THE GANGS OF MANCHESTER

THE STORY OF THE SCUTTLERS - BRITAIN'S FIRST YOUTH CULT

Out of the slums of industrial Manchester emerged a strange and bloody cult that would terrorise the city’s streets for three decades. Gangs of youths, violent and tough, launched a series of turf wars in a brutal fight for supremacy. Calling themselves ‘scuttlers’, they fought pitched battles that left scores injured or maimed. Soon the scuttler and his moll were as notorious as any modern gangster.

The Gangs of Manchester is a journey into this long-forgotten Victorian underworld. It traces the rise of the first youth tribes in the smoke-blackened courts and alleys of nineteenth-century Manchester and Salford and tells how they adopted a distinctive fashion and code of conduct. They wore peaked caps tilted to display their long fringes, flashy silk scarves, bell-bottomed trousers and brass-tipped clogs. But the scuttlers most prized possession was his thick leather belt, adorned with gang insignia and wrapped tight around his fist. The heavy brass buckle could shatter a man’s skull.

As the Grey Mare Boys battled with Holland Street from Miles Platting, the Bengal Tigers and Prussia Street fought it out in Ancoats and Ordsall Lane and Hope Street waged guerrilla war in Salford, they terrified respectable citizens and defied the police and the law courts. Mob leaders became local legends. George Worthington led a huge army from Bradford and Beswick. The infamous Bellis brothers held sway over Greengate. And in the 1890s, the entire city held its breath as a handful of leading ‘captains’ fought for the coveted title of King of the Scuttlers.

'An important addition to the growing library on pre-fifties youth culture.'
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

'The first hoodies ... gangs even more savage than today's.' THE DAILY MAIL

'Exposes the ugly history of the city's unique brand of adolescent warfare...Fascinating.' SALFORD ADVERTISER