DAYLIGHT robbery is commonplace these days. Every week the local newspaper columns become increasingly plastered with small snippets reporting on muggings, bag-snatches, house burglaries, car and factory thefts.

Twenty years ago, many of these crimes would have commanded splash headlines. Today they merit three or four lines of small text. Theft, it would seem, has to be accepted as an everyday risk.

But it wasn't always so, as veteran reader Joe Jones is keen to point out.

He recalls a time in recent history when the opportunity for housebreaking and opportunist theft was never greater - and yet crime statistics for such misdemeanours were almost non-existent.

Joe of Irwin Road, Sutton, reaches back to the grim years of the second world war to make his point.

"The black-out (without so much as a glimmer from street lamp, traffic, homes or industry) served to confuse an enemy seeking in vain to destroy and panic the British people into surrender,"writes Joe.

"And it could also have been a useful cover for any would-be criminals who could vandalise, attack and rob folk . . . then swiftly disappear into the dark.

"Except," says Joe, "that this just never happened."

He recollects that, after the pub towels had been placed over the beer pumps at closing time, the young arm-benders of that comradely era would weave off for home. You wouldn't be able to see them, particularly on a black winter's night, but you'd hear 'em all right!

They'd be rolling along, singing a song or calling out with a greeting to some shadowy passer-by or other they happened to bump into.

"They'd wish them the best of luck and a very good night," recalls Joe. "I was one of those passers-by on many an occasion and never had reason to feel frightened."

The most scary moments, recalls Joe, occurred when a policeman in his dark uniform and cape might pop out from the blackness of a street corner or shop doorway. The bobby would have been poised to halt late stragglers and demand to see their indentity card.

Joe sighs for those law-abiding times when even bad language was heavily frowned upon, especially in mixed company (nowadays you can even hear obscenities habitually tumbling from female lips).

"In those days," says Joe, "things were more controlled. There wasn't even any singing allowed in the pubs on a Sunday night. So everybody just sat about talking among themselves."

On one such occasion, a four-letter word slipped out from the mouth of one of the St Helens regulars.

"It silenced the whole room with everybody staring at the fellow, who must have wished a hole would appear beneath his feet to swallow him up."

IT all seems rather quaint now, but Joe's recollections seem to provide a sad commentary on today's 'acceptance' of petty crime and of foul-mouthed conversation.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.