Chapter X: The Larrikin in Australia

What the Larrikin is—A Social, Moral, and Political Danger—A Natural Foe of the Chinaman.

ONCE upon a time, so the story runs, an old gentleman was walking along the streets of London, when he was accosted by a little boy, who asked him for a light for his cigarette. The old gentleman, of course, was shocked, and indignantly remarked that when he was young little boys were not allowed to smoke. ‘Oh,’ replied the lad, ‘there ain’t any boys now; they are all young men; that’s what we call ’em, and old men we call thundering fools.’ This feeling, unfortunately, exists wherever there are civilized men and women. In savage countries it may be that the hoary head is a crown of honour; but where the schoolmaster has gone abroad the first impression made on the mind of the favoured scholar is that he is a man and his father but a fool. Old customs, old traditions, somewhat interfere with this idea in English towns and villages, yet the increasing tendency of the age is in another direction. All kindly correction has been denied the youth, especially of the working-classes. Let the lad ever so richly deserve a flogging, father or mother threatens ‘if you dare to lay a hand upon my boy,’ and so the master spares the rod and spoils the child. In some quarters the boy soon begins to earn his living, and then he spends his wages and his time in bad company, and is a terror to father and mother, and master, and all with whom he has to do. It is to this phase of civilization is due, in that highly-favoured country of Australia, the existence of the larrikin. It was while I was out there that there died the policeman who invented the name. In the course of his arduous duties he had to catch and bring before the magistrates a group of troublesome lads. ‘What were they doing?’ asked the magistrates. ‘I caught them a-larrikin,’ was the reply, and ever since then the name of larrikin denotes a lad in a hobbledehoy state, who is a torment to himself and everyone around. Worst of all, the chances are that he develops into a rough, and brutal, and unmannerly man. As it is, he is a nuisance everywhere, but a special danger in Australia in a social, and moral, and political point of view. In a new country naturally the young people assert themselves more than in an old one. You see this in America as well as in Australia, but in the latter country the press does its duty and points out the danger. In one of the best of the Australian papers—_The South Australian Register_—a leader-writer, in recommending the volunteer movement, remarks that there is no hardship in asking the Australian young man to take his place among the defenders of his country. On the contrary it would be of great physical and moral benefit to him to undergo the training of a citizen soldier. ‘Impatience of control, lack of discipline, a contempt for authority, the absence of a sense of duty—these are the prevailing faults of the youth of the day, and it is certain that a course of military exercises would have a bracing effect upon the moral nature, helping to make the young men better sons, better husbands, better fathers—in every way better qualified to discharge the important functions of responsible citizens in a State where all possess equal political rights and perfect freedom of action.’ As I write I read in a New South Wales paper: ‘Larrikinism is on the increase in the suburbs of Brisbane. Constant complaints are made of insults to pedestrians, drunken quarrels and profane language. On Sunday the hotels a short distance from the city are visited, and under the influence of the potations indulged in the most unholy scenes of rioting and revelling take place on the roads. Church-goers are subjected to insult. Decent parents are obliged to shut their children within doors to prevent their ears being assailed by the oaths and curses freely uttered by these lawless pests. The police generally are nowhere to be seen, and when present are indisposed to arrest the offenders. Our laws are badly applied.’

The larrikin is the natural foe of the heathen Chinee; not that he dislikes his imputed vices, but his real virtues. A friend of mine was walking near the suburbs of Melbourne, and he came across a Chinaman working in his garden, where only parsley was growing. ‘How is this?’ said my friend. ‘Why don’t you grow vegetables and flowers? I should have thought they would have paid you better.’ ‘Ah, sir,’ replied the heathen, ‘if I were to grow vegetables and flowers, the larrikins would come and pull them all up; so I can only grow parsley.’ And thus the people of Melbourne suffer, for those of them who have no gardens of their own have to depend for their supplies on the ever civil and industrious Chinamen. Since I have returned home, I see a Melbourne judge declared that it was unsafe to walk the streets of Melbourne by night or by day, and that that is so is, I take it, mainly due to the larrikins, who exist in such numbers as to defy the power of the police. When a larrikin gets drunk and quarrelsome he naturally goes in for the Chinese; they are few, and he and his friends are many. They are fond of fighting, and a Chinaman is a man of peace. It is fine sport for the larrikin to trample down and devastate the well-kept garden of the heathen Chinee, to get into his little shop and spoil his goods, to knock about and ill-treat the son of the Celestial Empire; nor does he object to murder one if he has the chance, as probably by means of perjury and hard swearing he will be able to escape the punishment due to his crime. By night the larrikins sleep in the parks, which are the glory of all the Australian cities, and the scenes there, so I was informed, are disgraceful. It is not safe for a respectable person to walk across the parks alone of a night. As in London, almost all respectable people live out of town, and they have but a faint idea of what goes on in their absence. The climate allows anyone, at any rate during the summer months, to sleep in the open air, and the rascals of the community for the time being may each one say for himself:

‘I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute.’

It is one of the drawbacks of the Australian climate that it gives the larrikin a chance such as he has nowhere else. Walking one evening with a friend in one of the parks which adorn Adelaide, we came to a young tree which had the bark cut off in a circle round the trunk—in other words, it was ring-barked. My friend indignantly exclaimed: ‘See what the larrikins have been up to!’ That tree was doomed to die. It was a valuable one. It had been planted for a special purpose—to add to the attractions of the park, and to be, when fully grown, a benefit to the entire community. It had leaves on. It did not seem to have suffered much damage; but it was doomed to die, nevertheless. As a resident in Adelaide, my friend was very much provoked at the sight; and no wonder.

Wherever you go you meet the detestable larrikin, but it is in Melbourne that he chiefly abounds. Fathers and mothers are much to be blamed on his account. There is an old commandment about honouring thy father and mother, to which, if I were a Melbourne parson, I should devote many sermons; but, alas! in a young community, with many questionable emigrants, where the fever of gold-getting in any way rages fiercely, it is not always that a young man can honour his father and mother. At any rate, the evil exists, and Church and State between them will have hard work to put it down. The larrikin delights in mischief for mischief’s sake. He is not necessarily very poor or wretched. Perhaps he gets too much flesh meat, and a vegetarian diet would suit him better. Dr. Dale tells us a good deal of the high spirits of the Australian youth—a phase of Australian life which did not strike me at all. Was he thinking of the Australian larrikin? Such high spirits are not to my taste. In one respect the larrikin reminds one of the days of Tom and Jerry as depicted in the vivid caricatures of the late George Cruikshank, but Tom and Jerry were gentlemen, and that makes a great difference. Rather I should take him to be a son of Belial, and thus give him a more ancient origin. His delight is to join himself to a gang of twenty or thirty to break street lamps, to wrench off knockers, tear down fences, mob and maltreat policemen, hustle respectable people at all hours by day and by night, and to assault some poor pedestrian, especially when a little the worse for liquor, and rob him. ‘Scarce a week passes,’ says a writer in the Colonies, ‘without some larrikin outbreak.’ It was even with difficulty that I could steer clear of him at times. I fear we have too much of the larrikin at home, but that is no reason why he should be allowed to taint the virgin soil of a new world. Our colonies ought to be an improvement on the old country. What is wrong at home they should avoid. Let them imitate our virtues. On a new soil they have a better chance.