen, 1949, Antwerp, 1949.

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Subjects Behavioural standards 9, 14–​19, 260–​286, 299 Body language 156–​172 Bourgeoisification 267–​287 Civilization process 14–​19, 169 Civilization offensive 276–​277, 297 Domestic violence 47, 81–​82, 122–​131 Duel 200–​219 Gender roles 165–​168, 220–​258, 267–​275, 293 Gossip 152–​155, 237–​249 Habitus 13–​14, 69 Honour 52–​84, 103–​114, 288–​366 Insults 151–​152, 237–​249, 288–​366 Interethnic relations 337–​341 Language 7–​9, 150–​155, 237–​249, 278–​279, 288–​366 Liminality 70–​71

Neighbourhood life 4, 43–​84, 115–​122 Performance 10–​12, 50–​51, 75, 144, 264 Police-​public relations 20–​24, 84–​102 Privatization process 2, 4, 45–​48, 123, 181, 252, 267–​275 Reputation 52–​84 Revenge 103–​114 Ritual 145–​220 Self-​regulation 4, 33, 56, 84–​102 Senseless violence 1–​3, 5–​7, 43–​45, 163–​164, 172 Sexual violence 107, 131–​143, 231 Social capital 80–​81, 97, 116, 135–​136, 260, 353 Social control 2–​5, 43–​45, 85, 115–​122, 126, 135, 142, 148–​149, 151, 153, 155, 207–​208, 269, 274–​275, 312, 334 Social disintegration 2, 4, 43–​45, 75, 115–​116 Sources 19–​41 Space 172–​200, 249–​257

Modern Authors Anderson, Benedict 64 Anderson, Elijah 284 Blok, Anton 78, 147, 151, 172, 221, 318 Blokland, Talja 246 Bourdieu, Pierre 13, 80, 284, 329 Bourke, Joanna 44, 351 Brabander, Guido de 282 Bulmer, Martin 152 Burke, Peter 288

Joly, Henri 166 Keunen, Annemieke 301, 344 Le Clercq, Geoffroy 135, 136, 140 Lindenberger, Thomas 254 Lis, Catharina 31, 52, 56, 128, 328 Martin, Dirk 343 Muchembled, Robert 17, 18, 19, 172, 173

Capp, Bernard 242, 298, 320 Carlier, Julie 138 Castan, Nicole 226 Castan, Yves 278 Certeau, Michel de 36 Christiaens, Jenneke 198 Corbin, Alain 330

Perrot, Michelle 314 Peters, Jan 239 Pitt-​Rivers, Julian 77, 200 Pol, Lotte van de 159, 298

Deneckere, Gita 199 Dinges, Martin 81, 178, 293, 346, 357 Douglas, Mary 169, 327

Saerens, Lieven 341 Scott, James C. 36 Simmel, George 172 Sledsens, Aloïs 26, 27, 61, 62, 253 Smedt, Oscar de 197 Smits, Frans 261 Smout, Herman 281 Sohn, Anne-​Marie 309 Soly, Hugo 31, 52, 56, 128 Spierenburg, Pieter 44, 46n, 78, 79, 81, 145, 222, 270, 296, 297, 298, 331 Swaan, Abram de 290 Szabo, Denis 17

Egmond, Florike 140 Elias, Norbert 14, 14n, 15, 15n, 16, 16n, 17, 18, 19, 45, 46, 68, 69, 156, 169, 172, 265, 269, 289, 334, 335 Farge, Arlette 233, 245, 246 Farge, Arlette 52, 245, 257 Foote Whythe, William 285 Foucault, Michel 32, 52 Freud, Sigmund 15, 15n, 16 Garrioch, David 38, 56, 116, 117, 177, 246, 252 Gennep, Arnold van 70 Gluckman, Max 114, 148 Goffmann, Erving 11, 50, 145, 146, 147, 149, 157, 178 Gould, Roger 71, 113, 114 Gowing, Laura 308 Hall, Edward T. 172 Huizinga, Johan 172, 211

Regt, Ali de 269 Rooijakkers, Gerard 7, 12, 13, 13n, 150

Tebbutt, Melanie 247, 248, 252, 253, 333 Tilly, Charles 147, 200 Turner, Victor 70, 148 Vigarello, Georges 135 Waardt, Hans de 70, 71 Wouters, Cas 46