The Making of the Modern Police, 1780–1914, Part I Vol 2

Paul Lawrence, Francis Dodsworth, Robert M Morris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000559736
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

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 Volume II of Part One.

REPORT FROM THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE POLICE OF THE METROPOLIS (1828) EXCERPTS

DOI: 10.4324/9781003112921-1

Report from the Select Committee on the Police of the Metropolis, Parliamentary Papers, 1828, vol. 6, 533, pp. 20–2, 31–2.

The 1828 Committee was the most recent of six parliamentary committees of inquiry between 1770 and 1828 that investigated policing arrangements in London. Usually set up in response to some particular contemporary incident or concern, hand-wringing tended to predominate, and the fate of the 1785 London and Westminster Bill discouraged ambition. The 1828 Committee was an entirely different enterprise: the responsible minister, the Home Secretary (Peel), was not only its orchestrator but also a member of the committee and with a distinct agenda. The chairman of the committee, T. G. Estcourt (1775–1853), was a Gloucestershire landowner and committed political ally of Peel who had succeeded to Peel’s Oxford University seat in 1827 having previously served as MP for Devizes from 1805. Estcourt’s surviving papers¹ show careful preparation of committee business.

The upshot was a report that spoke with considerable authority as well as determination. Above all, it offered an ambitious but credible strategic blueprint for a metropolitan-wide force under central command and executive political control. Taken by itself, the report could seem to be a novel, startling even, departure from previous parliamentary reports. However, this would be to overlook the cumulative effect of policing experimentation from 1792 and the extent to which it exposed the limitations of the parochial system. While the Estcourt committee acknowledged that some parochial forces were effective, it pointed out their fatal defect: however good individual parochial forces might be, they were incapable of acting in concert for the benefit of the metropolis as a whole. Without discussion, the report circumvented the problem of City of London susceptibilities by excluding the City altogether from the proposed scheme – and at a stroke removing the most formidable likely objectors to it.

The one important lacuna in the 1828 report was finance: what might the recommended system cost and how was it to be paid for ? Estcourt’s papers show him wrestling inconclusively with this problem. The committees solution was to hazard that costs would be unlikely to exceed what efficient parishes already paid, implying that inefficient ones would have to pay more. However, neither in the report itself nor during the passage of the ensuing Bill were cost estimates given. On the other hand, the assumption remained throughout that, whatever the costs were, they would be borne locally and not in anyway by central government. Because so many parishes did in the end have to pay more, the government was later forced in the 1833 Act (see pp. 21–4) and an important policy change to offer a subvention, covered in the selection reproduced below.

Note

1. Gloucester Record Office 1570 X/30. The extent to which the committee’s proceedings were stage managed can be seen from Estcourt’s surviving papers. They include interrogatories drawn up to prompt witnesses to deliver convenient evidence and drafts of the final report which wrestled with the difficulty of how to present and how to fund the expected extra costs. The papers also show that Estcourt was fully alive at the time to the principle of separating the executive from the judicial functions of magistrates in London. While unspoken, this was in practice achieved in the 1829 Act; it was not extended to the 1792 stipendiaries until the Metropolitan Police Act 1839.

METROPOLITAN POLICE IMPROVEMENT ACT 1829, EXCERPTS

DOI: 10.4324/9781003112921-2

Metropolitan Police Improvement Act 1829, 10 Geo. IV c. 44, preamble, sections III, IV, V, IX, XXIII.

After decades of protracted parliamentary agonizing, the Act had a surprisingly swift passage through Parliament. In line with the Bill’s preamble, Peel based the case for the legislation on a carefully assembled recital describing the rise in Metropolitan crime.¹ He was vague throughout about cost: on the one hand, he was confident that the cost would be much less than the existing watch rates and, on the other, he was sure that any additional burden would be fully compensated for by the additional protection and security afforded. No hard figures were ventured but MPs could at least be assured that the rate demands were to be capped at not more than 8d. in the pound. Public order as opposed to crime issues were hardly aired though it is difficult to believe they were very far from Peel’s mind at any time.

Granted the degree of former opposition to the creation of a force on such lines, historians have wondered how Peel managed to achieve as much as he did when he did. One of the lessons of the 1785 Bill had been the irreconcilability of the City of London² to any encroachment on what it regarded as its ancient rights. Instead of confronting the problem, Peel simply circumnavigated it by leaving the City out of the Bill altogether. One of the historians most recently examining the question has concluded that the struggle only just concluded over Catholic emancipation had led to some parliamentary exhaustion and that in London outside the City there may have been a greater degree of unspoken acceptance that the parochial system was incapable of delivering what was needed.³ How far Peel was silently intent on creating a new model of state control is not clear. In so far as the Act centralized and generalized previous best practice in London, a great deal in the 1829 Act was not new. Nowadays, Peel is credited with creating what the British like to think is a uniquely benign form of policing. However, in so far as that assessment holds water, it is a comment on what the force became rather than what it was initially intended to be.⁴ Reforms of this character do not long remain the property of their creators because the interactions which later shape them are beyond any single person’s control or lifespan.

The Act spelled out in some detail, especially in section 5, the extent of Home Secretary control. While the initiative lay largely with the Commissioners, the final decision lay with the Home Secretary. Although the latter’s powers did not expressly extend to giving operational orders to the police, in practice the relationship between Commissioners and the minister could only flourish for so long as Commissioners retained the Home Secretary’s confidence. The fact that the Commissioners and ministers were located physically within easy reach of each other no doubt helped facilitate good personal relations. However, during the social unrest of the late 1880s, relations did become very strained and swift moving events saw the departure and appointment of four Commissioners during 1886–90.

There are two further noteworthy points. First, neither this Act nor any subsequent legislation altered the immemorial status and powers of the constable – a continuity carefully preserved. Secondly, the Act provided for a Receiver who acted more as a local authority than as a mere accountant. The role was essential because there was no pre-existing pan-London authority on to which the new functions could be grafted. It is sometimes argued that, in a situation where the London County Council was not created until 1888, the sheer scope of the force’s duties allowed governments to evade acting on the case for a democratic London-wide authority for too long.

A long Act also had a long life. Very little amended, it was not repealed until responsibility for policing was transferred to the Mayor of London in 1998. Although the Act gave a large role to the Home Secretary, he was unable to give the force continuous, undivided attention and, as the force itself expanded, it in many ways outgrew the easy reach of its sponsor.

Notes

1. HC Deb, 15 April 1829, cols 867–81.
2. Its preposterously hyperbolic objections to the 1785 Bill despite the fact that all the proposed force’s warrants would have had to be backed by City justices to have effect there can be found at Parliamentary History, vol. 25, Commons, 29 June, col. 900.
3. Beattie, The First English Detectives, pp. 245–53.
4. For a perceptive comparative account of how and why different policing styles evolved in London and New York, see W. M. Miller, Cops and Bobbies: Police Authority in New York and London, 1830–1870 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press (1977).

Metropolitan Police Improvement Act 1829, excerpts

CAP. XLIV

An Act for improving the Police in and near the Metropolis.

[19th June 1829.]

His Majesty may establish a new Police Office for the Metropolis and the surrounding District, and may appoint Two Persons as Justices, to conduct the Business of the Office, under the Directions of a Secretary of State.

Whereas Offences against Property¹ have of late increased in and near the Metropolis; and the local Establishments of Nightly Watch and Nightly Police have been found inadequate to the Prevention and Detection of Crime, by reason of the frequent Unfitness of the Individuals employed, the Insufficiency of their Number, the limited Sphere of their Authority, and their Want of Connection and Co-operation with each other: And Whereas it is expedient to substitute a new and more efficient System of Police in lieu of such Establishments of Nightly Watch and Nightly Police, within the Limits hereinafter mentioned, and to constitute an Office of Police, which, acting under the immediate Authority of One of His Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State, shall direct and controul the Whole of such new System of Police within those Limits:’ Be it therefore enacted by the King’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the Authority of the same, That it shall be lawful for His Majesty to cause a new Police Office to be established in the City of Westminster, and by Warrant under His Sign Manual to appoint Two fit Persons as Justices of the Peace of the Counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Hertford, Essex, and Kent, and of all Liberties therein, to execute the Duties of a Justice of the Peace at the said Office, and in all Parts of those several Counties, and the Liberties therein, together with such other Duties as shall be hereinafter specified, or as shall be from Time to Time directed by One of His Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State, for the more efficient Administration of the Police within the Limits hereinafter mentioned; and His Majesty may remove either of the said Justices, if he shall see Occasion so to do, and may, upon any Vacancy in the said Office by Death, Removal, or otherwise, appoint another fit Person as a Justice of the Peace of the Counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Hertford, Essex, and Kent, and of all Liberties therein, to execute the Duties aforesaid, in lieu of the Person making such Vacancy; and it shall be lawful for His Majesty to appoint any Person to be a Justice of the Peace by virtue of this Act, and for such Person, during the Continuance of his Appointment, to execute the Duties of a Justice of the Peace for the several Counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Hertford, Essex, and Kent, and for all Liberties therein, although he may not have any such Qualification by Estate as is required by Law in the Case of any other Person being a Justice of the Peace for any County: Provided always, that no such Person shall Act as a Justice of the Peace at any Court of General or Quarter Sessions, nor in any Matter out of Sessions, except for the Preservation of the Peace, the Prevention of Crimes, the Detection and Committal of Offenders, and in carrying into Execution the Purposes of this Act.

The Justices need not have any Qualification of Estate. Proviso.

II. And be it enacted, That every Person to be appointed a Justice of the Peace by virtue of this Act shall, before he shall begin to execute the Duties of his Office, take the following Oath before some Justice or Baron of One of His Majesty’s Courts of Record at Westminster; (that is to say,)

Oath to be taken by the Justices.

‘I A. B. do swear, That I will faithfully, impartially, and honestly, according to the best of my Skill and Knowledge, execute all the Powers and Duties of a Justice of the Peace, under and by virtue of an Act passed in the Tenth Year of the Reign of King George the Fourth, intituled An Act for improving the Police in and near the Metropolis.’

Salary of the Justices.

III. And be it enacted, That it shall be lawful for His Majesty to direct that an annual Salary...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Bibliography
• Contemporary Material
• Memoir and Biography
• Editorial Notes
• List of Sources