Content note: this episode includes violence against children and teenagers, including the deaths of two boys under eighteen.

For more than thirty years, from 1870 to the early 1900s, the streets of Manchester and Salford belonged to the scuttlers: teenage gangs armed with belts, bricks and clasp knives. They fought for territory and pride, and for the coveted title of King of the Scuttlers. Some of them were fourteen years old.

This episode follows the scuttlers from a mass street fight inspired by a war on the continent, through the slums of Angel Meadow, to two trials that gripped the city, including the case of a sixteen-year-old sentenced to hang. Along the way, we find what may be Britain's first youth cult, decades before the Peaky Blinders, and a surprisingly direct link to Manchester United and Manchester City.

Were the scuttlers just bad lads, or did the city around them make them what they were? Manchester couldn't agree at the time, and it's an argument we're still having.

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Thanks lads!

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About the show Bad, Mad & Northern is a history and true crime podcast about the villains, eccentrics and extraordinary stories of the North: murderers and body snatchers, kings and rebels, drowned villages and Cold War secrets. Each episode is carefully researched and told with honesty about the sources, and a healthy dose of northern scepticism.

Meet your host I'm Lucy Sheridan: author, speaker, and proud northerner, recording from an armchair in the Peak District. I've always been drawn to the darker corners of our history, and this show is where I get to share them with you. Pull up a chair.

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Watch on Youtube from 1st October 2026

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