The creation of the Thames River Police in 1798 was one of the most significant police reform experiments of the time. This first regular professional police force in London was formed in order to control the thefts that weighed down London’s largest port. When serious problems occurred, the government would summon the army. However, as London’s population grew, the crimes that were being committed also increased and law and order was under threat. The city was becoming a dangerous place and many people were unemployed, had little to eat and had not received an education and therefore turned to crime in order to make a living and the old policing systems could not cope with this. More over, 75% of crimes were merely petty thefts and many of theses weren’t even violent.
1829 brought the turning point in nineteenth century law and order. Sir Robert Peel, the Home Secretary, founded the Metropolitan Police Force in order to carry out the functions of both the watchmen and the special constables .The work of Fielding’s shows that an organized force could reduce crime and therefore the Metropolitan Police Force were Britain's first Government created, controlled and funded police force and covered an area within a 7 mile radius from the centre of London. Their functions included lighting lamplights, calling out the time and watching for fire; their main duties were to deal with drunkenness, beggars, vagrants and prostitutes. The Metropolitan police were only armed with wooden truncheons and Constables given cutlasses, a type of sword, if there was any danger. However, from the 1840’s and 1850’s inspectors in the Metropolitan police began to carry revolvers at times. Peel’s Police were paid a little 16 shillings whereas more people in other skillful jobs earnt a lot more so the police didn’t attract a lot of intelligent officers and therefore lowering their public respect. Their popularity was also threatened because Sir Robert Peel himself had lots of enemies and even the Queen thought he was rude and common. However, the preventive tactics of the early Metropolitan police were successful, and crime and disorder declined. The public had little expectations for the Metropolitan Police and just wanted crimes to e solved in a nonviolent manner. However, the force had to deal with major disturbance as street crimes decreased, and soon got a reputation for heavy handedness and violence. The Metropolitan Police Force gained no public confidence and the majority of Londoners detested them.
The first detectives were selected by the Metropolitan Police in 1842. At first there was a lot of disagreement to the use of detective workers. The public were concerned that policemen with plain clothes could not be identified and the Home Office were worried that the detectives would become too friendly with criminals. However, it was not until the 1860’s that detective work began to be organized. The methods of these detectives developed slowly. The police have learnt the value of footprints in the early part of the nineteenth century but since then little progress had been made. The standard method in detective work was to follow suspicious characters, who where mainly foreign or Jewish at the time. In 1892, the Alphonse Bertillon method of identification was adopted; this involved measuring parts of the human body on the theory that no two individuals would be exactly the same. Fingerprinting however, was not adopted until the early 20th century.
Very little training for the police was received in the late nineteenth century and hours of duty could be as long as fourteen a day, seven days a week. In the 1880’s the reputation of policing was hit very hard due to a number of serious incident and many methods of tackling and solving crimes that we now take for granted, were unknown and even very regular patrols could not stop a determined criminal as, for many Londoners, crime was the only way to receive money, food and a half decent way of living.
