Describe Law and Order in the Nineteenth Century.

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Describe Law and Order in the Nineteenth Century.

This essay will focus on law and order in the late nineteenth century. I will look at why Britain needed a police force, who set it up, and what it was like. I will also examine the developments the police made in the nineteenth century, and draw comparisons between the police in the 1800s and the police nowadays.

        In the nineteenth century London was an extremely different place to how it is now. There were very distinguished boundaries between the rich and the poor. Most upper class Londoners had no idea about the way that thousands of impoverished people lived in London. The East End was one of the poorest areas in England. The streets were packed with the poor and homeless, and criminals and prostitutes were everywhere. Pickpockets, some still only children, stole things from people’s pockets and sold them just so they could feed themselves. Prostitutes were also a problem on the streets in the nineteenth century, although they were seen a normal thing to a lot of the people in the East End. The East End wasn’t a particularly nice place to live at the beginning of the nineteenth century but it would gradually get better over the next century.

        In the early nineteenth century, before 1829, the vast majority of British towns and cities didn’t have a police force. These towns and cities used an old system that remained unchanged since the Middle ages. This system was run by Justices of the Peace (JPs), who were chosen by the King. The JPs would choose Constables to help them, and the Constables would then choose watchmen to assist them. Not much is known about how effective this system was, but it is thought that it was good for preventing theft and disturbances as the watchmen and constables would have known all the local trouble-makers. Since 75% of all recorded crime in the nineteenth century was petty theft, this system worked quite well. However when riots and protests started to occur this old policing system was somewhat less that effective. In 1780, when the Gordon Riots broke out and people were breaking into Newgate Jail and attacking the Bank of England, the system failed completely and the army had to be called in. The army had no training in this kind of crowd dispersal, but it was the only way of restoring the peace. In 1819, at St Peter’s Fields in Manchester, a crowd had assembled to listen to a speech about the reform of Parliament. Local Magistrates wanted to disperse the crowd and, after the special constables and two detachments of a volunteer cavalry had failed, the army was called in to clear the area. Many people were killed and injured because the army couldn’t disperse the crowd peacefully. After that it became obvious that something needed to be done about Britain’s law and order system.

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        In 1800 there were two police forces in London, both of which were in London. ‘The Bow Street Runners’ was set up in 1749 as an attachment to the Bow Street magistrate’s court; the Thames River police that patrolled the river in boats was set up in 1798 and is still in operation today. The rest of Britain was still using the old regime of JPs, constables and watchmen. That was until Sir Robert Peel stepped in and put an end to Britain’s Law and Order problems.

        Sir Robert Peel was born in Lancashire in 1788, became England’s Home Secretary ...

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