A History of Police in England

by W. L. Melville Lee

These fatal riots should have taught the lesson that soldiers are ill-suited to the task of putting down civil tumult, and that their use entails an unnecessary amount of bloodshed, especially when their action is so long delayed that an increased severity becomes necessary. Unfortunately the lesson, if learnt, was not taken to heart: at any rate no adequate remedy was proposed at the time. On one point only was any light immediately thrown. Hitherto some doubt had existed as to the legality of employing the military to put down riots, but on this occasion the King sought the advice of the Attorney-General,[154] who gave it as his opinion, that, as soldiers were also citizens, they could constitutionally be used to prevent felony, even without the Riot Act being read. It was well that this point was cleared up, because circumstances will occasionally arise when troops must be sent for as a last resource; but it is remarkable that, after the failure of the soldier to keep the peace had just been demonstrated in so signal a manner, no one should have supplied the obvious rider, and suggested the substitution of a more satisfactory agent. Half a century slipped by before the necessary change began in England; but on the principle of applying the remedy to any limb except the diseased one, Dublin was quickly provided with what London lacked, and in 1786 was passed the "Dublin Police[155] Act,"[156] under which three Commissioners were appointed, and given the command of a paid and well-organised constabulary. In the course of the following year the whole of Ireland came under the protection of the new guardians of the peace, who, developing as time went on, eventually reached that state of efficiency that is now invariably associated with the name of the Royal Irish Constabulary.

The magistrates of the period set the worst possible example to their subordinate officers, and there were but few of them who did not deserve the name of "Trading Justices," that was so commonly applied. Those who did not actually accept bribes were usually ready to make a little extra money by the improper and wholesale bailing, not only of offenders who ought to have been kept in confinement, but of innocent persons also, who ought to have been immediately and unconditionally set at liberty. The system was to issue warrants against helpless people for imaginary crimes, and then to let them out on bail, the magistrate netting the sum of two shillings and fourpence every time he repeated the trick. James Townsend, a Bow Street runner, who gave evidence on this subject before a parliamentary commission in 1816, explained how lucrative this practice used to be, "and taking up a hundred girls, that would make at two shillings and fourpence, £11, 13s. 4d. They sent none to gaol, for the bailing them was so much better."

There is much to be said for the plan of employing country gentlemen to administer justice, without stipend, in the neighbourhood of their own estates; but in London, where all the criminal talent of the three kingdoms was collected, and where the duties of magistrates became both difficult and onerous in consequence, only inferior men could be induced to undertake the office, and then only for the sake of the patronage they could control, and for the perquisites they were able to pick up. They were distinguished neither for social position, nor for legal knowledge, and readily succumbed to every temptation that offered. As long as the magistracy was corrupt, Acts of Parliament were powerless to purify the police: the duty of the Government was plain if not easy; the Commission of the Peace for Middlesex had to be immediately purged of the Trading Justices, and a scheme had to be introduced under which capable and upright men would be secured to take their place: the hands of the new magistrates, when appointed, had to be strengthened and sufficiently enlarged to enable them to grapple with the problem of keeping order in London, a city which besides being the most populous in Europe, had the reputation of being the most difficult to manage, its inhabitants quickly resenting any action of the executive that threatened to interfere, in the smallest particular, with their liberties or their customs. At the same time it was necessary to devise a check upon the magistrates, powerful enough to prevent a recurrence of the old abuses.

The Middlesex Justices Bill, which was laid before the House of Commons in March 1792, was an attempt to satisfy the above-mentioned conditions, and was framed on the model of the stipendiary establishment already existing at Bow Street, where satisfactory results had been obtained. It was proposed to create five new police offices (shortly afterwards increased to seven), and to appoint three Justices to each, at a remuneration of £300 a year apiece. This salary was only to be paid on the explicit understanding that they were neither directly nor indirectly to apply to their own benefit any of the fees received by them, from whatever source arising, all such fees to be devoted in future to reducing the expenses of the office. The courts were to be open daily for the transaction of business, one magistrate always to be in attendance, empowered to dispose summarily of the cases brought before him without the assistance of a jury. Provision was also made for the appointment of six constables to each office, at a wage not exceeding twelve shillings a week, invested with authority to apprehend any person suspected of malpractices who was unable to give a satisfactory account of himself. Finally, the constables were to be under the control of the magistrates, and the magistrates were to be answerable to the Secretary of State, in whom was to be vested the power of dismissal, as well as that of appointment.

When introduced, the Bill was severely criticised, Fox and Sheridan, who were two of its strongest opponents, both declaring that the principle of a magistrate punishing without the intervention of a jury was barbarous and unconstitutional, and that the proposal to set up constables with increased powers was an unwarrantable attempt to oppress the poor, already ground down under the heels of the rich. It was advanced that the influence exerted by the Ministry of the day over the magistracy was already excessive, and that the real object of the bill was to still further increase this influence, by adding the power of conferring salaries to that of making appointments.

The framers of the Bill, whilst denying the truth of these statements, and confident of the ultimate triumph of the principles they advocated, were willing that the measure should at first become law for a limited period only, and were content that Parliament should have the opportunity of amending, or even annulling its provisions, if on trial they should prove unsatisfactory.

The Middlesex Justices Act first came into operation, therefore, as an experiment. The seven public offices were established in different parts of the Metropolis at convenient distances from each other, the twenty-one Justices were appointed, and the forty-two constables were sworn in, an insignificant force indeed with which to contend against the whole criminal array of London, but of great historical interest as a development of the Bow Street system, the two together forming the first regularly organized and paid force ever established in England. The acknowledgement of the desirability of employing stipendiary magistrates in crowded centres was no less important, and gradually led up to the system that is found so valuable to-day, not only at the metropolitan police courts, but also in those great towns where the principle has, in recent years, been adopted.

The reform of the magistracy that was taken in hand in 1792 was not so thorough as it might have been, and the opportunity that then offered of removing once and for all every unworthy taint from the administration of justice in the metropolis was only partly taken advantage of.

The Middlesex Justices Bill was conceived in too parsimonious a spirit, and the right sort of men did not come forward to fill the important posts of police justices, many of the new magistrates, in fact, being recruited from the ranks of the old discredited class, which it was one of the principal objects of the Bill to displace. Neither the justices nor the constables received a salary large enough to make them independent of improper sources of income, the latter being openly permitted to engage in various lucrative transactions that had nothing to do with their office. It is said that constables attached to the public offices would not infrequently fill the role of counsel for the prisoner, as well as holding a brief for the prosecution.

The small force called into being by the Act of 1792, and which, including the Bow Street officers, amounted to about fifty men, was designed only against individual criminals; the idea of preventing or repressing riots by means of a civil police force was hardly considered to fall within the range of practical politics. At the moment when the success of the revolutionary leaders had achieved the overthrow of the French Monarchy, and had culminated in the execution of Louis the Sixteenth, established authority all the world over was in danger of subversion. The violent utterances of certain Radical Societies shewed that there were many in England who violently sympathised with the Revolution, and the riots that took place in many of our towns proved that the excesses which had turned the streets of Paris into shambles, were finding an echo amongst the discontented and disorderly on this side of the Channel.