The Making of the Modern Police, 1780–1914, Part II vol 6

Paul Lawrence, Janet Clark, Rosalind Crone, Haia Shpayer-Makov

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781138761612
• eBook ISBN: 9781000559774
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mondiale

Over six volumes this edited collection of pamphlets, government publications, printed ephemera and manuscript sources looks at the development of the first modern police force. It will be of interest to social and political historians, criminologists and those interested in the development of the detective novel in nineteenth-century literature. This is Volune 6 from Part II.

THIRD REPORT FROM THE COMMITTEE ON THE STATE OF THE POLICE OF THE METROPOLIS (1818), EXCERPT

DOI: 10.4324/9781003112969-1

Third Report from the Committee on the State of the Police of the Metropolis, Parliamentary Papers, 1818, vol. 8, pp. 32–3.

The close of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth century saw rapid industrialization and urbanization in the British Isles, which affected almost every aspect of life and raised fears concerning the levels of individual safety and public security. Consequently, the educated public was embroiled in controversies regarding the criminal justice system and the need to improve it or even change it radically. This gave rise to periodical parliamentary inquiries on the state of the police – one of the themes that dominated these public debates. Since London, as the capital and the largest urban centre in the country, was seen to embody the problems requiring police control, the committees focused on it. There were six such committees between 1770 and 1828.

The post-Napoleonic years were hectic in this regard.¹ The Committee on the State of the Police of the Metropolis was first convened in 1816, four years after another committee of the House of Commons had sat to consider the same topic. The committee collected evidence on various features of the criminal justice administration, but with special reference to the police offices – the magisterial courts referred to in the Introduction to this volume, which were also called public offices. In addition to judicial functions, each of these police/ public offices carried out policing tasks, hence employing men in various roles, including a small team of about eight detectives who were called public officers or principal officers (the word ‘detective’ did not exist then). In fact, together, these pubic officers comprised the only official body of full-time detectives in the country. By far the most prominent public office was the one in Bow Street, whose detectives – popularly called the Bow Street Runners – enjoyed special status and esteem, and, therefore, drew singular attention from the committee.

In addition to producing minutes of evidence, the committee produced three reports: two in 1817 and the third in 1818.² The extract discussed here is taken from the report of 1818, subtitled ‘General Observations’ by the committee, as it reflected the frame of mind of its members. While the extract does not refer to the public officers (i.e., to detectives) per se, it illuminates popular sentiments among the informed public, which form an essential background to the understanding of the evolution of police detection in Britain. Of particular importance is the deep-seated objection to secret police methods (namely spying) echoed in the oft-quoted comment – ‘it would be a plan which would make every servant of every house a spy on the actions of his master, and all classes of society spies on each other’ (see below, p. 5) – divulging an objection that greatly impacted attitudes towards detectives both then and in later years.

The committee interviewed a variety of witnesses, including public officers who worked in the Bow Street office, and wrote its reports in the period following the prolonged Napoleonic Wars against a background of massive demobilization of soldiers and sailors, economic depression and high unemployment. The atmosphere was one of accelerating political turbulence, prompting coercive legislation and violent clashes with the forces of law and order, including the military. Nonetheless, although the committee criticized various aspects of law enforcement, such as the performance and habits of the Bow Street Runners and of the other public officers (for example, the use of informers and the corrupting effects of rewards), the 1818 report suggested only certain modifications in the policing of the metropolis, rejecting proposals for a wholesale police reform circulating then. In particular, the committee seemed to counter arguments made by the stipendiary magistrate, Patrick Colquhoun, a witness interviewed by the committee and the most persistent proponent of police reform over the past quarter of a century, who promoted the creation of a well-regulated and centralized police for London along the lines of the French system.³

From the ‘General Observations’ it is apparent that the committee was aware of current assessments of a sharp rise in the level of crime, and was determined to reduce it. Moreover, in the preceding section, the report conveyed deep discontent with the impunity enjoyed by criminals as a result of the prevailing system obliging victims of crime to trace and prosecute their offenders at their own expense, and, by contrast, the severe penalties for petty crime, which likewise tended to deter victims and witnesses from pursuing justice. The injurious effect on public peace was obvious. Notwithstanding, the committee felt confident that this situation could be remedied, at least partially, without resort to more vigorous and coercive policing.

In an effort to solve the problem of widespread reluctance to prosecute offenders, the committee recommended increasing the reimbursement of expenses borne by private prosecutors and witnesses, and mitigating those parts of the criminal law considered too harsh by the public. Significantly, it did not opt for the appointment of more public detectives. Its explicit preference was for the prevention of offences, rather than punishment after the act. However, it wholeheartedly deprecated the type of preventive police based on systematic surveillance of the population, advocated by Colquhoun. Since such a policing system was commonly associated with France and other authoritarian powers, and with secret spying, even on people who were not suspected of crime, the committee proudly affirmed that it was utterly unsuitable for a free country such as Britain.⁴ An additional reason for opposing such a preventive system was that spies were perceived as serving the central government, while the committee members recoiled from strengthening the state, motivated not only by fear of a tyrannical regime but also by a firm, and traditional, belief in the power of local government and in the need to maintain its time-honoured control of policing.

Driven partly by enlightened principles, the committee report of 1818 put its faith in the power of a humane system of justice, an improved economic environment, and moral and religious education to ameliorate the manners and moral habits of people, thereby creating a reasonably orderly and secure society. Related to this set of proactive measures was an emphasis on the necessity to appoint honest and reliable men to operate the criminal justice institutions, implying removal of corrupt officers, private thief-takers⁵ and ‘trading justices’⁶ whose activities sometimes promoted rather than reduced crime.⁷ Society could thus live in peace and security without a strong police or a strong government. In an optimistic spirit, the committee was assuaged by expert evaluation that the acute economic and social crisis was temporary and that violent crime was on the wane. At the same time, as John Beattie argues, leading members of the committee wanted above all to head off any discussion in Parliament about the crime problem in London, and any attempt at serious police reform, because that would almost certainly reduce support for the issues they were chiefly concerned to advance the reform of criminal law, in particular the reduction of capital punishment.⁸

Notes

1. On the parliamentary inquiries in the post-war period, see L. Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law, 4 vols (London: Stevens & Sons, 1956), vol. 3, pp. 354–60.
2. The second report contained sizable material about detection in the metropolis, and the third about the state of prisons.
3. Such ideas had appeared as early as 1795 in Colquhoun’s Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis, which ran through many editions thereafter and aroused interest and debate. Yet, similar arguments had been articulated even before Colquhoun had published his Treatise. The most radical collective voice calling for a central and much stronger machinery of police for London, and for investing police officers with far-reaching powers of arrest, vigilance and investigation before 1829, was ‘A Bill for the further Prevention of Crimes, and for the more speedy Detection and Punishment of Offenders against the Peace, in the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, and certain Parts adjacent to them’ presented by the Government to Parliament on 27 June 1785. The Bill was aborted as it elicited little support for the centralizing intentions or the proposed extensions of police powers embedded in it (though one of its proposals – stipendiary magistrates’ offices – was embodied in the Middlesex Justices Act of 1792 (see above, p. viii). Still, a minority opinion continued to promote these proposals. For a discussion of the Bill, see Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law, vol. 3, pp. 108–23; J. M. Beattie, The First English Detectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 151 -9. For Colquhoun’s life and published work, see Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law, vol. 3, pp. 211–51, 262–301, 309–11.
4. This highly pervasive contention explains to a great extent the insistence that all police officers wear a uniform when the first reformed police force was formed in London in 1829.
5. The occupation of thief-taking was consolidated during the eighteenth century, filling a void created by the absence of established police forces. Thief-takers were private individuals, usually hired by the victims to recover stolen goods or to bring criminals to justice. Thief-takers were widely suspected of being corrupt, engaging in shady practices and collusion with criminals with the aim of benefitting from the rewards offered for their services (R. Paley, ‘Thieftakers in London in the Age of the McDaniel Gang c 1745–1754’, in D. Hay and F. Snyder (eds), Policing and Prosecution in Britain 1750–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 301–41; J. M. Beattie, Policing and Punishment in London, 1660–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
6. This term reflected the low standing of London justices, who were the object of criticism and ridicule for allegedly using their office to attain financial benefits (Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law, vol. 3, pp. 31–3, 125; N. Landau, The Justices of the Peace , 1679–1760 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), p. 185).
7. For a number of publicized cases embroiling corrupt police officers in 1816, see D. G. Browne, The Rise of Scotland Yard (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1956), p. 68.
8. Beattie, The First English Detectives, pp. 231 – 2.

REPORT FROM THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE POLICE OF THE METROPOLIS (1822), EXCERPT

DOI: 10.4324/9781003112969-2

Report from the Select Committee on the Police of the Metropolis, Parliamentary Papers, 1822, vol. 4, evidence of Sir Richard Birnie, pp. 14–15.

In January 1822, Robert Peel (1788–1850) became home secretary (until 1827, and again in 1828–30). Deeply interested in all matters related to criminal justice, and intent upon radically improving the system of law enforcement, he soon appointed and chaired a select committee on the state of the police in London four years after a similar committee had issued its final report.¹ Just before he took office, the post-war disorders had reached a climax in the riots during the funeral procession of Queen Caroline in London on 14 August 1821.² The riots, involving the death of two civilians from fire by the Life Guards, prompted the government to decide that the maintenance of law and order required some revision. At the beginning of that year, Lord Sidmouth, the previous home secretary, had expanded the patrolling arrangements in the centre of London as well as in its outskirts, in line with gradually ascendant support for a stronger and more systematic preventive policing, but Peel aimed at instituting even more effective changes.

The committee discussed the various police establishments in the capital and heard their representatives, paying particular notice to the public offices, as in the previous committee. The document presented here is taken from the minutes of evidence, concentrating on the testimony of Sir Richard Birnie, chief magistrate of the Bow Street court, the most prominent police office in London (see above, p. vii).

His evidence sheds light on the nature and code of practice of the detective coterie at Bow Street, numbering eight – approximately the size of the detective squad in each of the other public offices.³ We learn that two Runners were assigned to guarding royalty, a role entrusted to them at the end of the previous century in the wake of the French Revolution and the heightened threat to the lives of kings and queens not only in France but also in England.⁴ The other six Runners were principally employed in detective work in the provinces.⁵ In contrast to London, where other public offices were active, provincial Britain was considered to be devoid of home-grown investigative expertise or competence and therefore in need of external assistance. The Bow Street Runners were mainly called upon to inquire into serious crimes due to their reputation as highly skilled detectives, as was later the case with the central detective branch of the Metropolitan Police. In effect, this small cadre operated as a national centre for crime investigation, discharging duties demanded by the Home Office as well.

Another issue brought up in Birnie’s testimony, and repeatedly raised in subsequent decades both inside and outside police circles, related to the monetary compensation of police detectives. Although the public officers were considered public servants, their income did not derive solely from public sources. Their formal wages constituted only a portion of their earnings. In addition to a retaining fee and other official payments, they received fees and expenses from the many private people and private and official institutions who hired their services.⁶ This meant that in part they acted as private detectives, and that, except for serious and complex crimes handled by local and state authorities, people of scarce means could not typically benefit from their unique capabilities, thereby having less of a chance to bring their offenders to justice, as was acknowledged by Birnie.

The Bow Street Runners seemed to be satisfied with this financial arrangement. Owing to their noteworthy reputation, they were in high demand, hence earned substantial amounts of money, as transpires from Birnie’s evidence. However, apparently Birnie himself, as other high officials, including Robert Peel (and the 1816–18 committee; see previous document), were troubled by this arrangement. Buttressing the growing trend of strengthening the public service, they advocated ending outside payment for detective services and making it possible for public officers to live on their fixed salary – and internal rewards – so that these services would be extended to everyone irrespective of economic circumstances. At the heart of this approach lay the premise, upheld by many officials at the time and later on, that if detectives were to succeed, their income must be adequate (see below, pp. 34, 42). For this very reason, there was then and afterwards a good deal of support for rewarding detectives for merit and singular efforts. Clearly, underpinning the endorsement of special incentives for detectives was the assumption that detective work necessitated not only natural talent, but also a strong motivation.

Although Birnie did not mention it, rewards could also have a corrupting influence on those resolute to augment their income, an effe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: Evolution of Police Detection
• Part II: Representations of the Detective Police
• Editorial Notes
• List of Sources
• Index