Law and order
Geoffrey Marshall
Crime and Police in England 1700-1900 J.J Tobias (Gill and Macmillian E10) Mr Justice Page, one of Queen Anne's judges, told an inquirer after his health that he was 'still hanging on'; and indeed he was, the criminal law of England giving him at that time ample scope for it. Severe penalties for crime indeed seemed the only alternatives to uncertainty of detection. In the course of the 18th and 19th centuries organised policing offered more effective sanctions, and public executions, along with 'hanging breakfasts' disappeared from the calendar of popular entertainment. In an account covering these 200 years Dr Tobias has neatly woven together the story of crime and police showing howchanges in the pattern of urban and rural crime stimulated the growth of a police organisation that in some respects has remained unchanged since 1829.
At the beginning of the 18th century the country was policed by the justices and parish constables, and to some extent in the towns by a rudimentary watch system. They were no match for urban thieves, poachers, smugglers and highway robbers. Nor could it be said that savage penalties produced an adequate or measured deterrent, since magistrates and juries when faced with imposing capital sentences frequently sought technical avenues of avoidance. Self-help, especially against highwaymen, was often the only recourse. It is odd, incidentally, that in Anglo-American mythology larceny on horseback has never excited total condemnation and has even invested its practitioners with a curious popular appeal. Often myths spring up, as of Dick Turpin and his ride to York, which may or may not have taken place. (The possibilities seem to be that Turpin did not ride to York, or that he -rode but only to Watford, or that he pretended to ride, or that three highwaymen rode to York but none of them was Turpin.) Throughout the country the unpaid justices of the peace played a crucial role both in the administration of criminal justice and in the control of policing. Dr Tobias remarks that in the investigation of crime the 18th-century magistrate often took upon himself a role not unlike that of the American District Attorney. Though that role withered away with the development of organised police forces, magistrates have continued to exercise a curious blend of duties and their role in the administration of the police service still raises arguments and perhaps its history deserves more attention.
In the Metropolitan area it was Henry Fielding who began the business of organising a professional police force that was completed by Peel's creation of a single Metropolitan Police district and a unified force (except for the City of London) superseding the various parish watches and Bow Street patrols. In many ways the new force was a departure from tradition. The Bow Street men had been heavily armed with pistols and cutlasses. Peel's police were unarmed except for the hardwood truncheon. The uniform was deliberately civilian in appearance and utilitarian in design. (The top hat, being strengthened with cane stays, could be used if need be as a small observation platform.) By the end of the 19th century there was a sense in which England had a national police service. The new police of London had spread to the provincial towns and counties under national legislation that set up a uniform system of police administration, in part nationally financed, nationally inspected and in logistical matters subject to a certain amount of supervision and regulation by the Secretary of State for Home Affairs. Yet, despite the recommendation of the 1839 Royal Commission in favour of a unified national force and the urging of Benthamites from Edwin Chadwick onwards, local operational control has remained, even with amalgamation, one of the central tenets of British policing.
Since Dr Tobias's book is about the connection between crime and the growth of police he has not been concerned with questions of organisation or control or with the problems that arose in the metropolitan force in the late 19th century. More controversially he has chosen not to consider the impact on policing of public order considerations, confining his attention to the crimes of 'those who broke the law for economic motives or as the result of social One wonders if this distinction can be drawn with any clarity. Indeed it could be argued that most of the public disorders faced by magistrates and police in the last two centuries have been mainly economic in origin, whether one looks at 18th-century bread riots or the unemployment that caused the major disturbances in London in 1886 and 1887. Dr Tobias suggests that the requirements of public order were not in any event significant in the shaping of the British police. This is an interesting thesis and it may be right. Even if it is, the history of public order offences and their control has not been much explored and we should to exploreobxepnleofrite it. D. r Tobias could be persuaded
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