Originally posted by miko2d
First, the resident population of the Dodge City could have been 2,000 but it does not account for much greater numbers of transients and visitors from the surrounding countryside.
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And New York City did not enjoy multitudes of transients and visitors from the surrounding areas? An enormous amount of rail traffic carried visitors to and from New York City during this era. If you're suggesting that these transients lower the overall murder rate in Dodge City, then I'd agree with you. However, the ratio between the murder rates of New York City and Dodge City probably remain identical despite this.
Also I bet most of those killed were not result of a violent crime in the usual sense but the belligerent adults picking fights in saloons. The general violent crime (robbery, rape, etc.) was extremely low compared to ours.
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Again, I'm not sure how much this differs from large urban areas at the time. I have no evidence to suggest one way or another, and we're just supposing at this point. I'd guess, but I wouldn't know for sure, that much of the violence in New York City was gang-related during this period and not typically focused at the general population.
Dodge City was supposedely the most violent place in the West and 5 murders was its worst year - while it's average year was 1.5 - 70 per 100,000.
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Well, my point in comparing Dodge City to New York City, particularly given the article I quoted, was to show that Dodge City
was relatively more violent than large urban areas. If you read that last link I provided, it actually notes that South Carolina throughout the late 1870s and 1880s suffered from 130 murders per 100,000 citizens -- almost double that of Dodge City! So perhaps Dodge City was the most violent city in the West, but it was most certainly not the most violent place in the Union.
Second, I am not comparing the Dodge City of 1870s with New York City of 1870s.
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I know, but the point of the comparison was to show how Dodge City might have earned this reputation. Relatively speaking, Dodge City was more violent than the largest urban center on the East Coast. I can see how such a reputation might have persisted even if the absolute numbers suggested otherwise. Nonetheless, the probability of dying by murder in Dodge City was quite a bit higher than in New York City.
I am comparing it with the image Hollywood presents and with today's America where we have millions of people in jail, enourmous numbers of police and full-time law-enforcement, much wealthier society, etc. - and considerable crime rates.
What tax rates did they pay?
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Hollywood distorts many images into what it believes sells best to the population. I have no problems with that so long as we always take Hollywood history with a large grain of salt.
We can compare murder rates between eras however, though obviously society has changed so dramatically since then that any comparisons present problems. I suppose it's possible to make an index of violence and taxation where we could "score" cities and eras based on the relative levels of taxation and violence. So if one era was ten times more violent but enjoyed 1/100th the taxation, it would score higher.
I don't have taxation information, but I did look up New York City murder rates for 2001 and 2002. The city population during that time was just over 17.6 million people. They are:
New York City (2001 - 646 murders): 3.67 murders per 100,000
New York City (2002 - 575 murders): 3.27 murders per 100,000
Thus modern-day New York City averages near the lower boundary of the 1880-era New York City which probably averaged about twice that many murders per 100,000. The overall crime rate in New York City in 2002 was 3,100 per 100,000; I have no comparable numbers for 1880, so I have no idea if we could say that it was safer from other crimes back then, though it's important to keep in mind that probably
more things constitute crimes nowadays than they did back then.
If you have access to taxation information from the 1880s and today, I'd love to see them. It wouldn't be hard to make some sort of desirability index based on that info, though it would certainly paint an incomplete picture of life during both eras.
-- Todd/Leviathn