After the American Revolution we lost this source of revenue, and penal establishments at Bermuda, Gibraltar, and in New South Wales took the place of the plantation in the social scheme. At the same time a change took place in the method of conveying convicts to their destination; they were no longer bought for the sake of the work that could be got out of them, but contractors were paid for carrying them to the penal establishments. The frightful mortality on board the ships continued, however, until the terms of the contract were altered; as soon as the practice of paying a fixed price for every man embarked was discontinued, and the payment of a larger sum for every man landed alive substituted, the convicts were treated more like human beings, and the death-rate on these voyages was no longer excessive.

Transportation signally failed as a deterrent, partly because the punishment was carried out so far from home, and partly on account of the unequal manner in which the penal system was administered. In the Crown Colonies, such as Bermuda, the servitude was of the hardest description, but in Australia the custom arose of assigning convicts as servants to colonists. This gave facilities for all kinds of abuses. A glaring and often-quoted instance of the kind of thing that went on may be cited. A certain bank clerk who had robbed his employers was convicted and sentenced to be transported to Australia, but the stolen property was not recovered. The convict was duly conveyed to New South Wales; soon afterwards his wife arrived in the same colony, and having selected her husband as a servant, the two lived together in security and wealth on the proceeds of the robbery.

Deterrents must be advertised in order to be effectual; the county gaol by the roadside is an ocular reminder of the reality of punishment, but a vague knowledge that felons were serving their time in the Antipodes was a far less potent preventive: indeed transportation came to be regarded as desirable by many, who gladly submitted to expatriation for the sake of getting a fresh start in life in a new land at the public expense. Escott remarks that whilst Australia was at once a penal settlement and a thriving colony, "the strange spectacle was seen of honest artisans emigrating of their own accord to spots where felons also were relegated for their offences."[170]

The second line of defence upon which the country relied for the diminution of crime was an unpaid parochial police, sometimes assisted, and sometimes thwarted, by the various stipendiary establishments already described, and this combination, as we have seen, was almost as untrustworthy as the penal system had proved itself to be.

The constables or headboroughs, and the thief-takers, or as we should now call them, detectives, were more vigorous than the watchmen, but in some respects they were also more dangerous to society; the former lived largely by blackmail and the latter on blood-money. The salary of the headborough for Shoreditch was only ninety shillings a year, the post was not one of honour, and the stipend surely too insignificant to be an attraction; yet there was no lack of applicants, who by the diligent gleaning of perquisites and by the industrious collection of blackmail, saw their way to make a good living out of the office. As much as thirty-six shillings a day could be earned by a headborough by appearing in a prosecution at the Old Baily, and bribes from those employed in the liquor traffic were a still more profitable source of income.

In 1815 alone, eighty thousand pounds was given in blood-money, an expenditure that might almost be considered as a Government subsidy for the encouragement of felony. Forty pounds was the reward offered for the conviction of certain offenders, and it was obviously to the advantage of the thief-taker not to interfere with a promising young criminal until he should commit a forty pounds crime; premature detection was tantamount to killing the goose that should lay the golden egg, and the common cant phrase of the day, when referring to a juvenile offender, was, "he doesn't weigh forty pounds yet." The mischievous tendency of this system of rewards cannot be exaggerated, it vitiated the whole police constitution; nor was there any chance of recovering property until a sufficient reward was advertised to stimulate those who alone were familiar with the haunts and methods of thieves and receivers.

"Officers are dangerous creatures," said Townsend, after more than thirty years' experience as a Bow Street Runner; "they have it frequently in their power (no question about it) to turn the scale, when the beam is level, on the other side: I mean against the poor wretched man at the bar; Why? this thing called nature, says profit is in the scale: and melancholy to relate, but I cannot help being perfectly satisfied that frequently that has been the means of convicting many and many a man.... I am convinced that whenever A is giving evidence against B he should stand perfectly uninterested.... Nothing can be so dangerous as a public officer, where he is liable to be tempted."

The following is a list of the rewards, that could be earned by police and others:—

A Tyburn Ticket was a certificate granted by a judge or Justice to the person who captured and prosecuted a felon to conviction; it freed the holder from all liability to serve as a Constable, and exempted him also from many other Ward and Parish obligations. The Ticket was transferable, and so had a pecuniary value which varied in different parishes, generally ten pounds or more. A Tyburn Ticket had been known to fetch as much as forty pounds.

The law being powerless to prevent crime, and the police being unable to give protection, people exerted themselves to safeguard their own interests in their own way; shopkeepers combined to provide patrols to watch the fronts of their shops, householders armed themselves for the defence of their houses, whilst steel man-traps and spring-guns were set up in gardens and coverts. In consequence of the number of innocent persons maimed and killed by these not very discriminating agencies, Lord Suffield, in 1825, introduced a Bill with the object of making their use illegal, but it was not until May 1827 that an Act was passed, prohibiting the setting of spring-guns, man-traps, and other engines calculated to destroy human life, or inflict grievous bodily harm.[171]

It is not too much to say, that a survey of all the institutions of England, as they existed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, would reveal the fact, that whereas many departments of government were feeble and many corrupt, in no department were ignorance, corruption, and inefficiency so pronounced as in that of police. If, however, any should wish to find a rival institution to share this unenviable position of discredit, he would not have far to look, but could discover the object of his search in the disgraceful mismanagement that pervaded every corner of our gaols, from prison-gate to condemned cell. If the criminal, whilst at large, could count on a minimum of interference with his career of depredation, he had at the same time to reckon with a maximum of ill-treatment if ever he was deprived of his liberty. It almost seemed as if the authorities, piqued at their ill-success in the departments of prevention and detection, were determined to wreak their vengeance on the unfortunate few who fell into their hands. Neglect was the keynote in every part of the penal administration, the public suffered through the neglect that failed to provide a modicum of protection, and the prisoners suffered through the neglect of the governors and warders to provide them with the necessaries and decencies of life.

A description of the extortions, inhumanities, and crimes against the most elementary laws of sanitation, that were rife in prison-houses and convict establishments, would here be out of place. A full account is to be found in the interesting volumes in the pages of which, Major Arthur Griffiths has exhaustively dealt with the subject; but to shew with what reckless disregard for consequences prisoners were treated, and how little attention was paid to the reclamation of juvenile offenders, it is sufficient to mention the fact that in Newgate, a felon, who had been sentenced to transportation, was retained in England, to act as a schoolmaster to the boy prisoners. Under the unreformed prison system, gaols were little better than universities of crime, that conferred the diploma of "habitual" on the criminals who graduated there, and it was said that half the burglaries that were committed in London were planned in Newgate.

CHAPTER XI
PIONEER REFORMERS

Just when the immediate outlook was the most gloomy, and at an hour when the future seemed most barren of any hopeful sign, unseen and unsuspected influences were already at work; influences which were destined first to arrest, and eventually to repel, the increasing flood of criminality, as well as to alleviate the hard lot of the unhappy convict. Up to this point the annual total of crime had ever been mounting higher and higher whilst the tale of abuses had continued to increase. But the malady had now come to a head, and intelligent public attention was at length focussed on a difficult and unpopular subject, which hitherto had been deliberately avoided by all but the very few who had been familiarized with its magnitude by routine, and who had mostly grown callous to its evils by use. When John Howard began to minister to prisoners, and when Jeremy Bentham began to propound his doctrine of utilitarianism, no one foresaw that the devotion of the one would achieve a transformation of the whole prison system, nor that the profound common-sense of the other would triumph over the irrationality which for centuries had vitiated the penal administration of England.

Foremost amongst the many objects for which Bentham worked were the amendment of the criminal code, the improvement of the Poor Laws, the abolition of transportation, sanitary and prison reform, systematic registration, and the instituting of public prosecutors, in short better police all round and in the widest sense of the term. Though most of Bentham's best work was done in the eighteenth, his doctrines received but little attention in this country before the nineteenth century, and the practical reforms which he advocated, though for the most part inaugurated in his own lifetime, were the immediate achievements of his disciples and friends. His own special hobbies were not altogether successful, the panopticon idea did not repay him for the labour and the money which he lavished upon it, and his philosophy did not prove the complete panacea for human ills that he anticipated; but through the medium of his friend Romilly he slew the Draconian monster, and he pointed out the path which Colquhoun followed and which ultimately led to the genesis of modern police.

The pamphlets of the two Fieldings, and the exertions of other minor reformers who succeeded them, had no doubt done something to stir up public opinion and to pave the way for a better system, but their combined influence was only effectual up to a certain point, and the virtue of the remedies they proposed was not sufficiently potent to get to the root of the all-pervading mischief. The credit of being the first to perceive the true functions of a rational police force, as it should be, belongs to Bentham,[172] and the credit of formulating the details and presenting them in a tangible and practical shape to his contemporaries is due to Dr Colquhoun, who, in 1796, published his famous treatise "On the Police of the Metropolis."

If we think of Colquhoun as the architect who designed our modern police, and of Peel as the builder who constructed its framework, we must remember that there were others who had a hand in the good work, and that a long time elapsed between the drawing of the plans and the erection of the edifice. If it is allowable to carry the simile a stage further, we may say that the Government pigeon-holed the draughtsman's plans for many years before the order was given for the foundation stone to be laid. This delay must not be attributed to indifference, but rather to necessity. It is, perhaps, a truism to say so, but in order to carry any valuable reform to a successful issue, thought must precede action. Law is the public opinion of yesterday put in force to-day, and as Professor Dicey has somewhere pointed out, legislation has almost always been the outcome of the opinion of thirty years before. No better example of the truth of this general formula could be instanced than the case of the police reforms of the nineteenth century: Bentham, Colquhoun, Romilly and others did the necessary thinking and sowed the seed in the public conscience; a period of thirty years elapsed whilst the seed was coming to maturity; meanwhile Peel and the Duke of Wellington watched the gradual ripening of public opinion and provided the necessary legislation as soon as the people were ready for it.

Colquhoun, who, like Fielding, was a Middlesex magistrate, saw that the essential need was method. He recognized that before any material improvement could be looked for, or any real security obtained, the miserable jumble of wards, parishes, hundreds and boroughs, each with its private establishment of watchmen and constables, who were debarred from acting one yard outside their own boundaries, would have to be swept away, and a centralized agency substituted under the superintendence of "able, indefatigable and intelligent men."

The criminal classes, at this time, had an organization far superior to any that Society could oppose to it; in fact, if a committee of pickpockets and burglars had been entrusted with the task of creating and arranging a system of police, they could hardly have devised any scheme under which they would have secured to themselves greater freedom from molestation. Colquhoun pointed out how all this might be changed: he would have a register prepared of all the known offenders, containing a complete history of their connexions and haunts, together with a list of all property stolen; he would establish such a correspondence between the town and country magistrates that the movements of suspected persons might be effectually watched, and finally would "interpose those embarrassments which a vigilant and active police may place in the way of every class of offenders, so as to diminish crimes by increasing the risk of detection." He also collected a mass of evidence bearing on the causes that were responsible for the prevalence of crime, and proposed that a scientific campaign against the enemies of Society should be inaugurated, under the direction of experts, who should be free to devote the whole of their time and energies to the task. His proposition, in fact, amounted to the creation, if possible, of a centralized police, related to the general government through the Home Office, and officered both in the superior and subordinate grades, by men specially trained for the purpose. It was on these lines, of course, that Peel set to work twenty years later, but there is little doubt that he would have failed to carry his measure, in the face of the opposition which it aroused, if men's minds had not been to some extent prepared beforehand by the convincing arguments brought forward in "The Police of the Metropolis."

It must not be imagined that the period immediately preceding the formation of the new police was a time of expectant idleness, or that nothing was being done beyond the publication of treatises. Experiment and legislation were both at work; Parliamentary Committees, which sat in the years 1812, 1826, 1818, 1822 and 1828, to investigate the subject of police, collected a mass of evidence, much of which was useful; and the Select Committee on Vagrancy, appointed in 1821, performed a necessary and valuable task. Distinct progress was also made towards the correction of prison abuses and in the direction of the reform of the penal code, whilst several statutes which were out of sympathy with the new standard of humanity were very properly repealed. The pillory was virtually abolished in 1816, public flogging of women was made illegal in 1817,[173] that anomalous institution "benefit of clergy" disappeared in 1826, and the death penalty could not be inflicted on persons convicted of forgery after 1830. Of new enactments belonging to this period, the most important was the "Alehouse Act" of 1828,[174] which reduced to one statute all the licensing laws passed in former years, and which to this day remains the foundation of our present system. Broadly speaking the object of the Act was decentralization, and its effect to place the whole licensing jurisdiction in the hands of the Justices of the Peace in their several districts.[175] The laws relating to remedies against the Hundred were amended and consolidated in 1826,[176] and shortly afterwards regulations affecting the jurisdiction of Courts of Quarter Sessions came into force.[177]

Colquhoun's activity did not stop short at the production of his first book, a work which roused the Government from its lethargy, and which even awakened the interest of the King, he issued a police gazette containing a full description of all known offenders, which circulated in all parts of the kingdom, and was the means of bringing many miscreants to justice; he strongly endorsed Bentham's suggestion that a public prosecutor should be appointed, in order that private persons should be relieved of the odium and expense of coming forward to prosecute offenders, who might enjoy a measure of popularity, or whose conviction might be desirable on public grounds, even if no individual had suffered specific injury; and in the year 1798 he was induced to turn his attention to the question of river-police. The rich cargoes of West India merchantmen lying in the Thames had long offered temptations, and the absence of police gave frequent opportunities which London thieves could not resist. Robberies were of daily occurrence, and the value of the property annually stolen from ships and wharves has been computed at half a million sterling.[178] Under these circumstances, the principal ship-owners, despairing of ever obtaining protection from Government in return for the heavy taxes they paid, applied to Colquhoun to help them to defend their goods. He assented, and produced a work called "A Treatise on the Commerce and Police of the River Thames," which was soon followed by the establishment by Government[179] of an efficient water-police, with headquarters at Wapping, and composed, for the most part, of sailors who had served their time in his Majesty's Navy.

In 1821 the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth, who had given much attention to police questions, determined if possible to put an end to the discreditable state of the London streets, where of recent years robberies had increased to an alarming extent. With this object in view, he decided to confine the services of the Bow Street patrols to the Metropolis, and gave orders that, in future, the wide circuit they had previously guarded was to be reduced, and their energies concentrated within the circumference of the central region. Dividing this limited area into sixteen districts, he attached to each a party of four men under a Conductor, and retained at Bow Street a reserve of one Conductor and fourteen men at the disposal of the Inspector there, for use in any sudden emergency. The suburbs and outlying districts were momentarily left unprotected by this withdrawal of the Bow Street Officers; so to repair this defect, the Horse Patrol, which in 1805 had been reorganized by Sir Richard Ford, was further improved and its numbers increased. The force was now divided into two branches, the mounted and dismounted, each of which was again split up into four divisions: the strength of the establishment was fixed at 161 of all ranks, apportioned as follows—

• Mounted—2 Inspectors, 4 deputy inspectors, 54 patrols.
• Dismounted—4 Inspectors, 8 sub-inspectors, 89 patrols.

As was formerly the case, the horse patrol consisted of ex-cavalry men, and they were dressed and accoutred in the following manner—

Blue double-breasted coat with gilt buttons, scarlet waistcoat, leather stock, white leather gloves, black leather hat, Wellington boots and steel spurs, whilst each man, when on duty, was furnished with a pistol, sabre, truncheon and pair of handcuffs.

Only married men were employed, and cottages were provided for them at convenient spots close to the roads they had to patrol, their wives were forbidden to keep pigs or poultry, a wise prohibition designed to secure to the government-horses their full allowance of forage.

The mounted and dismounted patrols worked in connection with each other; the latter were responsible for the immediate neighbourhood of London to a distance of five miles from its centre, and the former looked after the remoter districts included in a circle with an average radius of twenty miles; their principal routes were—to Enfield by Hampstead and Highgate in the North, to Epsom by Croydon and Richmond in the South, to Windsor by Uxbridge in the West, and Eastwards to Romford on the left bank of the Thames, and towards Maidstone on the right bank. Their orders were to proceed along the specified road at such a pace as would bring them to the end of their beat at the appointed time—halt ten minutes and then return meeting the other patrolmen half-way; when passing travellers they were ordered to make themselves known by calling out in an audible tone "Bow Street Patrol"; and on arriving at the home-end of their beat they were timed to meet the dismounted patrol, and had to communicate to them any news of importance. Every patrol, when on duty, was expected to be fully equipped, with his pistol loaded, and his sword-belt outside his coat; if his horse should go lame he had to dismount, and on foot patrol half his usual distance; in the event of a robbery or other breach of the peace coming to his notice, his duty was to join his companion, if possible, and that of the two together to pursue and endeavour to apprehend the offender or offenders, summoning outside assistance if necessary. If they effected a capture their prisoner was to be safely secured till morning, when they had to bring him to Bow Street.

The orders issued to the dismounted patrol, mutatis mutandis, were practically identical with those already detailed: the men were warned never to go out on their rounds without truncheon, cutlass and warrant; and they had to meet the mounted patrol at the extremity of their beat, or report the circumstances under which they failed to carry out their instructions.

The Bow Street patrols were efficacious to a certain extent. Their presence gave confidence to travellers, and highway robberies on the main roads were put a stop to; but they were of little use against burglars, and altogether failed to suppress the footpads who took to the lanes and by-ways when the high-roads were protected, nor could the removal of stolen property be prevented as long as the patrolmen were only kept on duty for half the night. The small force at the disposal of the Chief Magistrate at Bow Street, for the purpose of safe-guarding the outlying districts, had to patrol such a large area, and their movements were in consequence so regular, that it was easy for thieves to calculate the hour at which the peace officer was due at any given point, and equally easy to avoid him by concealment in a cross-road or behind a hedge until he had passed: a thief named Wilson long avoided capture in this manner, and when he eventually fell into the hands of the police, it was discovered that he had in his possession a regular time-table on which was marked at what o'clock the patrols might be expected at various points on all the main roads.

Twelve months after Lord Sidmouth's improvements had been initiated, a further advance was made, this time at the instance of Robert Peel, by the establishment of a Day-Patrol to supplement the Bow Street force. The new police body was very small, and only of an experimental nature; but it served the purpose of its institution, and the success achieved by the three Inspectors and twenty-four men who composed this little force was a strong argument for a subsequent extension on similar lines.

These reforms, following close upon each other, showed that at last Government was disposed to make a sustained effort to put the police on a better footing, and to give effect to the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committees, which it had summoned year after year, but whose advice it had hitherto as regularly neglected.

CHAPTER XII
"THE NEW POLICE"

The depth of lawlessness under which London lay submerged, and the deplorable condition of the feeble bulwarks that the richest city in the world had so long been content to rely on, have been considered at some length, because it is only by contrasting the security of recent years with the lawless confusion previously existing, that an intelligent appreciation of the debt we owe to Sir Robert Peel is made clear.

The evidence given before the various Parliamentary Committees reveals to us an impartial contemporary view of things as they then were, and it requires but little acumen to see for ourselves how well we are served by our police to-day. The improvement that has taken place has been something more than a well-defined instance of the general amelioration in our institutions, which was the feature of the nineteenth century: the year 1830 saw an almost instantaneous change in the police of London, a transformation from an inconceivably rotten and antiquated system into one which immediately became an example to the world, and one which still remains a credit to our civilization. Simultaneously with the police revival there suddenly dawned an unwonted era of security out of the dark and dangerous shadows of the past: that this was due to Peel's Act, and to no other cause, is conclusively proved by the fact that the rural parts of England, to which the Act did not apply, had no share in the improvement which was at once manifest in the metropolis. The sharp contrast between the state of London under the old régime and its condition under the new administration is well illustrated by a comparison of two critical articles taken from the leading reviews of the day. A year before the introduction of Peel's bill the Quarterly Review said—"There can be no doubt that the whole of the existing watch system of London and its vicinity ought to be mercilessly struck to the ground. No human being has the smallest confidence in it.... Their existence is a nuisance and a curse"; and some years afterwards, when people had begun to realise how indispensable their police had become, the Edinburgh Review refers to the Metropolitan force in these words: "The arrangements are so good, the security so general, and the complex machinery works so quietly, that the real danger which must always exist where the wealth and luxury of a nation are brought into juxtaposition with its poverty and crime, is too much forgotten: and the people begin to think it quite a matter of course, or one of the operations of providence, that they sleep and wake in safety in the midst of hordes of starving plunderers."

The change was the more sudden because it had been so long deferred. When the transition stage was over there could be no sustained conflict between the new champions of order and the old allies of disorder, because the latter had been allowed to hold the boards until their charlatanism and worthlessness were thoroughly exposed. People might, and actually did, say that the new system was bad and would lead to all kinds of disaster, but no one was bold enough to assert that the old system was good. Population had increased enormously, people were richer, more civilized and more humane than they had ever been before, and yet they put up with the same old apology for police that their grandfathers had been dissatisfied with and ashamed of. In some respects it is fortunate for us that this was so; for when the inevitable change was brought about, we got a better article than we should have done if an earlier model had been adopted, or if the abuses had not been allowed to flourish until they had become sufficiently glaring to demand radical measures for their removal.

Of the many Parliamentary Commissions, which since the year 1770 had investigated the police problem, the only one which did its work in a satisfactory manner was that convened on Peel's initiative in 1828. This Commission went into the question very thoroughly, and came to the conclusion that "it was absolutely necessary to devise some means to give greater security to persons and property." As soon as the Commissioners' report was issued, Peel decided to act upon it immediately, and on the 15th April 1829, introduced his bill in the House of Commons. After briefly reviewing the prevailing state of insecurity, and commenting upon the notoriously defective police arrangements in vogue, he declared that no longer must petty parochial jealousies be allowed to outweigh higher and more extended principles. He then unfolded to the House his general plan. Recognizing the impossibility of simultaneously providing the entire metropolis with trained policemen, he proposed, in the first instance, to start on a modest scale, hoping that by the gradual absorption of parishes, the central agency would become exercised in the management and control of the police, until in course of time it should be competent to take charge of the whole constabulary of London:[180] the first experiment would begin with Westminster; Kensington and Hammersmith would come next; and eventually every parish, any part of which was within fifteen miles of Charing Cross, would be taken over.

Most recent attempts to reform the police had been entered into under the influence of panic, and when some patched-up defence could be extemporised against the danger that threatened, those responsible for the public quiet had been content. Peel's aims were more comprehensive: he set himself to design a framework sufficiently rigid to withstand the stress of the moment, and elastic enough to admit of expansion along the lines of future development.

A nice judgment was required to determine how far the old materials could be made available for the reconstruction, to decide how much to retain and how much to discard. Certain sound and well-proved principles, admirably suited to the national temper, underlay the structure which he was bent on modernizing, and these, he saw, could not be dispensed with. No mania for novelty blinded him to the value of much of the groundwork of the old system; and his reforms, therefore, were in the best sense conservative, for whilst there was no break in the continuity of whatever was good, neither was there any deliberate retention of anything that was bad. It is largely due to Peel's moderation that, the more one studies the anatomy of modern English police, the more one discovers birthmarks of its Anglo-Saxon parentage.

Two months after its introduction, Peel's measure became law. The famous Act of Parliament[181] creating the Metropolitan Police Force was entitled "An Act for improving the Police in and near the Metropolis." The preamble declared that, it having been found expedient to substitute a more efficient system of police for the local establishments of nightly watch and nightly police which had proved inadequate for the prevention and detection of crime, a new office of police was to be constituted, under the immediate authority of the Home Secretary. The Act is a long one, but its main provisions are simple and concise. His Majesty appoints two Justices of the Peace to conduct the business of the Police Office, and to frame regulations for the management of the force, subject to the approval of the Secretary of State. The financial department is placed under an official called the Receiver, and the Police Rate (which must not exceed eightpence in the pound) is to be collected by Overseers like the Poor Rate. The existing watch shall continue to discharge its duties in the various parishes until notification is made that the new police is appointed, and then all watch-boxes, arms, etc., shall be handed over, and the present watch rates shall cease. The limits of the "metropolitan police district" are defined to comprise Westminster, and such parishes in Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent, as are enumerated in the Schedule of the Act. The Metropolitan police district is partitioned off into various "divisions" according to counties, those of Middlesex being as follows, Westminster, Holborn, Finsbury, Tower, Kensington, Brentford, and a division comprising certain extra-parochial places such as Grays Inn, Furnivals Inn and Ely Place. A short supplementary Act[182] relieves the chief magistrate at Bow Street of the direction of the Horse and Foot Patrols, and places them under the new police office.

This Office, as created by the Act of Parliament, the chief provisions of which are above detailed, was situated in Westminster and was called Scotland Yard. It differed from the older Offices in many respects, for whilst it was given no judicial functions to perform, it was charged with the duty of supervising the police machinery of the metropolis. It thus became a centre from which to amalgamate the heterogeneous elements that went to make up London's police, and from which to administer the reclaimed territory in an ever-widening circle, until the whole metropolitan area, amounting to nearly seven hundred square miles, was freed from the trammels of Bumbledom, and brought under the control of a bureau directed by "able, indefatigable, and intelligent men."

The intimate connection that had always existed between Justice of the Peace and constable was not severed at the birth of the metropolitan force, and the first officers of the new establishment, appointed under the provisions of the Act, were two Justices. Colonel Rowan, a soldier of distinction who had already gained some experience with the Royal Irish Constabulary, and Richard Mayne, an eminent lawyer, were the men selected. The task could not have fallen into better hands, and to the energy and tact displayed by the first Commissioners[183] must be attributed, in great measure, the success achieved by the new force from its inception. In the course of an appreciative report, dealing with the results obtained by the New Police, a Parliamentary Committee, which sat in 1833 and 1834, paid a high compliment to these gentlemen. "Much, in the opinion of your committee, is due to the judgment and discrimination which was exercised in the selection of the individuals, Colonel Rowan and Mr Mayne, who were originally appointed, and still continue to fill the arduous office of Commissioners of police. On many critical occasions and in very difficult circumstances, the sound discretion they have exercised, the straightforward, open and honourable course they have pursued—whenever their conduct has been questioned by the public—calls for the strongest expression of approbation on the part of your committee."

The task in front of the Commissioners was far from being an easy one: they had to raise a new force, but more important still was the business of restoring to the discredited office of Constable some of its native dignity and prestige. To this end it was necessary to get rid, as quickly as they dared, of all the unworthy ministers whose shortcomings had emboldened the lawbreakers and whose backslidings had disheartened the law-abiding; in so doing they had to incur the odium of causing the wholesale dismissal of public servants, who, worthless as they were, had no other trade to fall back upon. Nor was this the end of their difficulties. They had to organize and train a very considerable army of recruits, they had to drill this force and educate it to discharge duties requiring tact and forbearance, they were assisted by no expert opinion, and had little previous experience to guide them. The novelty of the problem increased the difficulty of its solution. They had to encounter a popular prejudice that was almost unanimously opposed to them, and although a false step might have produced the most disastrous consequences, no delay was allowed them for consideration or experiment.

Having undertaken the task, however, they were not the men to turn back, and in an incredibly short space of time they had the whole machine in working order; the metropolitan area was mapped out into police divisions, the divisions divided into sections, and sections subdivided into beats: the various grades of Superintendent, Inspector, Sergeant, and Constable were created, and to each grade was assigned its proper duties. By June 1830, the Metropolitan Police consisted of 17 Superintendents, 68 Inspectors, 323 Sergeants, and 2,906 Constables, or 3,314 of all ranks, distributed in the following manner:

Return of Metropolitan Police, 1st June 1830.

Key:
Col A: Superintendents.
Col B: Inspectors.
Col C: Sergeants.
Col D: Constables.

This table shows at a glance how rapidly the parochial police was giving ground before the advancing battalions from Scotland Yard. In less than twelve months, in place of the five districts originally taken over, we find practically the whole of London and its suburbs policed by the new constabulary. The skeleton of this force's organization is also indicated in the above table, the details only require to be filled in. The Metropolitan Police District, it will be seen, was divided into seventeen Police Divisions, each designated by an appropriate local name, and by a letter of the alphabet. These Divisions were then divided into Sub-divisions, Sections, and Beats. There were eight Sections in a Division, and eight Beats in a Section. In every Division a Police-Station was provided, in as central and convenient position as possible, where the business of the Division was conducted on a plan approved by Scotland Yard, and common to all alike. The Constabulary force was organized in police companies, one company to a Division, under the command and direct supervision of its officer, the Superintendent. Furthermore, each company was split up into sixteen parties, each party consisting of one Sergeant and nine men, four Sergeants' parties being equal to one Inspectors' party. To put it in tabular form—