A History of Police in England

W. L. Melville Lee

A History of Police in England

Published by Good Press, 2019

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EAN 4064066217396

Table of Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER

CHAPTER I ANGLO-SAXON AND NORMAN POLICE

CHAPTER II WATCH AND WARD

CHAPTER III JUSTICE AND CONSTABLE

CHAPTER IV FOREST POLICE AND POLICE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER V COMMERCIAL POLICE AND POLICE UNDER THE TUDORS

CHAPTER VI ECCLESIASTICAL POLICE AND POLICE UNDER JAMES I

CHAPTER VII MILITARY POLICE AND POLICE UNDER CHARLES II

CHAPTER VIII BOW STREET POLICE AND MAGISTERIAL REFORM

CHAPTER IX PAROCHIAL POLICE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER X POLICE AT THE DAWN OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER XI PIONEER REFORMERS

CHAPTER XII THE NEW POLICE

CHAPTER XIII PUBLIC OPPOSITION TO THE NEW POLICE

CHAPTER XIV POLICE REFORM IN BOROUGHS

CHAPTER XV POLICE REFORM IN COUNTIES

CHAPTER XVI CO-OPERATIVE POLICE AND THE SUPPRESSION OF RIOTS

CHAPTER XVII POLICE STATISTICS AND PENOLOGY

CHAPTER XVIII DETECTIVE POLICE AND THE RIGHT OF PUBLIC MEETING

CHAPTER XIX CONCLUSION

INDEX

PREFACE

Table of Contents

A title of convenient length, but one which shall exactly fit the subject-matter in hand, is a desideratum that seldom lies within an author's reach. The title selected for this book is open to the objection that, though consisting of as many as six words, it is, however, not quite explicit. The sense in which the word police is used is explained in the Introductory Chapter, but it here remains to be said that England must be taken to include the Principality of Wales, and, incidentally, that by the employment of the indefinite article an indication of the non-pretentious character of the work is intended.

References have been but sparingly given throughout, and, in answer to those critics who may possibly object that the array of authorities quoted is too meagre, the author can only plead in extenuation that opportunities for taking full advantage of good reference libraries are often denied to dwellers in camps and barracks. In general the plan adopted, or at least aimed at, has been to refer to all Acts of Parliament mentioned in the text, to acknowledge the source of verbatim quotations, and to give the authority relied on in support of any statement that may reasonably be held to verge on contentious, or even on debatable, ground.

In amplification of the Criminal Statistics tabulated on page 337, and in confirmation of the deductions there drawn, an encouraging fact may be mentioned. Although the Census Returns for 1901 shew that the population of England and Wales now exceeds thirty-two and a half millions, the Judicial Statistics recently published by the Home Office state that the number of persons brought to trial before the superior criminal courts during 1899 (the last year for which such statistics are available) was under eleven thousand, which is the lowest figure yet recorded.

Before concluding these prefatory remarks I must express my thanks to Lord Alverstone, who has been kind enough to find time to look through my proof-sheets and to allow me to dedicate the book to him; to H. W. Carless Davis, Esq., of All Souls' College, Oxford, who has so generously brought an expert knowledge of Anglo-Saxon history to bear upon my earlier chapters, and to those Chief Constables and other officials who have helped me with information and advice. In particular must I acknowledge my indebtedness to D. W. Rannie, Esq., of Oriel College, Oxford, for it is not too much to say that without his invaluable assistance and encouragement the following pages would never have appeared.

Inner Temple Library

August 1901

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER

Table of Contents

Introducing himself to his readers at the close of the eighteenth century, Dr. Colquhoun wrote: Police in this country may be considered as a new science. A full generation later, or to be more precise, in the year of Queen Victoria's accession, one of the leading magazines of the day found occasion to remark as follows: The art of preventing offences is unbeaten ground—has hardly had a scientific teacher. On laws and general legislation, on the theory of crimes and punishments, on prison discipline, on the execution of offenders, and all the ulterior proceedings of delinquency, we have treatises without number; but on the institutions of police we have not a single work, except perhaps the matter-of-fact publication of the late Dr. Colquhoun.[1] Since this paragraph was first printed a period of unparalleled literary activity has been witnessed, a period so prolific of book-making that the thirty-nine miles of shelves with which the main building of the British Museum is furnished have not sufficed to contain the ever-increasing accumulation of volumes that must be housed. It is true that in modern melodrama the detective has been found an almost indispensable property, nor has he been altogether neglected by the modern novelist; there are scores of blue-books containing evidence collected by Parliamentary Committees on the subject of police, and there is no lack of excellent manuals wherein the constable's duty is defined and explained; but at the dawn of the twentieth century, and in spite of the over-crowded state of our public libraries, we are still waiting for the advent of the teacher who will investigate and expound for us the police sciences.

In the following pages some attempt will be made to approach this strangely neglected subject, not indeed by the avenue that a scientist would use, but simply to trace in outline the story of English police, keeping in view the underlying principles that have directed, as well as those political and other considerations that have controlled, its evolution. Previous neglect is not however the only reason why the institution of police calls for historical treatment. On three other grounds in particular can the subject claim recognition; it deserves notice on account of its interest, on account of its antiquity, and on account of its importance.

The history of any national institution should not be totally devoid of interest; and amongst all our institutions it would be hard to find one so eminently characteristic of our race, both in its origin and in its development, or one so little modified by foreign influences, as the combination of arrangements for maintaining the peace, which we call police. Police questions touch each one of us so intimately in our daily life, in our personal liberty and in our self-respect; the character of a nation is so profoundly influenced by the nature of the control to which it is subjected, that a due appreciation of the scope of police functions, a proper knowledge of the origin and extent of the powers and duties delegated to our constabulary forces, must possess a more than academic interest. Continental gendarmeries, framed for the most part on the Latin model, have been imposed—often ready-made—on various nationalities, without heed to their racial peculiarities, and careless of local tradition or circumstance. Our English police system, on the other hand, rests on foundations designed with the full approval of the people, we know not how many hundreds of years before the Norman conquest, and has been slowly moulded by the careful hand of experience, developing as a rule along the line of least resistance, now in advance of the general intelligence of the country, now lagging far behind, but always in the long run adjusting itself to the popular temper, always consistent with local self-government, and even at its worst, always English.

When a people emerges from the savage state its first care is the institution of some form of civil government. To this there is no exception, it is, in the words of Macaulay, as universal as the practice of cookery. Martial law may co-exist with, and at times obscure, the civil machinery; but depending essentially, as it does, on local and temporary causes, must in the end inevitably be superseded, and whenever there arises a conflict between the two, the civil administration will invariably outstay the other by virtue of the inertia of its everlasting necessity. The penal department of any form of civil government must principally consist of two closely allied branches, the judiciary that interprets the law and exacts penalties for its infraction, and the police whose duty it is to enforce the legal code as laid down by the judges, it being in the nature of things that judicial functions cannot exist independently of police functions. Webster defines police as the organized body of civil officers in a city, town or district, whose particular duties are the preservation of good order, the prevention and detection of crime, and the enforcement of the laws. Blackstone goes further when he says that the public police and economy must be considered as the due regulation and domestic order of the kingdom, whereby the individuals of the State, like members of a well-governed family, are bound to conform to the rules of propriety, good neighbourhood and good manners, to be decent, industrious and inoffensive in their respective stations. As used in this book, the term police approximates to the definitions of both these authorities; in general merely a synonym for constabulary, it also embraces all the various expedients employed by society to induce its members to acquiesce in the arrangements that tend to promote public security, including such measures as the compulsory education of children, the reformation of criminals, the observance of sanitary and hygienic conditions, the control of the liquor traffic, and the prevention of cruelty to children and animals. In this latter sense the object of police is not only to enforce compliance with the definite law of the land, but also to encourage a general recognition of the unwritten code of manners which makes for social progress and good citizenship.

Police, therefore, occupies a position of vital importance in the commonwealth; it is not too much to assert that the restraining influence exerted by a good police system is as necessary to the welfare of society as are self-imposed moral and physical restraints to the health of the individual. To the superior judges fall the duties of solving abstruse legal problems, and of determining the weightiest legal issues, but it is the police magistrate who is in daily contact with the criminal and with the aggrieved person, it is he who applies the law in the first instance, and to him the large majority of the people look for decisions upon which their liberty or their property may depend. There is scarcely a conceivable case, said a London magistrate in 1834,[2] arising particularly among the lower orders, which may not immediately or indirectly come under the notice of the Police Offices. It is most important, therefore, that every means should be adopted for upholding their reputation, and so extending and increasing their moral influence. Only second in importance to the magistracy comes the constabulary, the primary constitutional force for the protection of individuals in the enjoyment of their legal rights,[3] designed to stand between the powerful and the weak, to prevent oppression, disaster and crime, and to represent the cause of law and order at all times and in all places. In every court and alley the policeman stands for good citizenship, he is a reality that the most ignorant can comprehend, and upon his impartiality, efficiency, and intelligence depends the estimation in which the law is held by the masses.

There is no doubt that this country is well policed, and fortunately for us, there is equally no doubt that we are not over-policed. However numerous and outrageous may be the theoretical imperfections of our method for maintaining the peace, its practical superior has yet to be discovered. A police system does not only need to be efficient, it must be popular; that is to say, it must conduct its operations with so scrupulous a regard to the susceptibilities of the people that public sympathy and approval are not alienated. The problem of devising an engine of sufficient power and mechanical ability to compel subjection to a rigid standard of uniformity is not a matter of great difficulty, but there is little credit and no comfort in the indiscriminate tyranny of a Juggernaut that mangles its suicidal votaries. Government cannot be exercised without coercion, but the coercion employed ought to be reduced to the lowest possible limit consistent with safety, the ideal police force being the one which affords a maximum of protection at the cost of a minimum of interference with the lawful liberty of the subject. The real difficulty of the police problem is therefore to fix the limits where non-interference should end, and where coercion should begin. Mill enunciated the maxim that all restraint qua restraint is an evil, and Bentham taught that only those preventive measures are sound the application of which involves no injury to the innocent; but there is one limit which cannot be disregarded if police is to be a blessing rather than a curse, and that is, that the plan adopted for the prevention of crime must never become more intolerable than the effect of the crime itself.

English police, however, is not the creation of any theorist nor the product of any speculative school, it is the child of centuries of conflict and experiment. Simple pecuniary compensation to the injured, sumptuary laws for the removal of temptation, torture in lieu of legal process, the payment of blood-money to informers, martial law enforced by puritan zealots, an amateur constabulary spasmodically supported by soldiery, the wholesale execution or banishment of offenders, these and many other expedients have all in their turn been grafted on the parent stock, tried, and found wanting. Are our present methods for the maintenance of the peace, for the suppression of crime, and for the encouragement of social virtue, perfect or nearly so? We can hardly suppose that posterity will answer these questions in the affirmative, but we can at least congratulate ourselves that the people of England, no longer living under a barbarous criminal code, enjoy to-day no small measure of security for their property and persons, without having to submit to a host of meddlesome restrictions and unreasonable formalities.

CHAPTER I

ANGLO-SAXON AND NORMAN POLICE

Table of Contents

In the days before the attainment of English unity, the maintenance of the peace was the care of certain local institutions and bodies, the nature of which need not here be specified. The Anglo-Saxon period of our history being one of continual change and gradual development, the maintenance of the peace cannot be treated as a homogeneous whole before the various arrangements which secured it had been consolidated, and, for the first time reduced to a system, by Edgar. From this time onwards, however, the whole of the now united England may be said to have enjoyed a general guarantee for public order under the name of the King's Peace, so called because the king guaranteed, or at least promised, to his subjects, a state of peace and security in return for the allegiance which he demanded from them.[4]

As the highest maintainer of the peace, the king claimed an actual police supremacy, and was not content with a mere title. Moreover, by virtue of his position as Commander-in-Chief, he had the power of enforcing compliance with the rules of the peace, of which he was the chief guardian and exponent. An English king was not only the hereditary ruler of his people, he was their chosen chief magistrate also. The idea that the peace and orderliness of the kingdom intimately depended upon the personality of its ruler was so deeply rooted that, at his death, the King's Peace was held to have lapsed, and, on their accession, English sovereigns were wont to make proclamation afresh of general peace orders, an example which was followed by William the Conqueror and his successors.[5] Referring to the death of Henry I., a chronicler writes: The king died on the following day after St. Andrew's mass day, in Normandy, then there was tribulation in the land, for every man that could, forthwith robbed another … a good man he was, and there was great awe of him. No man durst misdo against another in his time. He made peace for man and beast.[6]

The King's Peace was of two kinds: there was the public peace of the realm, common to all men; and there was the private peace proper to the king himself, designed to safeguard his person, to uphold his dignity, and to secure his interests in every way. This royal peace, as it may be called, was especially concerned with certain places, seasons, and individuals; a special measure of protection was accordingly extended to the king and his nobles, to nuns, widows and clergy; whilst breaches of the peace which occurred on Coronation days, on Fast days, and the like, or which were committed in the vicinity of the royal palaces or upon the King's Highway, received exemplary punishment from the royal judges. The public peace, on the other hand, afforded protection to all alike, to the exclusion only of the unfrith, as those men were called whose crimes placed them without the pale of society, or who, holding no land, yet failed to enrol themselves in a tything.

The police system which, under the king, maintained the peace was partly organised on the basis of land tenure. As in the Sudan to-day the Omdah is held responsible for the robberies committed in his district, and as in China the head of a family may legally be called upon to answer for the transgressions of his kinsfolk, so King Alfred looked to the thane[7] to produce the culprit or satisfy the claim. The plan adopted counted on the assistance of self-interest for its complete success; the thane being a landed proprietor and consequently unable to dispose of his property secretly, was security to the king for all the members of his household—if any of them broke the law, his over-lord the thane was careful to bring him to justice. Yet poverty brought no exemption to the landless freeman. He too had to find a guarantee for his good behaviour; if he was unable to attach himself to some thane, he was compelled to combine with others in the same position as himself, in order that their joint goods or aggregate credit should provide sufficient bail for the shortcomings of any member of the society: the penalty incurred by those who could not, or would not, thus find the required security was that they were forbidden to possess cattle, and were no longer under the protection of the law. Freemen, therefore, who had no freehold, banded themselves together into tythings: a tything consisted of the inhabitants of ten homesteads, and the members elected one of their number to be their headborough,[8] who thus became their representative, and was responsible for the community.

The police organisation which we are considering is generally spoken of as the Frankpledge system, frankpledge signifying the guarantee for peace maintenance demanded by the king from all free Englishmen, the essential properties of this responsibility being, that it should be local, and that it should be mutual. As we trace the history of police in England we shall see that these two qualities have survived through the successive stages of its evolution, and seem to be inseparable from our national conception of police functions.

The development of this system led to the institution of the Hundred,[9] which, as its name implies, was a group of ten tythings, under a responsible head. Hundreds as well as tythings had definite police functions to perform: when a crime was committed, information had to be at once given to the hundred-men and tythingmen of the district, and it was their duty to pursue, arrest, and bring to justice all peace-breakers. In the event of the non-appearance of a culprit at the court of justice to which he was summoned, his nine fellow-pledges were allowed one month in which to produce him, when, if he was not forthcoming, a fine was exacted, the liability falling, in the first place, on any property of the fugitive that might be available, in the second place, on the tything, and—should both these sources prove insufficient to satisfy the claim—on the Hundred.[10] Furthermore the headboroughs were required to purge themselves on oath, that they were not privy to the flight of the offender, and to swear that they would bring him to justice if possible. On the other hand, if any member of a tything was imprisoned for an offence, it was not customary to release him without the consent of his fellow-pledges, even though the fine had been paid.[11]

The practice of levying police fines from hundreds and tythings was an old one, and the limits of its application were clearly defined by Edgar: and let every man so order that he have a surety, and let the surety then bring and hold him to every justice: and if anyone do wrong and run away, let the surety bear that which he ought to bear. But if it be a thief, and if he can get hold of him within twelve months, let him deliver him up to justice, and let be rendered unto him what he before has paid.[12]

The fines[13] that were exacted, called respectively fightwitt, grithbryce, and frithbrec, differed in character, and varied in amount. When several persons had participated in a common crime the fine was payable by all who had a hand in it; an infraction of the peace by seven associates constituted a riot, and if thirty-five persons were concerned, the breach amounted to a rebellion.

Distinct from the official police societies, created by the central government for the general security, there also existed certain private and voluntary associations called peace-guilds, entered into by the inhabitants of London and other towns for their own protection. Each guild consisted of members arranged in ten groups under ten headmen, one of whom acted as chief of the guild and treasurer, the remainder forming a kind of consulting committee to discuss and advise upon the various interests of the associations at their monthly gatherings. The object of these guilds was simply mutual assurance, and each member had to pay fourpence to a common fund, out of which subscribers were compensated for any loss they might sustain through theft, the treasurer being authorised further to contribute a sum not exceeding one shilling towards the apprehension of delinquents.

The military and police systems were closely allied: the national militia was organised in tythings and hundreds, and had a place to fill in the complete design of peace maintenance; its embodiment was not only resorted to in time of war, it was also liable to be called out by summons of the array if disturbances were feared, or even for the pursuit of a single fugitive from justice, but its members could not be called upon to serve beyond the limits of their respective shires except to repel invasion. Every free Englishman between the ages of fifteen and sixty (the clergy and infirm only excepted) was liable to be called upon to perform three public services[14] for the peace of the commonwealth; he was bound to assist in repelling invasions, in crushing rebellions, and in suppressing riots. The Sheriffs therefore who were responsible for the conservancy of the peace in the hundreds were enabled to muster the posse comitatus, or whole available police force of the shire, in case of emergency. All men went armed in those days, and since the members of a tything were obliged on the summons of a headborough to join in the pursuit, the cry of Stop thief was a formidable weapon in the hands of the local executive.

The Anglo-Saxon conception of police functions is thus clearly intelligible: the internal peace of the country was held by them to be of the first importance, and every free man had to bear his part in maintaining it; theoretically all men were policemen, and it was only for the sake of convenience that the headborough (or tythingman as he came to be more generally called) answered for those of his neighbours, on whom he had to rely in case of necessity. The word peace was used in its widest possible meaning, and a breach of the peace was understood to include all crimes, disorders, and even public nuisances. The principle on which the police system was based was primarily preventive. The conservancy of the peace, says Lambard, standeth in three things: that is to say, first, in foreseeing that nothing be done that tendeth either directly or by means to the breach of the peace; secondly, in quieting and pacifying those that are occupied in the breach of the peace; and thirdly, in punishing such as have already broken the peace. Our Saxon ancestors did not spend much time in quieting or pacifying—a lawbreaker was at war with the community and received no quarter—but in other respects Lambard's definition applies.

It was assumed that all but a small minority of the king's subjects were, to use a modern phrase—good citizens—and personally interested in keeping the king's peace inviolate; and that they might therefore safely be trusted to do everything in their power to preserve it, without any necessity arising for the use of coercion. Had all men been equally trustworthy in this respect no police measures would have been required and none devised; but there existed on the fringe of Anglo-Saxon society, as will occur with all societies, a certain number of delinquents perpetually on the look-out for opportunities of preying on their fellows, and the decennary system of police, as it may be called, was an attempt to hold in check this lawless minority without having to raise and permanently support an expensive or elaborate force for its suppression.

The design was to group all honest men into convenient companies, excluding therefrom and from the benefits that civil government could then confer, not only those men who were living in open defiance of the rules laid down by society for its protection, but those men also, whose reputation for honesty and fair dealing did not stand high enough in the estimation of their neighbours to induce a sufficient number to accept a share of responsibility for their defaults. By this means a fence was set up which divided with a fair degree of accuracy the law-breaking section of society from the law-abiding, the problem of peace-maintenance being much simplified thereby; it was not the declared enemy nor the recognised outcast that was feared; the former might be met with superior force, and the latter could be kept down like vermin, it was the danger of the wolf within the fold that alarmed our ancestors. The dread of secret crime is a deeply-seated national characteristic, and accounts for the savage treatment served out to witches and Egyptians (as gypsies used to be called) through the middle ages and almost up to our own times. Alfred the Great reflected this feeling when he drew a distinction between cutting down a neighbour's tree with an axe and burning it with fire, the latter offence being declared the more heinous of the two, not as one might suppose, because of the danger of the fire spreading to other trees, but because of the clandestine character of the deed, it being open to the offender if detected to declare the burning to be accidental, a plea that he could not advance if the axe was used.

A detected criminal was either fined, mutilated, or killed, but punishment, as we now understand the term, was seldom inflicted; that is to say, the dominant idea was neither to reform the culprit nor to deter others from following in his footsteps. If a man was killed it was either to satisfy the blood-feud or to remove him out of the way as a wild beast would be destroyed; if a man was mutilated by having his forefinger cut off, or branded with a red-hot iron on the brow, it was done, not so much to give him pain, as to make him less expert in his trade of thieving, and to put upon him an indelible mark by which all men should know that he was no longer a man to be trusted; if fines were levied, it was more with a view to the satisfaction of the recipients of the money or cattle or what not, than with the intention of causing discomfort or loss to the offender.

The distinction that we now make between remedial and legal justice was theoretically held by the Anglo-Saxons, that is to say, repayment in money or kind for a civil offence, and death or some less punishment for an offence against the criminal code was recognised in their penal administration; but at the same time fines to expiate criminal injuries were also allowed, both in the shape of amercements to the Crown and of compensation to the injured. Homicides rendered themselves liable to a triple penalty, which, it appears, was the same whether the killing was wilful or whether it was accidental—one third part, called Maegbote, being assigned to the next-of-kin to compensate him for the death of a relative; a second portion, or Manbote, reconciling the thane to the loss of his vassal; and the remaining share, known as Wite, passing to the king on account of the violence done to his peace.[15] Only offences of a particularly heinous description were bootless (bote-less), as those crimes for which no compensation was permitted were called—of such a nature were murder when committed in a church, and the slaying of a man asleep.

The fines payable by the aggressor in cases where minor personal injuries had been inflicted were carefully graduated; thus, for a cut one inch long on the face, the sum of two shillings had to be paid; if the wound was underneath the hair only half that sum was exacted; but should the victim have suffered the loss of an ear, he was compensated to the extent of thirty shillings, and so on.[16]

It would offend our modern ideas of justice if a murderer were allowed to go free on payment of a sum of money to the relatives of his victim, still more so if a portion of the fine went to the Sovereign; but the practice is common amongst semi-civilised communities, to whom the complex and costly methods we now employ would be at once unintelligible and impracticable.

When it came to a question of proof, reliance was placed, in the absence of any surer method of discovering the truth, upon the oath of the interested party or parties; and just as the security of a thane was sufficient, where that of a landless freeman had to be supplemented by the contributions of his neighbours, so would the oath of a man of fortune and position prevail in cases where that of a common man had to be fortified by the corroborating oaths of his fellows.[17]

No matter what his station in life might be a man could always strengthen his case in this way: the more numerous the oath-helpers the greater the value of their evidence, and this held good even if it was clear that none of them were acquainted with the circumstances under consideration, because it was commonly believed that divine interference would prevent any considerable number of persons from perjuring themselves en bloc. The various ordeals, by combat, by fire, by water and many others, were conceived in the same spirit.

The principle of making every man responsible for his own actions, and to some extent answerable for the doings of his neighbour, has much to commend it, and its application would produce an almost ideal state of social security if its practical employment was not marred by two inherent weaknesses; in the first place it can only be applied with success to an agricultural community that is content to live always in the same spot, or whose migratory instincts the authorities are prepared to suppress; and, in the second place, such a system puts a premium both on the concealment of crime, and on the commission of perjury, since a tything had every inducement to forswear itself in order to escape the infliction of a fine or to save one of its members from punishment.

That the system above described was effectual in dealing with any crime that may have