Frederic Thrasher

Who was Frederic Thrasher?

Frederic Milton Thrasher was a sociologist at the University of Chicago. He was a colleague of Robert E. Park and was one of the most prominent members of the Chicago School of Sociology in the 1920s.

Thrasher was born in Shelbyville, Indiana in 1892; he graduated B.A. from DePauw University in 1916 in social psychology; he then did an MA in 1918, at Chicago with a thesis on "The Boy Scout Movement as A Socializing Agency." He then took a PhD in Chicago in 1926, on Gangs. Thrasher's epic work: The Gang: a study of 1313 gangs in Chicago, was published in 1927.It said that "neighborhoods in transition are breeding grounds for gangs." Thrasher’s work on gangs was one of a series of outstanding doctoral studies completed under Robert E. Park’s direction in the "golden era" of the University of Chicago Sociology Department.

"Isolation is common to almost every vocational, religious or cultural group of a large city. Each develops its own sentiments, attitudes, codes, even its own words, which are at best only partially intelligible to others."