They are the symbol of today's disaffected youth but a historian has revealed that the hoodie-wearing yob is not just a modern problem.
Professor Robert Bartlett, who is an expert on the Middle Ages, said hooded tops were also the garment of choice for 12th-century juvenile delinquents.
The teenage apprentice boys of London were lawless, violent and the scourge of the capital.
"They were away from home for seven years with no parental control and they would riot regularly for political and religious reasons," he told the Radio Times.
Hooded tops were worn by most citizens during medieval winters, he said, and they also served to hide the identity of young miscreants.
Prof Bartlett, of the University of St Andrews, said the life of the period resonated with today in other ways.
The English, who are now among the worst binge-drinkers in Europe, were also renowned as drunks in the Middle Ages.
"A surviving 12th-century Latin manuscript refers disapprovingly to 'Potatrix Anglia' - 'England the drunken'," said Prof Bartlett, who is presenting the series Inside the Medieval Mind on BBC4, starting next Thursday.
He will reveal the opening of the North-South divide, with the first recorded case - in 1120 - of a southerner complaining that he is unable to understand the speech of a northerner.
