The idea of the criminal underworld is one that has long fascinated society. There is a powerful belief that criminals populate a world that exists separately, but in parallel to, “respectable society”. Politicians, journalists and other commentators casually refer to the “underclass” and the “criminal class” who inhabit the “underworld”. The term underworld was not regularly used until the later Victorian period. In England, a Times editorial from December 1864 described the “belief in an underworld of crime and horrors”. Even in this period there was a recognition that reporting and other writing about criminal worlds was prone to sensationalisation

Related Links:

The Times