The placidity which one associates with mid-Victorian life was rudely disturbed in London by the garrotting scare in the 'sixties. Complaints of the inefficiency of the police and attacks on the Commissioner are frequent in those years. Yet street accidents were far fewer, and, on the whole, it cannot be maintained that London has become safer to live in. The mention of the police reminds one that the tall hat was discarded in 1865 for the helmet, a sensible change which was at first met with undeserved ridicule. The possibility of a strike of policemen at the end of 1872 seemed to _Punch_ so incredible that he declined to treat it seriously. [Illustration: TO GARROTTERS--"CAVE TOMKINS" TOMKINS (loq.): "Let 'em try it on again, that's all."] PART II THE SOCIAL FABRIC THE COURT If the word "amazing" had not lost most of its significance through overwork since August, 1914, we should be inclined to apply it to the frankness with which Royalty and the Court were criticized and discussed by the Press in the 'forties and 'fifties. _Punch_, as we have seen, took a leading hand in the game, though he contrived to combine loyalty to the person of the Queen with the most outspoken attacks on the exercise of Court patronage and the extravagance of courtiers. But he did not stop here. The Prince Consort was mercilessly ridiculed for his Germanism, his notions of sport, his passion for tailoring, and, most serious offence of all, his alleged intervention in high politics. After ten years of anti-Albertianism, _Punch_ dropped, to a considerable extent at any rate, the game of baiting the Prince, cordially admitted his services in connexion with the Exhibition of 1851, and for the rest of the period surveyed in our first volume granted him a comparative immunity from hostile criticism. The change, or conversion, was not due to expediency or to a change of editorship or of the staff. It had already begun several years before the death, in 1857, of _Punch's_ most democratic contributor, Douglas Jerrold. It was typical of a change in the enlightened middle-class opinion of which _Punch_ was the mirror. The Monarchy had gained in popularity, and though there was no great revulsion of feeling about the Prince until after his death, he had earned respect by his active interest in education and philanthropy and the sagacity in counsel which was most freely acknowledged by those who came in closest contact with him. The charges of undue intervention and interference were effectually dealt with by Ministers at the time, though _Punch_ failed to acknowledge his vindication, and the _Life of Lord Beaconsfield_ shows that a much stronger case can be made out against the Queen on this count when she was no longer able to rely on the advice of the Prince.