Peter Scott is reported to have said at a meeting of school medical officers that only seventeen out of 150 delinquent children he had questioned belonged to gangs.

I should have said from my experience that nearly every boy at a school where I worked in London belonged to a gang, right down to the infants, and if they had had a chance to gang up in their prams they would have done it.

I remember a conversation among a group of young boys averaging six to eight. One lot said, "Our gang's orr rite Miss, ain't it? We only uses bows an' arrows. We're not like them that throws stones." Then the smallest one piped up, "We're a good gang, Miss. We always says our prayers before," referring, I imagine, to an army chaplain. This conversation and others made it evident that these small boys knew the difference between good and bad gangs, but that age had a good deal to do with the character of the gang, the gang gradually becoming worse as the boys grew older.

I have also been one of the management committee for a youth club designed primarily for young men and boys who had been and were in trouble: thus we had a good deal to do with boys who belonged to gangs. If the leader of the gang was serving a sentence we got the other members so interested in the activities we provided for them, persuading them at the same time to hang on to their jobs, that we got them very near redemption. When the leader came out there was trouble, minor clashes, and we would lose the boys, though perhaps not all.

I am certain that if the club leaders, or I, had questioned any member belonging to the club whether they belonged to a gang we should have got instant denial, and denial that the gang existed. Secrecy was their policy, and we only got to know how very serious this was when we found that boys coming out of approved schools and Borstals and trying to go straight got beaten up and finally in despair rejoined the gang, and eventually were picked up by the police again.

In court if asked by the magistrate what had made them take to crime again they were silent. It was said that certain members of the gang attended the trial seated where they could watch the prisoner's face; fastened behind their coat lapels were razor blades which were thumbed back so that they would catch the wretched prisoner's eye.

Two boys we were very concerned about not only were beaten up but their relatives warned that they would suffer for it if they gave any information about these goings on. One intrepid old grandmother, who for her safety kept a long-handled axe behind her door, came to us and insisted that we go to see her grand-daughter-in-law, whose husband was in prison again as a result of this intimidation. The poor girl told us that some of the members of the gang had come into her room, while she was alone with her baby, and one had taken her to the mirror and said, "Look, there you are: say a word and you won't know yourself," and opening his hand showed her a razor blade.

We knew the other boy had been beaten up but he was too terrified to speak. His much younger brother told me about it: he said Will had taken a job in another part of London and would not be coming to the club any more. This as evasive action was not very successful. Will is now serving a sentence for robbery with violence.

The great danger of these gangs, to my mind, is not the occasional acts of robbery and violence against the public, but what takes place among themselves, making so difficult the redemption of the delinquent boy. Even if there are no harsh measures of beatings up, the boy newly out of Borstal will find his friends among the gang he used to go with, and will naturally, having had a try at going straight and finding it uphill work — with few friends,— return to his old ways.