The Metropolitan Police

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Generally, the word “police” means the arrangements which are made to protect the population and to solve crimes.

Sir Richard Mayne wrote in 1829 that the main object of a police is not to solve crimes, but the prevention of crimes, and if a crime is committed to solve it and to punish the offender.

He also wrote that “the protection of life and property, the preservation of public tranquillity, and the absence of crime, will alone prove whether those efforts have been successful.”

In his opinion a police could only be successful, if it cooperated with the public. One of the key principles of modern policing in Britain is that the police seek to work with the community as a part of the community.

Before a police was installed, the authorities have had just few resources for fighting against crime and disorder. At this time troops were used to keep order and local militias were used for local problems.

The origins of a sort of police are going back to the Saxons. They brought a system to Britain, which developed some organisation: The people were divided in groups of ten, called “tythings” and they had a “tything – man” as representative, who was responsible for securing order in his group. There were also bigger groups of ten “tythings” under a “hundred – man” who was responsible to the Shire-reeve of the county. In the word “Shire-reeve” we can already recognize the word “Sheriff”.

This system of tythings later changed, but some things remained the same like the tyhing-man or the hundred-man, they just got other names.

Later they had to be elected and there were formed special guilds for the task of maintaining the order. Later specified groups of citizens, known as “the Watch” were paid for guarding the gates and patrolling in the streets at night.

With the beginning of the industrial revolution new pressures on the society leaded to more violence and cities grew much bigger. The conditions became intolerable and led to the formation of a “new police”.

In 1829 passed Home Secretary Richard Peel’s Metropolitan Police Act the Government and the Metropolitan Police Force was founded.

This new police was only responsible for the London area, but not for the London city centre. The City of London Police which was founded in 1839 is today still am independent police force.

Now 1000 recruits were carefully selected and trained by the Commissioners.

Crime and disorder were now prevented and controlled by the police. But the new police had also other functions:

They had to light the lamplights, to call out the time, to watch for fires and to provide other public services.

In the beginning, there were some police establishments outside the control of the metropolitan police like the marine police, but these organisations had been absorbed by the metropolitan police by 1839.

The policemen were at the beginning not very popular. The citizens saw them as a disturbance of the English social and political life.

But the tactics of prevention of the metropolitan police were very successful, and crime and disorder declined.

Because of this success of the police, the idea expanded and by 1835 all parts of the city were ordered to set up police forces.

But it was not until 1856 that Parliament ordered the provinces to establish their own polices.

The Metropolitan Police Act established the principles of the British police: first patrolling by uniformed officers and second that command and control was to be maintained trough a centralised, military organisational structure.

The fist commissioners were Colonel Charles Rowan and Richard Mayne.

They occupied a private house at 4, Whitehall Place, which had a courtyard at the back. Its back premises were used as a police station. Because of the address of this house the headquarters of the Metropolitan police is known under the name “Scotland Yard”.

The exact origin of this name is not really clear, and there are two stories about the origin.

The first story says that the location was a residence owned by the Kings of Scotland and used as a Scottish embassy and known as “Scotland”. The courtyard was later used by Sir Christopher Wren and known as “Scotland Yard”.

The other story says that the house has this name because it backed onto a court named “Great Scotland Yard”. This name is said to derive from the land being owned by a man called Scott during the Middle Ages.

The following statistic shows that the “concentration” of policemen is very different in various cities and years.

But not in whole Britain police forces were established. In 1853 only 22 of 52 counties had police forces.

By about 1855 there were only 12000 policemen in England and Wales. The smallest division had only nine policemen.

Lukas Ramseier and Lukas Borter

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