History of London Police

London saw little gain in safety. In fact, for years, lawlessness was chosen over organized peace of mind. As peculiar as it sounds out of context, to a certain extent it's true. Not until 1829 did London have an official means of enforcing their law. People relied on the hope that other people see a crime and point it out before the criminal strikes again. Mind you, they are not paid for their service, but it was the closest to peace of mind people wanted. As history points out time and again, fear of change is a fact. People were fearful that organized law enforcement would escalate into a loss of civil liberties. They feared the slippery slope argument and this would never end. It's easy now to look back and wonder what they thought this would escalate into. Law enforcement is not a change in the law. It is just a means of ensuring the law gets enforced. What law enforcement escalated into was a stronger sense of peace of mind. As long as it took for people to accept law enforcement in London (beginning of time Ð'- 1829), it didn't take long for people to realize its benefits (a couple years later). They were surprised, but relieved by the change in public appearance. Beggars hid their begging. Prostitutes and drunkards carried themselves more appropriately. Kids did not fill the streets with games. Much of the clean up was not necessarily a cleanup of illegal activity, but it was a response to the omnipresent sense of being regulated. London's history will show that people are not as influenced by the possible punishment as they are by whether or not they can get away with it. Generally speaking, with law enforcement, people are less likely to get away with a crime, and as a result, they do not commit it in the first place. It removes the buffer zone that is otherwise felt by a criminal who is unregulated, ie lacking law enforcement.

In the period between 1674 to 1829, witnesses of crime had a legal obligation to arrest the culprit. The sense of individual responsibility lessened through the period when individual businesses were paid to carry out this task. This loss of individual responsibility translated into more crime. With no official policing, London relied on unpaid communal service. This evolved into night watchmen; householders from each precinct, which cycled through as the precinct's current watchman. The unpaid constable of the precinct organized the cycle. This lost its momentum in around 1663 when the number of constables on duty reduced from about 240 to twenty-six. This was due in part to being unpaid and stereotyped as uneducated.1 It wasn't until the late 1700's that the city kick started a new attack on unlawful corruption. Thomas De Veil, a Middlesex justice, turned his home into a public office, which his successors, Henry Fielding and Sir John Fielding turned into an open court that heard cases before going into official city trials. Its goal was to weed out the innocent from the criminals and in turn, add a fairness to justice. As a successful author, Henry Fielding gained support of the public through multiple means. He organized a newspaper, the Covent Garden Journal, which he used to advertise a need for the public to seek out crime and report it. He later published a bulletin, the Weekly Pursuit, which described stolen good and possible thieves. The Weekly Pursuit soon made its mark throughout London, and eventually became government funded.

With government funding, Henry Fielding created a force of "thief takers" to act as a professional means of finding crime. Their force consisted of six men and remained that size until John Fielding, Henry Fielding's half brother and co-founder of the Bow Street Runners, died in 1780. For such a historically famous organization, the Bow Street Runners met little success. Londoners of the time feared the loss of individual liberties, and believed that extreme punishment was enough to keep crime low. But what the Bow Street Runners did do was successfully lay down a model others would replicate, and one that eventually led to the Metropolitan police of 1829.

Among their successors, one of their more notable was William Pitt. Pitt first attempted at passing a bill to enable a single police force, but failed due to its mention of connection to the city's involvement. He later successfully passed a new bill, which created seven police offices and eight courts, and was modeled largely off of the Bow Street Runners. At the same time, the still going Bow Street patrol, continued after the Fielding brothers' deaths, was increased to seventy men.

Pitt made an advance in policing history, but its size relative to London's million people plus population was minimal. It wasn't until the publication of Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis by Patrick Colquhoun, which claimed more than 10% of Londoners were criminals, that people opened their eyes. His argument was directed largely at workplace crimes, ie burglary among servants and riverside workers. Such numbers were much higher than Londoners originally realized. The Home Office responded by creating the Thames Police Office, which policed over most of the area in which river crimes occurred. More police offices soon followed, and similar to those set up by Pitt, they were connected to the central Bow Street Office, hence the importance of the Fielding brothers.

Police forces continued to grow inside London. Though they were all connected, and with Bow Street Office as the main office, they was not run by the city. Post war caused an increase in crime inside London in the early 1800's. Home Security Sir Robert Peel began his campaign on a Metropolitan police force in the 1820's. His strategy was to focus less on the political dilemma and more on the increase of crime using an argument similar to Colquhoun. On 19th June 1829, Peel convinced Parliament of the need for an official Metropolitan Police force. Rather than build on the Bow Street force, they started a force from scratch. Also, "[the] city was not included in the Act of 1829 and to this day has its own separate police force, Peel having privately confessed that he would 'be afraid to meddle' with the Corporation,"2, but it did acknowledge the Metropolitan Police as the police of London (It wasn't until 1856 that Parliament mandated police among all provinces). Due to the city's lack of true involvement, money for the police originated largely from parishes inside London. Peel designed the structure with eight Superintendents, twenty Inspectors, 88 Serjeants (old spelling), and 895 Constables. A central headquarters was established at 4 Whitehall Place. There were initially eight Divisions, organized by an assigned letter and staffed with officers. Their uniform was designed more similar to civilian dress than military due to the sensitivity