In the 14th Century, Oxford had a per capita murder rate four to five times higher than other high-population hubs like York and London:
Newly translated documents list 75 percent of the perpetrators of murders with known background as “clericus”, a term most commonly used to describe students or members of the then-recently founded University of Oxford. And 72 percent of the victims were also classed as clericus.
[…]
“Oxford students were all male and typically aged between fourteen and twenty-one, the peak for violence and risk-taking. These were young men freed from tight controls of family, parish or guild, and thrust into an environment full of weapons, with ample access to alehouses and sex workers.”
“Sex workers”
They just can’t get themselves to call them what they really are, whores and prostitutes.
“They just can’t get themselves to call them what they really are, whores and prostitutes.”
What? Were they actually elected Members of Parliament?
Gavin,
Sex workers are providing a service. Parliament not so much.
”can’t get themselves to call them what they really are”
Well, Instagram, Tinder, et al. have so swelled the ranks that many feel the need to use nicer language. Would not want to alienate too many customers/voters/marks.
“And then the murders began.” The math doesn’t compute. Student population 1500. Average residence in Oxford say three years. Influx of new students five hundred a year. It takes many years to get that up to a large number. Thus I suspect that this is a case of the Law of Small Samples.
Three hundred and fifty-four murders at a rate of 70 per 100,000 requires a population of half a million. Oxford population townspeople plus students say ten thousand over the study period. Population churn not less than twenty years; it takes a millennium to get up to 500,000. The study may be accurate but the reportage most certainly is not.
Perhaps MVDR the translated documents are correct?
“Newly translated documents list 75 percent of the perpetrators of murders with known background as “clericus”, a term most commonly used to describe students or members of the then-recently founded University of Oxford. And 72 percent of the victims were also classed as clericus.”
Clearly, not only was I born in the wrong century, I was born in the wrong millennium.