Law and Order in London in Late Nineteenth Century

Law and Order in London in Late Nineteenth Century

The British police force came to being in the late eighteenth century.

By 1800 there were only 2 police forces in the whole of Britain, both

of which were in London. One was the Bow street runners, which was set

up in 1749 and the other, was the Thames River police force, which by

then was only 2 years old. The main turning point for policing as far

as London is concerned came in 1829 when 'Sir Robert Peel', the home

secretary of the time, created and set up a new police force, the

metropolitan

Police force.

The metropolitan police force was set up to carry out all the jobs

that the watchmen and special constables did before them. Their jobs

were to patrol the streets to keep them in order and to try to prevent

crimes. They were sometimes also used to tackle major crimes such as

riots. On some occasions the met would liase with the army and use

them to help them to tackle the more major things such as riots. This

would often prove to be unpopular with the public, as the army would

have been used before the creation of the met to break up popular

riots and demonstrations. Obviously because they were popular riots

and demonstrations the public wouldn't be in the metropolitan

polices favour for using them.

To begin with their jobs were not only the sort of jobs that we would

associate with the police of today. They also had to do many other

ordinary, menial tasks such as lighting the night lamps, calling out

the time and watching for fires, amongst many other public services

they had to carry out, which they had taken over from the

watchmen before them.

The police for...

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...the policeman would have to

walk about the streets looking for the crimes to be committed to the

newly introduced detective work such as line-ups and photos of the

crime scenes because the forensics had not really

developed that much yet to be of any help.

But a breakthrough happened 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 form

the victims wound. Moreover in 1892 the 'Alphonse' method was

introduced by which the police would measure the suspects parts of the

body on the assumption that no two humans would be the same. The

biggest breakthrough though came in the early twentieth when

fingerprinting was introduced. This making detective work much more

simpler and easier to carry out.