Before the Bobbies. The Night Watch and Police Reform in Metropolitan London, 1720-1830

(Jacob Rumans) #1
Introduction 5

1828-29, when Robert Peel succeeded in centralizing London's police.
Obviously, all reformers were not necessarily inspired by the same fears.
However, these factors -who was implementing reform and the way they did
it - support the interpretation that concerns about rising crime rates were
the primary motivation behind police reform.
The key problem for many local officials was not lack of awareness of
reform options or constitutional objections (though some feared the usurpa-
tion of their local 'liberties') but money. Thus a fourth theme addressed is
limitations on reform and how Robert Peel worked within them to accom-
plish his goal of centralization. Fiscal constraints on local government were
considerable and at times severe; the methods of improved policing that
were essayed were usually costly. Local officials did not resist the idea of
professional policing - they developed it - but objections to centralization
were strenuous. Professional policing was the norm in London by the 1820s,
but centralization remained controversial. By 1828, however, centralization
was presented by Sir Robert Peel as the next step towards making profes-
sional policing more effective. It will be seen that the persuasiveness of that
argument combined with the political skill of Peel, and the fact that politic-
ally some influential parish vestries were on the defensive at the time,
created the right climate for the passage of Peel's Metropolitan Police Act
in 1829.
It must be acknowledged that the story told here is one told from an
'official' perspective. The main body of sources used comes from local
government records - such as minutes of parish vestries and watch commit-
tees, beadles's books, the correspondence of local officials with the central
government, the testimony of parish leaders before parliamentary commit-
tees. These texts report the views of those who hired and supervised law
enforcement officers rather than the officers of the watch or the people who
were watched. What the watchman on the beat or watchhouse keeper
thought of his employers, his job, or his neighbours is something about
which we know virtually nothing. Our knowledge is filtered through the
lens of those who kept the records; it will reflect what behaviours those
officials (and some journalists) thought worthy of notice.
As we trace the long-term development of professional policing at the
local level, it will be evident that many of the methods and the organizational
structures of modem policing were developed in the parishes. Thus the
Metropolitan Police was not a revolutionary creation except in the sense
that it replaced many police forces with one centralized force, controlled by
the Home Office. There was a significant degree of continuity between the
old and the new - the 'bobbies' of Scotland Yard carried on what the
'Charlies' of the night watch had begun.^12
Finally, the policeman is a powerful symbol of the state. In the early
eighteenth century, the central government, as Joan Kent rightly asserts,

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