The New Police in the Nineteenth Century

Paul Lawrence

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780754629450
• eBook ISBN: 9781351541831
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The period 1829-1856 witnessed the introduction of the 'New Police' to Great Britain and Ireland. Via a series of key legislative acts, traditional mechanisms of policing were abolished and new, supposedly more efficient, forces were raised in their stead. Subsequently, the introduction of the 'New Police' has been represented as a watershed in the development of the systems of policing we know today. But just how sweeping were the changes made to the maintenance of law and order during the nineteenth century? The articles collected in this volume (written by some of the foremost criminal justice historians) show a process which, while cumulatively dramatic, was also at times protracted and acrimonious. There were significant changes to the way in which Britain and Ireland were policed during the nineteenth century, but these changes were by no means as straightforward or as progressive as they have at times been represented.

Part I
Police Reform and Administration

[1]

THE BEDFORDSHIRE POLICE 1840–1856: A CASE STUDY IN THE WORKING OF THE RURAL CONSTABULARY ACT

By CLIVE EMSLEY

Open University

The creation of police forces in 19th-century England represents one of the most significant extensions of public authority into the lives of ordinary citizens. The formation of the Metropolitan Police in 1829 is, with justification, generally regarded as the breakthrough, yet the legislation of 1839 was important for much more of the country. At the end of March 1839 the Royal Commission enquiring into the relevance of a constabulary force for England and Wales published its first report suggesting that the hotch-potch of parish constables, and of paid constables functioning as a result of private acts of parliament, be replaced by a centralised, professional system based on the Metropolitan Police. The Whig government considered the proposals too far-reaching and too expensive, particularly given their own shaky parliamentary position. But, faced with Chartist disorders during the summer they introduced a series of measures to improve policing: the army was increased, police forces on the Metropolitan model were established by act of parliament for Birmingham, Bolton and Manchester, and a fourth act enabled any Quarter Sessions which so wished to establish a rural constabulary financed from the county rates. This legislation had a rapid passage through parliament, yet few county benches took up the opportunity offered; by the end of 1841 only twenty-one counties had established police forces and another three had set them up for part of their jurisdictions. By 1856, when parliament made it obligatory for counties to establish constabularies, only another four had done so.¹

Most academic studies of the new police have dealt with urban forces, or with forces in counties where there was a substantial urban community. Indeed it can be argued that the new police were established principally to bring order to the new, predominantly urban, industrial society and to control the new working class.² The aim of this paper is to look at the creation of the constabulary in predominantly agricultural Bedfordshire exploring three basic ques-tions: Why was it set up? How effective was it? How did contemporaries poraries react to it?

Mid-19th-century Bedfordshire was an overwhelmingly rural county. In 1841 78 per cent of its population lived in communities of less than three and a half thousand; of the four principal towns, the borough of Bedford had a population of 9,000, Luton township had some 5,800 and Biggleswade and Leighton Buzzard just under 4,000 each. During the 1840s the population as a whole increased by some 15 per cent, but the urban population of the southern part of the county increased by considerably more. The Great Northern Railway brought prosperity and expansion to the parish of Dunstable which grew from 2500 in 1841 to 3500 ten years later. The most dramatic increase was in Luton where the population virtually doubled to 10,600, chiefly because of an enormous expansion in the manufacture of straw hats and bonnets; this work was principally done by women: 58 per cent of Luton’s population in 1851 was female. Yet, taking the county as a whole in 1851, agriculture remained predominant; the largest single occupational group according to the 1851 census remained male agricultural labourers — 12,703 of them.

Bedfordshire in 1840 was not a county noted for crime or popular turbulence. There had been some disorder at the time of the Swing riots, there was rioting in Ampthill in May 1835 over the New Poor Law which required a squad of Metropolitan Police to help suppress it.³ In January 1838 Metropolitan Policemen were sent to Ampthill again when magistrates and Poor Law Guardians feared further disturbances because of the presence of Mark Crabtree and James Turner who were seeking information, apparently at the request of John Fielden, the radical Tory M.P., on the working of the New Poor Law. There was no disturbance on this occasion. The police in the county, according to the Ampthill magistrates, was ‘so locally interested as to be totally useless even in checking any tumult that might arise’.⁴ Policing remained in the hands of the old system of part-time parish constables; the only exceptions were in the borough of Bedford and in Luton. As an incorporated borough Bedford had come under the police clauses of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 which required corporations to establish Watch Committees and police forces. The town appears to have kept its part-time parish constables and to have employed a paid night watch as its police.⁵ Luton was patrolled by three paid policemen, one during the day and two at night. They were directed by ten inspectors of Lighting and Watching appointed under the Lighting and Watching Act of 1833 (3 and 4 Will IV cap. 90).⁶

Whatever the Ampthill magistrates might report to the Home Office about local constables, the question of police reform was not discussed until May 1839 when the report of the Royal Commission was put before the Quarter Sessions. The magistrates rejected the proposals as too expensive, but they did see a need for improving the policing of the county noting:

1st: The inadequate payment of parish constables and the consequent unwillingness of persons the best qualified to undertake the office.

2nd: That their duties are not clearly defined.

3rd: That there is no co-operation or communication between the constables of different

4th: That they are not in any way organised under the chief constables or otherwise for active and efficient service.

The chief constables in the present day are seldom if ever occupied in preserving or in restoring the peace, in the apprehension of offenders in the prevention of crime and if at any time they are, are not remunerated for it.

They came up with a plan for a force of fifteen paid policemen for the county, three to be stationed in Bedford, including a superintendent, and one each for Ampthill, Biggleswade, Dunstable, Eaton [Bray?], Leighton Buzzard, Luton, Potton, She ford, Sham-brook, Toddington, Turvey and Woburn.⁷ This proposal was never implemented, but at the end of the year the Clerk of the Peace received two requisitions, one from six magistrates drawn from all over the county requesting that the enabling legislation of the summer be discussed at the coming of the Epiphany Sessions, and the other from six magistrates of the Woburn Petty Sessions Division requesting that the coming sessions authorise them to establish a force for their division of the county.⁸ The signatories of both requisitions were a cross-section of Whigs and Tories, and of regular and lax attenders at Quarter Sessions.

At the Epiphany Sessions the motion for establishing a county police force was proposed by Samuel Charles Whitbread, scion of the Whig brewing family, and seconded by William Bartholomew Higgins of Picts Hill, Turvey, also a Whig supporter. Whitbread’s case was not based on any specific incidents demonstrating the need for police. He argued that the old system of parish constables was inefficient and he believed that there should be a uniform system of policing for the whole county in the same way that there was now a uniform system of Poor Law. But there was one cardinal reason for the creation of a force for Bedfordshire:

in all large towns the police force was established, and consequently the only chance the thieves had of gaining a dishonest livelihood, was to go into the country villages where no watch or ward was kept.

Higgins reiterated the argument insisting that if Bedfordshire waited until its neighbours had established police forces it would find itself becoming a haven for all those ‘migrant dependants’ (the term was that of the Royal Commission on the Constabulary and repeated by Higgins) driven out by those forces.⁹ Until Jennifer Hart demonstrated just how inefficient most borough police forces were in the aftermath of the Municipal Corporation Act, many historians were prepared to accept the argument that criminals were driven from London by the Metropolitan Police, and then from boroughs after the 1835 reform.¹⁰ The argument had a comforting logic; it was implicit in the Royal Commission’s report with its emphasis on the migratory behaviour of criminals, and it was stated openly in at least one other Quarter Sessions debate on policing at this time.¹¹ No-one on the Bedfordshire bench challenged it directly, but there was opposition to Whitbread’s motion. It was suggested that the county wait and see what happened elsewhere, that crime was decreasing in Bedfordshire and that it was insufficient to warrant such a step as the creation of a professional constabulary. One gentleman, Richard Longuet Orlebar, from the north-west of the county, demanded to know why he and his neighbours should be expected to pay a police rate which would principally benefit the southern fringe where crime seemed so much more of a problem. Orlebar’s complaint was a common one where counties were divided between traditional rural districts and growing urban ones.¹² Interestingly no-one argued that police were unconstitutional and alien to English liberties. These criticisms were made by Radicals and Chartists and also by Tories of the old school;¹³ Bedfordshire had few of either. Whitbread’s motion was adopted; only five out of the twenty-one magistrates present at the Epiphany Sessions voted for the opposition amendment.

Whitbread believed that twenty-three men would suffice for the new constabulary; this, he calculated, would mean a police rate of threepence in the pound. Others were less sure. The Bedford Town Council declined the offer to amalgamate the borough force with the new county constabulary arguing that the latter was ‘totally inadequate to perform the various and important services contemplated’, not the least because nine-tenths of crime was committed by night and the new force was supposed to patrol by day.¹⁴ The Lord Lieutenant, Earl de Grey, saw the force of such arguments; ‘he could not believe that only three constables in a division would act as the slightest check to the temptation and the opportunity to commit crime’. Other magistrates insisted that farmers ‘would willingly pay the police rates’ and that if a constabulary was to be established it ought to be large enough to prevent crime efficiently. At the Adjourned Epiphany Sessions held on 28 January it was agreed to establish a force of forty constables, six superintendents and a chief constable.¹⁵

There were six applicants for the post of chief constable: four former army officers, a captain in the East India Company’s maritime service, and a Bedfordshire gentleman. The strongest candidate on paper was Captain Kelly, formerly of the 26th Foot and now an inspector in the City of London Police; furthermore twenty men from the City force had offered to serve with him in Bedfordshire. When the magistrates voted to elect their chief constable, Kelly received the backing of the two biggest landowners in the county, de Grey and the Duke of Bedford. But top of the poll was Captain Edward Moore Boultbee, the East India Company seaman, and a man with strong local connections. Boultbee was approved by the Home Office two days after his election:¹⁶ he was to serve as chief constable until the of 1871.

Three weeks after his appointment Boultbee presented the county bench with the names of four potential superintendents: Frederick Hampton and William Ashton were superintendents of the Birmingham Police, Henry Jebbet and James Bates were sergeants of the City of London Force. He also reported that the Commissioner of the Birmingham force had promised him as many constables as he might require. But there were problems. Ashton, a former army serge...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Preface
• Introduction
• Part I Police Reform and Administration
• Part II Changing Patterns of Policing
• Part III The New Police – Ireland (The Royal Irish Constabulary)
• Part IV International Comparisons
• Name Index