A History of Police in England

by W. L. Melville Lee

The apathy of those who were responsible for the policing of rural England produced its natural result; and, in the absence of adequate Government protection, people who were not content to submit quietly to be robbed by any scoundrel who preferred plunder to labour, made their own arrangements for self-protection. In 1839, there were upwards of five hundred voluntary associations for the apprehension of felons; of these associations some only concerned themselves with the financial side of the question, and by a system of mutual assurance guaranteed compensation, in part at least, to any member of the society who had suffered loss by theft or arson; others took a more active part against depredators, and revived the ancient institution of Hue and Cry in a practical manner by binding themselves to make quick and fresh pursuit on horseback after any aggressor. During a parliamentary election at Maldon, one party was compelled to employ a bodyguard of professional boxers to protect its candidate from the attacks of political opponents, who, in their turn, retained the services of a band of gypsies, as a measure of retaliation. But perhaps the most irregular of all these associations was that established in the Isle of Ely, where the parishioners of Whittlesea kept a pack of blood-hounds for the purpose of hunting down sheep-stealers. After carefully considering the operations of these societies for self-protection, the Special Commissioners unanimously condemned such expedients, and stated, that in their opinion, "the fact that they had been found necessary was as serious an indictment as could be preferred against the rural police," and remarked, that the existence of such associations might, in after years, be cited as a proof that the community which employed them was relapsing into a state of barbarism.

The prostrate condition of English police under the parochial system should be sufficiently clear without the production of further evidence. What, however, is perhaps the most convincing proof, that could be found, of the utter futility and unseemliness of the police arrangements in rural districts, is contained in the following plain statement from the magistrates of the Trant division of Sussex, on the subject of the lack of proper lock-ups for the temporary detention of prisoners. "In case," they complain, "a prisoner is remanded for further examination, there is no efficient place nearer than Lewes (23 miles) ... there are cages in several parishes but never used being unsafe ... for twenty years we have been compelled to hire a man, and handcuff him to the prisoner, and they are obliged to live at a public house.... Two incendiaries were each locked to men hired for the purpose, and kept at a serious expense ten days, separately in different houses." Some sixty years ago a comic engraving was published, which portrayed a prisoner handcuffed to his gaoler, undergoing a mock trial in the taproom of an alehouse for the amusement of the village tipplers. Such an incident may well have happened, at a time when it was no uncommon occurrence for a constable to confine his prisoner in a stable, or to chain him to a bedpost, until it might be convenient to remove him to a distant lock-up.

In concluding their comprehensive and interesting report, the Commissioners (Colonel Rowan, Mr Shaw Lefevre, and Mr Edwin Chadwick) strongly recommended the immediate establishment of a paid rural constabulary throughout England and Wales, with an organization similar to that of the Metropolitan police, and pointed out, that in order to lessen the expense of the proposed establishment, the new constables might conveniently perform various civil and administrative services, in addition to their normal duties connected with the maintenance of the peace.

Shortly after the presentation of the report, an Act of Parliament, commonly called "The Permissive Act,"[206] was passed, enabling a majority of the Justices in Quarter Sessions, to raise and equip, at their discretion, a paid police for the protection of their county. Justices who decided to take advantage of the Act were empowered to appoint a chief-constable, and delegate to him the power of appointing, directing and disciplining a sufficient number of police constables, the expense of the force to be charged against the general county rate.[207] Adjoining shires were permitted to unite for the common purpose of policing the larger area; and if any county refused, as a whole, to avail itself of the facilities now afforded, any division of that county might maintain a separate police force; provision was also made for the voluntary amalgamation of existing borough forces with any country constabulary, that might thereafter be appointed in the immediate neighbourhood.

The permissive character of the "Rural Police Act" has often been adversely criticised, sometimes, perhaps, without due allowance being made for the difficulty of the problem which confronted the government. It cannot be denied that, judged by its immediate results, the Act was largely a failure, and it is equally certain that its ill-success was consequent upon the free choice between adoption and rejection allowed to local magistrates; but it must be remembered that the power of the government in this matter was far from being unrestricted, the only possible alternatives before the authorities being, the policy of making a small beginning, and the policy of doing nothing at all.

Reference has already been made to the difficulty of securing satisfactory recruits for the metropolitan police, and the available supply had been still further reduced by the demands made upon it to satisfy the necessities of the boroughs. An endeavour to provide simultaneously the whole of England and Wales with efficient police-officers would have been to attempt the impracticable, whilst knowingly to admit inferior men into the ranks of the new constabulary would have been to condemn it irretrievably. Nor was the lack of suitable material the only reason why a cautious plan of campaign was necessary and inevitable; the same spirit of obstinate opposition which had been encountered and nearly overcome in London was, to some extent, apparent in the counties; country gentlemen, besides being indisposed to favour any innovation that threatened their personal supremacy so near home, were strongly opposed to any additional burden being thrown on the county rate. The press, without repeating the bitterness displayed in 1829, added its influence to that of the county magnates, and the idea that any reform of the rural police was at all necessary was scouted by people who ought to have known better; the very men who a year before had testified to the increase of rural crime, now declaring that any interference with the existing machinery for its suppression would be disastrous. Amongst the many objections put forward, some were not very complimentary to the "great unpaid;" it was argued, for example, that the county justices were comparatively harmless so long as they wielded that blunt instrument, the parish constable, but should they be armed with a sharp weapon, such as the police-constable was admitted to be, no man could foresee the damage that would result.[208]

Whilst public opinion remained in ferment the Government was surely well advised to act with caution, by making the adoption of the Act dependent upon the consent of those whom it was designed to benefit. In this way much opposition was disarmed, and the care of the infant institution was entrusted only to those who voluntarily undertook it.

Between 1840 and 1856 the history of rural police divides into two branches: in the counties which adopted the Permissive Act, the record is one of almost constant progress towards efficiency; in the counties which preferred to prolong the defective régime of the parish-constable, the story is largely one of stagnation, unnecessary friction, and weak-kneed experiment. Although these tendencies are so diverse, the migratory habit of criminals makes it impossible to follow the history of either to the exclusion of the other. No police system can rightly be considered without constant reference to neighbouring systems, because every improvement in the police of one district immediately increases the difficulties of every adjacent district. The result of the Permissive Act was precisely what might have been expected, and the situation may be summed up in the single phrase—crime follows impunity. The influences of pride and local jealousies proved powerful enough to prevent a complete recantation by those counties which had pinned their faith to the status quo ante, but they were not sufficiently potent to produce insensibility or indifference when the day of reckoning came. County magistrates, who in 1840 had refused to set their houses in order, were ready to embrace almost any expedient by the end of 1842. By this time they were only too glad to accept the services of police officers, trained in London or elsewhere, and to entrust them with the task of supervising the local constables. One of the chief reasons why parochial constables had become so useless, was because there was no one to keep them up to their work. The office of High-Constable (finally abolished in 1869) had long been purely nominal, and Justices of the Peace could hardly be expected to devote much time or trouble to the unpleasant task of extracting service out of unwilling agents. In country towns where watchmen were employed, it was usually the constable's duty to oversee the watchman, but it was found by experience that the business was so indifferently performed that a plan, known as the "clock system" had, in many places, been introduced. This method of supervision consisted of a mechanical contrivance, in the shape of a clock with a revolving face: the watchmen were instructed to pull the chain attached to the clock every time they passed any of the machines during the night. In the morning, the constable would visit the clocks, and note the hours at which the chains had been pulled; but as a matter of fact the check on the watchmen was valueless, because subsequent inquiry showed that one man could easily attend to three or four clocks. In the more remote country districts watchmen were seldom or never employed, and no responsible person conceived it to be his particular business to supervise the comings or goings of the parish-constables.

Under these circumstances, an attempt was made in 1842 to infuse new life into the decrepit parochial system by an Act[209] of Parliament, which ordered Justices of the Peace to hold special sessions for appointing proper persons to act as parish constables, and which authorized the employment of new functionaries called Superintending Constables to have the management of Lock-up Houses, and also the supervision of all the parish-constables within the Petty Sessional Division of the county for which they might be appointed—such superintending constables to receive a fixed salary out of the County Rates.

The Superintending Constable system was given a fair trial; most of the counties in England and Wales which refused to adopt the Permissive Act employing trained stipendiaries to look after their unpaid and amateurish parochial constables. That the compromise proved a comparative failure must be attributed not to the shortcomings of the officers selected, but to the impossibility of the task they were required to perform. Individually, superintending constables were often meritorious officers, and they proved so far useful that a substantial improvement was soon apparent in the police of nearly every county which employed them; but their exertions, however great, were doomed to failure because the very unpromising material they had to manipulate was proof in the long run against the limited powers they were allowed to exercise.