The Bulletin and the Larrikin: Moral Panic in Late Nineteenth Century Sydney

Abstract

In the late nineteenth century the disorderly behaviour of young people on the streets of Sydney provoked outrage among the city's middle class residents. The Bulletin was an organ of emergent radical nationalism which celebrated the irreverence and roughness of the bush pioneers. Its attitude to urban larrikinism was, however, little different from that of the conservative press. Editorials frequently expressed alarm at the decline in law and order and called for more intensive policing of the city streets. This article views the moral panic around larrikinism through the pages of the Bulletin and argues that there was a shift from a generalised concern about urban disorder to the construction of a sinister stereotypical figure of the larrikin, who haunted the slum quarters and whose behaviour threatened the well-being of the nation.