Almost any event in Victorian England which brought together a large gathering of people could result in crowd disorder. Violence frequently broke out at all sorts of mass meetings ‘from Salvation Army processions to demonstrations of the unemployed, industrial disputes, … eviction scenes, Orange celebrations, public hangings’. Sports crowds were no exception.

Spectators frequently got out of hand at mid Victorian horse-racing. Trouble seems to have been commonplace at several London meetings in the late 1860s: at Bromley a pitched battle was fought between welshing bookmakers and angry punters; at Streatham a rioting mob tore up railings and flung them at a jockey accused of not trying; and at Enfield a similarly suspected rider was saved from lynching only by the intervention of armed racecourse officials. The disturbances at some metropolitan meetings became so bad that in 1879 parliamentary legislation was used to suppress them. Provincial meetings, too, had their disturbances, particularly when backers felt that they had not had a fair run for their money or when bookmakers welshed on winning bets. No wonder that J. H. Peart, right-hand man of the famous trainer, John Scott, unfavourably contrasted the English situation with that at Chantilly, where ‘the arrangements on the racecourse are far beyond what they have in England. The roughs are kept in their proper place, and there was no hustle or confusion, and no fear of being robbed of your wallet. ’ Soccer, too, had its crowd problems.