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

(^162) Before the Bobbies
the new Whig administration of 1830, the great hope of Radicals, was not
interested in repealing the Metropolitan Police Act. Lord Melbourne, the
new Home Secretary, was willing to listen to suggestions for reform, such as
the change in the funding, but not its abolition. The confidence of the
government in the Metropolitan Police was made abundantly clear when
an 1834 Select Committee on the Police concluded that the Metropolitan
Police 'as respects its influence in repressing crime, and the security it
has given to ferson and property, is one of the most valuable of modem
institutions'.^8 Since the degree of continuity between the parish night
watch system and the Metropolitan Police was substantial, this acceptance
of the new system in a relatively short time is not surprising.^86 After all,
this 'new valuable institution' bore more than a passing resemblance to
the old.
The evolution of professional, centralized policing in London from 1720 to
1830 gives us another perspective on the origins of the Metropolitan Police
that allows for a fuller appreciation of just how complex policing and police
reform were. Half the story of police reform in metropolitan London is
missing if we focus on initiatives of the central government and ignore
measures introduced by local authorities. The techniques and methods of
modem professional police practice, including full-time officers, beat
systems, a crime prevention focus, and modem bureaucratic organization,
could all be found in the parishes long before the Metropolitan Police took
to the streets in 1829. This is not to deny the important contributions of the
Fieldings, the Bow Street magistrates, and Peel's Irish police. But London
was not 'unpoliced' in the eighteenth century. Th be sure, the quantity
and quality of the night watch varied widely. But if Deptford still only had
an unpaid parish constable in 1828, St Marylebone. also had every right to
take pride in the quality and sophistication of its police force and its
contribution to the 'discipline and regulations of the New Police'.^87 The
issue of centralization, a touchstone for many, was only part of a process
stemming from the early decades of the eighteenth century that had many
components,
Once we grasp that police reform was many-faceted, we can better under-
stand that it resulted from a more lateral than vertical process and involved
more people. Instead of 'enlightened reformers' at the pinnacle of govern-
ment imposing one form of change on resistant, reactionary parish residents
and leaders, reform originated in many locations and was thrashed out at
many levels. The debate over what good policing was and how it should be
accomplished involved watch committee members such as those in Hanover
Square who experimented with beat systems, vestry clerks like Luke Ideson