intended to increase a police presence in areas liable to unrest, associated with
labour disputes and agricultural shortages, but the constables were ineffective,
largely because the rate of pay was too low to attract effective applicants.
Rules for constables, their duties and the way they lived even when not on
duty were onerous. Their beats could involve walking twenty miles a night in
all weathers, with no sitting, leaning or refreshments allowed, they often had
to provide portions of their own uniforms, and these had to be worn even
when not on duty–all for as little as three shillings a day, minus deductions
for rent and pensions.^13 The acceptance for the necessity of the police forces
was slow–by 1850 only thirtysix counties had a force, and there were only
12,000 policemen to cover the whole of England and Wales. Many people
regarded the idea of a police force as somehow‘unEnglish’.
Local authorities objected to the expense involved, and there was no real
leadership from government about policing, until in 1856 a Police Act set up a
system of inspection and auditing, and compelled each county to set up a
police force. As a result, 239 forces were inaugurated, although there were no
national standards of pay and conditions. An inspectorate was designed to
check on the efficiency of the local police provision. The National Criminal
Record was established in 1869, followed in 1877 by the formation of the
Criminal Investigation Department. Innovations such as the telegraph system
now enabled forces to alert each other about criminal cases and to share
information necessary to make the pursuit of criminals more effective.
The immediate result was a fall in street crime and a reduction in the
amount of recorded violent crime. A middleclass public, initially suspicious
of policing, fearing a militarystyle force on Britain’s streets, now began to be
supportive of the police. By the end of the century, 243 forces existed across
Britain, with some 46,000 officers.
Prisons, too, were changing. Various pieces of legislation eroded the power
of country magistrates, and in 1877 the Prisons Act brought all the penal
establishments under the control of the Home Office. Many small local
prisons were closed at this time because they were uneconomic. The‘separate
system’was abandoned, but was replaced with a much harsher regime of hard
labour. The mood had switched from reform to deterrence, although
rehabilitation was still a stated goal. Punishment such as the treadmill and the
crank were used, as well as repetitive tasks such as picking oakum. The
treadmill was a revolving machine worked by prisoners who in effect climbed
a continuous stair for ten minutes at a time, with fiveminute breaks in
between (Plate 12). The crank was a box structure filled with gravel and fitted
with a handle that had to be turned to stir the gravel a set number of times in a
VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN CRIME