Law and Order in the late Nineteenth Century
In this essay I am going to write about London in the nineteenth century and also about the creation of the metropolitan police force.
During the 19th century London was different then what it is now for instance there was no major police force and most of the police was made up of volunteers. 75% of the crime in London was petty theft; only 10% of the crime was made up of violent crimes such as murders so there really wasn’t any need for a police force which explains why there wasn’t one. The population of London started to grow and so did the crimes because the more people there are at one place the criminals could easily pick pocket them. The home secretary at the time Robert Peel had to take some measures. In 1829 Robert Peel who was the home secretary sets up the metropolitan police force because of the number of crimes in Britain mainly in England was rising at a very fast rate. At the time there was a marine/river force and volunteers but they were not trained to handle crime or prevent it. At the start the metropolitan police force was given a black and blue uniform in order to be different from the army uniform because no one in Britain liked the army, so the MET police wanted to get on the good side of the people. The MET were given a nickname ‘’The London Bobby’’ named after Sir Robert Peel. The MET police didn’t really make the impact all of the people were expecting it to do. That was maybe due to the fact that they were not very well trained and they didn’t have any detectives who can solve and prevent crime, all the MET police were doing against crime was deal with prostitutes and alcoholics. In fact, while London’s streets were far more orderly and there were less street crimes in the late 19th century the burglaries went up. The Police force also had to deal with riots and that’s where they got their reputation as ‘’heavy handed’’. During the time the MET police had a mixed reputation for example the times wrote ‘’amid the bustle of Piccadilly or the roar of oxford street, P.C.W. 59 stalks along, an institution rather than a man’’ this shows us that the times reporters had a very one sided view about the London Bobby but another newspaper wrote ‘’In These happy days of piece, the blue coats, the defenders of order, are becoming the national favourites’’
