The Birth of the Police Force

The old way ran on everyone knowing everyone

For centuries England kept order without anything we would call a police force. Order was a job the community did for itself. Each parish had a constable, often an ordinary person doing the role for a year without pay, alongside a watchman who walked the streets at night. When a crime happened, people raised the alarm and neighbours were expected to join the chase. That whole arrangement rested on one thing: a small place where people knew one another. In a village the constable knew who was short of money, who had been seen near the workshop, and who to ask. The people around him would say what they had seen, because they knew each other and they knew him. Then, with industry, towns grew at a speed nobody had seen before. People poured in for work, streets filled with strangers, and a person could commit a crime in a district where nobody knew their name and be gone by morning. Once a place is full of strangers, a system built on everyone knowing everyone has nothing left to stand on. That is the problem the police force was invented to solve. Carry one question through this module: what could the old system rely on that the growing city took away?

Words for early policing

Five terms, each defined by what it was. They set up the change this module explains.

Tap the two the city took away

The old system leaned on certain things. Tap the TWO of these that a large, fast-growing town removed.

• People generally knowing one another in a small, settled community
• A population that mostly stayed in the same place for years
• The existence of laws against theft and violence
• The existence of courts to try those who were caught

Why the old watch could not cope

As industrial towns grew quickly, parish constables and watchmen struggled to keep order in a way they had not before. What best explains it?

• The old system relied on a community where people knew one another, and a fast-growing town was full of strangers, so it no longer worked
• The constables had simply become lazier than earlier ones
• There were suddenly no laws against crime in the towns
• The weather in industrial towns made patrolling impossible

The old way against the new force

The police force was not the old system done better. It was a different kind of thing.

Match the old feature to why the town broke it

Two things the new police did differently

Select the TWO ways the new Metropolitan Police worked differently from the old parish watch.

• They were paid professionals doing the job full-time
• They patrolled in uniform to prevent crime, not only to react after it
• They were unpaid volunteers chosen by each parish
• They worked only in small country villages

Making the police an answer to the town

This paper rewards turning a development into a FACTOR, and here the factor is urbanisation. A shape that answers most stems about the birth of the police: Say what the old system relied on. It rested on a settled community where people knew one another and would raise and join the alarm. Say what changed about society. Industrial towns grew very fast, they filled with strangers, and people moved around far more than before. Say why the old mechanism no longer worked. You cannot keep order by knowing everyone in a place where almost nobody knows anybody, so the old arrangement had nothing left to lean on. Name the response. A paid, full-time, organised, uniformed force that patrolled to prevent crime, beginning with the Metropolitan Police in London in 1829 under Robert Peel. Then say who disagreed. This is where marks are won. The new force was not welcomed by everyone. Many people feared that a paid, organised body under the government threatened English liberty, that it was a step towards spying on ordinary people, and that it would be an expensive burden. Two habits cost marks. The first is the progress story: writing that policing simply got better and kinder misses that it was resisted and feared. The second is reaching for a date you are not sure of. The Metropolitan Police in 1829 is safe. If you are unsure of another year, use the order of events and comparative language instead.

Order the rise of professional policing

Put these developments into a sensible order, from the pressure that caused the change to the finished national system.

• Industrial towns grew rapidly as people moved in for work
• The old parish and watch system could not keep order among so many strangers
• Paid officers such as the Bow Street Runners were an early step in London
• Robert Peel set up the Metropolitan Police in London in 1829
• Other towns and counties gradually set up their own paid forces
• Police forces were eventually made compulsory across the country

Build the policing explanation

This is the sentence that turns the police force into a factor answer. Assemble it.

The new police on the beat

Five questions on why the police force was born and how it differed. Three lives.

One theft, two kinds of place

Here is an invented illustration, drawn for practice from the general picture historians describe. Picture the same small theft in two very different settings. In a quiet country parish, the man appointed to keep order knows almost everyone. When a tool goes missing from a workshop, he knows who has been in the yard, who is short of money, and who to call on. The people nearby will tell him what they saw, because they know each other and they know him. He is barely paid and does the job alongside his ordinary work, but at that size it can just about hold. Now move the same theft to a crowded district of a booming manufacturing town. The people in the next room are strangers who arrived last month, the man who took the tool may already have moved across the town, and there is no settled circle of neighbours to say what they saw. The old arrangement has nothing left to lean on, because the one thing it needed, people knowing one another, is exactly what the crowded town has removed. The answer, when it came, was a body of paid men on regular patrol in the capital, wearing a uniform so everyone could see them, whose whole job was to prevent trouble by being visibly present. It was a different kind of thing from the old officer, and it existed because the town had become a different kind of place.

Complete the policing facts

Before the reforms, a local person, usually unpaid, who kept order in one small area was the _____. The paid, organised force set up in London in 1829 was the _____. A key feature of that new force was that its members were _____, doing the work full-time rather than as volunteers. The rapid growth of large towns that made the old system fail is called _____.

Why some people feared the police

When a professional police force was proposed, many people opposed it. What was a common reason at the time?

• They feared a paid, organised force could threaten English liberty and be used by the government to control people
• They actually wanted crime to continue
• They thought policing should be made even more expensive
• They believed there was no crime left to deal with

Three answers to sharpen

Three student answers about the birth of the police. The knowledge is broadly right; the reasoning needs work.

• A student writes that the police force was created simply because crime went up. Why is that too thin for top marks?
• A student writes that the new police force was welcomed by everyone as an obvious improvement. How would you correct it?
• A student explains that the old parish system failed but never says what replaced it or why that was different. What is missing?

Explain why the police force was born

A friend can describe the old parish constables and the new police force but keeps getting middling marks because the answer reads as a list. Explain how to turn it into an argument about why the police force was born.

• Explain what the old system of keeping order depended on, and who carried it out
• Explain what changed about society as industrial towns grew quickly
• Explain why the old system could no longer cope in a large town full of strangers, linking this to urbanisation as the factor
• Explain what the new police force was and how it differed, being paid, full-time and patrolling to prevent crime
• Explain why the new force was contested at the time and not welcomed by everyone
• Finish using only secure facts, such as the Metropolitan Police being set up in 1829, and avoid any date you are unsure of