At the time appointed numbers of people began to congregate on the waste ground at Coldbath Fields, and soon afterwards the speeches commenced. As soon as it became clear that the meeting was identical with that proscribed by the Home Secretary, the men of "A" division, after having been warned by Colonel Rowan to be cool and temperate in their demeanour, were ordered to carry out the instructions previously given them. At the same time a portion of the reserve was moved from the stables (where the men had been waiting) to support the first party, and it was during this advance that a collision took place at a street corner with a mob of people, who immediately began to throw stones, by which several constables were injured. Thereupon the superintendent gave the word to charge, and in the melée which followed truncheons were made use of, and three policemen were stabbed, one of them being killed on the spot. Meanwhile the crowd was incited to further resistance by the action of a man called Stallwood, who falsely representing himself to be a magistrate, harangued the police from the balcony of his house, and told them that they were acting illegally in making use of force before the Riot Act had been read. The struggle was of short duration. The people began to disperse in all directions, and numerous arrests were made by the police, who committed the error of following up their victory with too much vigour, carrying pursuit in some instances to a considerable distance from the scene of the original conflict.

This first collision between the Metropolitan force and the people gave rise to a series of charges against the police, which, if they could have been substantiated, might have ended in the undoing of all the good achieved after so many years, and brought about with so much labour and difficulty. It was said that the police were intoxicated and, in that condition, had made an unprovoked assault on inoffending citizens, knocking down women and children with brutal impartiality, and then stunning them with their truncheons as they lay on the ground. Fortunately an exhaustive enquiry was held, with the result that the action of the police was satisfactorily vindicated. An unanswerable argument against the accusers was that, whereas several constables were badly knocked about, and one killed, not a single case of serious injury was to be found on the other side.

Public animosity, however, did not pause to reason; and at the inquest which was held on the body of the murdered policeman Culley, the jury, sympathizing with, or intimidated by, the popular feeling, brought in a verdict of "justifiable homicide." A verdict so flagrantly in the teeth of the evidence could not be allowed to stand: the Crown applied to the Court of King's Bench, and the inquisition was very properly quashed.

A Committee of the House of Commons was then appointed to enquire into the conduct of the police, who came out of the ordeal with more credit than the Government did, for it was proved that the Police Commissioners only carried out the instructions of the Home Secretary, who, when trouble arose, sought to escape all responsibility, and to throw the blame on Colonel Rowan. Whatever may be thought of Lord Melbourne's action, it is certain that he did not err on the side of over-generosity, and the slender support which he somewhat grudgingly gave to the police authorities was hardly of a nature to encourage them in their uphill task. It may be that this cold-shouldering of its youngest child by a government department was not altogether a misfortune, for a popular reaction in favour of the police quickly followed, and friendship was expressed in quarters where nothing but hostility had been looked for: vestries which had recently petitioned against the formation of the force now passed resolutions in its praise, and nearly all those parishes situated just outside the boundary applied to be admitted into the Metropolitan police area. Before long provincial towns and outlying districts began to solicit the loan of police officers trained in the London school; and in eight years some two hundred places, including Birmingham, Bristol, Hull, Liverpool and Manchester were supplied with experts, who carried with them to their new sphere of action the methods they had learnt in the metropolis, and whose excellent work in the provinces did much to disprove the ridiculous fables, which had once gained credence, as to the overbearing incompetence of the new constabulary.

Public opinion is notoriously unstable; and in recent years the police have probably suffered to a greater extent than any other institution from the alternating favour and disfavour of the populace.[188] The comparative popularity enjoyed by the Metropolitan police force in 1834 was only a precarious possession, gratifying enough at the moment, but of little permanent value. No such disadvantage, however, attaches to a testimonial deliberately given by a representative tribunal, especially when such testimony is in direct contradiction to anticipations recently expressed by an equally competent and similarly constituted body. The 1822 Committee were of opinion that it would be difficult "to reconcile an effective system of police with that perfect freedom of action and exemption from interference which are the great privileges and blessings of society in this country." The 1834 Committee, on the other hand, having satisfied themselves that these gloomy forebodings were groundless, reported to the House of Commons as follows: "Looking at the establishment as a whole, it appears to your Committee that the Metropolitan police has imposed no restraint, either upon public bodies or individuals, which is not entirely consistent with the fullest practical exercise of every civil privilege, and with the most unrestrained intercourse of private society."

CHAPTER XIV
POLICE REFORM IN BOROUGHS

It is sometimes assumed that the Metropolitan Police Act solved, once and for all, the question as to the manner in which London was to be policed for the future. Such, however, was far from being the case. The old prejudice was not lived down in a day; and the jealousy of those who saw what they were pleased to consider their vested rights slipping out of their grasp into the hands of the newcomers, caused the remnant of the old office-holders to make frantic efforts to recover what they had lost, and to hold fast what they were in danger of losing. There were still many irreconcilables, who looked upon the new force as a gang of usurpers and treated it with distrust and suspicion accordingly, hoping that some false move on the part of the police authorities, or some unlooked-for happy chance, might change the fortunes of the day. Luckily no such set-back occurred, and by slow degrees the ultimate success of the principles enunciated by Peel became more and more assured, and Scotland Yard triumphed to the discomfiture of all possible rivals.

From the very commencement Sir Robert Peel had declared that unity of design was essential to success; but when the reorganization took place, Parliament shrank from the bold course marked out for it, and instead of making a clean sweep of all that was useless, whilst transferring to the new police anything in the old system that was of value, preferred to retain some of the existing unsatisfactory agencies, and to allow them to continue to manage or mismanage their own affairs as before.