Tag: History of the British Police Force

Before describing the successive steps by which the County Constabulary progressed towards its long-delayed reorganisation, it will be convenient to follow the method before adopted, when dealing with the somewhat similar march of events in the Metropolis, and to preface such description by a short account of the unreformed county police, thereby shewing how disastrous were the consequences of the faulty system in vogue, as revealed by the deplorable condition of rural England under its influence. The great source of information on this subject is the exhaustive report of the Royal Commission, appointed in 1839, to inquire as to the best means of establishing an efficient constabulary force in the counties of England and Wales. In the course of their enquiry (which was the most complete investigation of crime, its causes, and the means of its prevention, ever undertaken in this country), the Commissioners not only interrogated heads of business-houses, their commercial travellers and foremen, country magistrates, police men, and coastguards, but examined thieves, receivers, and all kinds of gaol-birds.

The immediate result of the activity of the new metropolitan and municipal police forces was found to be, that habitual criminals had migrated in large numbers from London, and from … Read the rest

It is sometimes assumed that the Metropolitan Police Act solved, once and for all, the question as to the manner in which, London was to be policed for the future. Such, however, was far from being the case. The old prejudice was not lived down in a day ; and the jealousy of those who saw what they were pleased to consider their vested rights slipping out of their grasp into the hands of the newcomers, caused the remnant of the old office-holders to make frantic efforts to recover what they had lost, and to hold fast what they were in danger of losing. There were still many irreconcilables, who looked upon the new force as a gang of usurpers and treated it with distrust and suspicion accordingly, hoping that some false move on the part of the police authorities, or some unlooked-for happy chance, might change the fortunes of the day. Luckily no such set-back occurred, and by slow degrees the ultimate success of the principles enunciated by Peel became more and more assured, and Scotland Yard triumphed to the discomfiture of all possible rivals. From the very commencement Sir Robert Peel had declared that unity of design was … Read the rest

The formation of the new police force in the metropolis aroused the fiercest opposition and remonstrance. Invective and ridicule were heaped upon the measure from all sides. The hopeless incompetence and the discredited character of the blackguardly Charlies were at once forgotten, nor were the prevalence of crime and the insecurity of life and property at all considered by those who made it their business to foment the popular antagonism.

Week by week certain newspapers continued to publish the most preposterous attacks : no story was too improbable to gain credence. A coup detat was contemplated- “it was Sir Robert Peel’s intention to place the Duke of Wellington on the throne – English liberty was to give place to military tyranny – under the pretence of providing protection for the people the government aimed the creation of a secret political inquisition,” in fact anything that was at once inconsistent and absurd was listened to with avidity and partly believed.

At first sight it seems almost incredible that any part of the nation, except the criminal class, should have felt and exhibited such bitter hostility to legislation that we now see had been too long delayed but the reluctance of the … Read the rest

The depth of lawlessness under which London lay submerged, and the deplorable condition of the feeble bulwarks that the richest city in the world had so long been content to rely on, have been considered at some length, because it is only by contrasting the security of recent years with the lawless confusion previously existing, that an intelligent appreciation of the debt we owe to Sir Robert Peel is made clear. The evidence given before the various Parliamentary Committees reveals to us an impartial contemporary view of things as they then were. The year 1830 saw an almost instantaneous change in the police of London, a transformation from an ‘inconceivably rotten and antiquated system into one which immediately became an example to the world.

Simultaneously with the police revival there suddenly dawned an unwonted era of security out of the dark and dangerous shadows of the past : that this was due to Peel’s Act, and to no other cause, is conclusively proved by the fact that the rural parts of England, to which the Act did not apply, had no share in the improvement which was at once manifest in the metropolis. The sharp contrast between the state of … Read the rest

Just when the immediate outlook was the most gloomy, and at an hour when the future seemed most barren of any hopeful sign, unseen and unsuspected influences were already at work ; influences which were destined first to arrest, and eventually to repel, the increasing flood of criminality, as well as to alleviate the hard lot of the unhappy convict. Up to this point the annual total of crime had ever been mounting higher and higher whilst the tale of abuses had continued to increase. the malady had now come to a head, and intelligent public attention was at length focussed on a difficult and unpopular subject, which hitherto had been deliberately avoided by all but the very few who had been familiarised with its magnitude by routine, and who had mostly grown callous to its evils by use. When John Howard began to minister to prisoners, and when Jeremy Bentham began to propound his doctrine of utilitarianism, no one foresaw that the devotion of the one would achieve a transformation of the whole prison system, nor that the profound common-sense of the other would triumph over the irrationality which for centuries had vitiated the penal administration of England.

Foremost … Read the rest

In the year 1801, the population of London and Middlesex hardly exceeded a million, but how many of the individual units that went to make up this total were engaged in criminal pursuits, it is of course impossible to estimate with any degree of accuracy, because the bulk of the crime was undetected and consequently unrecorded. From such data as we possess, however, it is certain that the proportion of thieves and other delinquents to honest men must have been alarmingly high. Between 1801 and 1811 the population increased some sixteen per cent., and during the same period the number of commitments rose nearly fifty per cent. This increase in the number of rogues whose careers were cut short by capture, speaks well for the Bow Street Runners from one point of view ; but it also indicates no less surely that these officers were making no progress at all in the art of preventing crime, which instead of diminishing as time went on, continued to grow in volume year by year. Indeed the state of the metropolis was such that social reformers might well have despaired of ever seeing an improvement:  every corrupting influence, and every criminal tendency seemed … Read the rest