TO THE correspondents who complained their box of groceries was stolen from their Brighton doorstep (Letters, May 11), I can only say: welcome to what the historian AL Rowse called “filthy modern society”.

According to Rowse, filthy modern society began in about 1972. His friend WH Auden, returning to Oxford from abroad that year, and thinking nothing had changed since the 1920s, left his rooms unlocked and was promptly burgled.

Rowse, who had also just been burgled, commented: “When we were young we never dreamed of locking our doors, such was our blissful security. Now everything has to be locked up.”

I own a copy of a national newspaper from February 1952. The whole front page is filled with the news of the death of King George VI, but space is found in the late news for one other story: a woman had her handbag stolen in Glasgow. I doubt whether that story would even get into a local Glasgow paper now.

There is a scene in the 1966 film Blow Up where David Hemmings gets out of his open-top car and enters a shop, leaving his camera on the front seat. It’s there when he returns.

Yes, you really could leave your door unlocked back then, you could park your bicycle without a padlock, you could have groceries and milk and parcels left on your doorstep.

Generally speaking, we trusted other people in this country, unless we had cause not to trust them. Now it’s the opposite – 40 years on from the start of Rowse’s filthy modern society, you don’t trust anyone unless you have cause to do so. You assume everyone is a thief.

Groceries are stolen, Percy the 10ft model from a children’s parade gets stolen, war memorials and lead off church roofs get stolen. St George’s Church, in Kemp Town, has had its heritage plate stolen.

They’ll cut through the railings to get your bike. They’ll take life-saving equipment from an ambulance while the crew is busy trying to help someone. They’ll steal the doorbell off your door, the drain covers from the road, the cables from the substation – even the railway track. They’ll stab you for your phone or a few quid. They’ll go through your binbags to steal your identity. You are daily beset by phishing emails and phone calls from fraudsters trying to steal your savings. There is no depth people won’t go to.

Graham Chainey, Marine Parade, Brighton