The police forces of London were divided into different divisions, where there were four inspectors and sixteen sergeants, each division managed by a superintendent. Each division was in charge of the area that was assigned to them but sometimes for more major cases other divisions under the Met would join and work together.
There were many criteria and expectations of people who took on the job and responsibilities of a Metropolitan Police officer. The ideal recruit would be someone who was between twenty-thirty five years of age, well built, at least five foot seven inches in height, literate and of good character, but obviously not all recruits were like this and at the beginning many recruits had to be dismissed. The most common reason for dismissal would be drunkenness.
At the beginning the role of the police was not to solve the crimes but only to prevent them from occurring. However, gradually this changed and by 1842 the first detectives were introduced. As well as trying to prevent crime they also tried to solve them although some work had to be carried out before the detectives were successful, as they did not have the technology advances for policing that we have in the present. Hence, the main way of catching a criminal was to catch them red-handed or to have a confession from the criminals themselves.
The police had to deal with many different crimes in the late nineteenth century ranging from minor crimes such as pick pocketing, drunkenness and prostitution to more major crimes such as murder, poisoning and garrotting (a more serious type of robbery whereby two or three men, one of whom would grab the victim around the neck and choke him whilst the others would go through the pockets of the victim and steal everything they could). The minor crimes were dealt with but no precautions could be taken to prevent or resolve the crimes because the only punishment the police could give was either a warning or a fine. As these punishments were not harsh, it tended not to deter people from carrying out these minor crimes again and again. Thus, the police work was not helping the matter. With the more serious crimes such as murder and garrotting they were more difficult to deal with and solve than the less serious crimes although attempts were still made to try and prevent and solve them.
By the 1870s crimes were on the rise and the editors of the national papers began printing stories that would stir fear amongst the people of Britain. The government felt that the situation was worsening and a garrotter’s act was therefore passed that brought about flogging on top of imprisonment as a punishment for violent robbery.
Murder was one of the most serious crimes that the police had to deal with. Most murders took place using poison during the Victorian times and many of the doctors at the time found it difficult to determine whether the victim had been poisoned or in fact just died of natural causes. This would make the police work difficult because the police were unsure whether they were looking for a murderer.
Another of the more serious crimes was prostitution. Prostitution was very common in some parts especially in Whitechapel. Women who had no money and no home to stay had to make a living by prostitution and would then receive some money for food and a place to stay for the night. As Whitechapel was considered dangerous place where no police would enter and where it is likely a woman would walk down a dark deserted alleyway alone, it was the perfect place for Jack the Ripper to strike.
The police used many different methods of fighting crime and as time passed, these methods became more and more advanced. In the late nineteenth century police walked the beat whereby they would have to walk about the streets looking for the crimes. As more research took place and the work of the detectives became easier and easier, due to the developments of forensic science. The newly introduced detective work included line-ups and photographs of the crime scenes because the forensics had not developed greatly yet to be of any help.
A breakthrough occurred in the last few years of the nineteenth century when a man was convicted for a murder because the torn paper used for his pistol wabbing was the same paper that was recovered from the victims wound. Moreover, in 1892 the ‘Alphonse’ method was introduced by which the police would measure the suspect’s parts of the body on the assumption that no two humans would be the same. The biggest breakthrough came in 1901 as a way of appointing the criminal to the crime committed, when the fingerprinting was introduced making detective work simpler and easier.
The reputation of the police was very controversial and many people began to see them in an unpopular image. The Metropolitan Police Force often had to deal with big disturbances and riots and often had to be quite heavy-handed and sometimes violent. This would prove unpopular because most of the riots that the police had to break up were very popular with the commoners. In 1868 a baton charge was used in Bromley which resulted in a seventy-year-old man being trampled to his death. The reputation of the police was also disliked in the working class areas of London because the people there often saw the police as upper class and did not think that the police should be there in their areas. Attacks on policeman were common and even sometimes murders were heard of.
To conclude law and order in London was at its early stages in the late nineteenth century and a lot of the technology we have today to help us with policing was unavailable back then so the work by detectives in those times were very limited. In order for them to catch a criminal they had to catch the criminal in the act or receive confession which would be very unlikely. The reputation of the police was very controversial and they were quite unpopular especially by the fans of the popular riots that the police had to break up. In the more poorer areas of London, the working class did not feel that they could trust them as they thought the police were too upper class to be seen in their areas.
