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Students made Oxford murder capital of late medieval England, research suggests
- Obscurity4340 3y agoKids THESE dayz. SMH —Chaucer, definitely
- alex_young 3y agoProbably clustered around https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gropecunt_Lane https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gropecunt_Lane
- xrd 3y agoI learned a lot from this wikipedia page, and I'm glad I'm not the only one who has read it (you posted it so that's evidence enough that you read the entire sordid article). edit: I'm joking. It's full of funny stuff, the names they gave these streets and areas is hilarious. And, it feels creepy to read it, I'll be honest!
- codetrotter 3y ago> it was normal practice for a medieval street name to reflect the street's function or the economic activity taking place within it Interesting. So unlike Cunthorpe, in this case the c-word part probably actually means that thing which it looks like it means.
- lostlogin 3y agoAre you meaning Scunthorpe? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
- codetrotter 3y agoYea, I mean that one heh
- surfingdino 3y agoMakes you wonder what was going on in Dumb Woman's Ln, Rye TN31 6AD (near Cock Marling)?
- 12907835202 3y agoPerfect band name
- lordnacho 3y agoI literally lived in one of the buildings in the picture. Bill Clinton lived in the next house, and tour guides will point this out. I remember when that article was featured, it was quite a shock to see my old dorm rooms on the front page of Wikipedia. Fascinating to think how that tiny little lane used to be the red light district.
- kr0bat 3y agoSo we're living in the least violent times of human history, aren't we? The murder rates found in Oxford was higher than even the most violent contemporary American cities, and the conditions of some of our cities are absolutely tragic. What's made the world so much more peaceful? Improved material conditions?
- thsksbd 3y ago[flagged]
- vinay427 3y ago> Even your statement hints that our cities are in a state of societal collapse with increased crime Not the GP commenter, but I don’t see how their comment hints at this. Could you clarify? > No, I don't think we're living in a peaceful era at all. This appears to respond to a different claim than that in the parent comment based on my reading, unless I’m misinterpreting the “no” here?
- thsksbd 3y ago"even the most violent contemporary American cities, and the conditions of some of our cities are absolutely tragic." I think there a little hint there that the OP doesnt think American cities are in their golden era. As to my peace comment, it must be put in context of the precious statement that, as violent as our cities are, we have have achieved some pacification by exporting violence. If the Congo-US city link is too abstract, consider American jails. They are brutally violent to the point where it is suspected male-male rape might be more prominent than male-female. All of our would be urban violence that we have warehoused in our jails occurs multiple fold in our jails.
- kr0bat 3y agoI wouldn't even disagree with a lot of what's you're putting down, but it's not very relevant, no? Even if you believe that we've "outsourced violence" - and honestly I agree, it's all to easy to forget that a lot of our first world material conditions are predicated on cheap third world labor - there's still a difference between global exploitation, and stabbing a man to death over public urination.
- wqtz 3y agoNetflix is going to adopt this idea right now. It is going to be produced by either one of those comedy-type directors of Marvel cinematic universe Taika something Gunn or one of their frequent collaborators or siblings. The story will spin around a bunch of college students who come from different lower to middle class background. There is a going to be Indian or Pakistani girl who came here to pursue higher studies. She is constantly ridiculed by the upper caste Indian students who are now part of the British elite class society. Then you have an Irish or some kind of GB region person who is also socially suffering. Then you have your usual group of social misfits. They share a common identity of being misfits of those times that is coincidentally representative of the times of present. Then someone among them kills some elitist upper class royalty type accidentally who was trying to abuse that person. Ah yeah, this going to happen after a party where those misfits are going to dance in a certain way to certain music that they know will popular in TikTok. Then the group bands to together to come up with a serial killer identity to hide the crime. They don't kill people but the do things that make people there is serial killing going on. Then you have your usual sheninigans. In season 1 a professor joins in their sheninigans who was relucatant. In season 1, finale the professor was almost caught. In season 2, someone actually kills and innocent person and does something drastic in the season finale. In season 3, the professor is killed and one of those misfits has near death experience. In season 4 Jack the ripper is introduced and season 6 part 1 finale Sherlock holmes makes an appearance. People petition RDJ to play sherlock holmes and the famous marvel alumni producer even drop a hint it might could be, but it ends not being RDJ but a random actor. But Jude law or the UK office guy makes a cameo in season 7. Then in after an abyssmal season 8 and the series ends in season 9, with Netflix says a spin off series is going to be launched in the metaverse platform that they recently acquired called Snap, which will attempt to provide an interactive detective and crime investigation experience platform that dynamically changes the TV show as the users participate.
- CrazyPyroLinux 3y agoAlso home to violent gangsa rappers: "Straight outta Oxford, a crazy MFer named Hawking" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITo3EvxWnPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITo3EvxWnPg
- Jigsy 3y agoIt was actually a University prank that went horribly wrong.
- dsign 3y ago> The mix of young male students and booze was often a powder keg for violence. “culture of the times” was also in that mix, I bet they would have been quite murderous even without the booze. To my knowledge, a bunch of monks in a monastery are not so murderous.
- bell-cot 3y agoThe article notes that records from that period are fragmentary at best, and the Oxford ones only cover 1296-1324 (fragmentary) and 1343-1348 (relatively complete). Point of interest: Philosopher Thomas Hobbes taught at Oxford ~1600. He later wrote Leviathan, in which he characterized the natural state of humankind as "...and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, [...], nasty, brutish, and short." One wonders whether the Oxford of ~1600 was much better than the Oxford of ~1300.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoThe Oxford of 2023 still has a PPE course whose graduates causes endless chaos and harm in the world. Things don't seem to have improved much.
- lordnacho 3y ago> There was an expectation on adult men that maintaining order was part of your social responsibility This is pretty interesting. Imagine a society where you're the police, in fact everyone is the police. I wonder when the thinking on this changed. It would be unthinkable these days to feel responsible for general public order as a private citizen. At best you'd report whatever the issue was and move on.
- quickthrower2 3y agoI read somewhere that police were an invention - I can't remember what prompted it. But there was law (courts, trials) before there was enforcement.
- denton-scratch 3y ago> I wonder when the thinking on this changed. In London, I believe the first "professional" police force ("The Bow Street Runners") was created by the magistrate Henry Fielding, author of Tom Jones. That's in the early 1700s. I imagine the idea took some decades to spread across the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fielding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fielding
- sethammons 3y agoThe more rural you get the more this is still true. In many places, there is no mentionable police force. You handle it or you get a group together to handle it.
- icegreentea2 3y agoI think modern police evolved from multiple strands (especially depending on locality), but in the context of England, I think there's been a more or less continuous evolution. The same idea that every adult man was responsible for maintaining order was the basis for night watch men duties, which was a duty that every household was supposed to partake in. Obviously, being a night watch man kind of sucks, so the combination of there being a law that compelled people to actually perform their responsibility, and that not everyone actually wanting to perform that responsibility (or really being fit for that responsibility) naturally led to people paying others to get out of duty... and here we go.
- zeristor 3y agoScores of years earlier some academics left to found Cambridge university: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Scholastica_Day_riot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Scholastica_Day_riot
- hardlianotion 3y agoIt seems like the Inspector Morse series may have been paying homage to Oxford's dark history.
- xhevahir 3y agoParis and Bologna had lots of violent students too at that time. Villon, the poet, famously was a burglar and street brawler during and after his student days in Paris. This article is interesting and compares the sorts of violence that took place in those three places: https://www.medievalists.net/2011/11/medieval-student-violence/ https://www.medievalists.net/2011/11/medieval-student-violen...
- uoaei 3y agoThe article notes that the translation and documentation is a very manual process based solely on coroners' records. It's more than likely that class structures at the time simply didn't record deaths of commoners, or else commoners may have simply dealt with such things within their own communities. Official bureaucratic systems of the time (for things that weren't related to extracting wealth) were part of the community of the elite.
- qwytw 3y ago> It's more than likely that class structures at the time simply didn't record deaths of commoners That's an interesting claim. Why do you think so? Considering cities were generally more or less run by "commoners". e.g. https://medievalmurdermap.co.uk/maps/london/ https://medievalmurdermap.co.uk/maps/london/ is full of murdered commoners. Many of the victims murdered by students in Oxford were just ordinary townsmen as well.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoCluster a group of undisciplined, arrogant, wealthy, supremely entitled male egos, unsupervised in one smallish city and tell them they're the greatest - and what would you expect?
- petercooper 3y agoThirteen years of Tory rule, so far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullingdon_Club https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullingdon_Club
- nobodyandproud 3y agoProving that academia was always cut-throat.