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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN VICTIMS AND VICTIMOLOGY

A Victim Community
Stigma and the Media Legacy of
High-Profile Crime
Nicola O’Leary
Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology

Series Editors
Pamela Davies
Department of Social Sciences
Northumbria University
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Tyrone Kirchengast
Law School
University of Sydney
Sydney, NSW, Australia
In recent decades, a growing emphasis on meeting the needs and rights of
victims of crime in criminal justice policy and practice has fuelled the
development of research, theory, policy and practice outcomes stretching
across the globe. This growth of interest in the victim of crime has seen
victimology move from being a distinct subset of criminology in aca-
demia to a specialist area of study and research in its own right. Palgrave
Studies in Victims and Victimology showcases the work of contemporary
scholars of victimological research and publishes some of the highest-­
quality research in the field. The series reflects the range and depth of
research and scholarship in this burgeoning area, combining contribu-
tions from both established scholars who have helped to shape the field
and more recent entrants. It also reflects both the global nature of many
of the issues surrounding justice for victims of crime and social harm and
the international span of scholarship researching and writing about them.

Editorial Board:
Antony Pemberton, Tilburg University, Netherlands
Jo-Anne Wemmers, Montreal University, Canada
Joanna Shapland, Sheffield University, UK
Jonathan Doak, Durham University, UK

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14571
 Nicola O’Leary

A Victim Community
Stigma and the Media Legacy
of High-Profile Crime
Nicola O’Leary
Criminology and Sociology
University of Hull
Hull, UK

Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology

ISBN 978-3-030-87678-4    ISBN 978-3-030-87679-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87679-1

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2021
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 Acknowledgements

First and foremost, my thanks go to the participants of this research. I

cannot thank them individually of course as I promised them anonymity,
but I am grateful for their generous help and support for this research and
for sharing their stories and experiences with me.
I am indebted to many people for their encouragement and guidance
as this project developed. It has been a long time in the writing! The book
is based on doctoral research in the Department of Criminology and
Sociology at the University of Hull, and particular thanks go to my super-
visors Mike McCahill and Simon Green, for their initial reassurance to
embark upon doctoral studies, their constructive feedback on numerous
drafts of my thesis and their inspiration and support to develop the thesis
into a book. Chris Greer and Keith Tester examined my PhD thesis and
their perceptive comments proved extremely useful when the time (even-
tually!) came to write this book. My thanks also go to my colleagues at
Hull and elsewhere, with whom I discussed my research as it has devel-
oped over the years.
I would also like to thank Pamela Davies and Tyrone Kirchengast, as
series editors of the Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology series,
for their patience and for supporting the publication of this book.
This book has been part of my life for a long time now, in one form or
another. There are many friends who have been with me through this

v
vi Acknowledgements

time and supported me in various ways and I thank them all. I am par-
ticularly grateful to my oldest friend Rachel Frank for encouraging me to
keep going and get this book written. Finally, my deepest gratitude goes
to my family who have always believed in me and particularly to Sean
and Josette; to my parents, Sean and Maria O’Leary; and to my brother
Dermot. I am especially grateful to Sean, who has seen this project evolve
from the beginning and has been unstinting in his support of me and our
family and to Josette, who will always make me proud.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 The Paradoxes and Contradictions of ‘Victim’ and

‘Community’ 21

3 Crime News, Media and Identity 61

4 Dunblane: A United Community Divided 89

5 Soham: The Litany of a ‘Tragic Town’123

6 Making Sense of ‘Victim Communities’: Negotiating

Collective Identity157

7 Conclusion185

vii
viii Contents

Appendix A: Notes on Methodology195

Appendix B: Overview of News Content Analysis203

Appendix C: Interviewee Characteristics205

Index207
 1
Introduction

There are certain crimes that when they occur, are of such magnitude and
resonance that they seem to embody the mood of the time. Events that
are so shocking people remember where and when they were when they
heard about them. The legacy of certain serious crimes and high-profile
events and the associated trauma goes beyond the immediate victims and
their families. These events haunt others whose voices are less frequently
recognised or heard. Some crimes can enter the public consciousness in
such a way that society itself seems harmed or irreversibly changed.
On 7 January 2015 in a suburb of Paris, two brothers Said and Cherif
Kouachi broke into the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper
Charlie Hebdo, armed with assault rifles. They killed 11 people inside the
office who worked for the newspaper and injured 11 others elsewhere in
the building. They also shot and killed a French National Police officer
outside the building who was attending the incident. A day later, a related
attack was undertaken by an associate of the brothers, Amedy Coulibaly,
who killed a policewoman and then entered a Jewish supermarket taking
several people hostage. Four people were killed inside the supermarket. A
video was subsequently posted online where Coulibaly pledges his alle-
giance to ISIS. The two brothers had also identified themselves as

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 1

N. O’Leary, A Victim Community, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87679-1_1
2 N. O’Leary

belonging to Al-Qaeda in Yemen. The perpetrators claimed the attack

was carried out to avenge the Prophet Mohammed for the newspaper’s
derogatory portrayal of Islam. Eventually all three gunmen were shot
dead by French security services. The death toll overall came to 17.
The effects of these events were profound and widely felt, not only in
France but elsewhere. They raised a series of thorny and complex issues
that included the focus on free speech at all costs and concerns about the
execution of violence inspired by religious and political ideology (Walklate
& Mythen, 2016). However, others may have felt the attacks in Paris
amounted to a ‘moral violation’ (Beck, 2015). In the days that followed 7
January, 3.7 million people took to the streets and marched to protest. At
the same time the ‘Je suis Charlie’ slogan and logo were created by French
Art Director, Joachim Roncin. The website of Charlie Hebdo went offline
shortly after the shooting, and when it became live again, it bore the leg-
end Je suis Charlie on a black background. The slogan was first used on
Twitter with the hashtag #jesuischarlie. Within two days of the attack,
the slogan had become one of the most popular news hashtags in Twitter
history (Goldman & Pagilery, 2015). The numbers marching and the
international uptake of the slogan coalesced a multitude of values and
served as an articulation point for a range of principles around not just
free speech and security but also collective identity, resilience and victim-
hood. In the UK, over recent decades we can identify several other land-
mark cases and events that have produced similar widespread reaction in
one form or another: the killings of Stephen Lawrence and James Bulger
in 1993, the deaths of Sarah Payne in 2000, the disappearance of
Madeleine McCann in 2007 and most recently in 2021, the kidnap and
murder of Sarah Everard. These crimes are a selection of those that have
had a profound impact on society and reached a level of prominence and
awareness in the public eye. All are high-profile crimes which have
become the focus of extensive and extended popular and media attention
and created a significant collective social reaction.
The examples discussed and referred to above are all historically recent
examples of events that can be viewed as forms of victimisation. Some of
course are now known terrorist attacks, where spreading fear and uncer-
tainty amongst as many as possible is key and where the target is not only
individuals or groups of people, but attacks which are aimed at political
 1 Introduction 3

and cultural disruption, engendering a climate of fear and anxiety in soci-

ety more broadly. Reactions to such events often lead to political and
social discussions and some very wide-ranging questions both legally and
at the level of politics and media discourse. At the same time however,
these are examples of a globally pertinent issue that requires theoretical
and empirical attention. Crime victims are now very firmly on the map.
For politicians, the media and the public at large, criminal injury and loss
are a source of constant concern and anxiety. Both criminological and
victimological literatures have addressed much of this concern in recent
years (see Chermak, 1995; Green, 2008; Furedi, 2006), but what has yet
to be investigated is how local communities experience high-profile
crimes and the media attention and social reaction that inevitably fol-
lows. This book seeks to address this gap by empirically exploring how
two communities in the UK, Dunblane and Soham, who experienced
particularly high-profile crimes in the UK context, lived with the tragic
events at the time and the unrelenting attention of the world’s media
afterwards.
Of course, this is a phenomenon that is neither spatially nor tempo-
rally specific. These types of serious and high-profile crimes are not just
happening in the UK and Europe, the issue is a globally pertinent one.
Communities and peoples all over the world are suffering harm and vio-
lence and coming to terms with these events as forms of victimisation.
Neither is this a recent phenomenon, but what is clear is that these events
take on a different significance and produce different consequences when
taking place in a 24/7 crime news mediasphere (Greer & McLaughlin,
2011). The following are a necessarily brief selection of international
examples of high-profile crime events that we might consider forms of
wider victimisation.

Mumbai, India, 2008

Perpetrators: Ten gunmen including Mohammed Ajmal
Kasab.
Details: In the city of Mumbai, India, in November
2008, a series of terrorist attacks were carried
4 N. O’Leary

out, when 10 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba,

an Islamic terrorist organisation based in
Pakistan, carried out 12 coordinated shoot-
ing and bombing attacks lasting four days
across the Indian city. The attacks began on
Wednesday 26 November and lasted until
Saturday 29 November 2008. At least 174
people died, including 9 attackers, and more
than 300 were wounded. The 10 Pakistani
men associated with the terror group
Lashkar-e-Taiba stormed several buildings in
Mumbai, killing 166 people and injuring a
further 293. Nine of the gunmen were killed
during the attacks, one survived. Mohammed
Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunman,
was executed in November 2012. The perpe-
trators travelled from Karachi, Pakistan, to
Mumbai via boat. Along the way, they
hijacked a fishing trawler and killed the cap-
tain and the crew members. The men docked
at the Mumbai waterfront near the Gateway
of India monument. They hijacked cars,
including a police van, and split into at least
three groups to carry out the attacks, accord-
ing to police. The attackers used automatic
weapons and grenades.
Context: There had been many other terrorist attacks
in Mumbai since the 13 coordinated bomb
explosions that killed 257 people and injured
700 on 12 March 1993.
Motive: The 1993 attacks were carried out in revenge
for earlier religious riots that killed many
Muslims. International reaction for the
attacks was widespread, with many countries
and international organisations condemning
 1 Introduction 5

the attacks and expressing their condolences

to the civilian victims.
Consequences/Coverage: Media coverage highlighted the use of social
media and social networking tools, including
Twitter and Flickr, in spreading information
about the attacks. In addition, many Indian
bloggers offered live textual coverage of the
attacks. A map of the attacks was set up by a
web journalist using Google Maps.
Commented on as the most well-docu-
mented terrorist attack anywhere.

Oslo/Utoya, Norway, 2011

Perpetrator: Anders Behring Breivik.
Details: On 22 July 2011 Anders Breivik killed 77 people, 8 by
setting off a car bomb in Oslo (also injuring a further
209) and killing a further 69 in a shooting spree on the
island of Utoya, 40 kilometres away (where in addition
at least 110 were injured).
The island attack occurred less than two hours after the
first in Oslo and took place at a summer camp organised
by the AUF, the youth division of the ruling Norwegian
Labour Party. The camp is held there every summer and
was attended by approximately 600 teenagers. Breivik,
dressed in a homemade police uniform and showing
false identification, took a ferry to the island. He told
those on the island that he was there for security reasons
following the explosions in Oslo. He then asked the
young people to gather around him before pulling weap-
ons and ammunition from a bag and firing at them
indiscriminately. He continued the shooting and killing
as he moved around the island and surrounding waters.
The police arrived around one hour after the first alarm
call at which point Breivik surrendered.
6 N. O’Leary

Motive: Breivik is as a right-wing fundamentalist. He supported

a far-right idea that Norway’s accessible open culture
was being undermined by immigration. He was also a
man who was not ashamed of what he did/was about to
do. He had obtained the correct uniform and dressed
as a policeman—he had planned well enough to have
weapons (and ammunition) that he was going to shoot
for two hours; he spoke to the young people on the
island saying, ‘Gather round, I want to ask you some
questions,’ and then shot them. Crucially, he did not
take his own life; he was making a point, not trying to
be a martyr.
Context: Norway has a population of around five million, so
given that young people at the summer camp were part
of national youth movement, the loss that these actions
entailed was far reaching. Both spree and serial killings
in Scandinavia are relatively rare.
Consequences: Norway is a country with a reputation for charity and
humanity. Indeed, in the aftermath of these events,
both the political leaders at the time and the people of
Norway demonstrated for the attacks to be met with
more openness and democracy. This stands in contrast
to the rather more draconian responses set in place by
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President
George W. Bush after the bombings of 7/7 (2005) and
9/11 (2001), respectively.

Cologne, Germany, New Year’s Eve, 2015/2016

Details: During the 2015/2016 New Year’s Eve celebrations in
Germany, there were reports of mass sexual assaults,
alleged rapes and numerous thefts in Germany, with
many taking place in Cologne city centre. Many of the
incidents involved women being surrounded and
assaulted by large numbers of men operating in groups,
 1 Introduction 7

leading to speculation that the assaults were organised.

The Cologne assaults were not reported by the national
media for days, and many news outlets started report-
ing it only after a wave of anger on social media made
covering the story unavoidable. Several months later
the authorities admitted that on New Year’s Eve, more
than 1200 women were sexually assaulted in various
German cities, including more than 600 in Cologne
and about 400 in Hamburg.
Consequences: This event has had many consequences, not least in
relation to the hardening of attitudes towards immi-
grants/refugees in Germany (as many of the alleged
perpetrators were reported to be of Arab or North
African origin and their immigration status was ques-
tioned in the media), but also in the distrust towards
government and the media, particularly after their lack
of and then ‘late’ reporting. Legislative changes in
German law were also made, broadening the definition
of sexual assault to include any sexual act that a victim
declines through verbal or physical cues. Previously
German law required a victim to physically resist their
attacker (BBC News, 7 July 2016).

Since the attacks in Cologne and Hamburg, there have been several
further high-profile terrorist attacks that occurred in the UK and Europe
including but not limited to March 2016—a series of attacks in Brussels
at both the Airport and the Metro that left 35 dead and 340 injured.
July 2016—in the French city of Nice, a 19-tonne cargo truck was
deliberately driven into crowds of people celebrating Bastille Day, result-
ing in the deaths of 86 people and injuring 458 others.
December 2016—Berlin Christmas Market attack, 12 dead and 56
injured.
March 2017—Westminster attack, London. 6 dead, 49 injured.
May 2017—Manchester Arena bombing, 23 dead, 119 injured.
June 2017—London Bridge attacks, 11 dead, 48 injured.
8 N. O’Leary

Introducing the Notion

of a ‘Victim Community’
All of these events have had profound and far-reaching effects in the
countries where they took place in France, the UK and on the global
stage. Many of these concerns within criminal justice and public policy
arenas have been investigated, and important political, legislative and
social repercussions have been addressed by the criminological and victi-
mological literature. What has not been clear is how these, and events like
them, are identified as forms of victimisation, not only for those primary
victims involved but also for the wider (local) community and broader
still—media and virtual national/international audience. Important
questions remain unasked as to what such events mean for our under-
standings of identity, collective victimisation, stigma and resilience. Such
events then bring into focus some of the questions that this book aims to
consider; how do such events seem to act disproportionately on how cer-
tain crime problems are more broadly conceived? What is the role of the
media and social reaction in that process? And what are the process of
collective victimhood in this and how do communities experience high-­
profile crime and the media attention that inevitably follows?
The traditional or positivist strand of victimology, emulating the sister
discipline of criminology, is pre-occupied with measuring the nature and
extent of criminal victimisation and the impact that such victimisation
has on people. Consequently, positivism reflects a rather individualistic,
passive and static understanding of the process of criminal victimisation
and betrays an implicit acceptance of a functionalist view of society
(Walklate, 1989). Other areas within victimology have also broadened
the horizons of the discipline. By focusing on the powerful as arbiters of
social harm, radical victimologists have either embraced a human rights
perspective in setting an agenda for their work (e.g. Elias, 1993) or have
argued much more directly for a ‘victimology of state crime’ (Rothe, &
Kauzlarich, 2014). This victimology brings to the table a much wider
appreciation of the concept of victim and by definition makes visible
categories of victims hidden from view within positivism. This is of course
to be valued and applauded. However, such a radical perspective still
 1 Introduction 9

presumes that the law dictates who counts as a victim of such crime; in
this instance, ‘law’ refers to international codes, the Court of Human
Rights or the Geneva Convention, for example. Thus, some aspects of
radical victimology are marked by an inherent conservatism similar to
that found within positive victimology.
Also, there are several applications; the critical victimology offered by
Mawby and Walklate (1994) affords the best opportunity to reframe our
understandings of the victim. This perspective foregrounds the processes
that create the victims we ‘see’ as well as the ones we do not ‘see’, while
simultaneously recognising that the victim is a human agent who can
adopt an active as well as a passive role in response to their experiences of
criminal victimisation (Walklate, 2016). Consequently, critical victimol-
ogy is helpful here in that it asks essential questions about the term ‘vic-
tim’ itself, and the circumstances in which it is applied.
Whilst the relationship between victim and crime has received atten-
tion within the study of victims, very little is known about communities
of victims or how victimisation is represented and experienced by those
who are caught up in the maelstrom of media coverage in the wake of a
serious and high-profile crime. There is academic discourse around media
effects and impacts and wider victimological discourse, but work on vic-
tim communities in this context is not (yet) developed.
This book introduces the notion of a ‘victim community’, a collective
who have been victimised not only by the commission of an offence but
also the media and societal reaction to it. The concept is a vehicle by
which to explore and understand the role and the influence of the media
in the construction and representation of identity. This book suggests
that a ‘victim community’ can be considered a collective of those who
belong or are physically located at a site where a serious and high-profile
crime has taken place. A victim community in the physical sense may be
constructed or shaped both by the media itself and its role in coordinat-
ing and articulating a social reaction in the wake of certain significant and
highly mediatised crimes. As a consequence, some of those within the
‘victim community’ may come to acquire a collective sense of stigma and
spoiled identity. The condition of late modernity is often described as
concerned and fearful, producing an anxiety that comes with the loss of
a sense of belonging, in which case people may seek to establish new
10 N. O’Leary

identities, which may, if only on a temporary basis, make them feel part
of a wider community. A victim community in a symbolic sense, there-
fore, may be considered more of a late-modern community of choice,
enabled by new media technologies to achieve a sense of community,
albeit without the attached sense of stigma. In some senses, new media
technologies1 may offer a part solution to the perceived problems of dis-
location in late-modern society by fostering such a sense of identity and
community across space and time. Therefore, in order to explore how
victim communities may occur, in both a physical and symbolic sense, it
is necessary to understand how the various elements of victim identity,
community, late modernity and new media technology culminate and
combine.
This work does not imply that victim communities are necessarily a
new phenomenon or that they do not or did not exist before the late-­
modern age and the onset of mass media production in all its various
present-day forms. This book suggests that the label or identity attached
to a ‘victim community’ can be both an internal and an external state; it
can exist, physically or symbolically, with or without media (re)construc-
tion and representation. However, as a key element this book examines
how and why the media plays such a central and significant part in pro-
pelling certain crime events into the public sphere with sufficient vigour
and emotional intensity to shape public fears of victimisation, often
invoking the strongest public reaction locally, nationally and sometimes
globally.
The central aims of this book are to understand and locate the stories
of these communities within an analysis addressing and questioning the
nature, impact and effects of that victimisation, the characteristics of
social relations and cultural identity in late modernity and the role of the
media in that complex process of victimisation. There are very few studies
that have researched the process of becoming a victim2 and none that have
focused on being a victim and the meaning attributed to this process by

1
Here we refer to new media technologies as those that deliver on-demand access to content irre-
spective of time or place, as well as the possibility of interactive use, creative participation and
community formation around the media content.
2
However, as noted, see McGarry and Walklate (2015) for foregrounding theoretical issues and
discussion.
 1 Introduction 11

victims themselves, via the mediated and social reaction of others. There
are very real and tangible impacts on and consequences for those living in
the shadow of such terrible and serious events and also for others wider
still via media dissemination and presentation.
This book is based on a two-year qualitative study that looks at the
relationships, dilemmas and unexpected triumphs of these communities
struggling to come to terms with the most harrowing of events, within
the glare of the media spotlight by telling the stories of those who live in
places where such high-profile crimes have happened. It examines the
experiences of two such communities in the UK—Dunblane and
Soham—that have witnessed high-profile crimes and lived with the tragic
events at the time and the attention of the world’s media afterwards.
These two cases are historically recent examples of events as forms of vic-
timisation, which have impact on and consequences for our study of
identity, collective victimisation, stigma and resilience. These are margin-
alised but relevant areas of investigation as the kaleidoscope of victimo-
logical theory and research explores and illuminates those darker areas of
knowledge and interest which have traditionally harboured an invisibility
of such communities suffering. What has not been clear is how this and
events like it are identified as forms of victimisation, not only for those
victims involved but also for the wider (local) and broader still—media
and virtual national/international audience. Important questions remain
unasked as to what such events mean for our understandings of identity,
collective victimisation, stigma and resilience.

The Victimological and the Cultural

As noted by Jenks (2003), there are events (such as discussed here) that
transgress our collective and individual understanding of what we can
take for granted in our everyday lives in relation to what is understood as
crime and victimisation. The media coverage and reporting of such seri-
ous crimes and terrorist attacks (and indeed other ‘natural’ disasters) is
intended to emotionally move us and to encourage us to place ourselves
alongside the victims, to feel what they feel—are they not after all just
like us? The excavation of our feelings in this way poses questions not
12 N. O’Leary

only about the role of the media in late modernity but also about the
events themselves and about the creation of suffering. Suffering and harm
are of course also experienced and caused by many more events of mun-
dane or ‘ordinary’ everyday acts of criminal victimisation. This ordinari-
ness of suffering (Walklate, 2012) is also experienced by many other lives
globally, which are characterised by poverty, war or famine. However,
suffering which was once deemed private has become much more public
in recent years. In this shift from private suffering to public suffering, it
is suggested that ‘we are all victims now’ (Furedi, 2006; Mythen, 2007).
The work of Claire Valier (2004) has also hinted at this with a ‘return to
the gothic’, the vicarious attention to the suffering of others. Here we are
placed side by side with the victim and encouraged to feel what they feel,
primarily through the use of the visual via TV, film, internet and social
media technology. Within the political and criminal justice arena too,
policies such as victim impact statements and compensation schemes are
intended to give voice to the victim, reflecting a similar empathetic intent
to move us. As McEvoy and Jamieson (2007, p. 425) suggest, ‘Suffering
becomes reshaped, commodified, and packaged for its public and didac-
tic salience’. It is a particular kind of suffering, however: it is an individu-
alised as opposed to a collective suffering. Such cultural narratives of
victimisation point to the importance of recognising how we understand
harm and who is placed to define it.
At the forefront of development of cultural victimology are McGarry
and Walklate (2015), who characterise cultural victimology as broadly
comprising of two key aspects. These are the wider sharing and reflection
of individual and collective victimisation experiences on the one hand
and the mapping of those experiences through the criminal justice pro-
cess on the other. Cultural victimology is a relatively newcomer to the
victimological literature over recent years in an attempt to incorporate a
number of features of the modern social, political and cultural landscape
which both surrounds and permeates the notion of being a ‘victim’. These
features include the increasingly visual nature of social life and the sym-
bolic displays of shared emotion that go along with this. Central to this
cultural approach to victimisation is an understanding of victimhood as
a dynamic and developing concept, both in terms of society’s understand-
ing of it and the individual (or group) victim’s personal experience (see
 1 Introduction 13

also Green et al., 2021). The contemporary turn to visual culture affords
a window of opportunity for victimologists to think critically about their
role in framing this culture. As argued by Walklate (2012, p. 181), here
is the space for witnessing—the potential that ‘demands our engagement
with what we see and challenges us to think about what we do not see’.
This notion that victimisation is no longer an ‘individual’ experience but
in many cases transcended the direct (or even indirect) victims to include
still larger groups within society is a key feature of victimology’s cul-
tural turn.
This book is concerned with the process of victimisation, the process
of becoming a victim, in the eyes of the establishment and the public at
large. In precisely this way, cultural victimology has problematised the
basic understanding of who is and who is not regarded as a genuine vic-
tim by focusing increased attention on the process of becoming recognised
as a victim rather than assuming this as a static concept. This is what this
book seeks to empirically explore and develop and to examine how par-
ticular ‘serious’ and ‘tragic’ crime events seem to act disproportionately
on how certain crime problems are more broadly conceived, including
the role of the mass media and social reaction in that process.

Bearing Witness and Je Suis Charlie

The cultural approach to victimology emphasises the sense of a public
‘bearing witness’ to victimisation of some crime events (Spencer, 2010),
especially through social media and 24-hour television coverage. Indeed,
in other cases of victimisation around the world, the point has been
reached where people thousands of miles away can (bear) witness to
crimes in real time through the social media updates of those involved on
the ground. Such incidents can be ‘witnessed’ live through media report-
ing within minutes of occurrence, and in the following hours/days, hun-
dreds of mobile phone-captured images/videos of the events as they
occurred can be broadcast almost as they happen. Often the cultural por-
trayal of an attack or terrorism, for example, is not just on individuals but
on society and the whole of ‘British democracy’.
14 N. O’Leary

What this brings to the fore is the collective unity shown after terrorist
incidents—the notion that the residents of the particular location are col-
lectively victimised, which in turn points to another prominent feature of
cultural victimology: a greater deference to the concept of mass victimisa-
tion (McGarry & Walklate, 2015). Elements of such collective victimisa-
tion can also be passed down through generations, and this can be seen
in relation to many incidents referred to earlier in the chapter, for exam-
ple, London after the terrorist bombings of 7 July 2005 and the March
2017 Westminster attacks, where media commentary was around
Londoners drawing on the resilience shown by older generations in that
city who lived through the Blitz during World War II. Indeed, the same
sense of collective cultural mourning is now present at an international
level in these major cases. On what might be usefully termed a ‘macro’
level, we can see this reflected by what has become an almost expected
ritual of national landmarks around the world being adorned in the
colours of the ‘country’ most recently victim of an attack, filtering down
to individuals updating their social media pictures to reflect the same
flag/colours of support and/or defiance. These examples further illustrate
the culturally informed and politicised nature of issues of victimhood in
the twenty-first century.
Extensive media coverage of the events in January 2015 in particular
inspired Je suis Charlie. This slogan and logo were adopted by supporters
of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, after the 7 January shoot-
ing. Very quickly, the slogan became a byword for empathy and associa-
tion with the victims of the attack and more broadly with the wider
community of victims, Paris, France, and then eventually, all who stand
against such violence.
The slogan was first used on Twitter. The website of Charlie Hebdo
went offline shortly after the shooting, and when it became live again, it
bore the words Je suis Charlie on a black background. The statement was
used as the hashtag #jesuischarlie and #iamcharlie on Twitter, as
computer-­printed or hand-made placards and stickers and displayed on
mobile phones and on many media websites. Within two days of the
attack, the slogan had become one of the most popular news hashtags in
Twitter history (Goldman & Pagilery, 2015). Je suis Charlie trended at
the top of Twitter hashtags on 7 January, the day of the attack. By the
 1 Introduction 15

following afternoon it had appeared more than 3.4 million times and was
being used nearly 6500 times per minute (Whitehead, 2015). By the end
of the first week, it had appeared more than 5 million times (Goldman &
Pagilery, 2015).
The Je suis Charlie slogan was adopted worldwide, was used in music,
displayed in print and animated cartoons (including The Simpsons) and
became the new name of a town square in France. The slogan and similar
ones adopted following similar events are intended to evoke solidarity
with the victims, as other similar phrases have done. Such “I am” and
“We are” slogans express empathy, outrage and horror by subsuming our-
selves into victims’ identities. Je suis Charlie has also been compared to
another phrase of solidarity, “Ich bin ein Berliner” (“I am a Berliner”), a
declaration by U.S. President John F. Kennedy on 26 June 1963, in West
Berlin on the 15th anniversary of the Berlin blockade.

The Research
This book is based on ethnographic fieldwork in the communities of
Dunblane and Soham and interviews with 39 community members. The
research fell broadly into three phases. The first was an exploratory phase
(initially about 6 months) which involved information gathering and sec-
ondary data collection including national and local newspaper articles in
preparation for a content analysis. I also used some of this material to
identify any potential contacts from within each community. The second
phase (another 6 months) was spent visiting the two research sites staying
overnight, drinking in the cafes and visiting significant places of interest.
These visits also saw me walking the streets of Dunblane and Soham,
visiting the churches and memorials, where so many tributes were laid in
the days, weeks and months following the crimes; spending time in situ
and talking with those I met there, finding my empirical feet as it were.
Overall and for the most part, people seemed open to the idea of my
research, though understandably many were keen to protect their confi-
dentiality and participation was an individual choice. Eventual access to
prospective participants was on a ‘word of mouth’ basis and interviews
therefore had to be negotiated individually. I was introduced to some
16 N. O’Leary

community members by others, which enabled me to reach several prom-

inent individuals. One member in particular in Soham was very helpful,
finding me somewhere to stay and making several helpful introductions.
This individual did much to ensure that I was introduced and at least
accepted in the first instance by some others in the community and their
recommendations no doubt helped to encourage more to participate in
the research. However, this was not always the case and there were several
instances when those who were recommended to me declined to take
part in the study.
Gaining access is unpredictable, particularly where the research is seen
as sensitive in nature, as the one thing needed to ensure successful access
is a detailed theoretical understanding of the social organisation of the
setting one is attempting to enter. In other words, ‘that which is most
likely to secure access can only be gained once the researcher is actually
inside the setting’ and has carried out the fieldwork. I was careful not to
address the issue of access as one that only takes place at the initial phase
of entry to the research setting. Instead, it is an ongoing and implicit
process, which needs to be continually renegotiated, often on a personal
and one-to-one basis. Access had to be revisited not only each time I
made a new contact but also when revisiting those who had not previ-
ously responded or when returning to participants at a later date. The
concept of access can be helpfully thought of as a journey where social
access is the ‘process of “getting along” through establishing a research
role, building a rapport with participants and securing their trust’ (Noaks
& Wincup, 2004, p. 63). Although physical access is a likely precondi-
tion of the social (Lee, 1993), the latter should not be taken for granted
and can remain problematic. As literature on this topic notes, past experi-
ences of research (or in this case, previous experience of the media) often
make group members cynical and they may assume the worst about an
outsider (Lee, 1993). This was something that was particularly resonant
given the nature of this research subject and the intense media coverage
that the communities had already received of the serious crimes both at
the time and subsequently. As a prospective outsider attempting to enter
these communities, I was acutely aware that I may be considered as part
of that interest and assigned a negative ‘role’ on that basis.
 1 Introduction 17

Thus, the third phase of research (the following 12 months) took place
travelling between Dunblane and Soham, respectively, where I interviewed
39 participants across both communities, normally in their own homes or
out on a walk, or somewhere else but always chosen by the participant.
Participants would be more relaxed on their own territory; we could break
as and when needed, and they could explain events that had occurred in
the local area or close by with much more ease. I would often be shown
photographs or media clippings about the event and at times, other per-
sonal props which seemed important to the telling of their stories. It was
also invaluable to be able to talk informally, in and around the taped ses-
sions. I was often welcomed into people’s homes and shown hospitality,
always offered tea or coffee and sometimes lunch. This welcoming attitude
is often not recognised in reports of research (Oakley, 1981).
Interviews with the 39 community participants lasted between 40 min-
utes and 3 hours with 1–1.5 ours being the average. All of the interviews
took place in one sitting. An interview guide was used to structure the
questions, although this was very flexible, and interviews were allowed to
flow in a conversational and narrative manner. The transcripts of the
interviews would later be taken apart and coded, but I was also interested
in how the participants narrated their lives and experiences and in how
they told their stories and talked about the past, present and future in
relation to their self and community identity. Appendix C records the
interviewees’ characteristics.

Outline of the Book

Chapter 1 reviews the current literature around victimology and identity,
including an analysis of the theoretical boundaries and limitations of exist-
ing understandings of the notion of the victim. Considering the impact of
victim identity at a community level, this first chapter also explores key
sociological themes of labelling and stigma and of how they may be refracted
to scrutinise victimisation at a community level. In order to explain and
understand the socio-cultural conditions in which the phenomena of victim
communities may arise, this first chapter also examines the issue of com-
munity in relation to the pertinent criminological and victimological theory.
18 N. O’Leary

However, its focus is on the diverse late-modern and symbolic notions of

community, where technology plays a key role in reshaping social relations,
beyond the traditional categories of place and space. Chapter 2 moves on to
engage with the media as a key source through which concepts of crime,
victims and victimisation are given meaning in contemporary society. By
examining the significance and impact of the 24/7 mediasphere (Greer &
McLaughlin, 2011) and the intense media and social interest that follow
serious and high-profile mega cases (Peelo, 2006), this chapter critically
scrutinises how collective victim identity is culturally constructed, repre-
sented and remade by the media in these cases.
The following two chapters (Chapters. 3 and 4) each provide a detailed
case study of the two research sites (Dunblane and Soham), by telling the
story through the lived experiences and responses of those in the communi-
ties involved. A snapshot of the media coverage of both cases is provided to
‘set the scene’ and to provide context within which the community themes
are broadly situated. These chapters introduce the reader to the quiet
moments of kindness, the sometime solidarity of a community under siege
as well as to the anger, frustration and division generated by both the most
heinous of crimes and the pressure of the media and public reaction to
them. Chapter 5 then returns us to the broader literature and discusses the
implications of these findings and the present study for the academic litera-
ture on victimology, media and ‘late modernity’. As its starting point, this
book forms part of a burgeoning ‘cultural victimology’ that awakens and
examines the different meanings that people can give to their lives as a
result of the harm they have experienced (Green et al., 2021; Green &
Pemberton, 2018; McGarry & Walklate, 2015; Walklate, 2012).

References
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media. Westview Press.
Elias, R. (1993). Victims still: The political manipulation of crime victims. Sage
Publications.
 1 Introduction 19

Furedi, F. (2006). Culture of fear revisited: Risk-taking and the morality of low
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dren kill a child. Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal, 4(2),
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Green, S., Calverley, A., & O’Leary, N. (2021). A new approach for researching
victims: The ‘strength-growth-resilience’ framework. British Journal of
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mediasphere and the ‘politics of outrage’. Theoretical Criminology, 15(1),
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Jenks, C. (2003). Transgression. Routledge.
Lee, R. M. (1993). Doing research on sensitive topics. London: Sage Publications.
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tives. Sage.
McEvoy, K., & Jamieson, R. (2007). Conflict, suffering and the promise of
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1741659006065404
Rothe, D., & Kauzlarich, D. (Eds.). (2014). Towards a victimology of state crime.
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
20 N. O’Leary

Spencer, D. (2010). Event and victimisation. Criminal Law and Philosophy,

5(1), 39–52.
Valier, C. (2004). Crime and punishment in contemporary culture. In London.
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 2
The Paradoxes and Contradictions
of ‘Victim’ and ‘Community’

This chapter gives a background and context to the varied theoretical

perspectives that have something relevant to contribute to our under-
standing of ‘victim communities’. In doing so, it considers victimhood
and identity by exploring interactionist works regarding labelling (Becker,
1963; Lemert, 1969) and stigma and spoiled identity (Goffman, 1963)
and extrapolates as to how they may be refracted to scrutinise victimisa-
tion at a collective level. Wider notions of victim status and secondary/
indirect victimisation are considered within the foundational perspective
of cultural victimology (McGarry and Walklate (2015), Walklate (2012)
and Mythen (2007).
This chapter also explores issue of community in relation to pertinent
sociological, criminological and victimological theory. The relationship
between crime and community has a long criminological history, with
early notions of criminogenic communities developed by the Chicago
School. Some more recent works encourage a re-theorisation of the
crime-community link and a consideration of social theories concerning
identity, culture and belonging (see, e.g. Evans, 2016 and Green, 2014).
This chapter also considers community in terms of collective action.
Community also emerges around global communications whereby it

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 21

N. O’Leary, A Victim Community, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87679-1_2
22 N. O’Leary

becomes constituted in new relations of virtual proximity and distance.

We are also interested in the symbolic nature of communities (Cohen,
1985) and the ways in which technology plays a key role in reshaping
social relations beyond the traditional categories of place.
The construction of social identity is an established but diverse area of
research interest. In late modernity, levels of uncertainty, risk and insecu-
rity, it is argued, concentrate a focus upon identity as a source of meaning
(Bauman, 2013). Community has a contemporary resonance in this cur-
rent social and political situation through the expression of collective
identities and interests alongside the fragmentation and fluidity of identi-
ties. The notion of ‘community’ and its place in late-modern society is
contested. Yet if anything unites these very diverse conceptions of com-
munity, it is the idea that community concerns belonging.

What (and Who) Is a ‘Victim’?

A victim may be defined in a variety of different ways: a person injured or
harmed as a result of a crime, incident or other event/action, or someone
who is duped or defrauded or who has come to feel helpless or passive
when facing mistreatment or disaster. In all of these cases, the ‘victim’
possesses a number of key, taken-for-granted and recognisable character-
istics. However, these definitions may be voluntary or involuntary,
applied immediately or gradually; they may have consequences or not;
victimhood therefore is a highly contested term and status. As McGarry
and Walklate (2015) have argued, suffering, power relations and choice
are all important concepts as to how we understand the label and the
status of ‘victim’.
Richard Quinney (1975) proposed the term ‘victim’ as a social con-
struct, a point also crucial for Miers (1990) who urges victimology to
analyse both the social processes of labelling individuals as victims and
the impact of such labelling on the individual. Significant to these discus-
sions is an understanding that here ‘victim’ is an identity, one that is
socially manufactured and dependent on others who shape the larger
social environment where it is positioned and interpreted. Such a con-
structionist lens helps to illuminate the processes and implications of
 2 The Paradoxes and Contradictions of ‘Victim’ and ‘Community’ 23

acquiring victim status and in the way beliefs about the victim interact
with and inform the world around us. The crucial point from this per-
spective is that the term ‘victim’, like the term ‘offender’, is conceived of
as a social status that is ascribed to a person according to formal and
informal rules. Without this status, a person will not be regarded as a
victim. According to Miers (1990) in order to acquire this status, it is
important that a person first self-identifies as a victim and then presents
their suffering in a way that complies with the social definition of
victimisation.
However, there are more nuanced discussions to be had on the social
construction of the victim, and Strobl (2004) analyses the conditions for
ascription of the victim role. With regard to self-identification and social
recognition of a victim status, Strobl offers four analytical possibilities or
outcomes. Unproblematically, if both self-recognition and social recogni-
tion are in agreement, this leads to an outcome of ‘actual victim’ or ‘non-­
victim’, respectively. Contest, however, comes in two forms. The third
outcome of ‘rejected victim’ is the one who identifies as a victim, but not
ascribed this status by important others, and the fourth remaining out-
come is the ‘designated victim’, one who is granted the status but does
not see themselves in the role of victim. Thus, depending on varying
degrees of knowledge, attitudes, cultural beliefs and values, self-labelling
as a victim can be relatively easy, relatively hard or almost impossible
(Burt 1983, in Strobl, 2004, p. 296). If the self-identity of the victim
does not match the social identity, then there may be many difficulties in
gaining social status, which of course is the gateway to efficient forms of
help and support. This status is further exacerbated for those persons who
are socially marginalised, who are not only at a high risk of being victim-
ised but also encounter difficulties being recognised as victims and there-
fore may be denied the socially accepted victim status that could grant
help and support. The significance of Strobl’s categorisation and a central
theme of this book is the focus on process (for further discussions, see
McGarry & Walklate, 2015). More specifically, the main challenge here
is the question of who is (and who is not) recognised as a victim, the
process by which this occurs, who is involved in the process of recogni-
tion of victimhood and in particular the outcomes and consequences of
this for those involved.
24 N. O’Leary

 ome Limitations to Our

S
Victimological Knowledge
It is clear there are still some areas of our victimological knowledge and
understanding that would benefit from further exploration and empirical
research. The first of these is associated with collectivising the term ‘vic-
tim’. As discussed, the idea of a victim means quite different things to
different audiences, including those to whom the concept may be applied.
Each identifiable representation of what it is to be a ‘victim’ has been
shaped by the historical, political and academic context. Those who have
championed each representation often had contradictory purposes, inter-
ests and methodologies that shaped the way the topic of victims was con-
sidered. For Rock, this obscures the ‘scholarly understanding of who and
what victims are’ (2002, p. 12). In part, we still know little about who
claims victim status and the circumstances under which this becomes
part of their identity, even though in the 20 years since, we have a much
keener appreciation of the complexity and expansive landscape and con-
tours of victimhood.
A second area of limitation is around the representation and connota-
tion of the ‘victim’ label. Victims do not necessarily have the opportunity
to define or shape the circumstances of their own victimhood identity
(Jacoby, 2015). This will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter.
How we research knowledge in this area is another source of difficulty.
Victim surveys, for example, are constructed to collect an anonymous set
of responses in a limited social context and cannot appreciate complex
social relations that develop over time. Consequently, they tend to cam-
ouflage the more existential elements in the representation and develop-
ment of victimisation. In part, it is these limitations which this book is
attempting to expand.
As we have seen, there are areas within the study and research of victim
which could be developed and extended. The most pertinent of this for
this study includes the problem of identity and the examination of what
it means to be a victim. A deeper understanding of how people cope with
the experience of crime, what sense they come to make of it and what
information allows them to acquire or construct a victim identity is
 2 The Paradoxes and Contradictions of ‘Victim’ and ‘Community’ 25

crucial to the exploration of ‘victim communities’. As Rock pertinently

noted almost two decades ago, there may be a ‘void that has yet to be
filled by an adequate description of the victim as a situated, reflective self
in interaction with others’ (2002, p. 13). This ‘void’ is still at least par-
tially present and it is this potential gap in the literature that this book
aims to develop, as significant throughout these issues and underpinning
victim identity here is the notion of collective identity (representation of
and social reaction) to victim communities. The aim is, by widening and
refocusing victimology’s outlook, to include such victim communities
and other understudied victims, as this could ameliorate their general
absence from the academic agenda and work towards decreasing future
victimisation of this kind. It is critical for victimology to have a greater
effect on the world, and that it deals with real-world problems, with peo-
ple and their difficulties (Sarkin, 2019). In order to do so, it might con-
sider a cultural victimological perspective and adopt a more pragmatic
role, widening the study parameters of victims to include, in this case,
empirical work with communities of victims.

Exploring Victim Identity

So, there are areas that amount to gaps in our existing knowledge about
certain ‘victims of crime’. Although victims have attracted increasing lev-
els of attention over the last few decades, both as a subject of criminologi-
cal inquiry and politically as a focus of criminal justice policy, there is still
no uniform and accepted definition of what victimology is (Sarkin, 2019)
or even who can claim to be a victim (as we have explored above). While
the study of victims has put victims’ needs and rights on the agenda, the
same concern has not been uniformly applied to all victims. By no means
the only omission here, but a certain gap, in our knowledge around the
exploration of collectives of victims or the notion of communities as vic-
tims; how their identity is constructed, represented and contested is an
area yet to receive significant consideration. Indeed, much criminological
research and criminal justice policy draws from a group that has been
officially defined as victims, at the neglect and marginalisation of those
who are affected in a less direct or hidden way.
26 N. O’Leary

The academic study of victims of crime is well rehearsed and can be

traced back to the theoretical and empirical work of Von Hentig (1967)
and Mendelsohn (1963), both of whom were exploring the relationship
between the victim and the offender. Certainly, over the last 40 years, the
prominence of crime victims in public life has grown and grown, and this
can be seen very clearly in criminal justice legislation and policy, aca-
demic research and media attention. So, things have changed.
Developments in social research and social theory and acknowledgment
of the victim by policy makers and practitioners (Walklate, 1989) have
combined to inform the growth in victim studies. This burgeoning explo-
ration into victimology had been broadly underpinned by three key theo-
retical perspectives. Firstly, a positivist or administrative victimology is
concerned with regular patterns of criminal victimisation, as given,
defined and responded to by the criminal justice process. The presump-
tion is that the term ‘victim’ is itself non-problematic, with little scope for
appreciation that the victim is one who has or makes choices. Secondly,
those with a more radical outlook centre on power relations and see the
powerful as arbiters of social harm. As such, they attempt to make visible
those who had been invisible to positivist concerns, such as victims of
oppression, state crime and victims of corporate crime. Thirdly and in
various guises, critical victimology draws attention to the importance of
understanding social mechanisms and processes that result in the pat-
terning of criminal victimisation that we see, as well as that which we do
not (Mawby & Walklate, 1994). In short critical victimology demands a
recognition of the structural dimensions and the processes of criminal
victimisation that are socio-economically and culturally situated and
brings to the fore the processes that create the victims we see, as well as
the ones which are less visible (Mawby & Walklate, 1994). This third
perspective of critical victimology is more useful to the concept of ‘victim
communities’, as it encourages a re-conceptualisation of the victim that
looks at experiences of victims and crucially asks questions about the
term ‘victim’ itself and the circumstances in which it is applied.
However, as already discussed, it is not only the contested nature of the
term ‘victim’ that needs examination but also the interactive processes
and mechanisms underpinning the establishment of that label. Both rad-
ical and critical victimologies variously propose the need to include
 2 The Paradoxes and Contradictions of ‘Victim’ and ‘Community’ 27

broader understandings of both the victimisers and the victims so that

hidden, neglected and voiceless victims are brought within the remit of
public concern and public policy (Davies, 2018). This is a welcome and
relevant area of investigation for this study regarding the construction,
identification and representation of victim communities.

F rom the Re-emergence of the ‘Victim’

to Cultural Victimology
Having faded in significance and view over the years, from academic,
policy and even social arenas, now we can of course identify a strong ‘re-­
emergence of the victim’ (within and without academic criminology).
Due in a large part to the contribution of feminist scholars, particular
characteristics or differences became important, in particular, which
identified vulnerable populations such as women and children (Walklate,
2012; Davies, 2018). Offences committed against such vulnerable vic-
tims, such as child abuse, were ‘discovered’ by police, social workers and
other professionals (Lea & Young, 1993), and crimes against women,
particularly domestic violence, rape and incest, were transformed from
private troubles into public issues and brought to social, political and
academic attention by the feminist criminologies of the 1970s and early
1980s (Smart, 1977). From here, we can identify a feminist-informed
critical victimology, which has shed light on two important issues. The
first is understanding the relationship between structure and context in
producing the victims we see and do not see, and the second the ways in
which the routine practices of everyday life produce and reproduce victi-
misation. And so, this returns us to the key questions of ‘who is seen as a
victim, and why’? Christie’s (1986) ideal victim concept of course out-
lines a characterisation which draws on early understandings of culpabil-
ity and vulnerability that still carries significant weight across many
different jurisdictions and cultures. However, what Christie was attempt-
ing to illustrate was an appreciation of a process where some are able to
acquire the label of victim readily and easily, and others never at all. This
process of acknowledgement is also discussed by van Wijk (2013) with
28 N. O’Leary

regard to the response to victims of international crimes. Acquiring the

label ‘victim’ is a complex process. What this book seeks to address in
addition is the role and the use of media to understanding the conditions
of successfully acquiring the status of victim, or not.
Enter cultural victimology. It is no longer a complete newcomer to the
academic field. Over the last 40 years there has been significant academic
commentary on the growing cultural salience of the crime victim in the
‘late-modern’ world (Garland, 2000; Green & Pemberton, 2018;
McGarry & Walklate, 2015). This turn to the cultural can be seen in
other observations regarding compensation culture (Furedi, 2006) and
private to public nature of the suffering of the victim (Valier, 2004).
Cultural victimology as proposed by McGarry and Walklate (2015) may
have the capacity to offer something both creative and critical to the
study of victims, particularly concerning politics and power relations. It
has certain interest and relevance therefore with regard to individual or
collective experiences of victimisation, the aftermath (how those experi-
ences are shared, publicly or otherwise), and with attention to the public
and emotional response to crime and the intermeshing of these processes
within the criminal justice system. Claire Valier also addresses the vicari-
ous attention paid to the suffering of others, in what she describes as a
return to the gothic (Valier, 2004). For Valier, this is manifested contem-
porarily and primarily through visual means. It is via image and visual
representation that we are all encouraged to stand side by side with vic-
tims, to feel what they feel. In the public nature of suffering, some voices
are heard, and others silenced, where silencing serves to frame some
events to the exclusion of others. In other words, those silences or absences
can be powerful. It is here that the role of the media in all its forms offers
understandings of social reality which contributes to a cultural political
economy.
What is being described here is the cultural shift in attention given to
suffering more broadly over and above the nature and impact of the harm
done, that is, the crime. Furedi (2006) argues that in the past ‘victims’ did
not necessarily identify as such; they were not defined or did not define
themselves by that experience. However, in more recent late-modern
times, there is a belief that victimhood affects us for life; it becomes a
crucial element of our identity, where society encourages those who suffer
 2 The Paradoxes and Contradictions of ‘Victim’ and ‘Community’ 29

from a crime or tragedy to invest that loss or harm with special meaning.
However, as understandings of victimhood have grown and developed
(from the most dominant position of positive victimology), we see that
there are different voices now competing for theoretical space within the
academy. So, in order to consider and place the concept of victim com-
munities within that, an understanding of what it means to be a victim
and the various processes by which that notion may be constructed,
negotiated and contested is crucial. For Furedi this shift in cultural values
can be attributed, at least in part, to notion of victim reward and com-
pensation (2006). Whilst not necessarily denying this implication, this
book investigates what other reasons might also be at play here.

Expanding Understandings of Victim Identity

Over time and across ideological boundaries, the term ‘victim’ means dif-
ferent things to different people, including those to whom the label may
be applied and the ‘other’ audiences. It is clear that not all those who are
wronged against will develop into full-blown victims. For some, possibly
those whose experience is confined to a fleeting and definable episode,
the label of victim may not carry with it significant weight or conse-
quences. Indeed, we know that some victims remain unaware or uncon-
cerned that they have been transgressed against (Hough, 2018). For some
the identity of victim is one to be accepted and embraced as becoming a
victim may have its rewards: sympathy, attention, the receiving of valida-
tion, being treated as blameless, the ability to give meaning and control
to a disturbing experience or financial compensation. For others however
the designation of the victim label is not appealing, more something to
be refrained from and even rejected. Alternative frames of reference may
be considered more desirable: patient, claimant or survivor, or indeed not
being recognised at all.
The experience and impact of being a ‘victim’, of accepting, claiming
or even rejecting that identity, is necessarily variable, ambiguous and
temporal. Such experiences can fluctuate in importance in one’s life; they
may develop gradually over time, or alternatively, the impact of the harm-
ful event and the subsequent identity experience may be unexpected and
30 N. O’Leary

traumatic. In this regard, difficult times may be eased by an abundance of

pre-existing narratives, laying out much of ‘how to be a victim’; these
texts may be supplied by counselling and therapy (Furedi, 2006); the
media in the form of narratives told in documentaries, films, television
programmes—factual and fictional—and newspaper reports; survivors
campaigns; and support groups. Such is the amount and conventionality
of these pre-ordained forms and narratives that questions have been asked
in some quarters as to the authenticity of the victim experience. It is here
that this research and book gain traction, where the understanding of
victims begins to lessen and the conceptual void around the issues of
victim identity begins.
So, it seems there is an identifiable neglect of a unifying analysis of
both crime and victimisation as a process involving people in interaction,
deploying meanings and changing identities (Rock, 2002). What is inter-
esting particularly in relation to victim communities and others who may
seek to attach themselves to such an identity are questions of when and
how people decide that they have been a ‘victim’ on some level of an act
identified as a crime and what they mean by that. What is the significance
of being a victim (at various levels) and if and when is this considered a
problem? How are these identities given or selected, defined and endorsed?
When, where and how would a victim seek support, take action or call
upon outsiders, and most importantly, is the label and identity as a victim
an enduring and significant one? In summary, when does a person under-
stand themselves to have become a victim (actual or symbolic) and what
are the processes and consequences involved in this for themselves and
others? Not enough is known about the experience and construction of
victim identity as a process, and there is a need to examine forms of ‘vic-
tim talk’ that are bound by the necessity of space, time, relations and
purposes (although see Green et al., 2021 for more recent exploration in
this area). Whilst some have argued that the need for this examination
would ‘reasonably apply to heavily victimised populations’ (Rock, 2002,
p. 21), such scrutiny is also much needed around other collectivities,
such as in this case, communities identified or ascribed as victims.
 2 The Paradoxes and Contradictions of ‘Victim’ and ‘Community’ 31

Secondary and ‘Other’ Victims of Crime

Whilst there may be a generally agreed acceptance of the significance and
legitimacy of many ‘primary’ victims, there is a more guarded and partial
acceptance of the importance and associated authority of ‘secondary vic-
tims’. Secondary victims are understood here as those who are indirectly
harmed, those who are the families and friends of the primary victims
and also the witnesses of crime, an area of crucial importance to the
exploration of victim communities. There is unsurprisingly some dispar-
ity around the status of the secondary victim, not only with regard to
who has the power to regulate admission and acceptance of the identity
but also around who is entitled to claim that identity for themselves, as
with the victim status more broadly. The relatives of particular murder
victims may be seen by some as valid in this instance, but for these and
other groups acknowledgement about who is a casualty of crime is uneven
and ambiguous. In her fascinating study on the consequences of crime
for relatives of serious offenders, Rachel Condry (2007) considers this
question of victim identity by examining the stigmatising experiences of
a group of relatives of those accused or convicted of serious crimes, those
family members who may or may not be ascribed the identity or status of
‘secondary’ or ‘other victims of crime’.
Other entirely different groups, who might be considered secondary
victims, are emergency staff or healthcare workers (Ullström et al., 2014)
who attend serious crime scenes or even offenders injured by their vic-
tims. This book suggests that victim communities associated with high-­
profile and highly mediatised crimes, for example, might be considered
one such ‘hidden group’ of secondary victims. Having suggested that vic-
tim status or identity cannot be taken for granted, those whom we most
readily consider as conventional or primary victims are more likely to
have their status ascribed or confirmed by the state; they are more likely
to have directly suffered a harm generally understood as a crime. Yet if we
apply the label of victim more willingly to some types of people than oth-
ers, then it follows that there must be a hierarchy of victims (Carrabine et
al., 2020). The higher up in the hierarchy, the more ‘ideal’ the victim, the
more innocent, the more deserving. These are the victims who may gain
32 N. O’Leary

sympathy more easily than others and concomitantly are more often
ascribed victim status. This manoeuvring for inclusion and exclusion
indicates the temporal and transient nature of what it is to be a victim
and that, in itself, is consistently tested and assessed.
David Garland has noted the importance of the contemporary and
increasingly political imperative that victims’ ‘voices must be heard, their
memory honoured, their anger expressed, their fears addressed’ (2001,
p. 11). This political rhetoric around victims routinely relies on the taken-­
for-­granted assumptions of the victim as a deserving figure whose suffer-
ing must be expressed. The application or acceptance of a victim identity
has important ramifications, and significantly, it establishes (intention-
ally or not) a frame of discourse where different identities may be trans-
formed. Becoming a ‘victim’ then may be more than it at first seems. It is
an emerging process of signification, involving the intervention and asso-
ciation of others whose meaning and impact may change over time,
punctuated by transitions, and even lack a fixed end state (Rock, 2002,
p. 17). This is the crucial question of acceptance or resistance by the
recipient, and it is this area and level of examination that is considered by
the research—the concepts of victimhood and identity at the commu-
nity level.

Vicarious Victims
So, victim identity occurs over different times and circumstances,
accepted and encouraged by some, while desisted and rejected by others.
However, there are further issues regarding victim identity that needs
further exploration. Firstly, there may be a refraction of victim identity
embraced by those who are not directly affected by the crime event—
even as a secondary victim—but nonetheless feel the need or want to
attach themselves to the events, to be part of the community and to feel
vicariously involved in the crime event that has taken place. Given the
ambiguous nature of the ‘victim’ label, these individuals may indeed be
eager to build part of their own (albeit temporary) identity on those stig-
matised foundations of loss and pain—those who actively want to attach
themselves to the victim status but are only vicariously affected by the
 2 The Paradoxes and Contradictions of ‘Victim’ and ‘Community’ 33

crime event and often only informed via the media: a level of (symbolic)
victim community.
In this way, whilst all those wronged against may not develop into
‘fully blown victims’ (Rock, 2002), it may be that there are a group who,
although they have not been wronged themselves, may seek to be seen as
victims, as part of a victim community of choice. This desire on one level
for a victim identity alludes to the discussion around identity with some
writers suggesting there is increasing competition in some senses for this
privileged and moral title in late-modern society (Rock, 2002).
Secondly, ‘other’ victims might also be those witnesses/bystanders or
others close that feel guilt/blame for non-intervention or not being aware
of a harmful event or victimisation taking place. Such groups may feel a
certain amount of stigma by association and guilt, respectively, question-
ing how they let this happen, could they have prevented the crime in any
way and how did they not notice what sort of person was in their midst.
This is particularly pertinent when considering witnesses or bystanders as
hidden victims. In the case of the murder of toddler James Bulger in
1993,1 the police investigation and subsequent criminal trial revealed 38
people who witnessed James and his abductors walking the route from
the Bootle Shopping Centre where he was first taken, to the railway line
some two miles away where he eventually met his death. This group came
to be known as ‘The Liverpool 38’, and some have spoken since of their
internal ongoing sense of shame and guilt that they did not intervene
and, in their minds, potentially change the outcome of events (Morrison,
1997) (see also the case of Kitty Genovese2 (Rosenthal, 1999), which
coincidentally also features a group of 38 potential witnesses who each
felt they could have potentially intervened). These ‘more indirect’ victims
should also be central to victimological endeavours as there may be very
clear parallels between the self-definitions taken on by the primary,

1
James Bulger was a 2-year-old boy from Merseyside, England, who was abducted, tortured and
murdered by two 10-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, on Friday, 12
February 1993.
2
In the early hours of 13 March 1964, Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old bartender was stabbed out-
side the apartment building where she lived, in the Kew Gardens neighbourhood of Queens in
New York City. Two weeks after the murder, The New York Times published an article claiming that
38 witnesses saw or heard the attack, and that none of them called the police or came to her aid.
34 N. O’Leary

secondary and indirect victims. Many have lost a sense of control. Many
have to acknowledge information that is impossible to accept, under-
stand and assimilate, and many have feelings of stigma and guilt and
often admit to a profound sense of bereavement and loss. Such groups
might be considered survivors of a traumatic ordeal and ‘other victims’
of crime.
This discussion around ‘other victims’ of crime raises a number of
important questions and implications. Firstly, it is clear that serious crime
affects almost all those whom it touches, not only the primary and
labelled victims and survivors themselves but also secondary, vicarious or
hidden victims and witnesses, and those who are associated with the
event in a more indirect way, such as police officers, jurors, witnesses,
bystanders, offenders’ families and offenders themselves (McGarry &
Walklate, 2015). Within this book then, we extend the literature around
this topic to consider another level of indirect victim, where a wider vic-
tim community is vicariously affected and stigmatised by association via
the media representations of the serious crime event and its consequences.
In addition, the effects of serious crime may alter for many their taken-­
for-­granted identities and relations, thus threatening the meaning which
people attach to themselves and their world. If the ripple effects of serious
crime cause confusion in this way, then claiming the status of victim with
all that it entails may satisfy a need to regain meaning and control in the
lives of previously hidden indirect victims.
This raises important and interesting questions not only about proce-
dures for establishing moral identity but also about the reach of crime,
the complexity of its impact and effects, the multiple consequences it
inflicts and the diversity of responses that it elicits. If over time, too many
groups or individuals make claim to the title of victim, does that make
the status any less meaningful? If people are so indelibly linked with the
crime event and/or the offender, are they are seen as less worthy of sym-
pathy and understanding than other victim groups? It is this notion of
how victims present themselves (or how they are enabled or encouraged
to present) that is of particular interest in relation to victim
communities.
Victimhood and the (self ) application of identity then are key issues
for this study. But they do not occur in a vacuum they occur in a social
 2 The Paradoxes and Contradictions of ‘Victim’ and ‘Community’ 35

and late-modern world, with reaction and interaction with self and oth-
ers. It is an exploration of these processes and impact of social reaction
that is now required.

Labelling, Stigma and Spoiled Identity

Firstly, we must briefly address the notion of labelling as it significantly
speaks to the nature of social reaction and is crucial in the examination of
identity. Labelling is a social assertion which transforms the doing of the
deviant act into a core part of a person’s identity, a symbolic reorganisa-
tion of self that affects their future performances and their own self-­
identity (Becker, 1963; Lemert, 1969). The stigma that is attached by the
process of labelling sticks; it affects how others see them as well as how
they see themselves. As Becker has argued, one result of this form of stig-
matisation is those who have been negatively labelled will also seek out
the company of others who have similarly been cast as outsiders (Becker,
1963). There is something to be gained from examining such effects of
labelling at a community level, not of offenders but instead with groups
of victims, victim communities.
However, the concept here is more than a classic labelling approach
that conceives labelling as merely a social reaction. Informed by cultural
victimology, this book views the conditions of victim identity or status as
an interaction between the ‘victim’ and society and its representatives
(including the police, judiciary, media and the public more broadly). As
discussed above, this is most helpful viewed as a process. Analysing vic-
timhood and identity in this way (as a result of a communication process
that includes labelling phenomena) opens up an exciting field for victi-
mological theory and research, shedding light on the factors that play
into the social ascription of victim status that could help reflect the prac-
tices of the institutions of social control. An increasingly relevant ques-
tion here concerns the conditions for the successful communication of a
case of victimisation. Factors leading to the recognition of victimisation
and to an application of victim status can be analysed in different social
contexts.
36 N. O’Leary

There are then many issues raised by the labelling perspective that are
pertinent and relevant in an exploration of victim communities, but at
the same time, it is essential not to oversimplify the labelling process. As
Bullock and Garland (2018) have argued, the process of acquiring labels
is a subtle one. It may be techniques of labelling used more generally in
society (e.g. by families and schools) that are instrumental in a person’s
identity long before they receive any ‘official’ sanction or label from a
criminal justice representative or agency. We should not forget that labels
can be resisted, nor should we simply imagine that it only takes one event
and a person is labelled for life. However, the question for this work
regarding the labelling and representations of victim communities cen-
tres around issues of power, primarily of the media, as an official labelling
force. Taking the lead then from labelling theorists who focus on the
importance of the impact of labelling by the ‘official’ criminal justice
system on the deviant, the exploration at the heart of this work refracts
this notion to examine the influence and power of the ‘official’ media
constructions and representations of victim communities in places where
serious and high-profile crimes have taken place, the official mediated
version or label of victim identity.

Community, Stigma and Spoiled Identity

The connotations of loss, weakness and suffering sometimes inferred by
the term ‘victim’ convey some form of stigmatisation. As we have dis-
cussed above, it is presumed that most people in everyday life would not
willingly court (these circumstances) or eagerly build an identity upon
them (Rock, 2002; Fohring, 2015). In a similar vein, Goffman’s work on
stigma describes this status as ‘a deeply discrediting attribute … consti-
tuting a special discrepancy’ (1963, p. 13). Goffman’s notion of stigmati-
sation goes some way to explaining why some (perceived) deviants are
subjected to marginalisation and social exclusion and are the recipients of
hostile reporting and censure by the media. So how useful is this in the
exploration of victim and community identity?
Initially a term used as reference for the visual signifiers of the moral
status of the bearer, over time the term stigma has more often been used
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shopping to do if I have any fun at home.”
The eyes of the Judge sought the ground. “No. I was—ah—just
considering.” Then he looked up into the laughing but sympathetic
eyes of the boyish young fellow, and his dignity sensibly relaxed. “I
was only—ah—Grady, let me see you a moment.”
The two walked to the edge of the pavement, and talked together
some little time. I did not overhear the conversation, but learned
afterwards that the Judge told Mr. Grady that he had no provisions at
home, and no money to buy them with, and asked for a small loan.
“I’ll do better than that,” said Mr. Grady. “I’ll go with you and buy
them myself. Come with us,” he remarked to me with a quizzical
smile. “The Judge here has found a family in distress, and we are
going to send them something substantial for Christmas.”
We went to a grocery store near at hand, and I saw, as we
entered, that the Judge had not only recovered his native dignity, but
had added a little to suit the occasion. I observed that his bearing
was even haughty. Mr. Grady had observed it, too, and the humor of
the situation so delighted him that he could hardly control the
laughter in his voice.
“Now, Judge,” said Mr. Grady, as we approached the counter, “we
must be discreet as well as liberal. We must get what you think this
suffering family most needs. You call off the articles, the clerk here
will check them off, and I will have them sent to the house.”
The Judge leaned against the counter with a careless dignity quite
inimitable, and glanced at the well-filled shelves.
“Well,” said he, thrumming on a paper-box, and smacking his lips
thoughtfully, “we will put down first a bottle of chow-chow pickles.”
“Why, of course,” exclaimed Mr. Grady, his face radiant with mirth;
“it is the very thing. What next?”
“Let me see,” said the Judge, closing his eyes reflectively—“two
tumblers of strawberry jelly, three pounds of mince-meat, and two
pounds of dates, if you have real good ones, and—yes—two cans of
deviled ham.”
 Every article the Judge ordered was something he had been used
to in his happier days. The whole episode was like a scene from one
of Dickens’s novels, and I have never seen Mr. Grady more
delighted. He was delighted with the humor of it, and appreciated in
his own quaint and charming way and to the fullest extent the pathos
of it. He dwelt on it then and afterwards, and often said that he
envied the broken-down old man the enjoyment of the luxuries of
which he had so long been deprived.
On a memorable Christmas day not many years after, Mr. Grady
stirred Atlanta to its very depths by his eloquent pen, and brought the
whole community to the heights of charity and unselfishness on
which he always stood. He wrought the most unique manifestation of
prompt and thoughtful benevolence that is to be found recorded in
modern times. The day before Christmas was bitter cold, and the
night fell still colder, giving promise of the coldest weather that had
been felt in Georgia for many years. The thermometer fell to zero,
and it was difficult for comfortably clad people to keep warm even by
the fires that plenty had provided, and it was certain that there would
be terrible suffering among the poor of the city. The situation was
one that appealed in the strongest manner to Mr. Grady’s
sympathies. It appealed, no doubt, to the sympathies of all
charitably-disposed people; but the shame of modern charity is its
lack of activity. People are horrified when starving people are found
near their doors, when a poor woman wanders about the streets until
death comes to her relief; they seem to forget that it is the duty of
charity to act as well as to give. Mr. Grady was a man of action. He
did not wait for the organization of a relief committee, and the
meeting of prominent citizens to devise ways and means for
dispensing alms. He was his own committee. His plans were
instantly formed and promptly carried out. The organization was
complete the moment he determined that the poor of Atlanta should
not suffer for lack of food, clothing, or fuel. He sent his reporters out
into the highways and byways, and into every nook and corner of the
city. He took one assignment for himself, and went about through the
cold from house to house. He had a consultation with the Mayor at
midnight, and cases of actual suffering were relieved then and there.
The next morning, which was Sunday, the columns of the
Constitution teemed with the results of the investigation which Mr.
Grady and his reporters had made. A stirring appeal was made in
the editorial columns for aid for the poor—such an appeal as only Mr.
Grady could make. The plan of relief was carefully made out. The
Constitution was prepared to take charge of whatever the charitably
disposed might feel inclined to send to its office—and whatever was
sent should be sent early.
The effect of this appeal was astonishing—magical, in fact. It
seemed impossible to believe that any human agency could bring
about such a result. By eight o’clock on Christmas morning—the day
being Sunday—the street in front of the Constitution office was
jammed with wagons, drays, and vehicles of all kinds, and the office
itself was transformed into a vast depot of supplies. The merchants
and business men had opened their stores as well as their hearts,
and the coal and wood dealers had given the keys of their
establishments into the gentle hands of charity. Men who were not in
business subscribed money, and this rose into a considerable sum.
When Mr. Grady arrived on the scene, he gave a shout of delight,
and cut up antics as joyous as those of a schoolboy. Then he
proceeded to business. He had everything in his head, and he
organized his relief trains and put them in motion more rapidly than
any general ever did. By noon, there was not a man, woman, or
child, white or black, in the city of Atlanta that lacked any of the
necessaries of life, and to such an extent had the hearts of the
people been stirred that a large reserve of stores was left over after
everybody had been supplied. It was the happiest Christmas day the
poor of Atlanta ever saw, and the happiest person of all was Henry
Grady.
It is appropriate to his enjoyment of Christmas to give here a
beautiful editorial he wrote on Christmas day a year before he was
buried. It is a little prose poem that attracted attention all over the
country. Mr. Grady called it

A PERFECT CHRISTMAS DAY.

No man or woman now living will see again such a Christmas day as
the one which closed yesterday, when the dying sun piled the western
skies with gold and purple.
A winter day it was, shot to the core with sunshine. It was enchanting to
walk abroad in its prodigal beauty, to breathe its elixir, to reach out the
hands and plunge them open-fingered through its pulsing waves of
warmth and freshness. It was June and November welded and fused into
a perfect glory that held the sunshine and snow beneath tender and
splendid skies. To have winnowed such a day from the teeming winter
was to have found an odorous peach on a bough whipped in the storms
of winter. One caught the musk of yellow grain, the flavor of ripening nuts,
the fragrance of strawberries, the exquisite odor of violets, the aroma of
all seasons in the wonderful day. The hum of bees underrode the
whistling wings of wild geese flying southward. The fires slept in drowsing
grates, while the people, marveling outdoors, watched the soft winds woo
the roses and the lilies.
Truly it was a day of days. Amid its riotous luxury surely life was worth
living to hold up the head and breathe it in as thirsting men drink water; to
put every sense on its gracious excellence; to throw the hands wide apart
and hug whole armfuls of the day close to the heart, till the heart itself is
enraptured and illumined. God’s benediction came down with the day,
slow dropping from the skies. God’s smile was its light, and all through
and through its supernal beauty and stillness, unspoken but appealing to
every heart and sanctifying every soul, was His invocation and promise,
“Peace on earth, good will to men.”
 IV.

Mr. Grady took great interest in children and young people. It

pleased him beyond measure to be able to contribute to their
happiness. He knew all the boys in the Constitution office, and there
is quite a little army of them employed there in one way and another;
knew all about their conditions, their hopes and their aspirations, and
knew their histories. He had favorites among them, but his heart
went out to all. He interested himself in them in a thousand little
ways that no one else would have thought of. He was never too busy
to concern himself with their affairs. A year or two before he died he
organized a dinner for the newsboys and carriers. It was at first
intended that the dinner should be given by the Constitution, but
some of the prominent people heard of it, and insisted in making
contributions. Then it was decided to accept contributions from all
who might desire to send anything, and the result of it was a dinner
of magnificent proportions. The tables were presided over by
prominent society ladies, and the occasion was a very happy one in
all respects.
This is only one of a thousand instances in which Mr. Grady
interested himself in behalf of young people. Wherever he could find
boys who were struggling to make a living, with the expectation of
making something of themselves; wherever he could find boys who
were giving their earnings to widowed mothers—and he found
hundreds of them—he went to their aid as promptly and as
effectually as he carried out all his schemes, whether great or small.
It was his delight to give pleasure to all the children that he knew,
and even those he didn’t know. He had the spirit and the manner of a
boy, when not engrossed in work, and he enjoyed life with the zest
and enthusiasm of a lad of twelve. He was in his element when a
circus was in town, and it was a familiar and an entertaining sight to
see him heading a procession of children—sometimes fifty in line—
going to the big tents to see the animals and witness the antics of
the clowns. At such times, he considered himself on a frolic, and laid
his dignity on the shelf. His interest in the young, however, took a
more serious shape, as I have said. When Mr. Clark Howell, the son
of Captain Evan Howell, attained his majority, Mr. Grady wrote him a
letter, which I give here as one of the keys to the character of this
many-sided man. Apart from this, it is worth putting in print for the
wholesome advice it contains. The young man to whom it was
written has succeeded Mr. Grady as managing editor of the
Constitution. The letter is as follows:

Atlanta, Ga., Sept. 20, 1884.

My Dear Clark:—I suppose that just about the time I write this to you
—a little after midnight—you are twenty-one years old. If you were born a
little later than this hour it is your mother’s fault (or your father’s), and I
am not to blame for it. I assume, therefore, that this is your birthday, and I
send you a small remembrance. I send you a pen (that you may wear as
a cravat-pin) for several reasons. In the first place, I have no money, my
dear boy, with which to buy you something new. In the next place, it is the
symbol of the profession to which we both belong, in which each has
done some good work, and will, God being willing, do much more. Take
the pen, wear it, and let it stand as a sign of the affection I have for you.
Somehow or other (as the present is a right neat one I have the right to
bore you a little) I look upon you as my own boy. My son will be just about
your age when you are about mine, and he will enter the paper when you
are about where I am. I have got to looking at you as a sort of prefiguring
of what my son may be, and of looking over you, and rejoicing in your
success, as I shall want you to feel toward him. Let me write to you what I
would be willing for you to write to him.
Never Gamble. Of all the vices that enthrall men, this is the worst, the
strongest, and the most insidious. Outside of the morality of it, it is the
poorest investment, the poorest business, and the poorest fun. No man is
safe who plays at all. It is easiest never to play. I never knew a man, a
gentleman and man of business, who did not regret the time and money
he had wasted in it. A man who plays poker is unfit for every other
business on earth.
Never Drink. I love liquor and I love the fellowship involved in drinking.
My safety has been that I never drink at all. It is much easier not to drink
at all than to drink a little. If I had to attribute what I have done in life to
any one thing, I should attribute it to the fact that I am a teetotaler. As
sure as you are born, it is the pleasantest, the easiest, and the safest
way.
 Marry Early. There is nothing that steadies a young fellow like marrying
a good girl and raising a family. By marrying young your children grow up
when they are a pleasure to you. You feel the responsibility of life, the
sweetness of life, and you avoid bad habits.
If you never drink, never gamble, and marry early, there is no limit to
the useful and distinguished life you may live. You will be the pride of
your father’s heart, and the joy of your mother’s.
I don’t know that there is any happiness on earth worth having outside
of the happiness of knowing that you have done your duty and that you
have tried to do good. You try to build up,—there are always plenty others
who will do all the tearing down that is necessary. You try to live in the
sunshine,—men who stay in the shade always get mildewed.
I will not tell you how much I think of you or how proud I am of you. We
will let that develop gradually. There is only one thing I am a little
disappointed in. You don’t seem to care quite enough about base-ball
and other sports. Don’t make the mistake of standing aloof from these
things and trying to get old too soon. Don’t underrate out-door athletic
sports as an element of American civilization and American journalism. I
am afraid you inherit this disposition from your father, who has never
been quite right on this subject, but who is getting better, and will soon be
all right, I think.
Well, I will quit. May God bless you, my boy, and keep you happy and
wholesome at heart, and in health. If He does this, we’ll try and do the
rest.
Your friend, H. W. Grady.

Mr. Grady’s own boyishness led him to sympathize with everything

that appertains to boyhood. His love for his own children led him to
take an interest in other children. He wanted to see them enjoy
themselves in a boisterous, hearty, health-giving way. The sports that
men forget or forego possessed a freshness for him that he never
tried to conceal. His remarks, in the letter just quoted, in regard to
out-door sports, are thoroughly characteristic. In all contests of
muscle, strength, endurance and skill he took a continual and an
absorbing interest. At school he excelled in all athletic sports and
out-door games. He had a gymnasium of his own, which was thrown
open to his school-mates, and there he used to practice for hours at
a time. His tastes in this direction led a great many people, all his
friends, to shake their heads a little, especially as he was not greatly
distinguished for scholarship, either at school or college. They
wondered, too, how, after neglecting the text-books, he could stand
so near the head of his classes. He did not neglect his books. During
the short time he devoted to them each day, his prodigious memory
and his wonderful powers of assimilation enabled him to master their
contents as thoroughly as boys that had spent half the night in study.
Even his family were astonished at his standing in school, knowing
how little time he devoted to his text-books. He found time, however,
in spite of his devotion to out-door sports and athletic exercises, to
read every book in Athens, and in those days every family in town
had a library of more or less value.
He had a large library of his own, and, by exchanging his books
with other boys and borrowing, he managed to get at the pith and
marrow of all the English literature to be found in the university town.
Not content with this, he became, during one of his vacation periods,
a clerk in the only bookstore in Athens. The only compensation that
he asked was the privilege of reading when there were no customers
to be waited on. This was during his eleventh year, and by the time
he was twelve he was by far the best-read boy that Athens had ever
known. This habit of reading he kept up to the day of his death. He
read all the new books as they came out, and nothing pleased him
better than to discuss them with some congenial friend. He had no
need to re-read his old favorites—the books he loved as boy and
man—for these he could remember almost chapter by chapter. He
read with amazing rapidity; it might be said that he literally absorbed
whatever interested him, and his sympathies were so wide and his
taste so catholic that it was a poor writer indeed in whom he could
not find something to commend. He was fond of light literature, but
the average modern novel made no impression on him. He enjoyed
it to some extent, and was amazed as well as amused at the
immense amount of labor expended on the trivial affairs of life by the
writers who call themselves realists. He was somewhat interested in
Henry James’s “Portrait of a Lady,” mainly, I suspect, because it so
cleverly hits off the character of the modern female newspaper
correspondent in the person of Miss Henrietta Stackpole. Yet there
was much in the book that interested him—the dreariness of parts of
it was relieved by Mrs. Touchett. “Dear old Mrs. Touchett!” he used to
say. “Such immense cleverness as hers does credit to Mr. James.
She refuses to associate with any of the other characters in the
book. I should like to meet her, and shake hands with her, and talk
the whole matter over.”
When a school-boy, and while devouring all the stories that fell in
his way, young Grady was found one day reading Blackstone. His
brother asked him if he thought of studying law. “No,” was the reply,
“but I think everyone ought to read Blackstone. Besides, the book
interests me.” With the light and the humorous he always mixed the
solids. He was fond of history, and was intensely interested in all the
social questions of the day. He set great store by the new literary
development that has been going on in the South since the war, and
sought to promote it by every means in his power, through his
newspaper and by his personal influence. He looked forward to the
time when the immense literary field, as yet untouched in the South,
would be as thoroughly worked and developed as that of New
England has been; and he thought that this development might
reasonably be expected to follow, if it did not accompany, the
progress of the South in other directions. This idea was much in his
mind, and in the daily conversations with the members of his editorial
staff, he recurred to it time and again. One view that he took of it was
entirely practical, as, indeed, most of his views were. He thought that
the literature of the South ought to be developed, not merely in the
interest of belles-lettres, but in the interest of American history. He
regarded it as in some sort a weapon of defense, and he used to
refer in terms of the warmest admiration to the oftentimes
unconscious, but terribly certain and effective manner in which New
England had fortified herself by means of the literary genius of her
sons and daughters. He perceived, too, that all the talk about a
distinctive Southern literature, which has been in vogue among the
contributors of the Lady’s Books and annuals, was silly in the
extreme. He desired it to be provincial in a large way, for, in this
country, provinciality is only another name for the patriotism that has
taken root in the rural regions, but his dearest wish was that it should
be purely and truly American in its aim and tendency. It was for this
reason that he was ready to welcome any effort of a Southern writer
that showed a spark of promise. For such he was always ready with
words of praise.
He was fond, as I have said, of Dickens, but his favorite novel,
above all others, was Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables.” His own daring
imagination fitted somewhat into the colossal methods of Hugo, and
his sympathies enabled him to see in the character of Jean Valjean a
type of the pathetic struggle for life and justice that is going on
around us every day. Mr. Grady read between the lines and saw
beneath the surface, and he was profoundly impressed with the
strong and vital purpose of Hugo’s book. Its almost ferocious protest
against injustice, and its indignant arraignment of the inhumanity of
society, stirred him deeply. Not only the character of Jean Valjean,
but the whole book appealed to his sense of the picturesque and
artistic. The large lines on which the book is cast, the stupendous
nature of the problem it presents, the philanthropy, the tenderness—
all these moved him as no other work of fiction ever did. Mr. Grady’s
pen was too busy to concern itself with matters merely literary. He
rarely undertook to write what might be termed a literary essay; the
affairs of life—the demands of the hour—the pressure of events—
precluded this; but all through his lectures and occasional speeches
(that were never reported), there are allusions to Jean Valjean, and
to Victor Hugo. I have before me the rough notes of some of his
lectures, and in these appear more than once picturesque allusions
to Hugo’s hero struggling against fate and circumstance.
 V.

The home-life of Mr. Grady was peculiarly happy. He was blessed,

in the first place, with a good mother, and he never grew away from
her influence in the smallest particular. When his father was killed in
the war, his mother devoted herself the more assiduously to the
training of her children. She molded the mind and character of her
brilliant son, and started him forth on a career that has no parallel in
our history. To that mother his heart always turned most tenderly.
She had made his boyhood bright and happy, and he was never tired
of bringing up recollections of those wonderful days. On one
occasion, the Christmas before he died, he visited his mother at the
old home in Athens. He returned brimming over with happiness. To
his associates in the Constitution office he told the story of his visit,
and what he said has been recorded by Mrs. Maude Andrews Ohl, a
member of the editorial staff.
“Well do I remember,” says Mrs. Ohl, “how he spent his last year’s
holiday season, and the little story he told me of it as I sat in his
office one morning after New Year’s.
“He had visited his mother in Athens Christmas week, and he said:
‘I don’t think I ever felt happier than when I reached the little home of
my boyhood. I got there at night. She had saved supper for me and
she had remembered all the things I liked. She toasted me some
cheese over the fire. Why, I hadn’t tasted anything like it since I put
off my round jackets. And then she had some home-made candy,
she knew I used to love and bless her heart! I just felt sixteen again
as we sat and talked, and she told me how she prayed for me and
thought of me always, and what a brightness I had been to her life,
and how she heard me coming home in every boy that whistled
along the street. When I went to bed she came and tucked the
covers all around me in the dear old way that none but a mother’s
hands know, and I felt so happy and so peaceful and so full of tender
love and tender memories that I cried happy, grateful tears until I
went to sleep.’
 “When he finished his eyes were full of tears and so were mine.
He brushed his hands across his brow swiftly and said, laughingly:
‘Why, what are you crying about? What do you know about all this
sort of feeling!’
“He never seemed brighter than on that day. He had received an
ovation of loving admiration from the friends of his boyhood at his old
home, and these honors from the hearts that loved him as a friend
were dearer than all others. It was for these friends, these
countrymen of his own, that his honors were won and his life was
sacrificed.”
From the home-life of his boyhood he stepped into the fuller and
richer home-life that followed his marriage. He married the
sweetheart of his early youth, Miss Julia King, of Athens, and she
remained his sweetheart to the last. The first pseudonym that he
used in his contributions to the Constitution, “King Hans,” was a
fanciful union of Miss King’s name with his, and during his service in
Florida, long after he was married, he signed his telegrams “Jule.” In
the office not a day passed that he did not have something to say of
his wife and children. They were never out of his thoughts, no matter
what business occupied his mind. In his speeches there are constant
allusions to his son, and in his conversation the gentle-eyed maiden,
his daughter, was always tenderly figuring. His home-life was in all
respects an ideal one; ideal in its surroundings, in its influences, and
in its purposes. I think that the very fact of his own happiness gave
him a certain restlessness in behalf of the happiness of others. His
writings, his speeches, his lectures—his whole life, in fact—teem
with references to home-happiness and home-content. Over and
over again he recurs to these things—always with the same
earnestness, always with the same enthusiasm. He never meets a
man on the street, but he wonders if he has a happy home—if he is
contented—if he has children that he loves. To him home was a
shrine to be worshiped at—a temple to be happy in, no matter how
humble, or how near to the brink of poverty.
One of his most successful lectures, and the one that he thought
the most of, was entitled “A Patchwork Palace: The story of a
Home.” The Patchwork Palace still exists in Atlanta, and the man
who built it is living in it to-day. Mr. Grady never wrote out the lecture,
and all that can be found of it is a few rough and faded notes
scratched on little sheets of paper. On one occasion, however, he
condensed the opening of his lecture for the purpose of making a
newspaper sketch of the whole. It is unfinished, but the following has
something of the flavor of the lecture. He called the builder of the
Palace Mr. Mortimer Pitts, though that is not his name:

Mr. Mortimer Pitts was a rag-picker. After a patient study of the

responsibility that the statement carries, I do not hesitate to say that he
was the poorest man that ever existed. He lived literally from hand to
mouth. His breakfast was a crust; his dinner a question; his supper a
regret. His earthly wealth, beyond the rags that covered him, was—a cow
that I believe gave both butter-milk and sweet-milk—a dog that gave
neither—and a hand-cart in which he wheeled his wares about. His wife
had a wash-tub that she held in her own title, a wash-board similarly
possessed, and two chairs that came to her as a dowry.
In opposition to this poverty, my poor hero had—first, a name (Mortimer
Pitts, Esq.) which his parents, whose noses were in the air when they
christened him, had saddled upon him aspiringly, but which followed him
through life, his condition being put in contrast with its rich syllables, as a
sort of standing sarcasm. Second, a multitude of tow-headed children
with shallow-blue eyes. The rag-picker never looked above the tow-heads
of his brats, nor beyond the faded blue eyes of his wife. His world was
very small. The cricket that chirped beneath the hearthstone of the hovel
in which he might chance to live, and the sunshine that crept through the
cracks, filled it with music and light. Trouble only strengthened the bonds
of love and sympathy that held the little brood together, and whenever the
Wolf showed his gaunt form at the door, the white faces, and the blue
eyes, and the tow-heads only huddled the closer to each other, until, in
very shame, the intruder would take himself off.
Mr. Pitts had no home. With the restlessness of an Arab he flitted from
one part of the city to another. He was famous for frightening the early
market-maids by pushing his white round face, usually set in a circle of
smaller white round faces, through the windows of long-deserted hovels.
Wherever there was a miserable shell of a house that whistled when the
wind blew, and wept when the rain fell, there you might be sure of finding
Mr. Pitts at one time or another. I do not care to state how many times my
hero, with an uncertain step and a pitifully wandering look—his fertile
wife, in remote or imminent process of fruitage—his wan and sedate
brood of young ones—his cow, a thoroughly conscientious creature, who
passed her scanty diet to milk to the woeful neglect of tissue—and his
dog, too honest for any foolish pride, ambling along in an unpretending,
bench-legged sort of way,—I do not care to state, I say, how many times
this pale and melancholy procession passed through the streets, seeking
for a shelter in which it might hide its wretchedness and ward off the
storms.
During these periods of transition, Mr. Pitts was wonderfully low-
spirited. “Even a bird has its nest; and the poorest animal has some sort
of a hole in the ground, or a roost where it can go when it is a-weary,” he
said to me once, when I caught him fluttering aimlessly out of a house
which, under the influence of a storm, had spit out its western wall, and
dropped its upper jaw dangerously near to the back of the cow. And from
that time forth, I fancied I noticed my poor friend’s face growing whiter,
and the blue in his eye deepening, and his lips becoming more tremulous
and uncertain. The shuffling figure, begirt with the rag-picker’s bells, and
dragging the wobbling cart, gradually bended forward, and the look of
childish content was gone from his brow, and a great dark wrinkle had
knotted itself there.
And now let me tell you about the starting of the Palace.
One day in the springtime, when the uprising sap ran through every
fibre of the forest, and made the trees as drunk as lords—when the birds
were full-throated, and the air was woven thick with their songs of love
and praise—when the brooks kissed their uttermost banks, and the earth
gave birth to flowers, and all nature was elastic and alert, and thrilled to
the core with the ecstasy of the sun’s new courtship—a divine passion fell
like a spark into Mr. Mortimer Pitts’s heart. How it ever broke through the
hideous crust of poverty that cased the man about, I do not know, nor
shall we ever know ought but that God put it there in his own gentle way.
But there it was. It dropped into the cold, dead heart like a spark—and
there it flared and trembled, and grew into a blaze, and swept through his
soul, and fed upon its bitterness until the scales fell off and the eyes
flashed and sparkled, and the old man was illumined with a splendid glow
like that which hurries youth to its love, or a soldier to the charge. You
would not have believed he was the same man. You would have laughed
had you been told that the old fellow, sweltering in the dust, harnessed
like a dog to a cart, and plying his pick into the garbage heaps like a man
worn down to the stupidity of a machine, was burning and bursting with a
great ambition—that a passion as pure and as strong as ever kindled
blue blood, or steeled gentle nerves was tugging at his heart-strings. And
yet, so it was. The rag-picker was filled with a consuming fire—and as he
 worked, and toiled, and starved, his soul sobbed, and laughed, and
cursed, and prayed.
Mr. Pitts wanted a home. A man named Napoleon once wanted
universal empire. Mr. Pitts was vastly the more daring dreamer of the two.
I do not think he had ever had a home. Possibly, away back beyond the
years a dim, sweet memory of a hearthstone and a gable roof with the
rain pattering on it, and a cupboard and a clock, and a deep, still well,
came to him like an echo or a dream. Be this as it may, our hero, crushed
into the very mud by poverty—upon knees and hands beneath his burden
—fighting like a beast for his daily food—shut out inexorably from all
suggestions of home—embittered by starvation—with his faculties
chained down apparently to the dreary problem of to-day—nevertheless
did lift his eyes into the gray future, and set his soul upon a home.

This is a mere fragment—a bare synopsis of the opening of what

was one of the most eloquent and pathetic lectures ever delivered
from the platform. It was a beautiful idyll of home—an appeal, a
eulogy—a glimpse, as it were, of the passionate devotion with which
he regarded his own home. Here is another fragment of the lecture
that follows closely after the foregoing:

After a month’s struggle, Mr. Pitts purchased the ground on which his
home was to be built. It was an indescribable hillside, bordering on the
precipitous. A friend of mine remarked that “it was such an aggravating
piece of profanity that the owner gave Mr. Pitts five dollars to accept the
land and the deed to it.” This report I feel bound to correct. Mr. Pitts
purchased the land. He gave three dollars for it. The deed having been
properly recorded, Mr. Pitts went to work. He borrowed a shovel, and,
perching himself against his hillside, began loosening the dirt in front of
him, and spilling it out between his legs, reminding me, as I passed daily,
of a giant dirt-dauber. At length (and not very long either, for his
remorseless desire made his arms fly like a madman’s) he succeeded in
scooping an apparently flat place out of the hillside and was ready to lay
the foundation of his house.
There was a lapse of a month, and I thought that my hero’s soul had
failed him—that the fire, with so little of hope to feed upon, had faded and
left his heart full of ashes. But at last there was a pile of dirty second-
hand lumber placed on the ground. I learned on inquiry that it was the
remains of a small house of ignoble nature which had been left standing
in a vacant lot, and which had been given him by the owner. Shortly
afterwards there came some dry-goods boxes; then three or four old sills;
then a window-frame; then the wreck of another little house; and then the
planks of an abandoned show-bill board. Finally the house began to
grow. The sills were put together by Mr. Pitts and his wife. A rafter shot up
toward the sky and stood there, like a lone sentinel, for some days, and
then another appeared, and then another, and then the fourth. Then Mr.
Pitts, with an agility born of desperation, swarmed up one of them, and
began to lay the cross-pieces. God must have commissioned an angel
especially to watch over the poor man and save his bones, for nothing
short of a miracle could have kept him from falling while engaged in the
perilous work. The frame once up, he took the odds and ends of planks
and began to fit them. The house grew like a mosaic. No two planks were
alike in size, shape, or color. Here was a piece of a dry-goods box, with
its rich yellow color, and a mercantile legend still painted on it,
supplemented by a dozen pieces of plank; and there was an old door
nailed up bodily and fringed around with bits of board picked up at
random. It was a rare piece of patchwork, in which none of the pieces
were related to or even acquainted with each other. A nose, an eye, an
ear, a mouth, a chin picked up at random from the ugliest people of a
neighborhood, and put together in a face, would not have been odder
than was this house. The window was ornamented with panes of three
different sizes, and some were left without any glass at all, as Mr. Pitts
afterwards remarked, “to see through.” The chimney was a piece of old
pipe that startled you by protruding unexpectedly through the wall, and
looked as if it were a wound. The entire absence of smoke at the outer
end of this chimney led to a suspicion, justified by the facts, that there
was no stove at the other end. The roof, which Mrs. Pitts, with a
recklessness beyond the annals, mounted herself and attended to, was
partially shingled and partially planked, this diversity being in the nature
of a plan, as Mr. Pitts confidentially remarked, “to try which style was the
best.”
Such a pathetic travesty on house-building was never before seen. It
started a smile or a tear from every passer-by, as it reared its homely
head there, so patched, uncouth, and poor. And yet the sun of Austerlitz
never brought so much happiness to the heart of Napoleon as came to
Mr. Pitts, as he crept into this hovel, and, having a blanket before the
doorless door, dropped on his knees and thanked God that at last he had
found a home.
The house grew in a slow and tedious way. It ripened with the seasons.
It budded in the restless and rosy spring; unfolded and developed in the
long summer; took shape and fullness in the brown autumn; and stood
 ready for the snows and frost when winter had come. It represented a
year of heroism, desperation, and high resolve. It was the sum total of an
ambition that, planted in the breast of a king, would have shaken the
world.
To say that Mr. Pitts enjoyed it would be to speak but a little of the truth.
I have a suspicion that the older children do not appreciate it as they
should. They have a way, when they see a stranger examining their
home with curious and inquiring eyes, of dodging away from the door
shamefacedly, and of reappearing cautiously at the window. But Mr. Pitts
is proud of it. There is no foolishness about him. He sits on his front
piazza, which, I regret to say, is simply a plank resting on two barrels, and
smokes his pipe with the serenity of a king; and when a stroller eyes his
queer little home curiously, he puts on the air that the Egyptian gentleman
(now deceased) who built the pyramids might have worn while exhibiting
that stupendous work. I have watched him hours at a time enjoying his
house. I have seen him walk around it slowly, tapping it critically with his
knife, as if to ascertain its state of ripeness, or pressing its corners
solemnly as if testing its muscular development.

Here ends this fragment—a delicious bit of description that only

seems to be exaggerated because the hovel was seen through the
eyes of a poet—of a poet who loved all his fellow men from the
greatest to the smallest, and who was as much interested in the
home-making of Mr. Pitts as he was in the making of Governors and
Senators, a business in which he afterwards became an adept. From
the fragments of one of his lectures, the title of which I am unable to
give, I have pieced together another story as characteristic of Mr.
Grady as the Patchwork Palace. It is curious to see how the idea of
home and of home-happiness runs through it all:

One of the happiest men that I ever knew—one whose serenity was
unassailable, whose cheerfulness was constant, and from whose heart a
perennial spring of sympathy and love bubbled up—was a man against
whom all the powers of misfortune were centered. He belonged to the
tailors—those cross-legged candidates for consumption. He was
miserably poor. Fly as fast as it could through the endless pieces of
broadcloth, his hand could not always win crusts for his children. But he
walked on and on; his thin white fingers faltered bravely through their
tasks as the hours slipped away, and his serene white face bended
forward over the tedious cloth into which, stitch after stitch, he was
working his life—and, with once in a while a wistful look at the gleaming
sunshine and the floating clouds, he breathed heavily and painfully of the
poisoned air of his work-room, from which a score of stronger lungs had
sucked all the oxygen. And when, at night, he would go home, and find
that there were just crusts enough for the little ones to eat, the capricious
old fellow would dream that he was not hungry; and when pressed to eat
of the scanty store by his sad and patient wife, would with an air of
smartness pretend a sacred lie—that he had dined with a friend—and
then, with a heart that swelled almost to bursting, turn away to hide his
glistening eyes. Hungry? Of course he was, time and again. As weak as
his body was, as faltering as was the little fountain that sent the life-blood
from his heart—as meagre as were his necessities, I doubt if there was a
time in all the long years when he was not hungry.
Did you ever think of how many people have died out of this world
through starvation. Thousands! Not recorded in the books as having died
of starvation,—ah, no? Sometimes it is a thin and watery sort of apoplexy
—sometimes it is dyspepsia, and often consumption. These terms read
better. But there are thousands of them, sensitive, shy gentlemen—too
proud to beg and too honest to steal—too straightforward to scheme or
maneuver—too refined to fill the public with their griefs—too heroic to
whine—that lock their sorrows up in their own hearts, and go on starving
in silence, weakening day after day from the lack of proper food—the
blood running slower and slower through their veins—their pulse faltering
as they pass through the various stages of inanition, until at last, worn
out, apathetic, exhausted, they are struck by some casual illness, and
lose their hold upon life as easily and as naturally as the autumn leaf,
juiceless, withered and dry, parts from the bough to which it has clung,
and floats down the vast silence of the forest.
But my tailor was cheerful. Nothing could disturb his serenity. His thin
white face was always lit with a smile, and his eyes shone with a peace
that passed my understanding. Hour after hour he would sing an
asthmatic little song that came in wheezes from his starved lungs—a
song that was pitiful and cracked, but that came from his heart so
freighted with love and praise that it found the ears of Him who softens all
distress and sweetens all harmonies. I wondered where all this happiness
came from. How gushed this abundant stream from this broken reed—
how sprung this luxuriant flower of peace from the scant soil of poverty?
From these hard conditions, how came this ever-fresh felicity?
After he had been turned out of his home, the tailor was taken sick. His
little song gave way to a hectic cough. His place at the work-room was
 vacant, and a scanty bed in wretched lodgings held his frail and fevered
frame. The thin fingers clutched the cover uneasily, as if they were
restless of being idle while the little ones were crying for bread. The tired
man tossed to and fro, racked by pain,—but still his face was full of
content, and no word of bitterness escaped him. And the little song,
though the poor lungs could not carry it to the lips, and the trembling lips
could not syllable its music, still lived in his heart and shone through his
happy eyes. “I will be happy soon,” he said in a faltering way; “I will be
better soon—strong enough to go to work like a man again, for Bessie
and the babies.” And he did get better—better until his face had worn so
thin that you could count his heart-beats by the flush of blood that came
and died in his cheeks—better until his face had sharpened and his
smiles had worn their deep lines about his mouth—better until the poor
fingers lay helpless at his side, and his eyes had lost their brightness.
And one day, as his wife sat by his side, and the sun streamed in the
windows, and the air was full of the fragrance of spring—he turned his
face toward her and said: “I am better now, my dear.” And, noting a
rapturous smile playing about his mouth, and a strange light kindling in
his eyes, she bended her head forward to lay her wifely kiss upon his
face. Ah! a last kiss, good wife, for thy husband! Thy kiss caught his soul
as it fluttered from his pale lips, and the flickering pulse had died in his
patient wrist, and the little song had faded from his heart and gone to
swell a divine chorus,—and at last, after years of waiting, the old man
was well!

There was nothing strained or artificial in the sentiment that led

him to dwell so constantly on the theme of home and home
happiness. The extracts I have given are merely the rough lecture
notes which he wrote down in order to confirm and congeal his
ideas. On the platform, while following the current of these notes, he
injected into them the quality of his rare and inimitable humor, the
contrast serving to give greater strength and coherence to the
pathos that underlay it all. I do not know that I have dwelt with
sufficient emphasis on his humor. He could be witty enough on
occasion, but the sting of it seemed to leave a bad taste in his
mouth. The quality of his humor was not greatly different from that of
Charles Lamb. It was gentle and perennial—a perpetual wonder and
delight to his friends—irrepressible and unbounded—as antic and as
tricksy as that of a boy, as genial and as sweet as the smile of a
beautiful woman. Mr. Grady depended less on anecdote than any of
our great talkers and speakers, though the anecdote, apt, pat, and
pointed, was always ready at the proper moment. He depended
rather on the originality of his own point of view—on the results of his
own individuality. The charm of his personal presence was
indescribable. In every crowd and on every occasion he was a
marked man. Quite independently of his own intentions, he made his
presence and his influence felt. What he said, no matter how light
and frivolous, no matter how trivial, never failed to attract attention.
He warmed the hearts of the old and fired the minds of the young.
He managed, in some way, to impart something of the charm of his
personality to his written words, so that he carried light, and hope,
and courage to many hearts, and when he passed away, people who
had never seen him fell to weeping when they heard of his untimely
death.