The rise of the stabbing spree in Britain, invariably carried out by Muslims and schizophrenic black men

In recent years, the nature of murder in this country has changed, with the victims increasingly being attacked on the streets, rather than in a domestic setting

There are fads and fashions in murder, just as there are in other fields of human endeavour, such as  architecture and music. Today, the commonest means used in this country  to cut short  the life of another person is  stabbing with a sharp implement. Around 40% of British homicides are carried out in this way.  A century ago, rather than jabbing with something pointed, tastes ran more to slashing and hacking;  invariably at the throat or neck of the prospective victim.  A third of the murderers hanged in Britain during the first quarter of the twentieth century, committed their crimes by using this method. The weapon wielded was, in almost every   such case, an open razor. Not for nothing was the open or ’straight’ razor known colloquially as the ’cut-throat’ razor!

     Murder is usually a spur of the moment act, being committed with whatever weapon lays closest at hand. In America, where privately owned firearms are alarmingly  common; two thirds of homicides involve the use of guns. In Britain, a hundred years ago, the most deadly instrument readily available in the average home was the razor.

     For centuries, men in this country shaved using single edged blades which, when not in use, folded  neatly into a handle. These razors looked a little like blunt ended knives. Such open blades can be hazardous, but it wasn’t until American inventor King Camp Gillette patented his ‘safety razor’ in December 1901, that men wishing to be clean shaven had any choice in the matter. The first safety razors appeared in Britain in 1905, but they were slow to catch on and when World War I started in 1914, most men in this country still relied upon the straight razor and it was this which so many men reached for when they wished to put an end to somebody’s life.

     There have in recent years been two great changes in the style of British murders. The first is of course that traditionally, murder has always been a cosy, domestic affair in this country. It was conducted indoors, and the victims were almost invariably friends or relatives of the killer. Today, shootings and stabbings are as likely to be conducted on the streets as they are in the home and often the victims have no strong connection to the perpetrator, indeed they are in many cases complete strangers. This is a definite change in British tradition. Then too, murderous assaults have overwhelmingly been carried out on one person at a time. This too has lately changed.

     Those who read the newspapers or watch the television news cannot fail to have noticed that a large proportion of the shootings and stabbings which take place in Britain are now committed in the open air; in streets, shops and parks. They will have observed too that in many cases, these crimes are associated with gangs or criminal enterprises, rather than being disputes between husbands and wives. The most extreme form of these new crimes involves more than one victim at a time and is almost always carried out in public. In the course of the last ten years or so, this new kind of crime has become increasingly common in Britain. It is the stabbing of a number of complete strangers in quick succession by a single individual; such attacks always taking place in public places such as streets, parks, railway stations or shops. These stabbing sprees are invariably carried out either by Muslims in the grip of a religious mania or black men suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

     The stabbing to death in the street of three people, one of them a young woman,  in the English city of Nottingham, made headline news in the summer of 2023. The man who carried out this crime was later revealed to be a mentally ill African called Valdo Calocane. Long before the court case which revealed this to the general public, many people had already guessed that the perpetrator of such a crime could only be either Muslim or black. Few were prepared to voice out loud such a notion though, for fear of being accused of racism or Islamophobia.

        There have of course always been murders in Britain by the use of edged weapons, although these have usually been domestic crimes. Once in a while, there would be occasional exceptions to this general rule, madmen like Jack the Ripper, for instance, who killed strangers in the street. Since 2015 though, there have been a number of woundings and killings by people wielding knives, all of which share common features. In these attacks, the victims are quite unknown to their assailants, more than one person is injured or killed, and the attacks take place in a public place. Random stabbing sprees, in which a person charges through the streets or a park, seeing how many strangers he can stab before he is stopped, are always the work of Muslims or deranged black men, and in at least half such crimes, both features are present, that is to say the knifeman is black, Muslim and also mentally ill. Perhaps looking at specific examples of the last decade will make this a little clearer.

     In December 2015, a black African Muslim went wild with a knife at Leytonstone tube station in London, stabbing three people. Muhaydin Mire was motivated by Islamism, but also mentally ill and he was sent to Broadmoor Hospital (1). The following year, Zakaria Bulhan, a mentally ill black man who also happened to be a Muslim, stabbed six people in central London, killing one of them. He was sent to a secure hospital (2). In March 2017, Khalid Masood, ran over and killed four people on Westminster Bridge, before stabbing a police officer to death. The motive was Islamism. Three months later, a group of Muslim fanatics ran through Borough Market in south London, stabbing anybody in their path. Eight people were killed in this ferocious attack (3). A year later, another Muslim, a black man called Mahdi Mohamud, went on a stabbing spree at Manchester’s Victoria Station. He was later detained in a secure hospital after being diagnosed with schizophrenia.

     It would be wearisome to list all such attacks, but each and every one of them where a number of strangers were attacked with knives in the open air, followed the same pattern. Either Muslims or black men with schizophrenia, or those who fell into both categories, were involved. It is interesting to speculate on the reason for this pattern. There is of course the indisputable fact that black men are nine times as likely to become psychotic as white men. This difference is so marked that the British government no longer publishes the ethnic breakdown of such figures (4). Then too, the proportion of black men convicted of offences involving knives is also higher than that for other ethnic groups. It is possible that these two factors combine to produce what is observed.

     As far as Islam is concerned, there is a worldwide trend for those in pursuit of an Islamist ideology to carry out terrorist attacks. In Britain, explosives to construct bombs are not easy to obtain, while an adult can walk into a supermarket and emerge with a razor-sharp kitchen knife. For anybody wishing to kill a few people swiftly, a stabbing spree must therefore be an attractive option. Knives are cheap, lethal and easily accessible.

     The propensity towards schizophrenia of black men and the rise of militant Islam are connected with what we see, but then too, some crimes enjoy a vogue for a time; they become, in effect, fashionable. Such is the case with stabbing sprees. When an event of this kind appears on the news, it catches the attention of some men and they go on to emulate it. In the United States, the lone shooter has for many years been a ‘thing’, but of course in Britain, access to firearms is severely limited. So it is they we have been forced to devise an alternative version, which might well be described as the ‘lone stabber’. It is true that such men are unlikely to be able achieve a similar body-count as that caused by a homicidal maniac armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, but there is still sufficient novelty value in knife rampages to ensure that they hit the headlines.

     As was remarked at the beginning of this piece, at one time, the frenzied murder of members of his family by a man armed with a cut-throat razor was a regular news item in Britain. Now, it is regarded as a quaint piece of history. Presumably, in a century or two, The stabbing sprees we see now will one day be seen in a similar light

1.        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leytonstone_tube_station_attack

2.        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Russell_Square_stabbing

3.        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_London_Bridge_attack

4.        https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.serce.gov.uk/health/mental-health/adults-experiencing-a-psychotic-disorder/latest/