Bullying - History

History

High-level forms of violence such as assault and murder usually receive most media attention, but lower-level forms of violence such as bullying have only in recent years started to be addressed by researchers, parents and guardians, and authority figures. It is only in recent years that bullying has been recognised and recorded as a separate and distinct offence, but there have been well documented cases that have been recorded over the centuries. The Fifth Volume of the Newgate Calendar contains at least one example where Eton Scholars George Alexander Wood and Alexander Wellesley Leith were charged, at Aylesbury Assizes, with killing and slaying the Hon. F. Ashley Cooper on February 28, 1825 in an incident which might today be described as "lethal hazing". The Newgate calendar contains several other examples that, while not as distinct, could be considered indicative of situations of bullying. Virginia Woolf considered fascism to be a form of bullying, and wrote of Hitler and the Nazis in 1934 as "these brutal bullies".