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Seeing the world through vitriol-tinted glasses

One of the big stories over the last couple of week has involved an attack involving a corrosive substance. The fact that the perpetrator appears to have been an illegal immigrant has not gone unnoticed.

Here’s another case:

After being five weeks in hospital, Arthur William Thompson, an omnibus inspector, attended at the Westminster Police Court yesterday to give evidence against EDITH LOUISE BASSETT, alias Mabel Young, 31, of Fentiman-road, Lambeth, on the charge of throwing corrosive acid in his face in the vestibule of the Court with intent to do grievous bodily harm.

But – as you’ve probably guessed from the presence of the word “omnibus” and a hyphenated road name – this isn’t recent. In fact it’s from The Times from Thursday 14th February 1924. And it’s far from an isolated case.

8 comments to Seeing the world through vitriol-tinted glasses

  • Bloody foreigners, coming over here and taking vital roles from home grown acid-throwers…

  • bobby b

    So, this is just a traditional English form of assault? They really are assimilating?

  • Freddo

    So it is part of a rich cultural heritage and every female who objects to having their face splashed with acid is a vile racist. Glad we figured that out.

  • Paul Marks

    Leaving aside this individual case – the British people have, repeatedly, voted to end mass immigration (legal or illegal).

    Yet mass immigration continues, against the will of the British people, this draws into question whether the United Kingdom can truly be called a democracy.

    For the same establishment elite who allows (indeed encourages) mass immigration to then complain about the decline of public services (the crises in health care waiting lists, the “Tower of Babel” schools, and so on), increasing congestion on the roads and loss of open space (for example all those former school playing fields that now have houses or blocks of flats on them), and the cost of housing, and to pretend that such things as playing with the Planning Laws can deal with the problem (ignoring the almost TEN MILLION immigrants that have arrived in the last couple of decades), is the height of dishonesty.

  • John

    In Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Illustrious Client the character Kitty Winter, who also featured at length in the excellent “Elementary” TV series, chucked oil of vitriol at the evil baron.

  • Kirk

    Which just goes to show the essential stupidity of any policy “disarming the public”.

    There are no “dangerous weapons”. There are only dangerous minds.

    I can turn anything into a weapon. If you pad the world with marshmallow creme, covering everything with a layer too deep to even bruise someone by flinging them onto a rock, well… I’ll just use all that handy padding as something to smother them with.

    You want to address the violence? The only way to do that is by working inside the minds of the violent. To dissuade them, you have to have an environment that discourages violence effectively enough that they choose other paths. The reward incentive has to be taken away… And, since even the numpties know that’s too damn hard to do, they go after the “instruments of violence”. Which doesn’t work, because the underlying causes are still there.

    I can turn anything into an “instrument of violence”. The dangerous bits are in my mind, and those are restrained only because I do not see violence as a solution, being a civilized being; this is the only thing preventing me from going around and doing as I damn well please to my neighbors that annoy me or have what I want.

    It’s truly unfortunate that the numpties focus on the weapons, because those are inert and safe so long as the “safeties” in my mind are present and working. I have a collection of knives, firearms, and tools such that the average UK “law enforcement” figure would probably swoon with fear and outrage, and they’ve never been used to harm anyone because while I am a dangerous man, I do not believe in the use of force or violence to get what I want.

    In the end, the only effective way to address violence in the human animal is by working inside the minds of said animals. Hell, even jellyfish can be dangerous, if they get together in large enough numbers to block the intake filters on things like nuclear powerplants… The fact that said jellyfish lack weapons isn’t the issue, either: It’s what they’re doing with what they have…

  • Paul Marks

    Kirk – correct, for example a car or a truck can be used to kill a very large number of people.

    One example is the mass killing in Nice (in France) where an Islamic Gentleman killed about 80 (eighty) people, by simply driving them down with a truck.

  • Stephen W. Houghton II

    It was historically common enough that the New York Penal Code has long made acid throwing a form of 1st degree assault.

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