A History of Police in England

by W. L. Melville Lee

London was in a disgraceful condition. Few towns in Europe were at once so inadequately policed, so badly lighted, and in such an insanitary state as the capital city of England; proof of the lack of proper sanitation, and its unfailing result, was brought home to people in convincing form at the time when the nightly procession of dead-carts, filled with victims of the plague, was the only traffic to be seen in the streets; but although the great fire of 1666 improved out of existence some of the most pestilential quarters, London remained a city of squalor and darkness. Most of the thoroughfares were without pavements of any kind, and such as existed were so sunken and broken that they were a source of danger to those who stumbled along them; rubbish was shot out of upper windows into the street beneath, and the public squares were used as receptacles for all the filth of the neighbourhood. After nightfall the certainty of having to encounter drunken bullies and highway robbers confined to their houses those citizens whom urgent business did not compel to walk abroad; even in daylight there were districts where the peace officers dared not venture, and Macaulay tells us that within the sanctuary of Whitefriars "even the warrant of the Chief Justice of England could not be executed without the help of a company of musketeers."[131]

All this time the legislature was mute: throughout the reign of Charles II. hardly a single Act of Parliament was passed dealing with the policing of the twin cities that make up the metropolis. The municipal authorities did what they could, and by an Act of Common Council provided a force of about one thousand Bellmen, afterwards called Charlies, in memory of the monarch in whose reign they were first instituted. Unfortunately these watchmen were allowed to shirk their duties and were well known to be altogether inefficient, so much so, that when rowdy apprentices and other unruly assemblages gave trouble, as they too often did, no one thought of looking to such weak-kneed officials for the safety of the town. On such occasions companies of soldiers were requisitioned to protect the main thoroughfares, and, as a further precaution, chains were stretched from one side of the street to the other to prevent the free movement of the riotous bands.

Before the end of the reign, however, some advance was made towards rendering London a fit place to live in. Several squares were enclosed and planted; new and wider streets were built; but the greatest improvements of the time were due, not to the efforts of municipal authorities, but to the recently-formed Royal Society, which investigated the question of sanitary police, and offered suggestions that to some extent were acted upon, with the result that England has since been free from the plague, so fatal in former years. Commissioners of Sewers were appointed, and the duties of scavengers and rakers, with regard to the cleansing of the metropolis, were formulated.

In other departments also, progress was manifest, especially in the lighting arrangements. By an act passed in 1672[132] it had been ordered that a certain number of candles should be displayed every night between Michaelmas and Lady Day; but in 1685 private enterprise was responsible for placing a light before every tenth door from dusk till midnight. The effect cannot have been dazzling, but even this moderate amount of illumination was more effectual in preventing crime than any number of the watchmen of the period were likely to be. About the same time regulations for the control of hackney carriages plying for hire were first published.[133]

In the rural districts peace-maintenance was, if possible, at a lower ebb than in London—the roads were almost impassable throughout the winter months, and highwaymen were as frequent as mile-stones. Peace officers were practically non-existent: Justices were careless and apathetic, and Lords of the Manor had neglected to hold Courts-Leet for the annual election of Constables. A statute of 1673[134] complains of the lack of constables, and authorises two Justices of the Peace in each district to fill up the vacancies immediately. This was the first occasion on which the power of appointing petty constables had been by Act of Parliament conferred on the magistrates, and official sanction extended to what had for years been the almost invariable custom. For the better policing of highways, turnpikes were established,[135] and those who used the roads made to subscribe towards the necessary repairs, instead of the whole burden being thrown on the rural population, which, partly by forced labour exacted by law (the Corvée of Feudal times), and partly by a parochial rate, had been compelled to mend the roads that traversed their neighbourhood. It is to be feared that this long-delayed act of justice was attributable rather to the vile condition of the highways than to any tender consideration for the rural population.

The system of passports, which had been introduced some centuries before for the purpose of checking vagrancy, continued to find favour, and was believed in as a panacea for the prevention of all kinds of crime. It was thought, not without reason, that a thief could not long pursue his vocation undetected amongst neighbours, who were acquainted with his circumstances, and who saw how he occupied his time and how he spent his money, whilst a stranger who came to-day and was gone to-morrow, might rob from one end of England to the other with impunity. The police were therefore instructed to enforce the regulations against vagrants with increased vigour, and in the following manner. After a vagrant beggar had been whipped he was entitled to a testimonial signed by the minister of the parish and countersigned by the constable or tythingman, setting forth the date and place of his punishment, something after this form. "W. W., a sturdy vagrant beggar (aged about forty years) tall of stature, red-haired, and long lean-visaged, and squint-eyed, was this 24th day of A in the 22nd year of the reign of Our Gracious Sovereign Lord King Charles the Second, etc., openly whipped at T in the County of G; according to the law, for a wandering rogue; and is assigned to pass forthwith from parish to parish by the officers thereof the next streight way to W in the county of B, where he confesseth he was born: and he is limited to be at W aforesaid within twelve days now next ensuing at his peril. Given under the hands and seals of C. W. minister of T. aforesaid, and of J. G. constable there, the day and year aforesaid."[136] Any vagrant found by a constable, and unable to produce such a testimonial, was straightway to be arrested, and became liable to more whipping, or if found incorrigible[137] to transportation "to any of the English plantations beyond the sea" by the order of a majority of Justices at Quarter Sessions. Although we no longer look upon vagrancy as "The Mother and Root of all Evil" as our forefathers did, and have relaxed the stringency of the laws against vagabondage, the tramp is still an object of legitimate suspicion, and a watchful eye is kept by the Convict Supervision Office over all convicts at large, who are bound to produce their licenses when called upon by a police officer to do so, and are only allowed to travel from district to district under certain restrictions.

Among the many difficulties that those responsible for the preservation of the peace had to contend with, one of the most complicated was how best to deal with the lawless aggression of the Lowland Scots without involving the two nationalities in actual war. Henry VIII. endeavoured to solve the problem by the creation of a special local authority called "The Council of the North," but this was only a temporary measure, and not very successful, nor were the expedients adopted by Elizabeth any more effectual. Throughout the whole of the seventeenth century, the northern counties were continually overrun by predatory bands, called Moss-troopers, who taking advantage of the almost perennial hostility existing between the English and the Scots, harried the country-side, murdering, marauding, and lifting cattle: in case of pursuit, or after an unusually successful expedition, they had only to cross the border to avoid capture. According to Fuller,[138] their numbers amounted at one time to some thousands of men, who scoured the country in troops and exacted an annual tribute from the inhabitants of the valleys between the Solent and the North Sea. Although Fuller's was assuredly an exaggerated estimate, these enterprising freebooters were without question a most formidable fraternity. The Union of the Crowns of England and Scotland deprived them, it is true, of the international pretext they had traded upon in the past, but their depredations continued just the same as before. With the hope of putting an end to these raids, a local police force was established in 1672,[139] and afterwards kept alive by successive Acts of Parliament. The Justices of the Peace for the northern counties were empowered by virtue of this Statute to make a charge of £500 against Northumberland, and of £200 against Cumberland, for the payment and support of a body of men, forty-two strong (viz., thirty Northumbrians and twelve Cumbrians), whose duty it was to "search out, discover, pursue, apprehend, and bring to trial by law,"—the raiders. In strict justice, the task of suppressing the Moss-troopers should not have been left to a local force, but the political relations between the two countries were already strained almost to breaking point, and the employment of troops on the borderland might, and probably would, have induced a rupture. Under the circumstances, therefore, the government of the day was probably justified in the course pursued, but on no account should the whole expense have been borne by the very counties which had already principally suffered through the inroads of the raiders.

Contemporary literature shews how lamentably insecure life and property had become in the days of the later Stuarts, and during the early Georgian period. Luttrell's diary is one long catalogue of crimes of violence, and he remarks, from his own experience, that "footpads are very troublesome in the evening on all the roads leading to the city, which renders them very unsafe." In his history of England, Smollet declares that "thieves and robbers are now become more desperate and savage than they had ever appeared since mankind was civilized."

No thoroughfare was free from the tyranny of the fraternity of highwaymen, who were allowed to terrorize whole districts, and who enjoyed an almost unlimited freedom from interference. As their depredations grew more extensive, their insolence increased. Evelyn describes how a gang of robbers succeeded in appropriating the taxes that had been collected in the northern counties, as the bags containing the money were being escorted through Hertfordshire, on their way to London: the highwaymen first stopped and secured all travellers in the immediate neighbourhood, placed them under guard in a field, and after killing the horses of their captives to prevent pursuit, attacked the escort, put them to flight, and captured the treasure. The authors of this outrage were never caught.