Katharine Brown.

10D

Jack the Ripper.

Describe Law and Order in London in the late Nineteenth Century.

There was a huge change in law and order in the late 19th century, to being very successful and crime rate dramatically going down. There were only two police forces in Britain, before the Metropolitan Police Force was set up in 1829, the Thames River Police Force and the Bow Street Runners. Towns and cities were growing rapidly and the system could not cope.

 The main turning point came in policing when Sir Robert Peel, the home secretary, was convinced of the need for a police force and set up the Metropolitan Police Force. Peel’s ideas had a huge affect on police forces and still exist today. The police became known as ‘Bobbies’ and ‘peelers’ after there founder Sir Robert Peel. The streets of many British towns and cites would be patrolled by the watchmen and parish constables before the Metropolitan Police Force came about. The watchmen and the parish constables would keep an eye out for trouble and prevented disturbances and would keep it well under control because they knew the people and the town well, however they couldn’t deal with the big things, like riots, which were common in parts of Britain.

     Image of Sir Robert Peel.

The British people disliked seeing red coats because it was the colour of the army. The Government used the army to keep order and suppress popular demonstrations; as a result it was distrusted. On the other the hand the navy was given ‘hero status’ as the defenders of Britain. Therefore a blue uniform was introduced for the Metropolitan Police Force with a tail coat, a top hat and as few badges                    and decorations and possible.

 The new ‘bobbies’ would only be armed with a truncheon, which had often been carried by the watchmen. Fire-arms were not used at first but constables were issued with cutlasses, if there were any danger. In the 1840s and 1850s, however inspectors in the Metropolitan Police Force began to carry revolvers at times.

 

Bow Street truncheon.  Uniform.

In 1842 the first detectives were appointed by the Metropolitan Police, there were only two inspectors and six sergeants. There was a good deal of opposition at first to the use of detectives. The public weren’t happy about the idea of detectives, concerned that plain clothes policemen could not be identified, and the home office was concerned that detectives would become too friendly with criminals and become corrupt. In 1869 the Detective Department was created and full time detectives were attached to each Division. However all did not go to plan and in 1877, three out of the four inspectors in the Detective Department were found guilty of corruption.

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The Detective Department was recognized and in 1878 the CID was set up, this stands for Criminal Intelligence Department. This led to considerable improvements.

Detective methods developed slowly. In the early part of the nineteenth century, the police had learnt the value of footprints, also dealing with a murder case, the body must not be moved, nor anything about it or in the room or place interfered with, and the public must be excluded. A standard method in detective work was to follow suspicious characters, similar as the methods used by the bobbies.

  1884 forensics was being ...

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