Policing in the early nineteenth century Flashcards
What did a range of late 18th and early 19th century incidents provide?
Calls for police reform
What was an important case which led to a parliament committee bring set up to investigate the police of the metropolis?
The Ratcliffe highway murders of 1811
What did the Ratcliffe highway murders involve?
Two vicious attacks on two separate families that resulted in 7 deaths, within 12 days
True or false? The London and Westminster police reform bill of 1785 failed
True
What would the London and Westminster police reform have done?
- Create 9 divisions
- Have divisional chief constables
- Hostility to the bill from city of London
What did the justices bill of 1792 create and exclude?
- Created seven police offices
- The city of London was excluded from these measures
What did the Thames River police of 1798 involve?
- Patrick Colquhoun helped establish a private police force to protects goods of West India
- 1800 this organisation was taken over by the government and became the Thames river police
- 1839 combined with the Metropolitan police
What happened with the 19th century attempts at reform?
- Increasing debate
- Treaty was written talking about all the problems
- He envisioned a police force forming around the magistrate system
What were the aims of the nightly watch regulation bill in 1812 which failed?
- The result of the parliamentary inquiry into the Ratcliffe highway murders
- Bill proposed minimum standards for parish watches of metropolitan Middlesex
- Parishes were strongly opposed to this bill
- The bill is dropped
What were Sir Robert Peels reasons in his Metropolitan police bill?
- Wanted a single police force to maintain order without having to call on the army
- Uniform system of police for Metropolitan area that didn’t depend on the wealth of a parish
- Desired order tidiness on the street of late 18th and early 19th century cities
What did Peel do to pass the act?
- Peel used trickery in order to get his act accepted
- kept the city of London out of his reforms
- Used criminal stats that proved an increase in crime (although it was just a spike in prosecutions)
- Fears of crowds and radical agitation also led to the passing of the bill
- In 1829, the first constables were patrolling the streets
What were some objections to the police?
- Some parishes objected to the loss of control over the way they were policed
- Concern that the new police would be a branch of the military used to control the population
- People complained about the cost (880 Euros per year)
What do historians such as Emsley and Paley maintain about Peels thinking?
- That Peels thinking was coloured by the desire to have a force that could deal with unrest
- Army had more experience of crowd control than the Met police
- New police were not as civilian
What did the old watch system provide?
A beat that covered all the streets & alleys of the parish.
True or false? New recruits were poorly educated, paid very little, made to wear their uniform while off duty and worked second jobs
True
