Police control systems in Britain, 1775–1975: From parish constable to national computer 9781526102584

Citation preview

Chris A. Williams

P O LICE CON TRO L SYST EM S IN BR ITAIN , 1775–1975

From parish constable to national computer

Police control systems in Britain, 1775–1975

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Police control systems in Britain, 1775–1975 From parish constable to national computer Chris A. Williams

Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan

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Copyright © Chris A. Williams 2014 The right of Chris A. Williams to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed in Canada exclusively by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN  978 0 7190 8429 4 hardback First published 2014 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by 4word Ltd, Bristol

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For my parents

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Contents

List of figures and tables page viii Preface and acknowledgementsix Abbreviationsxi Introduction1 22 1 The ‘old’ police, 1780–1840 2 The proletarianisation of police labour, 1800–1860 43 3 Drilled bodies and zealous minds, 1820–1890 62 4 Time, bureaucracy and the new policeman, 1830–1930 85 5 Real-time communication, 1848–1945 118 141 6 The arrival of the control room, 1919–1975 7 Computerising the back office, 1955–1980 174 8 Conclusion 202 Bibliography211 Index232

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Figures and Tables

Figures 3.1 Metropolitan Police officers stand outside page 64 Catford Police Station in the 1850s 4.1 The Metropolitan Police Criminal Records Office  101 in the interwar period, featuring numerous file card indexes 4.2 The relative cost of Met ‘back office’ functions,  104 1840–1940 4.3 Officer/clerk ratio in the Met, 1865–1940 104 5.1 A Metropolitan Police Constable uses a box phone  132 from the external door of a police telephone box, some time in the mid-twentieth century 6.1 A police officer places markers on a map table,  151 mid-twentieth century 7.1 Police officers using 1970s vintage video display units 180 8.1 Police parade before going out on duty, holding their equipment for inspection, late twentieth century  203

Table 4.1 ‘Back office’ expenditure on policing in 1921

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Preface and acknowledgements

The idea for this book came together over a period of years as I began to notice that, while working on the history of British policing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I kept ending up with a similar set of interesting questions. This book is an attempt to answer them. Over the years that it has taken me to research and write it, I have received help and inspiration from a large number of people. Sometimes I have been able to help or (I hope) to inspire in return, but I am conscious that in nearly every case I have received far more than I have given. John Roberts developed my love for the past, and George Wales brought it under control. Greg Silver and Lucy Faire taught me how to think like a historian. Steve Carpenter and Sarah Evans gave me tea and toast in the control room. I have also been helped, inspired, or both by (in no particular order) the late Alan Lothian, Rachael Griffin, Jakob Whitfield, Brett Holman, Alex Harrowell, Stef Dickers, Anja Mueller-Wood, Nick Groom, many commentators on ‘sci.military.naval’, Shane Ewen, Brian McCook, Dave Cross, Duncan Broady, Margo de Koster, Erik Lund, Klaus Weinhauer, Jens Jäger, Jack Bunker, the Schlachtenbummler at ‘Blood and Treasure’, Sharon Howard, Jonathan Edelstein, Toni Weller, Mike Esbester, Anja Johansen, John Beattie, Marjanna Niemi, Neil Raven, Denise McHugh, Neil Wood, Luc Racaut, Sue Townsend, Michael Weaver, James Kneale, Alastair Dinsmore, Ben Taylor, and Steven R. Cole of www.dtels.org. I also benefited immensely from many people with whom I have worked at the Open University over the years: Louise Westmarland, Ian Martin, Janet Clark, Bob Morris, Fran Dodsworth, Gonzalo Gonçalves, Justine Berlière, Joanne Shortland, Gerry Oram, the

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late Mark Pittaway, Georgie Sinclair (whose input was especially valuable), Pete King, John Carter Wood, Ros Crone, Paul Lawrence, Donna Loftus, Stef Slater, and above all Clive Emsley, who also takes double credit for assembling many of these people at the OU in the first place. The help was theirs: I lay claim to the remaining errors. Janet Clark, Malcolm Noble, Laura Allan, Lisa Lewzey and Jacquie Green worked as research assistants on this project, financed by the Open University’s Arts Faculty, and their work was excellent and invaluable. Malcolm Noble’s help with the editorial work was also much appreciated. Archivists, curators and librarians all over the country were invariably professional and helpful: the ones who stood out even from this high standard were Leicester University Library’s Official Publications desk and Greater Manchester Police Museum.

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Abbreviations

ACPO

Association of Chief Police Officers of England and Wales BEF British Expeditionary Force CC Chief Constable CCTV Closed Circuit Television CID Criminal Investigation Department CRO Criminal Records Office DTels Home Office’s Directorate of Telecommunications ETC English Telegraph Company HMIC His/Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary HO Home Office HOLMES Home Office Large Major Enquiry System JADPU Joint Automatic Data Processing Unit LADA London Air Defence Area MADE Mobile Automatic Data Experiment Met Metropolitan Police Force MO Modus Operandi MoT Ministry of Transport O&M Organisation and Methods PAG Police Applications Group PARC Police and Aliens Records Computer PEDEX Personal Data Experiment pIRA Provisional Irish Republican Army PNC Police National Computer RAF Royal Air Force RN Royal Navy SAGE Semi-Automatic Ground Environment

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Introduction

Policing needs to be studied on a quotidian level, which analyses what people did every day, rather than a series of stories of rare crises.1 The aim of this book is to pose and answer two main questions. First, how have law enforcers been instructed and supervised? Second, how did police organisations work, and how and why – if at all – did this change? It is easy to identify long-term change, but often hard to accurately describe and explain it. Historians who work with sociologists in the highly present-focused subject area of criminology find it easy to greet many over-arching sociological explanations with the caveat that ‘none of this is new’ – or at least not nearly as new as the sociologists argue it is.2 Nevertheless, it is clear that at some points in the last two hundred years, policing has changed beyond all recognition. Retired police officers have a standing joke about the frequency with which they say ‘The job’s not what it was’. They are right: it is not, and the task of this book is to describe and analyse some (though not all) of the ways that it has indisputably changed. At the start of the nineteenth century, nearly all British police were self-employed artisans. Between 1780 and 1830, police institutions emerged which – in the words of Francis Dodsworth – ‘mechanised virtue through new systems of superintendence and regulation’.They altered the social environment through ‘new structures which would operate in a ceaseless and uniform manner’.3 Policing became a task performed by a mass waged workforce. In the mid-nineteenth century, police forces built institutions through standardised bureaucracy and pioneered the use of lifelong time consciousness in order to ensure labour discipline. In the twentieth

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century, they innovated and disseminated the techniques of realtime control through radio. By the 1970s they were pioneer users of operational computing technology on a national scale. This book describes these changes in the way that policing was carried out. It is an attempt to understand some of what Peter Becker and William Clark referred to as ‘mundane administrative tools’: the everyday practices that make institutions work in a particular way.4 It attempts to draw some general conclusions through reference to the insights of social science but it is a work of analytical history rather than of historical sociology.

Criminal justice historiography There is ‘more to cops than robbers’.5 Police are interesting because they are ubiquitous in everyday life and in popular culture. They are also interesting because they are a useful institution through which it is possible to study the development of modernisation trends over the long term. Above all, they are interesting because of the role that they play in defining, maintaining and reproducing the authority of the state. Despite this, it was not until the 1970s that academic historians ‘discovered’ policing as a topic. After several decades of research, the development of British police institutions is now quite well understood; although there are still places, people and institutions which we do not know as much about as we could, we have reached a stage where we have a narrative history of many police institutions at our disposal. The aim of this book is to build on this knowledge to illuminate both some new elements in the history of policing and some aspects of the broader social world.6 It rests on research in a number of different areas. The political and social development of police institutions over this period has been plotted by Clive Emsley, David Taylor, and Philip Rawlings.7 In addition, work by Bob Storch and David Philips has covered the first years of the new police and their broader social significance, notably the extent to which they were a force directed against the ‘dangerous’ lower classes.8 Haia Shpayer-Makov, David Wall and Joanne Klein have focused on the careers and working lives of the police officer, and some of this material will be drawn on, although the topic covered here deals with working lives and organisational

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Introduction3

structures in a broader, more schematic and less detailed way.9 Much extant police history addresses topics which will not be dealt with in this book. The question of the effectiveness of policing, or of its class position, are only noted insofar as they have a bearing on the question of differing organisational forms. This book is not a total history of how police related to the public. I am less concerned with the causes of large-scale adoption of new police forces than with the precise nature of such forces. Throughout, the question of how police organisations were supposed to work has been emphasised, over that of how they actually did work: for example, I do not examine the practice of police discretion.10 This has been done in order to explore and explain the changing organisational visions within police institutions. It defines ‘directing’ as exercising control within an organisation, hence it focuses on the way that policing was internally organised, and does not consider the political accountability of police institutions to external bodies (watch committees, the Home Office, police authorities) or the chief constable’s relations with these bodies and the public.11 Many insights derived from police history and police science inform the preoccupations of this study. One important one is the notion of ‘haut police’ originated by Jean-Paul Brodeur: the key role of police institutions in defending the state and relating directly to state power. Another is the attempt to develop and flesh out the conclusions of several historians who have attempted to characterise the shift to new police in schematic terms. This was initially advanced by Allan Levett, and noted in the Canadian and American contexts by Willem de Lint and Eric Monkonnen, as a move from old ‘entrepreneurial’ police, to new police, who formed a ‘politicised bureaucracy’.12 If this book has a single progenitor from within the field of criminal justice history, it is undoubtedly Carolyn Steedman’s Policing the Victorian Community, which took the arrival of the county police forces in 1857 as its subject, and analysed this process in order to look at the history of working lives and of the subjectivity of class in the nineteenth century. In Steedman’s words, this was ‘not so much an account that tells of the police (though it certainly does that), as of the way in which a society at many levels, and from many class perspectives, understood itself to operate’.13

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Structure The book examines the causes, consequences and significance of four major innovations. The first of these was the arrival of reformed and uniformed ‘new’ police forces between the 1820s and 1850s. Because these are analysed in terms of their contrast with the unreformed police who preceded them, the book begins with a chapter which describes British police systems of the late eighteenth century, concentrating on the ways that those within them were supervised and incentivised. Three chapters then follow which analyse different aspects of the ways that ‘new’ police were new, and how their innovation might be best understood. The first of these looks at the process of police reform to trace the genesis of the policeman as a waged and closely supervised labourer, and advances the proposition that, far from the creation of a ‘professional’ police, what was introduced was in fact a ‘proletarian’ police. The subsequent chapter looks closely at police rule books in order to describe how these highly disciplined organisations were maintained, and addresses the paradox of the demand for initiative which accompanied the need for subordination to the institution. It also looks at the concept of time, showing that one major difference between new and old police was the way that they interacted with the future. The chapter following continues this theme in its analysis of the paperwork of new police forces, describing and analysing it in terms of Max Weber’s model of bureaucracy. The second major innovation was the use of real-time telecommunications systems. Chapter 5 analyses the introduction of telegraph and telephone systems, which began in the mid-nineteenth century, and seeks to explain what precipitated their adoption, and what its nature can tell us about the functioning of police institutions. The third major innovation, discussed in Chapter 6, was the introduction of radio, which combined with existing control structures – and external communications networks such as the public telephone system – to constitute the first systems of real-time command at a distance.These were centred in control rooms, which were the most important of several key police technologies which drew directly on experience from the First World War.The development of radio also involved the private sector in a new and ongoing relationship with police and their funders in central government.

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Chapter 7 deals with the fourth major innovation: the use by police of computer systems. Its content is more a story of policy, debate and decision than one dealing with what happened ‘on the ground’. There are a number of reasons for this. One is slightly trite: it is a very important tale which has yet to be told at all, and the central records are the best place to find the sources which tell it. Leading on from that reason is another: the central records are significant precisely because for the first time the Home Office was designing a resource which would necessarily transform policing all over Britain, and continue to structure it. This approach also allows us to examine the role of the private sector and of the international dimension. By the late twentieth century, developments in police technology were clearly global in coverage: to what extent were they transnational in their nature? The final chapter summarises the key conclusions deriving from the work as a whole, concentrating on the extent to which there is any general link between the modernisation of policing and modernity in general. The second half of the book is thus, predictably, about the rise and role of machines in structuring police forces and the way that they responded. The first half, however, is also about these sociotechnical systems of control, but focuses more sharply on people, and the way that they were trained, disciplined and controlled. The structure of this book is complicated by the customary refusal of reality to conform en bloc to a neat periodisation of discrete changes. For a Metropolitan police officer in an area car in the late 1930s, their experience of the job of policing could have been remarkably similar to their modern counterparts. For some detectives, right up to the arrival in the 1980s of computer-based procedures for handling information such as HOLMES their job may have felt very similar to the tasks carried out by men from the London police offices in the late eighteenth century. Continuities like these have been dealt with by focusing more on the differences between distinctive styles of policing and elements of control, and less on their precise chronology. This work covers aspects of police development in Britain as a whole, although its coverage is biased towards England in general and London in particular. There are two reasons for this: the first is that it reflects the extant historiography of policing, which has tended so far to concentrate on these areas. The second is that at many (though not all) points the capital’s police

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were the innovators, given their vastly greater size than all other British forces, and their more varied responsibilities and geographical concentration than the only other UK force which approached them in size, the Irish Constabulary. Innovation-centred history risks drawing a misleading picture, but the process of bringing new institutions and techniques into use usually generates far better primary sources, and hence allows far better subsequent analysis, than does the adoption of already proven techniques elsewhere.

Sources and methods The period covered by the book has been chosen to encompass as broad a time-span as practical. The existence of long-term views related to crime and criminal justice, such as Zedner’s idea of the ‘criminal justice state’, provides another justification for this periodisation.14 Knowledge about the timing and nature of any shifts in the quality of the police response to crime helps us to place this time series data in a better context.The starting point, 1775, is securely in a period when the vast majority of policing in Britain was carried out by men who were later collectively termed the ‘old’ police. To an extent it is also driven by the need to deploy a variety of evidence in order to explain the activity of the unreformed police. The end point, 1975, was selected because it enables the introduction of the Police National Computer to be examined, as well as the ubiquitous use of personal radios, two developments which taken together transformed the relationship of police to information and to supervision. Because of this long period, it relies on a wide range of primary sources. Some of these are proposals for reform, either internal documents or those put forward externally, often by ‘moral entrepreneurs’.15 It would be naïve to assume that these described what eventually happened: indeed, many of them seem to have followed innovation rather than providing a blueprint for it. But changes in the content of manifestos can give us insights into what was considered possible or desirable at different times.16 Even regulations and standing orders cannot be taken at face value: those orders which were most often repeated are better guides to what the organisation was failing to do than to what it was actually doing. One factor

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Introduction7

which needs to be taken into account is that called by Christopher Dandeker ‘Machiavellian’ social theory.17 This notes that social and bureaucratic evolution within states is often the product of competition between them but also highlights ‘the independent part played by the self-interest of professional and bureaucratic experts in the expansion of the surveillance capacities of the organisations in which they are based’.To most historians, this seems like a statement of the obvious, but it is worth noting in a work such as this which might otherwise appear to be derived from an uncritical reading of some key sources. As with other types of source, changes in these internal documents too can be analysed for what they tell us about expectations, preoccupations, and the underlying assumptions about what ought to be done.The close study of these documents has been pioneered in the Pacific Rim. Mark Finnane has demonstrated how the nature of police rule books are indicators of the contestation over the form that police authority should take, whilst T.P. Barnard has shown how the regulations for police in different Malay states at the end of the nineteenth century exemplified subtly different notions of authority.18 Graeme Dunstall has noted the significance of the ‘Black Book’, written by the force’s Commissioner himself, in establishing the priorities for the New Zealand Police in the interwar period.19

Preoccupations in the history of bureaucracy ‘Bureaucracy’ has become a largely pejorative term in the last 20 or so years: this is odd, because it is one of the major defining characteristics of the successful modern state.20 Bureaucracy itself is inherently complex, and the more closely it is analysed, the more complex it looks. This was demonstrated in the late 1950s when systems analysts working as part of the Home Office’s first attempts to computerise some of their services first tried to describe the information-processing procedures of one of its elements – the register of non-British entrants to the country. Their attempt to describe the workings of the aliens register was itself complex and nuanced, but it was subject to ruthless criticism by those who ran the register, as woefully over-simplified.21 This inherent complexity may be one reason why administrative techniques are not often

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written about. ‘Bureaucracy’ is the great villain of many a story: yet the transition to modernity is in many respects the same as the transition to bureaucracy, and many of the demands of democratic and technical society – demands that ‘they’ come up with solutions to social and economic problems – have never been delivered by any other means. Much of the researched history of administration is in fact history of the administration, focusing on how policy is made in the first place, or the everyday functioning of the top levels of government.22 Given the vast amount of attention paid then and subsequently to nineteenth-century governance, the amount of analysis of the way it actually worked from day to day is minuscule.23 Nearly all this attention is focused on the way that policy was made, rather than how it was implemented. This bifurcation was present in the Northcote Trevelyan Report of 1854, which began by drawing a distinction between ‘intellectual’ and ‘mechanical’ labour in the public service.24 It then concentrated largely on the former at the expense of the latter, and subsequent historiography of the civil service has followed this trend.25 Policing is no exception to this trend, unsurprisingly since it is (among other things) an executive function of the civil service, and the bureaucratic techniques of policing have much in common with those exercised in support of other executive functions. Paperwork – usually a dirty word in the context of modern policing discourse – is usually invisible work, publicly revealed only in crisis and described largely in terms of ritualistic condemnation.26 The characterisation of nineteenth-century executive government – Trevelyan’s ‘mechanical’ labour – was also usually left to oppositional pamphleteers who were anxious to establish the principle of open entry and selection by ability, thus keen to publicise government clerks as ‘the imbecile who is below work, and the coxcomb who is above it’.27 But supporters as well as denigrators also ignored the administration. Edward Troup was the pre-eminent Home Office civil servant in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In his account of the Home Office in the 1920s, he wrote that he could ‘pass over details as to the organisation of work within the several divisions; nor need I discuss the constitution of the three auxiliary branches manned mainly by officers of the clerical grades – Registry, Accounts and Statistics – or the ‘pools’ of typists and

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Introduction9

shorthand typists similar to those in other well-organised offices’.28 Historians have followed where commentators and (many) practitioners have led. Traditional administrative history has focused on relations between the Home Secretary and his civil servants, or between the civil servants and the policy-making community. The latter was the classic example used by Oliver MacDonagh in his research into the politics of government growth.29 Norman Chester’s work dealt with the way that the Home Office changed its organisational structures, and the balance of effort between the administrative and executive branches, without describing the nature of the latter.30 This book stands in a tradition which seeks to explain the institutions behind their public front: how they came into being, what their priorities were, and their relationship with time. In this, it has been inspired by John James’ The Paladins, which explores the institutional history which led up to the RAF of 1940.31 James spent his career as a civil servant, rather than as a professional historian, which gave him valuable insights into central government. His is an example of what Edgerton has called ‘historiography from below’, which includes the views developed by participants and non-academic observers, and which can reflect startlingly orthogonal preoccupations to those that dominate and structure existing academic research. 32 Perhaps the most useful relevant example of ‘historiography from below’ is Jack Bunker’s From Rattle to Radio, a technical history of communications in the Metropolitan police, written by a retired expert in the field.33 Such a perspective can help counter the dominance of top-down, policy-driven administrative history.

Information and technology The relatively young field of ‘information history’ provides another way of looking at some of the concepts which are necessary for a history of an information-heavy task such as policing. It is, though, primarily concerned with information itself as a focus for study, rather than the institutions which manipulated it, and sees it as best studied as a subset of cultural history rather than social history.34 Hitherto, much of its attention has been concentrated on the ways that government interrogated and changed its everyday practices,

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at the expense of those practices themselves. Becker and Clark’s collection of essays on the history of knowledge and government, for example, analyses the way that the everyday and the mundane can be described in terms of knowledge and information, but is more concerned with questionnaires than with lists; with epistemic than with administrative tools.35 Information systems have many different elements to them: some, such as dictionaries or specialised scientific nomenclatures, are classificatory. Michel Foucault’s entertaining conceit that these are completely arbitrary still exercises some baleful influence.36 Classifications are not free-floating fictions, but are generally products of the interaction between human institutions and the world around them, and the way that these institutions try to make sense of the world – the data that they attempt to process – can tell us a lot about them.37 The desire to access reliable information which could be processed and trusted as a guide to future action has long been – in many countries – a critical part of the police’s aims.38 Policing, especially new policing, was about information a long time before mechanical computers arrived: indeed, some schemes for general police reform such as that proposed by Henry Fielding in the 1750s were based primarily on new information structures, and his brother John, who pioneered hierarchical policing in the 1750s, systematically collected information to support the operation of the Bow Street Runners.39 New police were ‘new’ partly because they relied upon standardised bureaucratic methods to operate and make sense of the world.40 This study seeks to include an element of technical history, which analyses the actual change in the capabilities of policing, as well as the ways that these changes were discussed given that, in Headrick’s words: ‘Ours is not the first information age in history … Yet in certain periods the methods used to handle information changed dramatically.’41 As such, this study is close to one tradition within information history which seeks to historicise the current ‘information age’ using contemporary terms as its touchstones. Good examples of this are the work of Alistair Black and of Martin Campbell-Kelly.42 Black’s brief analysis of the ‘prehistory’ of the information society in government uses case studies of the Post Office and MI5 and deals with the mechanics of information management. 43 Even if we look outside central government it is

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Introduction11

difficult to find many detailed histories of administrative practices: as Campbell-Kelly noted, techniques of data processing in large Victorian enterprises tend ‘to go unrecorded’.44 The history of information within the firm has been pioneered by historians of American corporate practice. First, Alfred Chandler’s The Visible Hand historicised the concept of a managerial revolution, occurring in the last third of the nineteenth century, which was impelled by the growth of single firms to a size which meant that their various elements had to supplant market-based relationships with managed co-ordination.45 JoAnne Yates outlined the spread of systematic management within large American companies in the period 1860–1920, showing how its growth was tied in to the increasing use and sophistication of internal communication systems.46 James Beniger has also pointed out the links between control and communication, in that he postulated that, largely in the nineteenth century, large-scale networks (between companies as well as within them) hardened and grew. There was a shift from the use of agents in remote locations to integrated organisations; this and other changes were impelled by a series of ‘crises of control’ in which communication technology lagged behind longdistance demand, and was developed and adopted in order to fill this gap.47 Economic needs created the demand for new institutional communication.

Histories of knowledge and histories of policing Jonathan Finn’s history of the criminal image has pointed to the usefulness of these concepts in understanding the ways that photography and law enforcement related to one another in the nineteenth century.48 Finn applies two crucial concepts drawn from Bruno Latour: the first, ‘black-boxing’, is where the users of a particular process expect to be able to rely on it to process information in a defined and expected way, even though they do not necessarily understand every intermediate step of the process itself.49 This concept need not be confined to the process of scientific research; indeed it is inherent to most bureaucracies, wherein the division of labour has developed to the extent that not every worker knows the process as a whole.The second is the concept of ‘inscription’, a process

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used by Latour to describe the way that complex phenomena in the laboratory are reduced to various kinds of text in the form of graphs, tables, numerical results and text proper.50 This concept has been described by historians of criminal justice, but largely with reference to the visual: in the context of the photograph and the body. Alan Sekula’s article ‘The body and archive’ provides a compelling view of the way that the potential of the photograph to ‘fix’ the criminal was one focus of nineteenth-century thought about photography itself.51 Finn’s work on the photograph of the criminal again puts it at the centre, asserting that the inscriptive practice most central to the operation of modern criminal justice systems is the photograph.52 The photograph was not the only visual way that identity could be fixed, however, and Clare Anderson in Legible Bodies has shown how in nineteenth-century South Asian penal practice, the British colonial authorities, deploying far greater powers (though far sparser resources) than their metropolitan counterparts, used distinctive clothing and tattooing, as well as photography-based techniques, to the same end: that of ‘the verification of identity’.53 Sekula’s idea of the ‘total archive’ tends to privilege the image over textual information, thus his main focus (as well as that of Finn) is the linking of the photograph to the body, and he only mentions in passing the bureaucratic assemblage which constituted the next necessary link in the chain.54 It is this bureaucratic assemblage – of ledgers, loose-leaf files, card indexes, punched cards, and magnetic storage – which takes centre stage here, as it evolved, became more powerful, and occupied a larger proportion of the effort devoted to police work. The camera, the work of Lombroso in criminology, and attempts to render the body searchable through the system of Bertillonage, are all interesting (perhaps too interesting) topics in the cultural history of the nineteenth century, but it was the system of fingerprint classification introduced in the early years of the twentieth which transformed criminal justice by enabling the authorities to reliably fix the identity of those they had in custody.55 This study will use a broad meaning of ‘technology’ to encompass the social processes around material artefacts as well as the artefacts themselves.56 So, for example, a sergeant’s journal, embedded in practices, rules and regulations, is as much a technology as is a personal radio: itself unusable without a shared institutional understanding of correct radio procedure. Many traditional histories of

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government reflexively ascribe technological conservatism to it.The recent official history of the British government asserts that it lagged behind the private sector and other governments by 1914, an assessment which will be contested below. 57 Nevertheless, the official historian agrees that after 1918 the British civil service was aggressively modern in its attitude to technology, and in some respects led the rest of the world.Traditional police history has tended to fit into a technologically determinist view: technology emerged, and police had to adapt themselves to it.58 The dominant interpretation of the history of technology tends to dislike such an approach, preferring instead to consider technologies as ‘socially constructed’: having to fit into the existing world rather than defining it.59 Some critiques of this approach have allowed more space for technological determinism.60 Here, one key aim of the book will be to identify any general trends in the way that police adopted technologies.

Theoretical contexts for analysis The aim of this book is to contextualise developments in British police institutions. It is focused on historical events rather than theoretical positions but, in order to make useful generalisations, it will refer to a number of useful theoretical positions about the past. Perhaps the most important of these is the concept of ‘bureaucracy’ itself. How is this constituted? The best starting point for analysing bureaucracy remains the work of Max Weber, who listed it as one of his ‘ideal types’ of governance. Weber was writing in the early years of the twentieth century, perhaps the high point of the uncritical acceptance of bureaucracy as an unalloyed good.61 He defined it according to the following characteristics: • Regular required activities are assigned as official duties. • The authority to give commands is distributed in a stable way and ‘strictly delimited by rules concerning the coercive means, physical, sacerdotal or otherwise, which may be placed at the disposal of officers’. • ‘Methodical provision is made for the regular and continuous fulfilment of these duties and for the exercise of the corresponding rights; only persons who qualify under general rules are employed.’

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• Office hierarchy allows for a system of appeals by subordinates to still higher authority. • ‘The management of the modern office is based upon written documents (the ‘files’), which are preserved in their original or draft form ... The body of officials working in an agency along with the respective apparatus of material implements and the files makes up a bureau.’ • Office management involves ‘thorough training in a field of specialisation’ and official activity necessarily entails ‘the full working capacity of the official’. • Office management follows general rules which are more or less stable, more or less exhaustive, and which can be learned. Knowledge of these rules represents a special technical expertise which the officials possess. • Bureaucratic processes can never completely control an organisation: for it to function in practice the rules must always be subverted to some extent. As will be shown below, each element of Weber’s definition was present in the new police forces of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This study aims to connect patterns in the long-term changes in policing to theoretical perspectives which appear to describe them. Nevertheless, it is a work of history not of theory, and it demonstrates an instance of the historian’s luxury of borrowing an idea here, or a concept there, from a general theory without feeling a need to take it (or leave it) intact. This is most noticeable in the case of the work of Michel Foucault, especially that set out in Discipline and Punish, the big idea of which is that, round about the time of the French Revolution, there was an abrupt change in the way that criminal justice and other institutions managed their inmates and which has received a rough ride from historians who have looked in (especially) prisons for evidence of it.62 But although Foucault may have been wrong about prisons, his description of a disciplinary institution closely fits new police forces. With regard to Foucault’s later ideas of governmentality, though, this work tends to turn him on his head. Foucault saw the eighteenth century as an ‘age of police’ – in the meaning of this term as ‘science of government’ – implying close control over place and a ‘visible

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grid of communications’. The nineteenth, conversely, was an age of liberalism, in which governmental processes involved (and brought to the centre) the whole population, and respected its autonomy.63 Looking inside actually existing police institutions I instead come to the conclusion that the eighteenth century was a period when policing power was dispersed fairly widely through the population and organised on the basis of autonomous institutions, whereas the nineteenth century saw the sudden advent of new police forces which had at their centre a desire to define and control communications and movement within the institution. The most useful idea in Foucault’s later work is in fact one which he defined as a key part of liberal governmentality: the idea of ‘security’. Foucault said that he meant three things by ‘governmentality’. The first of these is by far the most useful here: The ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power, which has as its target population, as its principal form of knowledge political economy, and as its essential technical means apparatuses of security.64

‘Security’ might be better translated as ‘durability’, since it refers to ‘the ‘holding out’ of the state over an indefinite span of time’.65 One essential characteristic of new police forces, which will be examined at length in this book, is their relationship to time. For the police constable controlled by the prospect of promotion and a pension, as well as for the superintendent recording events in books which would provide a lasting and auditable record of his conscientiousness, new police inscribed, and were in turn inscribed by, time. Much of the territory covered in this book has been already remarked upon in schematic terms by Christopher Dandeker’s Surveillance, Power and Modernity, which sought to explain and describe the birth of modern organisations and states. He has noted the transformation in police working patterns between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and related this to advances in communications technology.66 One current he examines is the Marxist history of changes in the labour process, which is present in the work of Sidney Pollard on factory discipline and Braverman on ‘de-skilling’.67 As Dandeker concludes, Pollard’s analysis usefully points to changes in the relative balance of power and skill in

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factory production, although the mechanisms for such change do not always follow a Marxist schema of being generated by conditions internal to class relations: rather they are often ‘borrowed’ from other sectors. Dandeker’s work focuses on the inter-relationships of different sectors, and constitutes a largely successful attempt to examine the growth of modern forms of power and surveillance. The main potential contributory factors which he discusses are: competition between states, often expressed through the growth in military power; the development of capitalist economies and their associated productive forces; and the desire of states to control and survey their own populations, often expressed through the surveillance capacities of police organisations. Dandeker’s aim – to explain the growth in state capacity – creates a highly useful matrix for contextualising changes in policing with reference to related developments in wider society. Its disadvantage is that the picture of growth it contains can verge on the teleological. An antidote to this focus on the state’s strength can be found in an account written around state weakness. In his Seeing like a State, James C. Scott considers how governments have attempted, and failed, to understand the behaviour of ‘their’ populations.68 Scott’s attention is drawn to ‘thin, formulaic simplifications’ – times and places when the state conspicuously fails to reduce the objective complexity of the world to a level of understanding which allows the world to be successfully manipulated.69 These are common in the agricultural case – studies which dominate Seeing like a State: but as even he concedes, in the sphere of the relations between governments and ‘their’ populations, ‘state simplifications’ can work to an extent. One example which he gives is of the imposition of names, and specifically surnames, on subject populations, the better to tax them.70 The strengthening of the state in the modern era required the ‘invention, elaboration and deployment’ of this and similar abstractions, intended to increase the legibility of a society to its rulers. A theme which will recur below is that systems of understanding which are confined ‘indoors’, within and facing state organisations (particularly the police) themselves, are far more powerful, more prevalent, and technically more advanced than those which are implemented ‘outdoors’, facing the population at large. Scott’s work explains why this might be so, and his understanding of the importance of simplification for successful control provides an explanation as to why some

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policing innovations are more powerful than others. Scott’s main focus, on confusion and weakness, reminds us that the history which follows here is sometimes as much about changing police visions as about changing police capacities: it asserts, nevertheless, that the alterations in both need to be understood if we are to understand the history of policing and the broader history of modernity.

Notes   1 John James, The Paladins: The story of the RAF up to the outbreak of World War II (London: Futura, 1990), p. 57.  2 Chris A. Williams, ‘Constables for hire: The history of private “public” policing in the UK’, Policing and Society, 18:2 (2008), 190–205.   3 Francis Dodsworth, ‘The idea of police in eighteenth-century England: Discipline, reformation, superintendence, c. 1780–1800’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 69:4 (2008), 583–605, pp. 597, 603.  4 Peter Becker and William Clark, ‘Introduction’ in Peter Becker and William Clark (eds) Little tools of knowledge: Historical essays on academic and bureaucratic practices (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), pp. 1–34, p. 1.   5 Steve Hughes, Crime, disorder and the Risorgimento: The politics of policing in Bologna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 34.   6 A similar project is embodied in Louise A. Jackson’s Women police: Gender, welfare and surveillance in the twentieth century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006).  7 Clive Emsley, The English police, a political and social history (Edinburgh: Longman, 2nd edition, 1996); David Taylor, The new police in nineteenthcentury England: Crime, conflict and control (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997); Philip Rawlings, Policing: A short history (Cullompton: Willan, 2002).   8 R.D. Storch, ‘The plague of the blue locusts: Police reform and popular resistance in northern England, 1840–1857’ in International Review of Social History, XX (1975), 61–89; D. Philips, Crime and authority in Victorian England: The Black Country, 1835–1860 (London: Croom Helm, 1977); D. Philips and R.D. Storch, Policing provincial England 1829–1856: The politics of reform (London: Leicester University Press, 1999).   9 Haia Shpayer-Makov, The making of a policeman: A social history of a labour force in metropolitan London, 1829–1914 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002); David S. Wall, The Chief Constables of England and Wales: The socio-legal history of a criminal justice elite (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998); Joanne M. Klein,

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10 11

12

13 14

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Invisible men: The secret lives of police constables in Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, 1900–1939 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010). Michael Banton, The policeman in the community (London: Tavistock, 1964), p. 113. This topic is well covered by the following: Tony Jefferson and Roger Grimshaw, Controlling the constable: Police accountability in England and Wales (London: Frederick Muller, 1984); Lawrence Lustgarten, The governance of the police (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1986); Clive Emsley, ‘The police’ in Bogdanor, Vernon (ed.) The British constitution in the twentieth century (Oxford: Oxford University Press/British Academy, 2004), pp. 557–583; Chris A. Williams, ‘Rotten boroughs? How the towns of England and Wales lost their police forces in 1964’ in J. Moore and J.B. Smith (eds) Urban corruption (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 155–175. Eric Monkonnen, Police in urban America 1860–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 61; Willem de Lint, ‘Autonomy, regulation and the police beat’ in Social and Legal Studies, 9:1 (2000), 55–83; Charles Tilly, Allan Levett, A.Q. Lodhi and Frank Munger, ‘How policing affected the visibility of crime in nineteenth-century Europe and America’, CRSO Working Paper 115 (January 1975) http://hdl. handle.net/2027.42/50892, pp. 38–39, 69–70. Carolyn Steedman, Policing the Victorian community:The formation of English provincial police forces, 1856–80 (London: Routledge, 1984), p. vii. Lucia Zedner, ‘Policing before and after the police: The historical antecedents of contemporary crime control’ in British Journal of Criminology, 46 (2006), 78–96. David Philips, ‘Three moral entrepreneurs and the creation of a criminal class in England c.1790s–1840s’ in Crime, History Societies, 7:1 (2003), 79–108. Dodsworth, ‘Idea of police’, p. 597. C. Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity: Bureaucracy and discipline from 1700 to the present day (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), p. 6. M. Finnane, ‘Police rules and the organisation of policing in Queensland, 1905–1916’ in Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 22:2 (1989), 95–108; T.P. Barnard, ‘Rules for rulers: Obscure texts, authority, and policing in two Malay States’ in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 32:2 (2001), 211–225. G. Dunstall, A policeman’s paradise? Policing a stable society, 1918–1945 (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1999), p. 32. Paul Du Gay, In praise of bureaucracy: Weber, organisation, ethics (London: Sage, 2000), pp. 61–72. HO 352/47 Aliens Passenger Traffic Index: staff instructions; use of automatic data processing, 1952–1960, Comments re Aliens Register interpolated in ‘Report of working party on feasibility of using automatic data processing in the Home Office’, March 1958.

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22 Oliver MacDonagh, ‘Emigration and the state, 1833–55: An essay in administrative history’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series, 5 (1955), 133–159; Peter Hennessy, ‘“Harvesting the cupboards”: Why Britain has produced no administrative theory or ideology in the twentieth century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series, 4 (1994), 203–219. 23 Chris Otter, The Victorian eye: A political history of light and vision in Britain, 1800–1910 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008) provides a notable exception to this trend. 24 Northcote Trevelyan Report [First published 1853] repr in Public Administration (1954), 1–12. 25 Jill Pellew, The Home Office 1848–1914: From clerks to bureaucrats (London: Heinemann, 1982), p. 86. 26 Rosie Cowan,‘Police spending just over half their time on frontline duties’, Guardian (23 September 2004); Richard Edwards, ‘One million police hours wasted on paperwork, say Tories’, Daily Telegraph (17 September 2008). 27 Edwin Chadwick, quoted in Anonymous, The devising heads and executive hands of the English government: as described by Privy-Councillors and civil servants themselves (London: Administrative Reform Association, 1855). 28 E. Troup, ‘The functions and organisation of the Home Office’, Public Administration, 4 (1926), p. 134. 29 MacDonagh, ‘Emigration and the State’. 30 Norman Chester, The English administrative system 1780–1870 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 258–259. 31 James, The Paladins, pp. 14–16. 32 D. Edgerton, ‘Innovation, technology, or history: What is the historiography of technology about?’ in Technology and Culture, 51(3), July 2010, 680–697, p. 693. 33 John Bunker, From rattle to radio (Studley: Brewin Books, 1988). 34 Toni Weller, ‘An information history decade: A review of the literature and concepts, 2000–2009’, Library & Information History, 26:1 (2010), 84. 35 Becker and Clark (eds) Little tools of knowledge. 36 Michel Foucault, The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences (London: Tavistock, 1970), p. xv. 37 Ann Rudinow Sætnan, Heidi Mork Lomell and Svein Hammer (eds), The mutual construction of statistics and society (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), p. 8. 38 Robert Darnton, The great cat massacre, and other episodes in French cultural history (New York: Basic Books, 1984). 39 Rawlings, Policing: A short history, p. 94; John Beattie, The first English detectives:The Bow Street Runners and the policing of London, 1750–1840 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 30. 40 Philips and Storch, Policing provincial England, p. 225.

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41 Daniel Headrick, When information came of age: Technologies of knowledge in the age of reason and revolution 1700–1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 217. 42 Alistair Black, Dave Muddiman and Helen Plant, The early information society: Information management in Britain before the computer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); Martin Campbell-Kelly, ‘The railway clearing house and Victorian data processing’ in L. Bud-Frierman (ed.), Information acumen:The understanding and use of knowledge in modern business (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 51–74. 43 Black et al., Early information society, pp. 125–129. 44 Campbell-Kelly, ‘The railway clearing house’, p. 57. 45 Alfred Chandler, The visible hand: The managerial revolution in American business (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977). 46 JoAnne Yates, Control through communication: The rise of system in American management (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). 47 James Beniger, The control revolution: Technological and economic origins of the information society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986). 48 Jonathan Finn, Capturing the criminal image: From mug shot to surveillance society (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009). 49 Bruno Latour, Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1987) p. 131. 50 Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory life:The construction of scientific facts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986 [fp 1979]), p. 51. 51 Alan Sekula, ‘The body and the archive’ in October 39 (1986), 3–64. 52 Finn, Capturing the criminal image, p. xvii. 53 Clare Anderson, Legible bodies: Race, criminality and colonialism in South Asia (Oxford: Berg, 2004), p. 3. 54 Sekula, ‘Body and the archive’, p. 57. 55 Simon R. Cole, Suspect identities: A history of fingerprinting and criminal identification (London: Harvard University Press, 2002). 56 Otter, Victorian eye, p. 16. 57 R. Lowe, The official history of the British civil service: Reforming the civil service Volume 1: The Fulton Years, 1966–81 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), p. 73. 58 At a point when this book was very nearly finished, I was pleased to find that Kevin Rigg’s doctoral research at the University of Teesside into the policing of South Shields in the mid-twentieth century independently matched some of my conclusions about the impact of technology on police practice, as well as drawing many more of his own. K. Rigg, ‘From “pounding the pavement” to “pushing the pedal”: A constable’s perspective of the detraditionaliseation of policing in a small county borough police force, 1947–1968’ (PhD dissertation, Teesside University, 2013).

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59 E. Constant, ‘The social locus of technological practice: Community, system or organisation?’ in W.E. Bijker, T.P. Hughes and T.J. Pinch (eds) The social construction of technological systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), pp. 223–242. 60 D. Edgerton, ‘Tilting at paper tigers’, in British Journal for the History of Science 26:1 (1993), 67–75, pp. 69–72; D. Edgerton: ‘Innovation, technology, or history’, p. 696. 61 Max Weber, Economy and society: An outline of interpretative sociology, eds G. Roth and C. Wittrich (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), III, pp. 956–982. 62 See, inter alia, A. Brown, English society and the prison: Time, culture and politics in the development of the modern prison, 1850–1920 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003). 63 Colin Gordon, ‘Governmental rationality: An introduction’ in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds) The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 1–52, p. 20. 64 Michel Foucault, ‘Governmentality’ in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds) The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 87–104, p. 102. 65 Gordon, ‘Governmental rationality’, p. 19. 66 Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, pp. 127–128. 67 Harry Braverman, Labor and monopoly capital: The degradation of work in the twentieth century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974); Sidney Pollard, The genesis of modern management: A study of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain (London: Edward Arnold, 1965). 68 James C. Scott, Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1998). 69 Scott, Seeing like a state, p. 161. 70 Scott, Seeing like a state, pp. 64–71, 77.

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1 The ‘old’ police 1780–1840

Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the main features of the ‘old’ police systems, concentrating on the issues of organisational control raised in the Introduction. This thematic approach provides a defence against one cogent criticism that could be levied against its title: that there was no ‘old’ police system. Policing before 1829 was heterogeneous (in fact, more so than afterwards) and, crucially, its systems were dynamic. Wherever historians have looked in depth at policing, they have found structures and practices which were amenable to change, and did in fact change, in response to perceived needs. The idea of a monolithic ‘old system’ derives chiefly from ‘Whig’ historians of the new police, who were over-anxious to justify the legitimacy of their subjects, and generally did so by repeating as objective fact the polemics and propaganda which the early partisans of new policing aimed at their opponents.1 This chapter will concentrate on the watchman and on the parish or petty constable, also called a tythingman in some jurisdictions. The ‘High Constable’ had similar powers to his parish counterpart, covering a broader geographical area. Despite the title, he had no authority over parish constables, thus need not feature in this analysis.2 Also absent are the various uniformed patrols run from the Bow Street police office which were created from the 1760s, funded by central government and under the control of a stipendiary magistrate. It leans heavily on the work of Rock, Storch and Philips, and those historians who have described policing in London before 1829, but it is not intended as a substitute for, and certainly

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not as a summary of, their work.3 Here, the emphasis will be on the lines of responsibility within the institution. It will describe the office of constable as it functioned in the late eighteenth century, in a variety of different ways which varied between the amateur ideal and the activity of part-time and full-time entrepreneurial officers, some of whom were able to attain positions of considerable power and wealth through their police work. Via a consideration of instruction books and press reports of court cases, it will analyse the ways that constables were controlled: indirectly through the law, which was one element in a marketplace of incentives and rewards. Another police institution – the urban watch – existed alongside the constables, and the very different way that this was disciplined will be examined, with a view to demonstrating the ways in which it was within watch institutions rather than the constables that the true antecedents of the new police forces can be found. There were several key features across the old systems (albeit not evenly distributed) which were not characteristic of the new, and it is these which will be described here, in order to try to get to the heart of the contrast between the two. The most characteristic aspect of the old police system (not just in the context of this book, but universally) was the dispersal of authority. The old police system was a response to a lack of capability to closely control events from any one centre, and as such Beniger’s concept of the ‘Control Revolution’ can help us to understand how it differed from those institutions which came after it. The role of the old police was analogous to that of ‘factors’ – representatives in the periphery of a merchant in the core who made deals at a distance, before systems of direct commercial control grew up in the mid-nineteenth century.4 Factors were just one example of the phenomenon of the ‘agent’: someone empowered to do business on behalf of another, who was unable to do it themselves owing to separation. Another example is workers in the pre-factory ‘putting-out’ system, subject to market discipline but not under close supervision.5 Like these, the old police also need to be understood as the ultimate product of an economy with very limited capacity to create surplus value compared to the modern age. This in turn led to a relatively weak state, with significant limits on the number of people it could employ and the amount of resources it could mobilise. Thus, especially outside the ‘fiscalmilitary’ core of the state, and doubly at local level, its functions

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were generally carried out by part-time amateur officials and, rather than create many institutions to ensure compliance, its usual mode of activity was to create incentives.6 These incentives were intended to guide the governance of territory and populations, which at this time was dominated by local self-government.

Constables Each parish (and sometimes townships within large parishes) had a constable, appointed annually to serve for a year. They could be appointed by the parish vestry (an assembly elected by the ratepayers, usually consisting of some of its richer property-owners), the court leet (an annual meeting of the tenants and landowners convened under the auspices of the lord of the manor) or, in some towns, by the corporation (the town’s public body, which was sometimes elected but more often an oligarchy) but in all cases the body which appointed them neither supervised nor disciplined them.7 They were in theory subject to direction by the justices of the peace, who were (outside London) all amateurs but nearly all from the gentry or nobility. One of their key roles was to serve legal warrants – for arrest, search, and seizure – issued by these justices. The constable was, in theory, a householder and property-owner, as well as literate and healthy.The constable himself was responsible for dealing with law enforcement, crime and disorder in his parish, but these were not his only responsibilities: notably much of his activity concerned the administration of relief to the parish poor.8 He was also responsible for maintaining accurate lists of inhabitants liable to serve in the militia, and for finding billets as necessary for any regular troops, tasks rendered more important by the wars of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The parochial constable system lacked bureaucratic support or any system of ongoing records outside of account books. He was able to claim expenses and some fees from the parish and from any higher courts on whose behalf he acted.9 These fees were generally set at a rate which would make it worthwhile for most self-employed artisans to carry out the duties: anyone whose business was more lucrative than this would suffer a penalty, and many wealthier men paid poorer substitutes (often termed ‘acting

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constables’) to serve in their place, or gave a fine to the appointing body, which could then be used by them for this purpose. He was expected to respond to reports of crime, and had the power to arrest (and to enter premises in search of) those suspected of felonies – the category of serious crimes triable at Quarter Sessions or Assizes, which contained burglary, robbery, and most theft. In addition he had a general duty to secure order in his parish. The overall picture of the constable’s activity, and his ability to perform it, is best summed by Storch and Philips thus: a local man who, by dint of his physical powers and other personal qualities, could command enough respect to conciliate people at odds, break up petty village brawls, deal with disputes before the parties resorted to the courts, and preserve the peace under normal circumstances.10

The legal position of the constable varied considerably depending on the kind of activity he was engaged in. The law laid out that constables were immune from being personally sued if they were acting under the authority of a justice of the peace.11 So to this extent the constable did not always serve as a wholly autonomous agent but rather as one whose job it was to enforce the judgements of the governmental representative – the justice – who had both autonomy and legal responsibility. In certain circumstances (detailed below) litigants who sued constables would be put in a weak position by being liable to excessive damages if they lost.What these legal privileges had in common was the method by which they were expected to be enforced: by altering the constable’s degree of responsibility during an action for damages in the courts of the common law.12 The ideal of the constable fitted into the broader conception of eighteenth century governance. He was, at least in theory, to be independent, responsible and reasoning. In this ideal of governance there was no distinction between those inside and those outside the structures of local government, composed as these were of self-governing citizens.13 There was also an association between masculinity and freedom on one hand and femininity and oppression on the other: as Francis Dodsworth has shown, the constable’s masculinity was constructed in ways which emphasised his independence. Ideally, he needed to be a property owner, in order to maintain the principle

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of self-government, and physically capable to perform his duty in person but the most important qualification was that he should be an independent man, and nobody’s servant. Only then would he be able to exercise his judgement properly.14 He must not be poor – this would render him dependent on others, and unable to devote his time to the job, which needed to be carried out by the respectable head of a household.15 Owning property also implied that he would be aware of the law and able to engage with it. When it was allocated on a rota basis which was associated with those who owned or rented particular properties, the nominal office of constable itself could sometimes pass into the hands of a woman. She would be expected to pay for a substitute if she could afford to, or if not the task devolved on another male parishioner. Perhaps in order to underscore his point to one wealthy man who was refusing to serve as a constable, Lord Justice Kenyon observed ‘women were eligible into this Office’ in order to illustrate that there were no legal boundaries set on who could be appointed.16 However, no cases of a woman acting in the office of constable during the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries appear to have come to light.

Entrepreneurial constables The idealised system of one amateur constable per year, per parish, was no longer the most prevalent one by 1780. The system evolved in three main ways: the hiring by constables of paid substitutes; paying the constable’s salary from the public purse; and constables relying on fees, but serving for longer periods.17 The system of informal paid substitutes is hard to track, although there is more evidence for the formal payment of long-service constables.18 A substitute constable could count on fees and a payment from his principal: given that the fine payable for not serving was £6, this would set a ceiling on any likely substitute’s salary. If there was a ‘going’ rate for the salary of those constables paid directly from the parish rates, it was probably around £10 per year.19 Sometimes it could be higher: in Northamptonshire in 1836, ‘In a village of 1,000 inhabitants, a man shoemaker by trade acts as constable and is paid 12/ per week for six winter months and six shillings per week for six summer months.’20

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Eighteenth-century justice relied on a marketplace of incentives and rewards, mobilising private self-interest in the public service. Constables who relied on fees essentially took up the role as a trade – though many combined it with other occupations to make up a living wage. This led to the emergence of the professional constable, who was archetypically described by Storch and Philips as: a man determined to make a trade of it, tough – even brutal at times – interested in turning the office to account, active (sometimes too active for many), responsive to the magistrates, but often partial and sometimes even corrupt.21

Constables could charge private prosecutors for detective work carried out on their behalf, for attending Sessions or Assizes as a witness, or for the expenses entailed in recovering stolen property. Statutory rewards for successful prosecution of some criminals were introduced in 1691 and expanded in scope over the next century to cover burglary, house-breaking, horse-stealing and highway robbery. One sought-after reward was a ‘Tyburn ticket’ – a document given to successful prosecutors of serious crimes which granted immunity from all obligations to hold parish offices. This was linked to a parish, not to any one individual, hence it could be traded.22 There was also the potential for a zealous (or merely lucky) constable to receive substantial rewards, from private citizens or Associations for the Prosecution of Felons. These could be from victims, or from indirectly grateful locals: in 1830 John Izzard Pryor, of Baldock in Hertfordshire, presented ‘a piece of plate’ to the local constables, John and William Little, for having arrested a notorious local bad character called Lee, who had just been transported for life at the recent Assizes.23 The main problem of this system was the temptation that it offered to those prepared to maximise income. In 1816, all professional police suffered a blow to their legitimacy when a Bow Street police officer, Vaughan, was convicted of setting up crimes for the purpose of ‘solving’ them and collecting the reward.24 Constables could also gain salaried employment as an ‘acting constable’, if they retained the confidence of the body responsible for annual appointments. Joseph Nadin was the best-known exemplar of this trend. A spinner by trade, he had become involved in the criminal justice system of Manchester as an entrepreneurial ‘thief-taker’. Nadin was clearly intelligent and subtle and – like his

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counterpart in 1820s Sheffield, John Waterfall – he was more than six feet tall.25 Nadin was appointed as acting constable on the recommendation of the town’s Association for the Prosecution of Felons in 1802, though in the previous year he was already known as ‘well known and very active’.26 He served in this capacity until retiring as a wealthy man in 1821, maintaining a reputation for ability in combating serious crime which was matched by active involvement against political radicals and accompanied by a commitment to feathering his own nest. Like a number of active constables in the UK, he was part of a network employed by the Bank of England to detect and prosecute forgers of the paper currency between 1797 and 1821. Given that the average annual cost of Bank prosecutions in this period was over £10,000, it is likely that this practice helped both to develop the skills and to enhance the income of this category of men.27 The constables in Sheffield provide a good example of how a large and relatively wealthy town could provide a good living for a number of acting constables and their assistants. Between 1812 and 1832, Sheffield township’s criminal justice system was dominated by Thomas Smith, who was eventually: chief acting constable; bailiff of the court of requests; master of the debtor’s gaol (a ‘good investment’); inspector of butter and eggs; inspector of weights and measures, and a publican. Unsurprisingly he ‘accumulated considerable wealth’ in office, as well as some resentment.28 In the 1820s Smith was the senior of a team of three acting constables and three assistants; the latter were often close relatives of the former.29 Sheffield township was one part of a larger parish, and some of its smaller townships also supported long-serving acting constables. These were prosperous men whose sons were upwardly mobile: when the town’s police was re-modelled on incorporation in 1843, the two senior acting constables were brought in as ‘warrant officers’ on a salary of £150; the chief of police was on £200.30 The constables’ total income appears to have been variable but high although, because it was composed of fees and rewards from a variety of sources, it is difficult to estimate. In 1826 a correspondent to the Sheffield Independent, anxious to play down the amount of money given to Sheffield’s constables from the county rate, claimed that they only got about £100 per year from this source.31 The business of serving warrants appears to have been particularly lucrative. On

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one (exceptional) day in 1820, over 300 summonses were issued for non-payment of parish rates, involving a total of £32 in fees for the constables. In 1841–1844, their income from summonses for non-payment of Highway rates alone came to £25 per annum. 32 Although the relevant account books do not survive, more income of a similar order would have come from warrants involving poor, watch, gas and water rates. Constables had authority and professional autonomy. In 1830, one Sheffield constable wrote to the committee of the Eyam Association for Prosecution of Felons – ratepayers and householders all – about an arson case which they had asked him to investigate. He criticised their failure to immediately isolate their suspect, and concluded that had the investigation ‘been properly gone into at the time, there would have been little doubt or difficulty to have brought the case home to the right man’.33 This was the tone of a professional addressing amateurs. On many occasions in the 1820s and 1830s, Sheffield’s constables were able to arrest criminals by acting on suspicion or on ‘information received’, or when suspects, knowing they were hunted, gave themselves up.34 In 1820 one of them followed a parcel of stolen cutlery to Birmingham by monitoring the coach offices, and arrested the man who came to collect it, thus obtaining a lucrative Assize conviction.35 The apex of the eighteenth – and early nineteenth – century police world was occupied by the men of the London police offices: Bow Street and (after 1792) the six offices in Middlesex. Each of these supported around half a dozen professional police, willing to work for hire throughout the kingdom, and indeed beyond, if necessary.They were paid a nominal salary, and worked under the ultimate direction of the stipendiary magistrates who ran their offices, but in practice they were able to operate on a semi-freelance basis. They handled all kinds of criminal cases, although most of them related to serious crime. Their clients (which group included the central government itself) had little in common other than wealth, which was necessary to enjoy the services of these professionals. When officers such as George Ruthven of Bow Street travelled to investigate cases they charged 14s per day, as well as 3d per mile. In the 1830s, Ruthven was reputed to be making over £1,000 a year from his police work, the majority of which income would have come from rewards.36

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Men like Nadin, Waterfall and Ruthven were upwardly socially mobile, literate and skilled.37 Their expertise allowed them to associate on equal terms with their social superiors. They lacked qualifications or collegial accreditation, but aside from this self-organising element they met many of the classic criteria for ‘professionals’. The re-appointment of constables or of acting constables was not confined to large cities, however: in rural Essex, it seems that in the early years of the nineteenth century, vestries and courts leet were re-appointing the same man, year after year, for periods which averaged a decade. Such re-appointments accounted for about two thirds of all appointments.38 An ‘amateur’ constable in the countryside could not make a living from this role alone, but could combine it with other activity: Michael Evans, a village constable in Devon in the 1830s, mixed his occupation as a tailor with law enforcement and detection.39 The prevalence of this re-appointment implies that many constables were men with a number of years’ experience on the job.

Controlling the constable Rule books are a remarkably useful source in illustrating the underlying structures of police systems.40 Their content, and the way that it is expressed, can tell us about the forms that authority might take, and how it can be reproduced over time. This is especially the case for eighteenth-century constables’ manuals, intended to give the amateur a grounding in his job. Without exception, these contained little or no practical advice on how to carry out the duties of the constable: there were no procedures to follow. Nor was there much on the constable’s interior state: Joseph Ritson’s Office of Constable merely repeated the Common Law qualifications for the constable: honesty, knowledge and ability.41 The bulk of these manuals consisted of a list of statutes, and a summary of how their power affected the constable. Some offered him a reward if he did his duty; most held out the prospect that he could be fined if he did not do it properly. For example, a constable could be fined between 10 shillings and £5 for ‘refusing or neglecting his best endeavours to apprehend or convey to a justice any rogue or vagabond’.42 Ritson provided a number of exemplar documents at the end of his manual. Nearly all

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of these were the precise words required for various oaths that the constable would take or administer – his own oath of office, a written promise for use by others to keep the peace and suffer a forfeit if this was not kept, an oath to be taken by the appraisers of goods confiscated for non-payment of rent, and the correct words for the constable to appoint a deputy – the exception is the text of the Riot Act, to be read to a disorderly crowd in order to give the authorities power to use force to disperse them. All of them were words with specific legal meanings, which had power if used properly and could be taken into account by the courts.There were no forms for stereotyped records, or models of reports to superiors, as would appear in nineteenth-century ‘new’ police manuals: the constable’s world was defined and structured by a minimum of bureaucracy. A slightly different perspective was present in a series of constables’ manuals produced from the 1790s by the Society for the Suppression of Vice. The didactic function of one edition of the Society’s model manuals was also apparent in that they were priced for sale by the dozen as well as individually.43 These were intended to encourage constables in their duties against misdemeanours such as swearing, prostitution, drunkenness and vagrancy, which the Society regarded as the root of many more social problems. Here, the definition of the character of the constable (‘respectability of character; integrity, to render him proof against corruption; vigilance; activity; firmness; discretion; and humanity’) was fuller than the bare-bones legal definition present in Ritson’s manual: it is consistent with the broader eighteenth-century vision of governance anatomised by Dodsworth and discussed above.44 What is wholly absent is any notion of selfsurveillance, introduced with the new police, which will be discussed in the next chapter. These manuals belaboured the incentives that awaited constables who successfully suppressed moral offences, and stressed the fines which could be levied upon them if they neglected this part of their duty. The authors neglected to mention that these fines were little threat given the absence of a significant number of people prepared to go to the trouble and possible expense of indicting the constable for neglect. Despite their different purpose and concentration on moral offences, these manuals follow the same basic structure as Ritson’s: powers and duties are defined in terms of discrete statutes. This way of communicating the constable’s duties to him lasted well into the nineteenth century.45 The

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manuals’ mode of discourse was also followed by reforming justices, whose eighteenth-century prescriptions for greater police efficiency demanded (as well as more power for justices) increased status and reinforced legal immunities for the constable.46 Statutes defined the constable’s duties, and thus the courts were the arena in which the limits of the constable’s power and authority were tested. The courts tended to protect constables: members of the public who assaulted them in the course of their duties could expect very harsh penalties if the case came to the higher courts.47 If the press is any guide (and on the balance of probabilities, as well as taking into account the likely broader context, it probably is), actions against constables were far more likely to be prompted by their over-zealous or mistaken activity than by their inactivity. In the first third of the nineteenth century, constables were prosecuted for arresting hawkers of political ‘libels’; for trespass or assaults which allegedly resulted from their accompanying bailiffs distraining property, lawyers trying end a marriage, or parish officers collecting poor rates; for searches for which they had neglected to get a warrant; for false imprisonment by those whom they were simultaneously attempting to indict for assault; and for malicious prosecution.48 The mechanism for restraining a constable’s actions – suing in a higher court – sometimes concerned disputes between various local jurisdictions. One dispute between Yorkshire parishes in 1817 over whether or not a pauper should have been ‘settled’ in a particular parish (i.e. their upkeep would be chargeable to the poor rate of that parish) led to one constable imprisoning another for a night, and culminated in a judgement at the assize court of £30 in favour of the imprisoned man.49 In other cases, their accusers could be categorised as the already criminal. One is described in this report from Suffolk in 1823, regarding ‘a fellow named Sharpe, of infamous notoriety’: Sharpe v Norman. An action of assault brought by the person beforementioned against a constable who took him into custody on some one of the charges against him. – Just after the Counsel for the defence had commenced his address, the Judge told the Jury that the only question was, whether it should be a shilling or a farthing damages. The Jury awarded the latter sum.50

The message of a farthing damages was clear: the constable had acted improperly, but in a cause with which jury and judge entirely

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sympathised. As well as alleged criminals, respectable but vexatious litigants could be awarded farthing damages, as was the case when an attorney from Berkhamsted sued a constable for arresting him on the orders of the vicar after (in his capacity as solicitor to the parish vestry) he disrupted a church service in the course of a dispute in 1824.51 In other cases, where the judge and jury sided with a respectable plaintiff, the sums involved could be substantial: in 1804 Kent Assizes awarded £150 damages against a constable of Greenwich for malicious prosecution of a local baker.52 Constables accused of exceeding their authority were usually charged with assault or trespass by members of the public: one unlucky Southwark constable, John Kinsey, was sued for slander in Kings Bench in 1825, after a case in which, probably owing to mistaken identity, he said to a respectable woman, ‘You are a w[hore]; you keep a b[awdy] h[ouse]; you have five husbands.’53 The jury awarded £100 damages against the constable for his error. It was nearly always a private individual who took action against the constable, on their own initiative. In the City in 1797, a constable was suspected of detaining two women in the watch house purely to extort money from them: the Lord Mayor, sitting as a magistrate, decided that the City would pay for the constable to be indicted for an assault – but the implication was still that one of the women, not the City itself, would have to stand as prosecutor.54 Tellingly, there is an almost total absence of reports – at least in the newspapers – of constables proceeded against for inactivity. One exception concerns the case of a near-riot in Southwark, for which a constable was reprimanded by a magistrate, and indicted at Quarter Sessions: Holmes, a constable, preferred a complaint against William Ellis, a constable of St George’s, for neglect of duty as a peace officer, during the riot and confusion which took place … on Tuesday evening. Holmes found it necessary to assemble all the constables of the parish to prevent a serious disturbance; the defendant was required to unite his exertions to those of the other officers, for the preservation of the peace; he disregarded the requisition, and refused to render assistance.55

This was a case of disorder which involved a number of constables acting in concert: both elements were relatively unusual outside London and the large towns, where most of the constable’s

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everyday duties would have concerned low-level local regulation and response to felony. This pattern of more reported prosecutions for an excess of zeal than for its lack may have influenced legislative attempts to tip the balance of incentive and reward in favour of the authorities. The legal deck was already stacked in favour of constables when carrying out some of their duties. In the 1790s, for example, constables serving warrants enabling them to remove property for non-payment of poor rates could be sued for doing so unlawfully, but any such action had to happen within six months of the event and, if the plaintiff (the member of the public complaining) lost the case, they would be subject to triple damages, paying to the constable three times the cost of the case itself. 56 The immunities of constables were further strengthened in the next century. For example, a commentator in 1823 pointed to legal imbalance evident in the new vagrancy act: The Vagrant Act provides admirably against prosecutions, by enacting that in all cases, where proceedings are had against any Justice, Constable, or other person, for any thing done by them in the execution of their duty, treble cost shall be recovered against the plaintiff in the event of his discontinuing the suit, or becoming nonsuit, or a verdict being brought in against him. While we see these formidable obstacles opposed to the injured man who may desire to seek redress, not only rewards but punishments are held forth to stimulate the activity of informers. A long clause directs in what manner officers shall be punished for neglecting their duties, that is, for want of industry, zeal, and alertness in apprehending offenders; but not one word is there respecting their transgressing the line of their duty on the side of undue rigour.57

The law was not balanced evenly, but towards the interests of state agents, especially when they dealt with the poor and marginal.

Watchmen The streets of eighteenth century Britain were patrolled by watchmen, who had far more of the characteristics of waged labourers than did constables. The legal ideal was for householders to take a regular turn of duty on watch: this had not fallen entirely into desuetude by the late eighteenth century: for example, householders

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were still doing duty as watchmen in Stamford in 1787.58 Most, though, paid for a substitute by one means or another. Watchmen’s pay could come via the parish, the corporation, informal consortiums of local householders, or (increasingly) by commissions established under local improvement acts. Watchmen’s additional legal powers were limited to the stopping and searching of suspicious persons at night.59 Some kept to fixed ‘stations’, usually boxes, but most patrolled regularly with lantern and staff, calling out the time as they went. Their hours were generally longer in the winter than the summer, which fitted in with the greater opportunities for supplementary casual labour elsewhere when nights were short.60 Watchmen were also, if industrious and lucky, able to take part in the culture of reward: three Bath watchmen who in 1784 arrested a number of armed escaped convicts following an altercation were rewarded by the local association for prosecution of felons.61 The watchman, then, looked very different from the constable, in that the former had definite periods of duty. An analysis of the terms used near ‘watchman’ in the Old Bailey transcripts for the period 1790–1820 clearly shows that the word ‘duty’ was associated with the role of watchman far more strongly than any other law enforcement role.62 In the course of his duty he was occasionally supervised directly by members of the body (vestry, corporation or association) which appointed him, or by members of a specialist ‘watch committee’ which was a subset of it. Many metropolitan watch forces were ultimately supervised by the annually-appointed amateurs who held the office of churchwarden and overseer – a fact which Richard Birnie, the London stipendiary magistrate, complained about to the Select Committee of 1822, asserting of these men that ‘by the time he begins to learn any thing, he is out of office’.63 In London and in larger towns he was also under the view of the Constable of the Night, a parish constable whose specific duty was to attend the watch house all night to charge prisoners brought in by watchmen, and who also served as someone to whom crimes could be reported, who could then investigate them.64 Increasingly, London parishes also paid ‘sergeants of the watch’ whose job was to supervise the other watchmen: Marylebone had them in 1772.65 The difference between the discipline and control of watchmen and of constables was made clear in a London case from 1827, when

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a watchman brought a respectable printer to Bow Street on a charge of disorderly behaviour. The magistrate (Birnie) concluded that the case was ‘a gross outrage on the liberty of the subject’, and declared himself outraged with the watchman who had made the arrest and the constable who had recorded the charge in the watch house. The defendant was advised ‘to bring an action against the constables for false imprisonment and to lay the conduct of the watchman before the Watch Committee of the Parish’.66 Misbehaving watchmen were also vulnerable to legal accountability in that they could also be charged with criminal offences and, even if acquitted, their parish could suspend or dismiss them.67 Coroners could also prompt juries to recommend that watch committees investigate them.68 In a significant alteration in the way that policing was structured, magistrates in London were granted the power to suspend or remove watchmen in 1821.69 After this, when a watchman proffered a charge of assault against a respectable gentleman, which failed to convince the stipendiary magistrate at Marylebone Street, the magistrate was able to ask the gentleman whether he wanted the watchman suspended, or ‘removed altogether’: the erstwhile defendant preferred the latter, so the magistrate pronounced him suspended for three months and referred him to the district’s watch committee.70 Note, though, that in this case the magistrate’s response was to devolve his own power back to the gentleman and the committee, maintaining the traditionally central position of the private prosecutor and the parochial authorities in the legal system. The constable of the night served as a check on the zeal of any charge the watchmen might bring against the public, and recorded the names of the men on duty. In cases of misconduct, he had the power to send a watchman home.71 He lacked any other disciplinary power over watchmen, though: even if they assaulted him, he had to bring a legal action against them to prove it.72 The constable himself was subject to a penalty – exactable only through the courts – of £5 if he neglected his duty, and could also be sued alongside the watchmen if he was deemed by a member of the public to have exceeded or abused his powers.73 He was not necessarily salaried, and could be a householder ‘serving for himself ’, and thus not well schooled in law, or a substitute nominated (and thus paid) by one: if the vestry lost confidence in a substitute, they could resolve not to accept his appointment in the future.74

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The City of London introduced professional supervision of their watch forces by introducing ‘patroles’ with a remit covering their whole area in 1785.75 These were appointed (and paid the relatively high wage of 15–21s per week) wage labourers (unlike the contemporaneous watch sergeants in Marylebone, who reported to a committee) under the control of the City’s Marshals.The Marshals were two salaried officers of the City as a whole, elected in theory by the Aldermen but in practice appointed and supervised by the Mayor and responsible for law and order. One of the main duties of the patroles was to aid the Constables of the Night in the supervision of the watch.76 It is here, if anywhere, that we can see the genesis of the organisation of the ‘new police’: in a body of waged labourers who were themselves supervised by waged labourers, who in turn reported to salaried employees who were the link with the political authorities. The introduction of such professional supervision in practice preceded the publication of George Barrett’s Essay on Police (1786) which set out a national system for bureaucratic supervision of police, with the lower levels being carried out by waged labour.77 But in the 1790s such universal and ubiquitous supervision was rare: most supervision of the watch involved a mixture of paid, amateur and judicial authority. Paid watchmen in smaller towns were generally supervised by the committees of Inspectors – unpaid ratepayers – who had ultimate power to appoint and dismiss them. This was also the case under the 1830 and 1833 Lighting and Watching Acts, which institutionalised the policing arrangements of many small towns.78 These committees do not appear to have been proactive in their supervision, but to have relied on responding to complaints – it was perhaps as a response to this situation that when the inspectors of Braintree shifted the basis of their three-man watch from the 1830 Act to the 1833 one, they mandated their watchmen to keep a journal of their activities which could be inspected.79 By that decade, the idea of a supervised and bureaucratic system of watching was a coherent alternative to the less formal systems. The existence of more organised bodies of police tended to lead to ongoing institutionalisation of the existing ones, as when in Sheffield in 1839 Lord Wharncliffe, the Chairman of the Quarter Sessions, and chief local advocate of the County Constabulary, castigated Sheffield at the Sessions for ‘the want of a good understanding between the constable and the police’.80

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A thief had nearly escaped justice owing to a failure of communication. The situation was resolved to the Commission’s satisfaction with the adoption of a new occurrence book, open to view by the constables as well as the police.81 The written record was the solution to this institutional problem.

Conclusion The archetypical constable was maintained ultimately by fees rather than a salary he could live on: he was held accountable to law, but was not closely supervised. The constable’s activity was constrained by slow-acting law, which constructed him as a reasoning agent who was given responsibility to act legally. Generally though, he lacked any kind of immediate supervision. Conversely, watchmen were subject to a stronger chain of accountability, which in the City of London and some other metropolitan watch forces began to be conducted by other waged employees with the power to discipline him. It was the watchmen’s role within the ‘old police’ model which was taken as the basis for that of the ‘new police’. The nation’s rulers, in their capacity as magistrates, increasingly felt that their inability to appoint and more closely instruct constables was a problem. However well the ‘old police’ system was working, it is clear that by 1836 the magistracy as a whole had lost confidence in it.82 Their desire for reform had two legislative expressions. The first gave magistrates a greater role in selecting parish constables, and allowed magistrates in county Quarter Sessions to raise money to pay ‘superintending constables’ to supervise a number of them. The second allowed Quarter Sessions to create organised bodies of police, which would carry out the constables’ duty to enforce the law and maintain order.83 These followed a model generalised across London by the Metropolitan Police in 1829: they had the legal powers of the constable, but they were uniformed, supervised and disciplined in a similar manner to the reformed watch forces. The old police had been institutionally irregular and heterogeneous, and its hierarchies were characterised by a complex web of subordination and accountability which was intimately linked to the courts of the common law. The institutions which replaced them were ‘new’ chiefly because they marked a decisive departure from these characteristics.84

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Notes   1 C.D. Robinson, ‘Ideology as history: A look at the way in which some English police historians look at the police’, Police Studies, 2:2 (1979), 35–49; C. Reith, British police and the democratic ideal (London: Oxford University Press, 1943); T.A. Critchley, A history of police in England and Wales: 900–1966 (London: Constable, 1967); D. Ascoli, The Queen’s peace: The origins and development of the Metropolitan police, 1829–1979 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1979).   2 Joseph Ritson, The Office of Constable being an entirely new compendium of the law concerning that ancient minister for the conservation of the peace, second edition (London: W. Clarke and son, 1815 [1791]), p. 43.   3 Paul Rock, ‘Law, order and power in seventeenth and early eighteenthcentury England’ in Stanley Cohen and Andrew Scull (eds) Social control and the state (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), pp. 191–221; Philips and Storch, Policing provincial England; R. Paley, ‘“An imperfect, inadequate and wretched system?” Policing London before Peel’, Criminal Justice History, 10 (1989), 95–130; E. Reynolds, Before the Bobbies: The night watch and police reform in Metropolitan London, 1720–1830 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998); A.T. Harris, Policing the City: Crime and legal authority in London, 1780–1840 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2004); Drew D. Gray, Crime, prosecution and social relations: The summary courts of the City of London in the late eighteenth century (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2009).  4 Beniger, Control revolution, pp. 132–133.  5 Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, p. 177.   6 John Brewer, The sinews of power: War, money and the English state, 1688– 1783 (London: Routledge, 1989), p. xviii; Rock, ‘Law, order and power’, pp. 192–193; Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, p. 54.   7 Philips and Storch, Policing provincial England, pp. 14–16.   8 Rock, ‘Law, order and power’, p. 196.  9 Gray, Crime, prosecution and social relations, p. 47. 10 Philips and Storch, Policing provincial England, p. 12. 11 Observer (21 May 1797). 12 Philips and Storch, Policing provincial England, p. 17. 13 Francis Dodsworth, ‘Masculinity as governance: Police, public service and the embodiment of authority, 1700–1850’ in Matthew McCormack (ed.) Public men: Masculinity and politics in modern Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) p. 37. 14 Ibid., p. 39. 15 Ibid., p. 41. 16 Telegraph (3 July 1795). 17 Dave Barrie, Police in the age of improvement: Police development and the civic tradition in Scotland, 1775–1865 (Cullompton: Willan, 2008), pp. 25–28. 18 Gray, Crime, prosecution and social relations, p. 50.

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19 HO 73/5 Constabulary Force Commission (1836), Returns for Oundle, Northamptonshire. 20 HO 73/5 Constabulary Force Commission (1836), Returns for Towcester, Northamptonshire. 21 Philips and Storch, Policing provincial England, p. 12. 22 ‘Tyburn Ticket to be sold by private contract’, Sheffield Iris (7 July 1818). 23 Gerald A. Curtis, A chronicle of small beer: The early Victorian [sic] diaries of a Hertfordshire brewer (London: Phillimore, 1970); Philips and Storch, Policing provincial England, p. 17. 24 Reynolds, Before the Bobbies, p. 112. 25 J.D. Leader, Reminiscences of old Sheffield (Sheffield, 1876), p. 103. 26 Alan J. Kidd, ‘Nadin, Joseph (1765–1848)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); ‘Forgery’, The Morning Post and Gazetteer (26 September 1801). 27 Randall McGowen, ‘Managing the gallows:The Bank of England and the death penalty, 1797–1821’, Law and History Review, 25 (2007), 245–246, p. 282. 28 J.B. Himsworth, ‘Sheffield gaols’, Hunter, 6 (1950), 137; Leader, Reminiscences of old Sheffield, p. 114; William White, Historical and General Directory of the Borough of Sheffield [etc.] (Sheffield: William White, 1833), p. 80. 29 ‘Report of Court Leet’, Independent (4 April 1820); Leader, Reminiscences of old Sheffield, p. 113; Mercury (14 May 1836); J.Taylor, The Chartist conspiracy of 1840: How it was detected (Sheffield, 1864):, p. 6; 1841 Census 1329 (Sheffield), 2, 27b. 30 Leader, Reminiscences of old Sheffield, p. 113; Sheffield Mercury (14 May 1836); Taylor, ‘Chartist conspiracy of 1840’, p. 6; 1841 Census 1329 (Sheffield), 2, 27b; SCA 134, 23 February 1844. 31 Independent (24 June, 1 July 1826). 32 Ibid. (23 September 1820); SCA 24/44, ‘Sheffield Township Board of Highways Constable’s Ledger 1841–1844’. 33 SCA PHC 315/3, ‘Eyam Association for the Prosecution of Felons Records’; MD 183/4/23, ‘Eyam agreement to prosecute’. 34 Independent (3 March, 21 April 1821; 8 October, 24 December 1825; 18 January, 25 January 1834; 6 January 1838). 35 Independent (18 March 1820). 36 David Cox, A certain share of low cunning: A history of the Bow Street Runners, 1792–1839 (Cullompton: Willan, 2010) p. 68. 37 Leader, Reminiscences of old Sheffield (1876), p. 113. 38 Maureen Scollan, ‘Parish constables versus police constables: Policing early nineteenth-century Essex’, unpub PhD, Open University 2007, pp. 80–88, 107–108. 39 A. Sayers, ‘Michael Evans, village constable, tailor and smuggler’, The Devon Historian, 54 (1997), 24–26.

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The ‘old’ police41

40 Finnane, ‘Police rules’. 41 Ritson, The Office of constable, p. 3. 42 Ibid., p. 36. 43 Anon., The constable’s assistant : being a compendium of the duties and powers of constables, and other peace officers; chiefly as they relate to the apprehending of offenders, and the laying of informations before magistrates (London: Society for the Suppression of Vice, 1818). 44 Anon., The constable’s assistant, being a compendium of the duties and powers of constables and other peace officers, chiefly as they relate to the apprehending of offenders, and the laying of informations before magistrates, 4th edition (London: Suppression of Vice, 1831), p. 4. 45 HO 73/5, Constabulary Force Commission (1836), Returns; Borough of Bridgnorth: Instructions to Constables (Bridgnorth: C Partridge, 1836) [Included with Shropshire returns to 1836 Commission]. 46 Philips and Storch, Policing provincial England, p. 13. 47 At Shrewsbury Quarter Sessions in 1797, a man was imprisoned for two years for such an offence, a remarkably harsh punishment at the time for interpersonal violence. Observer (22 April 1798). 48 Morning Chronicle (17 September 1819); London Packet (18 November 1799); Morning Post (5 December 1822); Jackson’s Oxford Journal (14 February 1818); Examiner (16 February 1823); Lancaster Gazette (8 July 1826); Ipswich Journal (21 November 1801); Bury and Norwich Post (1 August 1804). 49 Lancaster Gazette (9 August 1817); Morning Chronicle (4 June 1824). 50 Bury Post (2 April 1823). 51 Jackson’s Oxford Journal (13 March 1824). 52 Bury and Norwich Post (1 August 1804). 53 Morning Post (17 December 1825). 54 ‘Police Offices’, Observer (15 October 1797). 55 Caledonian Mercury (26 November 1818). 56 ‘News’, True Briton (20 November 1799). 57 Morning Chronicle (22 October 1823). 58 Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal (15 September 1787). 59 Gray, Crime, prosecution and social relations, p. 40. 60 Elaine Reynolds, ‘The night watch and police reform in Metropolitan London, 1720–1830’, unpub PhD thesis, Cornell University, 1991, p. 221. 61 Bath Chronicle (6 May 1784). 62 Chris A.Williams, “‘I am not on the beat now, the New Police have come there.’” Using the Old Bailey Online to study the changing enforcers of the law in London, 1730–1834’ (unpublished paper, 2006). 63 Report from the Select Committee on the Police of the Metropolis, PP 1822 (440), vol. IV 91, p. 20. 64 Morning Post and Gazetteer (12 August 1802); ‘Surrey Assizes’, Morning Chronicle (4 April 1808).

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65 Reynolds, ‘Night watch’, p. 220. 66 Morning Post (6 November 1827); ‘Police Intelligence’, Morning Post (8 January 1818). 67 World (20 October 1792); Oracle (12 September 1792). 68 ‘Coroner’s Inquest’, Morning Chronicle (9 December 1817). 69 Reynolds, Before the Bobbies, p. 114. 70 Morning Post (4 October 1825). 71 ‘Coroner’s inquest’, Morning Chronicle (9 December 1817). 72 ‘Police’, Morning Post (30 December 1803). In some places, such as Bristol, watchmen could be dismissed by their ward’s constable, Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal (9 and 16 August 1788). 73 ‘Riot at Covent Garden Theatre’, Oracle and Daily Advertiser (9 November 1799); ‘Law Intelligence’, Morning Chronicle (8 June 1809). 74 Oracle (12 September 1792); ‘London, Friday January 14’, Morning Post (14 January 1803); Ipswich Journal (8 November 1806); ‘Law intelligence’, Morning Chronicle (29 January 1807). 75 Gray, Crime, prosecution and social relations, pp. 39–40. 76 Harris, Policing the City, p. 47. 77 George Barrett, An Essay Towards Establishing a System of Police on Constitutional Principles … Addressed to the Legislature (London: G&T White, 1786), p. 11. 78 Lighting and Watching Act, 1833 (3&4 Will. IV c90). 79 Scollan, ‘Parish constables’, p. 97. 80 Independent (9 November 1839). At the Sheffield Sessions in October, Wharncliffe had remarked: ‘the police and constables ought to act together instead of going on in ignorance of what one another was doing’, Independent (25 October 1839). 81 Independent (7 December 1839). 82 Philips and Storch, Policing provincial England, p. 36. 83 Emsley, English police, pp. 43–49. 84 Dodsworth, ‘Idea of police in eighteenth-century England’, p. 593.

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2 The proletarianisation of police labour 1800–1860

This chapter describes and analyses perhaps the most important transformation in the police labour process: the arrival of the new police, which transformed the constable from an independent agent into a wage-earner. This de-skilling can be best understood as part of a broader social trend. Thus in the first half of the nineteenth century, the vast majority of police were not ‘professionalised’, but proletarianised, in certain specific ways best understood with reference to the work of Foucault; work which, whatever its faults when attempts are made to apply it to the condition of nineteenthcentury prison inmates, is useful in helping us to understand the experience of policemen. Further useful theoretical insights into this transformation can be taken from the work of Frykman and Löfgren, who focus on changing attitudes to time as a key marker of nineteenth century social change. In practical terms, this transformation stemmed from the Metropolitan model which gave the legal powers and responsibilities of a constable to men who were organised, controlled and disciplined in the manner of watchmen, at the bottom of a hierarchy which was itself disciplined. In broader terms, this linked with other processes of evolving labour discipline related to the industrial revolution. Its antecedents will be observed here, notably through the proposals around 1800 by the moral entrepreneur Patrick Colquhoun for better-disciplined police forces, and the recommendations of the 1822 inquiry into the policing of London, which also arrived at many of the new police’s key organisational features. The chapter will end with an analysis of how this shift was felt by one of best documented of the first generation of new police, George Bakewell.

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Different views of the ‘professional’ police officer In order to understand what was happening to police during this period, we need to know about broader changes in thinking about time and the individual, and about the ways in which these changes impacted upon attempts to moderate and control individual behaviours, particularly within workforces. This requires looking at a context which is broader than existing criminal justice centred histories. Existing analytical accounts of the creation of the new police forces tend to fall into three categories. Some look at the politics of transition, in a continuing attempt to address the question of why they arrived when and where they did.1 Others focus on their relationship to broader questions of political economy and the ‘target’ of their attentions (Neocleous), or on their constitutional position (Lustgarten).2 There are some significant exceptions (notably the work of Shpayer-Makov, Brogden and de Lint) which will be drawn on here, as will work by Clive Emsley, Philip Rawlings, Carolyn Steedman, and Francis Dodsworth.3 This chapter also addresses the concept of ‘professional’ in the police context. The arrival of new police forces has usually been talked of in the context of ‘professionalisation’: here I will show that if anything it was the reverse of this as customarily understood.4 Within police history, the label ‘professional’ has been initially attached to the new police in the narrow sense of their not being amateurs. Later academic history also examined the implications of ‘professionalisation’ of police forces as a whole, in a manner akin to military officers, usually relying on evidence from higher ranks.5 But the subjective identity of police officers has generally tended to be described as a ‘professional’ identity, rather than in terms which might be more appropriate for low-paid and subordinate workers, such as ‘occupational’.6 Concatenation of the uses of the word for several different processes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Gray, for example, at points conflates ‘salaried’ and ‘competent’ into ‘professional’, and renders ‘amateur’ as synonymous with ‘traditional’ when describing early nineteenth-century law enforcement) has obscured the extent to which the arrival of new police was a de-professionalisation of the office of constable.7 This argument is not completely new: de Lint has shown how in Canada the move to a new police built on the existing practice of the control of

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watchmen, and how a close disciplinary control of the policeman’s body was a way of depersonalising his authority by insulating him from the public at large.8 Miller has compared the nature of police authority in nineteenth-century London and New York, showing how the semiotics of power related to the constitutional position of the police.9 Below, these conclusions will be tested with regard to Britain’s new police, and other aspects of their institutional make-up will be examined. Surveillance at work can be discussed in two different ways: as a material process purely designed to extract labour, or as a symbolic one which is also connected to broader social forces. Theorists of the contemporary workplace, such as Kirstie Ball and Stephen Margulis, argue that the process of monitoring people at work is simultaneously material and symbolic in character and should be studied as such.10 Hence, this section will touch on some broader prevailing societal developments in whose context policing was ‘reformed’. One useful way into thinking about the new culture of new policing locates it in control over time. Jonas Frykman and Orvar Löfgren have placed control over time at the centre of their analysis of the emerging bourgeois culture in Sweden in a time of intense urbanisation and industrialisation, an analysis which also fits early nineteenth-century Britain.11 For Frykman and Löfgren, the advance of time discipline was an important element of bourgeois culture, which itself consisted of four key elements. Firstly, it was based around the extraction of labour: E.P. Thompson has shown that the new capitalist classes (both urban and rural) were concerned with extracting the maximum labour from their workers, and thus with propagating their own time ethic.12 Secondly, it was linear. It conceived of life as a field for progress, rather than a set of experiences that could repeat cyclically. As Frykman puts it, with the triumph of ‘bourgeois culture’, ‘our gaze is constantly directed forward’: the prospect of a pension loomed large in police discipline.13 Thirdly, it was individual rather than collectively-based. The concept of the career path of the individual was central to it.14 One way that policing was made more palatable was the prospect of promotion. Fourthly, it included a set of expanding chronological horizons. Balancing an increased awareness of history was a sense of a different future: ideas of ‘reform’, ‘progress’ and the ‘new’ all influenced police reform. To a perhaps surprising extent this concept

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of the ideal-type view of ‘bourgeois time’ (which ought not to be taken as anything other than a convenient model here) can be used to illustrate the ways that British police institutions developed. The ability to think about the future was a crucial element of the norms of ‘political economy’ – the dominant elite reforming discourse in early nineteenth-century Britain. Adam Smith had seen foresight as one crucial cause of economic growth: the principle, which prompts to expence [sic], is the passion for present enjoyment; which, though sometimes violent and very difficult to be restrained, is in general only momentary and occasional. But the principle which prompts to save, is the desire of bettering our conditions, a desire which, though generally calm and dispassionate, comes with us from the womb, and never leaves us till we go into the grave.15

Conversely, nineteenth-century social scientists thought the criminal class had a special vulnerability to the ‘psychological laws’ of present-centredness, leading to unrestrained behaviour. In 1860 Baron Holtzendorff told the National Association for the Promotion of the Social Sciences: with many men, and with criminals especially, the present time and occasion are the stronghold of human existence. Recollections of the past and hopes for the future, conclusions drawn from past evils, and the feeling of an approaching responsibility, exercise comparatively small influence.16

Smith too had acknowledged that there was nothing innate about the desire to save; without education and the occasion to exert their understanding, labouring men could become ‘as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for human creatures to become’ and this ignorance specifically expressed itself in the preference of the pre-industrial artisan for leisure: ‘their work thro’ half the weeks is sufficient to maintain them, and thro’ want of education they have no amusement for the other but riot and debauchery’.17 This view was not of course merely a discourse: it was both a motor for and a result of the process of restructuring labour relations in the early industrial revolution. E.P. Thompson looked in depth at the consequences for one class of artisans – the handloom weavers – when competition from mechanised production, embedded in a fundamentally new form of political economy, lowered and altered their status ‘from a self-motivated man, however poor, to a servant or

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“hand”’.18 The process of proletarianisation in the factory was also examined by the historian and political activist Harry Braverman. Braverman’s hypothesis regarding de-skilling – that it was a consequence of the activity of monopoly capital in the twentieth-century private sector – is worth bearing in mind as we examine remarkably similar innovations occurring in the nineteenth-century public sector.19 He pointed out the advantages to employers of concentrating the labour force indoors and exercising a high degree of legal and paralegal compulsion over them. Compulsion was present in the new police, but of course they were not based in factories, and much of the story of police reform is about ways that factory discipline was simulated ‘out of doors’. Another point of reference and comparison derived from economic history is James Beniger’s work on the ‘rationalisation of control’ – a shift away from organisations which worked largely on client/agent relationships towards those which relied on commands – which he sees as taking place within the vertically integrated distribution trades of the US during the final third of the twentieth century.20 There is a psychological history to some of these processes, as well as a social history. Alan Finlayson points out that Theodore Adorno’s views can be used to illuminate long-term changes in response to work: the progress of enlightenment, the extension of freedom and greater individuation, has resulted in the reverse – the increasing domination and repression of the individual.The capitalist form of social organisation, encompassing the routinisation of work, subordination to forms of bureaucratic or instrumental rationality, the passivity induced by the culture industry and so forth, has produced less, rather than more, liberation. The domination of nature has resulted in the domination of man by a reified ‘totally administered world’.21

Adorno wrote about ‘the standardisation of individuals’ in modern society, forced to ‘enact a senseless ritual to the beat of a compulsively repetitive rhythm and become emotionally impoverished’.22 Similarly, Ernest Gellner pointed out that one consequence of industrial society was the need for standardised state-licensed education which had the aim of creating interchangeable individuals.23 The link between the social and the psyche is also present in the work of Michel Foucault, who in Discipline and Punish schematised the move to a ‘disciplinary society’ that began in the eighteenth

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century and took off in the nineteenth.24 The key points that he made in this work are: that we need to look at first the body, then the mind, as sites of disciplinary power; that this power is tied up in practice; and that power is decentralised and pervades social systems. Foucault’s more contentious conclusions in this work dealt with the strength of power in so-called ‘total institutions’ such as prisons. While some of his followers found evidence of such tendencies in prisons, most historians who looked more closely did not.25 The rhetoric of a disciplinary society was often present, but it was rarely matched by practice. Bentham’s panopticon – a building / machine for improving the behaviour of prisoners subjecting them to the continual possibility of surveillance – was a model much discussed, but in the UK it was never built. Nevertheless, Foucault pictured an innovative nineteenth-century world where discipline was bureaucratic and rested on systems of drill and uniformity. This may not have been present in the world of the British prison: it was certainly present in the British ‘new’ police.

Key factors in early police reform The idea of the highly-supervised worker was present in Patrick Colquhoun’s innovative conception of police organisation. His Thames Police (1800) were one of the first law enforcement institutions in London to apply the principles of close control of the constable. In his treatise describing it, he clearly set out the principles it was designed to embody. Each man was selected on the basis of recommendation, their fitness for the task and their character were investigated – all tests familiar to ‘old’ police – and they were sworn in. For Colquhoun, though, the distinctive reasons for their efficiency lay elsewhere. As well as being under the authority of magistrates who had no potential links to the community in which they worked, they were ‘regularly surveyed by superior officers, both day and night, who inspect into their conduct, and report daily to the Magistrates how far they have conducted themselves properly, and in conformity to their instructions’.26 Insofar that the constables knew they would be ‘minutely’ surveilled, ‘they stand’, Colquhoun claimed,‘in a predicament different from all other Watchmen’.27 They thus were – and needed to be, if they were to

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retain their jobs – charged with carrying out instructions properly (‘correct’ in Colquhoun’s description); additionally bringing initiative and commitment to the job (‘vigilant’) and demonstrating a long-term loyalty to their institution (‘faithful’). Colquhoun boasted that the Thames Police Constables were under closer control than any system of financial fine, bond or surety – the traditional technologies for controlling trusted agents – could produce. His scheme also established close control of watchmen and of guards – neither group sworn in as constables – by the same system of supervision. Thus it was innovative in that it subsumed sworn constables under a disciplinary system, rather than treating them as autonomous professionals. This would be the key feature of the new police. Not all of Colquhoun’s visions of reformed police followed the same pattern. The sixth edition of his Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis (1800) supported the existence of the office of parochial constable, but argued that they should be supervised by a twolevel system: under the High Constable of a Division, a permanent and salaried Parochial Chief Constable would make sure that local constables carried out their duties. These would receive, in addition to expenses, five shillings for each day that they were occupied. 28 This rate implies that he was envisaging officers of considerable seniority as supervisors: at the time a watchman’s wages were 12 to 14 shillings a week.29 The Parochial Chief Constables were expected to inspect public houses and on-duty watchmen, and report each night’s events to the supervising magistrates. Each quarter the High Constables were to report the criminal statistics in their division, and estimate the number of thieves at large.30 In this project, Colquhoun did not specify close supervision of constables or daytime patrols: instead he favoured keeping them active by an incentive system. He had prescribed that the main advantage of the new police was that they would be able to devote their whole attention to the job – and nothing less than their whole was demanded.31 But it would take decades before his blueprint for policed police was generalised. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, various inquiries into the policing of London were sparked off by fear of rising crime, and by the nature of that rise: an increase in minor thefts and daylight robberies by groups of men, at the expense of the rarer (though more violent and individually lucrative) highway robberies. It was a problem of ‘volume crime’ which appeared to be better tackled

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through a universal system of prevention than through the activity of detectives.32 Prevention meant a different form of organisation from detection: one which relied on information and on hierarchical supervision. Such a form was present in embryo in several different institutions in 1820s London: the City’s ‘patrols’; Colquhoun’s Thames Police Office, with a total complement of 99 in 1822; the ‘patrols’ based in Bow Street, paid for by the Home Office and under the orders of Bow Street’s stipendiary magistrate; and the bigger and more organised vestry watches such as Marylebone.33 Peel’s 1822 committee produced a report which led to the strengthening of the police institutions under the direct control of the Home Office and took it as axiomatic that the ‘maintenance of public order’ depended on ‘unity of action’: a single system to control Westminster’s streets and render the police efficient in the same manner that prevailed in the City.34 The Committee of 1822 set out principles of good policing which 1829 universalised, but it did not implement them. The Committee put institutional measures at the front of its recommendations, which largely followed the line taken by its premier witness, chief Bow Street magistrate Richard Birnie: it welcomed the new power (noted in the previous chapter) given to magistrates to dismiss incompetent or negligent watchmen, and recommended that the various parish vestries should allow the existing Police Offices (run by stipendiary magistrates) to advise them on the structure of the night watch in order to maximise their efficiency.35 It wanted command of Bow Street’s day and night patrols to be unified, and for the police magistrates to share information with them. It did not recommend any increase in their pay, but proposed that the Home Secretary be allowed to offer compensation to injured officers, and a pension to those disabled or worn out by their service, to act as a ‘stimulus to their exertions’.36 A rank of head constable would be established at each office, promoted from the ranks, but with more than twice the salary, to directly superintend the others and report daily to the magistrates of their activity. His role was also to act as an exemplar for the others, who could hope to succeed him as a reward for their exertion in special cases, but also for ‘uniform vigilance and activity in preventing the commission of crime’.37 They had considered adopting different grades of constable (a procedure later used by new forces) as

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a similar incentive, but concluded that it would be impossible to impose this arrangement on their existing staff.38 The Committee, then, had set out many of the features of the new police of the early nineteenth century: they would be closely and bureaucratically supervised; a career of good service could earn them a discretionary pension; and their zeal would be harnessed by the prospect of promotion within and between ranks. Their aim was to create an outdoor panopticon: offenders would be inhibited by ‘an impression that they are under the vigilant inspection of persons who are acquainted with their persons and characters, and are at hand to defeat their purposes, or to assist in their apprehension’. A patrol would harass the offender ‘by a persevering and annoying scrutiny’: it is clear that the Committee conceived of policing as something which existed over a period of time, and relied on duration to work.39 The political thrust of the new police was – in the words of Mark Neocleous – to transform ‘masterless men in to rational calculating machines in pursuit of clearly defined economic goals’. As ‘annoying scrutiny’ of the public by police drove the former to compliance with labour discipline, so too did the similar scrutiny of police by their superior officers.40 But the paradox was that the ‘old’ constables were already rational, calculating, entrepreneurial and masterless men; their replacements were a different kind of policeman. As Wilbur Miller concluded about the authority of the English policeman, his impulses were designed to be subordinated in the service of institutional authority: the nature of this subordination will be further explored below.41 Seen in the context of the 1822 reports, the actual creation of the London Metropolitan Police (Met) in 1829 was indeed innovative politically: it put policing under two Commissioners responsible to the Home Secretary, and removed it from the existing local authorities. But in organisational and labour-management terms it followed an existing blueprint, which it imposed on an unprecedented scale. The successor 1839 Police Act was also significant in that it set the Met up as the sole body of police in (extramural) London, ending a period of coexistence with entrepreneurial constables. Such coexistence lasted a little longer outside London. The national police reforms of 1835–1857 enabled the ‘new police’ model to be adopted by the country at large, and it was these which employed the bulk of professional police in the 1840s and early 1850s: the 1842 and 1850

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Parish Constables Acts preserved a version of entrepreneurial police under paid supervisors, but this was decisively rejected in 1856 in favour of a compulsory universalisation of the new police model.42 Action as well as legislation spread the model nationally. The Met’s accountability structures did not set a precedent for the counties, despite an abortive attempt to impose them nationally in the 1830s, but its internal structure and basic principles did.43 In the 1830s and 1840s, Met officers were responsible for setting up or re-modelling many new forces in Britain, and drew on their London expertise to do so.44

Police reform as proletarianisation For the first generation of reformed police, the work was immensely difficult, and turnover was high.45 The intense organisational control over the minute-to-minute time of the policeman was part of a broader pattern of oppressive work discipline and bureaucratic uniformity.The aim of these tactics was (in de Lint’s words) to ‘make the policeman a silent instrument of a remote power’.46 This was a highly ambitious aim, and the new police institutions were driven to great lengths to attempt to attain it. Peel was following the lead set by Colquhoun and the 1822 Committee (as well as his own experience in Ireland) when he specified that the Metropolitan Police should be a force of constables, disciplined and organised along those lines previously used for watchmen.47 This combination of individual legal responsibility inherent in the status of constable with the fact that they were under orders, soon began to create difficulties for new police, who were ordered into situations which put them at a grave disadvantage from the point of view of the Common Law. The proletarian policeman had to appear in person in court to prosecute most of the people he arrested. In the spring of 1830, a large number of prosecutions by police against respectable men accused of homosexual activity in Hyde Park collapsed at court in the face of defences which stressed the character and status of the accused and denigrated those of the prosecutors. Although these were a direct result of an order coming from the Commissioners to heavily police this practice, some unsuccessful prosecuting constables were themselves then subject to

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court action as individuals. 48 The legal weakness of the Met’s rank and file combined with other factors – relatively low pay, the lack of a rest day, and the intense pressure of discipline – to result in an exceptionally high turnover rate. Of 3,400 men who joined the force in 1829–1830, only 862 were there four years later, and high turnover continued for the force’s first decade.49 This pattern was repeated elsewhere. When Middlesbrough police force was set up in the late 1850s, the initial picture was of very high turnover of men, with large numbers of both resignations and dismissals.50 In Buckinghamshire in 1857, 47% of police recruits served for under a year, and this pattern was repeated in other county forces.51 Many of these separations were a result of alcohol and/or unreliability. The psychological demands of the job were such that most men could not match them: this reminds us of Adorno’s work quoted above referring to the ‘modern’ job as a ‘senseless ritual’. The job was often unpleasant as well as lonely. The majority of police work was night patrol, in the open in all weathers, and most of the potential compensations for this were themselves forbidden temptations. A report into working conditions among Sheffield’s police in the 1850s, for example, pointed out the temptations of illicit alcoholic drink during ‘a long cold and dreary winter’s night’.52 In addition, a constable needed permission to marry, and his wife, even if deemed suitable by his superior officer, was then forbidden from working. Long shifts, a prohibition against using credit, and a paucity of rest days were a high price to pay for secure wages. The police also practised a factory-style division of labour.53 The instructions to Manchester and Edinburgh’s first reformed police forces provide different rules for different roles.54 All ranks except the chief constable (and in borough forces, even him) were subordinate to a set of rules governing their allotted tasks. The increased responsibility of higher ranks was matched by increased status and powers. Despite the fact that every man had the legal power of constable, supervisory ranks were clearly able and expected to keep their subordinates at work. The lack of a defined ‘officer class’ (outside the very highest ranks) did not eliminate some very clear markers of status within the organisations. For example, supervising officers were often more heavily armed than their subordinates, implying that the latter could not be trusted with lethal weapons: Leicestershire in the 1850s allowed officers of the rank of sergeant

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and above to carry a cutlass: the Met allowed its first tranche of Inspectors to carry pistols; in 1856 the head constable and sergeant of the small Kidderminster force were allowed to carry revolvers.55 Hierarchy went beyond individual forces: the 1857 Police Act introduced a group of Inspectors of Constabulary, with a remit to comment on the state of the police service (outside London) as a whole. This system was harnessed to increase institutions’ disciplinary power: records of men dismissed were sent quarterly to the Inspectors of Constabulary and circulated back to all forces, so that men could not change forces clandestinely.56

One man’s view of the new police: George Bakewell The closely documented experience of PC George Webb Bakewell in two new police forces is a unique illustration of the pressures on the lives of the first generation of new police.57 Bakewell was a downwardly-mobile member of the middle classes, who had in 1836 published a successful pamphlet on dealing with imprisonment for debt, based in part on his own experience.58 Some time in the late 1820s, he had served as a parish constable, which experience was crucial to his later (mis)understanding of the criminal justice system.59 Following a series of unsuccessful business ventures and brushes with the law which included pleading guilty in 1839 to a charge of assaulting a 12 year old girl with intent to rape her, he was reduced to penury; in June 1840 he joined the Birmingham police force.60 This force had been created by act of parliament in 1839, largely owing to the government’s lack of confidence in the local authority’s ability to police the Birmingham Chartists. Though financed locally, it was controlled by central government, and adopted a highly regimented style.61 Bakewell’s experience in the Birmingham police was not a happy one: he quarrelled with his superiors, and even assaulted one of them; he did not take to the discipline; he chafed at the petty restrictions.62 He made some spectacular arrests which won him praise, but was also responsible for two serious mistakes, one of which he thought permanently blighted his career. On the mistaken advice of a drunken farmer, he arrested a reputable innkeeper for theft, drawing his cutlass in order to remove him from the presence of his clientele. In October 1841, after less

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than 18 months on the force, he was dismissed for being drunk on duty.63 His reaction was to write a pamphlet, Observations on the New Police, setting out his experiences in the Birmingham police, and justifying himself.64 It highlighted the failings in Birmingham’s force and railed against the stifling effect of the discipline and the low quality of the men. The style of New Police suggests that Bakewell was speaking from the heart. An example regarding the nature of barracks discipline runs: when a man entered the force he had to leave three days’ pay in hand, which was held for the ostensible purpose of securing the clothes being kept in perfect repair, and to crown all when pay day came each Constable had to submit for inspection that whole of his appointments, besides a quantity of his own private linen, and the following articles, namely a tooth pick and brush, two combs, clothes brush, three shoe brushes, and a bottle of Warren’s Japan blacking, a regulation which to my certain knowledge drove in the short space of six months, scores of active and intelligent men from the service.65

New Police included both implicit and explicit condemnations of the system of hierarchical professional police as it existed.66 He felt that the oppressive discipline separated the policeman from the public, and made him afraid to take the necessary measures ‘for the protection of life and property’.67 He was critical of the principle of the new police: indeed he set out very clearly the kind of alternative organisation that he would like to see. Bakewell extolled the virtues of the independent thief-taker, and wanted more, and more professional, rank-and-file constables employed at the expense of the supervisory ranks.68 His view of the social cachet of the police constable, or rather the lack of it, is summed up thus, in a passage which might allude to his own experiences, or at least the construction which he put on them: with regard to a young man who has led a thoughtless, or extravagant life, and whose friends either cannot or will not longer assist him, I consider that no greater punishment could overtake him, than his being compelled to earn his bread by Police servitude, the storm and tempests of Heaven, the severity of frost, and the scorching heat of summer, to all of which he is turn exposed, are no hardships compared to the insults which an unpromoted Policeman must almost daily submit to, from men who are only his superiors by courtesy.69

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Francis Dodsworth, in his work on the relationship between structures of policing and ideals of masculinity, suggests that the independent masculinity of the ideal eighteenth-century constable was preserved in discourse of the new police: Bakewell’s views suggest that whatever the rhetoric may have been, the independence of the constable was extinct.70 Bakewell served in the Sheffield police force for 18 months in 1846–1847, ending his service there when he falsely accused his landlady, the wife of a fellow-policeman, of having stolen his trousers.71 This incident resulted in him being sacked from the police, after which he again took to the press, convincing many of the public that the manner of his sacking had been irregular, but not winning the reinstatement he was demanding.72 His Sheffield pamphlets took up themes he had used in New Police about the oppressive and unnecessary discipline in the police.73 Again he referred to the replacement of the constable by the policeman: The old and excellent constables the country once had, have, in great measure, been turned adrift, without remuneration, simply because they were sinking into the vale of years, or that they would not submit to be drilled, and harassed, and tormented by the chief of a police establishment, and their situations have been filled up, generally speaking, by young men, some of whom have grossly abused the powers with which they have been entrusted.74

In this and his other surviving writing, he was very fond of quoting the wisdom of judicial authority in his support, calling on the precedent of Common Law to attack the new statutes governing policing. He wrote: ‘I once heard the late Mr Justice Bayley declare that a constable possessed, in many cases, a power superior to that of the Magistrate; and it perhaps was well for him, his lordship added, that he did not know its extent.’75 Bakewell was rebelling against the principle of a new police force, particularly the ways that it was intended to be a disciplined ‘total institution’. His rebellion was prompted by the way that he saw himself existing: as an autonomous individual, subject to the law and its constraints, but not to the disciplinary power of an institution that claimed authority over his being, as well as his actions. Bakewell may have been an extreme figure – he was clearly not representative of most recruits to the first new police forces. Nevertheless his experience sums up the shift from independence to

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proletarianisation. His spleen was vented against exactly those social innovations which constituted new policing: a close and ongoing supervision; a system of rules and regulations which acted closely on the body; and a hierarchy which was itself subject to rules and regulations.When workers such as handloom weavers or framework knitters protested against the de-skilling process which had moved production into factories and ended their independence, they came up against the first generation of new policemen: the irony was that these men too were the products (and in many cases, the victims) of a similar process of proletarianisation, through which independent artisans had been reduced to a body of disciplined wage labour.

Notes Philips and Storch, Policing provincial England; Barrie, Police in the age of improvement, pp. 146–169; Reynolds, Before the Bobbies. 2 Mark Neocleous, The fabrication of social order: A critical theory of police power (London: Pluto Press, 2000); Lustgarten, Governance of the police. 3 Shpayer-Makov, The making of a policeman; M. Brogden, The police: Autonomy and consent (London: Academic Press, 1982); de Lint,‘Autonomy, regulation and the police beat’; D. Philips, ‘A new engine of power and authority: The institutionalisation of law-enforcement in England 1780– 1830’ in V. Gatrell, B. Lenman and G. Parker (eds), Crime and the law: The social history of crime in Western Europe since 1500 (London: Europa, 1980), pp. 155–189; Emsley, English police; Clive Emsley, ‘The policeman as worker: A comparative survey c.1800–1940’, International Review of Social History, 45 (2000), 89–110; P. Rawlings, Crime and power: A history of criminal justice 1688-1998 (London: Longman, 1999), p. 76; Steedman, Policing the Victorian community; F. Dodsworth, ‘“Civic” police and the condition of liberty: The rationality of governance in eighteenth-century England’, Social History, 29:2 (2004), 199–216.; W. de Lint, ‘Regulating autonomy: Police discretion as a problem for training’, Canadian Journal of Criminology, 40:3 (1998), 277–304. 4 Critchley, History of police in England and Wales, p. 50. 5 Steedman, Policing the Victorian community, p. 125; Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, pp. 93, 122. 6 Shpayer-Makov, Making of a policeman, p. 17. 7 Gray, Crime, prosecution and social relations, p. 36. 8 de Lint, ‘Autonomy, regulation and the police beat’; Willem de Lint, ‘Nineteenth century disciplinary reform and the prohibition against talking policemen’, Policing and Society, 9 (1999), 33–58. 1

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W.B. Miller, Cops and Bobbies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973). 10 Kirstie S. Ball and Stephen T. Margulis, ‘Electronic monitoring and surveillance in call centres: A framework for investigation’, New Technology, Work and Employment, 26:2 (2011), p. 113. 11 J. Frykman and O. Löfgren, Culture builders: A historical anthropology of middle-class life, trans. A. Crozier (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1987). 12 Frykman and Löfgren, Culture builders, pp. 20–24; E.P. Thompson, ‘Time and work-discipline and industrial capitalism’, in Customs in common (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993). p. 382. 13 Frykman and Löfgren, Culture builders, p. 19. 14 Ibid., pp. 32–33. 15 Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations [ed. R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner, fp 1776] (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 341. 16 Baron Holtzendorff, ‘On Police Supervision’, Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of the Social Sciences (1861), 413–419. 17 Smith, Wealth of Nations p. 782; Adam Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence [ed. R.L. Meek, D.D. Raphael, and P.G. Stein, fp 1832] (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1978), p. 540. 18 E.P. Thompson, The making of the English working class (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991) [first published 1963], p. 306; Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, pp. 140–141, 616; Pollard, Genesis of modern management, pp. 183–184. 19 Braverman, Labor and monopoly capital, pp. 66, 135. 20 Ibid, p. 262. 21 Alan Finlayson, ‘Psychology, psychoanalysis and nationalism’, Nations and Nationalism, 4:2 (1998), 151. 22 T.W. Adorno, ‘Sociology and psychology: Part I’, New Left Review, I:46 (1967), 67–80; ‘Part II’, New Left Review, I:47 (1967), 79–97. 23 E. Gellner, Thought and change (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964), p. 166. 24 M. Foucault, Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977). 25 M. Ignatieff, ‘State, civil society and total institutions: A critique of recent social histories of punishment’ in D. Sugarman (ed.) Legality, ideology and the state (London: Academic Press, 1983), 183–212; Brown, English society and the prison, p. 7. 26 Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Commerce and Police of the River Thames (London, 1800), p. 215. 27 Ibid., p. 216. 28 Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis (London: Joseph Mawman, 1800) [6th edition] p. 408. 29 Reynolds, Before the Bobbies, p. 118. 9

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30 Colquhoun, Police of the Metropolis, p. 409. 31 Neocleous, The fabrication of social order, p. 55. 32 Beattie, The first English detectives. 33 Critchley, ‘History of police’, pp. 42–44; Reynolds, Before the Bobbies, p. 95. 34 Report from the Select Committee on the Police of the Metropolis, PP 1822 (440), vol. IV 91, p. 6. 35 Ibid., p. 9. 36 Ibid., pp. 17–18. 37 Ibid., pp. 10–11, 15–16. 38 Ibid., p. 18. 39 Jacqueline Muniz and Domicio Proenca Junior, ‘Stop or I’ll call the police! The idea of police, or the effects of police encounters over time’, British Journal of Criminology, 46:2 (2006), 234–257; Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, p. 111. 40 Dodsworth, ‘Idea of police’, pp. 592–593. 41 Wilbur R. Miller, ‘Police authority in London and New York City 1830– 1870’, in C. Emsley (ed.), Essays in comparative history: Economy, politics and society in Britain and America 1850–1920 (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1984), p. 213. 42 5 & 6 Vic. c. 109 Parish Constables Act; 13 & 14 Vic. c.20 Parish Constables Act. 43 D. Philips and R.D. Storch, ‘Whigs and coppers, the Grey ministry’s national police scheme, 1832’, Historical Research, 67:162 (1994), 75–90. 44 Critchley, History of police, p. 64; David M. Smale, ‘The development of new police in the Scottish Borders’ (PhD dissertation, Open University, 2007). 45 Emsley, ‘Policeman as worker’, pp. 96, 100; Clive Emsley, The great British Bobby:A history of British policing from the 18th century to the present (London: Quercus, 2009), pp. 42–44. 46 de Lint, ‘Nineteenth century disciplinary reform’, p. 47. 47 S. Palmer, Police and protest in England and Ireland, 1780-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 278. 48 The cause of these failures was the salience of character information at court. The police officers were vulnerable to being branded as of low status, and thus unreliable witnesses compared to the upper and middleclass defendants. This particular vulnerability was still being demonstrated in the 1860s. Charles Upchurch, Before Wilde: Sex between men in Britain’s age of reform (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), pp. 113–117. 49 Shpayer-Makov, Making of a policeman, p. 79. 50 David Taylor, ‘Conquering the British Ballarat: The policing of Victorian Middlesbrough’, Journal of Social History, 37:3 (2004), 762–763. 51 Steedman, Policing the Victorian community, p. 94. 52 Sheffield City Archives SCA 134, Watch Committee Minutes, 20 December 1855.

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53 Neocleous, Fabrication of social order, p. 55. 54 Anon., The Orders and Instructions to be observed by the officers of the Manchester Police (Manchester: Cave and Sever, 1836). See: beadles, pp. 9–10; lockup keeper, pp. 10–11; coroner’s officer, deputy constable, p. 12; street-keepers, assistant officers p. 13; Regulations for the day patrol and watchmen of the Edinburgh police establishment (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1838). 55 Reports of Inspectors of Constabulary to Secretary of State, 1857–58, PP 1859 Session 1 (17), vol. XXII 399, pp. 22, 45. 56 Ibid., p. 10. 57 Chris A. Williams, ‘Bakewell, George (1805–1883)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 58 [G. Bakewell], ‘A resident of Manchester’, Observations on the bill now before Parliament, for the abolition of imprisonment for debt, and on its consequences to the landed and mercantile interests of the country, with remarks on the present law of debtor and creditor (Manchester: Wilmot Henry Jones, 1836). 59 It has not been possible to verify the claim made by Bakewell, not always a reliable narrator when his amour propre was concerned, that he had served as a constable. However records of one of his numerous bankruptcy settlements indicate that he had indeed worked as a farmer, in the parish of Stowe in Staffordshire. No records of who held office in the parish at this time survive: frustratingly, he appears to have moved out of this district immediately before the local vicar carried out an informal census of the parish: perhaps to make sure that Bakewell was really gone. Litchfield Record Office D29/2/1, ‘Private register of Stowe parish 1828–1893’. 60 The rape charge is documented in ‘A Clever Swindle’, Manchester Courier June 22 1839; G. Bakewell, Observations on the construction of the New Police Force, with a variety of useful information (London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1842), p. 35. 61 Police Review (22 May 1893), p. 283 records the experience in the 1839 force of Mr George Glossop, who later rose to be Chief Constable of the Birmingham City Police. 62 Bakewell, ‘New Police’; Birmingham Journal (9 January 1841 and 20 February 1841). 63 M.Weaver,‘As if every vestige of English honesty had for ever fled: George Bakewell’s criticisms of the New Police in early-Victorian Britain’, unpub. paper delivered at the Southwestern Historical Association Conference, San Antonio, April 1999, p. 9. 64 Bakewell, Observations on New Police. 65 Ibid., p. 8. 66 Rawlings is wrong in my opinion to say that Bakewell was in favour of the new police on principle, though against the practice of the Birmingham force. His criticisms go to the heart of the concept of the new police. Rawlings, Policing, p. 131.

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67 Bakewell, Observations on New Police, p. 13. 68 Ibid., p. 33. 69 Ibid., p. 12. 70 Dodsworth, ‘Masculinity as governance’, p. 48. 71 SCA, Sheffield Town Council Watch Committee Minutes, 17 June 1847. 72 Williams, C.A. ‘The Sheffield Democrats’ critique of criminal justice in the 1850s’, in R. Colls and R. Rodger (eds), Cities of ideas: Civil society and urban governance in Britain 1800–2000 (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2004), pp. 96–120. 73 G. Bakewell, An address to the ratepayers of Sheffield on Mr. Raynor’s Conduct towards George Bakewell, Late police constable, No. 28 ... Second Pamphlet. (Sheffield: Stephen New, 1847). 74 Ibid., p. 5. 75 Ibid. This theme is also present in other examples of Bakewell’s writings; New Police, p. 36; Observations on circumstantial evidence, Derived from cases which have fallen under the immediate notice of the Author, during the last Thirty Years: wherein many Innocent Persons have been Condemned and Executed, suggested by the conviction of Michael McCabe (Sheffield: John Dyson, 1848), Sheffield Local Studies Library, Pamphlet Collection, 64:2, p. 24.

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3 Drilled bodies and zealous minds 1820–1890

This chapter defines and describes the chief ways that the newly proletarianised police officers were controlled. Three different kinds of characteristic process were involved. Firstly, they were subject to close control of their bodies and their personal space. The techniques of drill had a long history as a military technique, producing a tractable collective body and also a controlled individual one, and both aspects were useful to police forces. Secondly, this discipline expressed itself in a variety of bureaucratic means of control, expressed through rules and regulations. ‘New’ police manuals, analysed below, were significantly different in form and underlying philosophy from the constables’ manuals noted in Chapter 1. They contained instructions, but also lists of desirable characteristics for the police officer, which together amounted to a new (and distinctively nineteenth-century) view of the personality. Uniforms gave police a public marker of their status, both on the street and within the institution. Together with the supervision systems which made an outdoor panopticon of the police beat, these regulations constitute a classic example of the ‘disciplinary institution’ outlined by Michel Foucault. Thirdly, in order to overcome the problems of discretion that were inherent in the operation of such rule-based organisations, police were also subject to attempts to re-mould their personalities in a manner which stressed zeal, the desire for advancement, and the possibility of life-long financial security. These processes could conflict with the classic rule-based bureaucracy, since they involved an element of discretion, but as well as allowing organisational flexibility, they also bolstered the position of police authorities who had the power (until 1890) to withhold pensions.

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The drilled and disciplined body One of George Bakewell’s dislikes – in both Birmingham and Sheffield – was the drilling of policemen: a key aspect of the close bodily control of the individual. Drill was also seen in the late eighteenth century as a way of structuring, standardising and influencing habitus and body language off the parade ground.1 It has been linked by Foucault and others to the late sixteenth-century innovations of Maurice of Nassau, whose pioneering manuals of musketry drill discovered the trained docile body, defined by a process of close attention to the ways that it could move, and was allowed to move.2 Through military-style drill the new policeman’s body was made an object of discipline.3 In 1858 a manual of drill written by Met Assistant Commissioner William Harris for use by county police forces consisted of selections from the army drill book, and retained army nomenclature for units – section, company and battalion. Drill was set up as a progressive and competitive acquisition of skills, which was inculcated by a process of competitive emulation: too much pains cannot be taken by those intrusted [sic] with the instruction of the Constables to move them on, progressively from squad to squad, according to their merit, so that the quick, intelligent man may not be kept back by those of inferior capacity. To arrive at the first squad should be made an object of emulation to every Constable.4

This process echoes closely the programmes of inculcation described by Foucault in French military academies.5 Drill had a symbolic effect on the men, but it was important for other reasons too: it allowed men to be moved around quickly and efficiently, and in an overtly disciplined way. In the Metropolitan force, and other urban forces, men from each section were marched to their beats behind their sergeant, peeling off from the rear of the file when their beat was reached, in a daily demonstration of the fact that each new policeman might have been alone on his beat, but was part of a disciplined force. Mastery of drill also allowed police to be used in the key public order role. For example, in Lothian, ex-Met police chief Alfred List only started to train his men in drill after they had been beaten by rioting navvies in 1846.6 But it was also inculcated in many forces which were usually highly dispersed

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Source:  Mary Evans image no 10029866

3.1  Metropolitan Police officers stand outside Catford Police Station in the 1850s

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in their operation: in 1857 Staffordshire kept a drill sergeant to drill new recruits, Dorset’s men were drilled en bloc each month as they assembled to collect their pay; while Hampshire drilled annually, though Herefordshire’s recruits only drilled for their first month, emphasising the role of drill as initiation.7 As Foucault theorised, the body was indeed the site of control. As noted in Chapter 2, among the many objects of George Bakewell’s ire were the Japan Blacking and the toothpick, and he was right to complain about them: they were examples of the intrusion of an institution’s set of personal belongings into the intimate life of an individual. It meant that the things closest to him, which he was enjoined by law to guard, and liable to pay for if he could not produce on demand, were not his own, but standard commodities identical to those of his comrades, owned by the disciplinary institution rather than by him.8 Possession of the accoutrements was linked directly to receiving pay. Bakewell went on to point out that in his opinion this close and compulsory attention to cleanliness revealed the low quality of the men in the force. If it was necessary, then: ‘those who required it were not fit and proper persons to be employed on the public service, whilst if it were not necessary it is equally evident that the proceeding was at once scandalous and wholly unjustifiable’.9 In his view, free men were free to emulate proper personal behaviour: the forced imposition of habitus was only necessary for the degraded and uncivilised. The policeman was expected to control his body language on the street, to emphasise his subordinate position. Essex police were to: ‘take the outward side of the footpath, and it is particularly desired that constables when walking along the streets should not shoulder past respectable people, but give way in a mild manner’.10 Instructions to Sheffield police were more abrupt: they were to give passers-by the wall.11 Passing on the side nearest the street was an admission of inferiority, thus bearing out Wilbur Miller’s conclusions about the basis of the authority of the English policeman, as opposed to his American counterpart. The English policeman’s impulses were designed to be subordinated: his authority was not personal, but institutional.12 These rules applied not just to the individual officer but to the group of officers marching in formation to their beats. In 1899, the rules of the Metropolitan police stated that each sergeant should march with his constables round his section,

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in single files, in which process they ‘will always take the outside of the footway; they will invariably give way when necessary for the convenience of the public and are never to rudely shoulder past persons using the footway’.13 The forbidden practice is set out in enough detail here that it seems very likely that this instruction was not always followed, but its presence testifies to the image which the institution was intending to convey.

The new policeman: defined by a manual Here is the first paragraph of the police instructions issued by the Borough of Manchester in 1836: There is no class of persons who should be more mindful of their personal conduct than Police Officers. They are at all times, owing to their peculiar situation, exposed to strong temptation, held out to them by depraved or interested parties, who will be the first to expose their compromise of independence, and effect their ruin. Integrity, sobriety, intelligence, a systematic correctness in business, civility and humanity, are the leading qualifications of a good Police Officer; the exercise of which, while it will always command the respect and confidence of the public, is the most certain method of promoting his own interests and welfare through life.14

The contrast with the manuals written for ‘old’ constables is stark: rather than defining a series of inducements and sanctions, this manual describes the type of person that the police officer is supposed to be, or to become. Subsequent orders in the regulations fleshed this desire out: the policeman had to devote the whole of his time to the force, to serve where requested, to promptly obey all legal orders from those in authority above him, and was at all times liable to fine or dismissal by the superior authorities. He was to be ‘at all times clean and respectable in his appearance’.15 On joining, each Manchester policeman was furnished with a greatcoat, uniform, staff of office, a pair of handcuffs, a book of instructions, and a memorandum book. For these he had to give a receipt, and account for them when he quit the force.16 The police instruction book stood in a different relationship to the new policeman. Just as much as the toothpick and the bottle of Japan Blacking, it was a physical part of a complex set of obligations that the policeman had

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to keep up. Like the rest of the uniform and accoutrements, losing it led to a fine.17 Some analysts of the labour process see an opposition between Taylorism: ‘the managerial choreography of bodies’, and the more post-Fordist human resources model of ‘active minds’ and ‘the unobtrusive orchestration of employee values’.18 It is clear from the instruction manuals of the new police that both these models can be combined: the active mind working in the choreographed body. The instructions for new police in Britain often followed the model of those set out in London in 1829. The policeman was told to exercise restraint over himself, to command his temper, and to ‘conduct himself with civility’.19 It is worth dwelling on the implications of this phrase: it implies a reflexive self that can be conducted. ‘Civility’ often also meant ‘obligingness’, and it was presented in the context of ‘civility to persons of every station’: the policeman was being defined as the servant of every law-abiding member of the public.20 Sheffield’s regulations conformed to the Metropolitan pattern by placing prevention at the forefront of the police’s duty.21 A constable was to give his whole time to the police force, to stay in uniform and not to carry a stick or umbrella, or to smoke or drink alcohol when on duty – again, the desire to render the men standardised and effective was expressed in terms of close control over the body. His whereabouts were controlled: he had to let the Inspector know his address, and was not to lodge in a beer house or public house. Advice on personal demeanour was given to all ranks: the Superintendent (chief officer) was to be ‘firm and just, but at the same time kind and conciliating’.22 The main duties of Sheffield’s three Inspectors were to base themselves at the station and make rounds checking all the sergeants and some of the men on their beats. Senior ranks’ lives and work were also controlled. The policeman’s clothes accentuated his special status. He was expected to be uniformed at all times. The identifiable uniform had first been developed by the most advanced of the ‘old’ watch forces: those whose organisation had the most influence on the Metropolitan police.23 Uniform, particularly its distinguishing details, was to take on ‘massive symbolic importance’ in the various new police forces.24 Malcolm Young ascribes to its ‘nuances of style’ the power to define the police’s social identity.25 It also had instrumental use: as a way of constricting the body, of displaying gradations

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of status, and of rendering him personally visible.The leather ‘stock’, a tight and thick collar copied from military practice, prevented early Metropolitan police from being strangled, but also forced their heads into an upright pose. The uniform could hold marks of intermediate rank and long service, merit and good-conduct badges, which served to fix the policeman’s status in terms of his fellows and his career.26 It also usually contained a unique number by which he could ‘at all times be known to the public’, continuing a practice begun by earlier watch forces, and adding to the police constable’s legal vulnerability.27

The beat In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries there was an imperative need to control access, traffic and informal economic activity in the city. To take an extreme example, in the 1840s Manchester was only one mile square and had a population of 300,000. 28 To deal with this problem it was necessary to create institutions that would manage proximity – a key component in the ‘urban variable’. 29 Hence the policing of urban space was something that became increasingly urgent through the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The large towns were social problems not just because of crime and the threat of insurrection, but also because they needed to be rendered orderly if they were to function. Constables in Northampton were ordered: to remove or report all nuisances, prevent the foot-walk from being obstructed in any way whatever, and either drive away or take into custody all beggars, ballad-singers, and persons amenable to the vagrant-laws … He must not permit persons wheeling barrows, carrying water, or any bulky article to walk on the foot-way.30

The force’s sergeants were given an additional general brief to monitor the street: ‘If he observe in the streets or other public places anything likely to produce danger, or public inconvenience, or anything irregular or offensive, he is to report the same at the Police Office, taking such immediate measures as may be necessary.’ ‘He must ... make a report as to the street nuisances, state of the pavements, foot walks, lamps, &c.’ ‘He must also see that the by-laws

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under the Municipal and Improvement Act are properly enforced.’31 This imposition of urban order was an important part of their role. In Sheffield between 1859 and 1862 the police summonsed 1,684 people for breaches of the borough by-laws, against 3,298 arrested for drunkenness, and 813 for assault.32 The policeman’s normal mode of behaviour was mechanical: working his beat.33 The policeman was an unobtrusive presence, patrolling on the outward side of the footpath.34 Huntingdonshire constables had some discretion in the way that they worked theirs: this fact was unusual enough to be remarked upon by the Inspector of Constabulary.35 Obviously, sometimes events would demand that the policeman left his beat: but he was enjoined to return to it as soon as he possibly could, and to inform his superior officers about what he had done.36 Surviving beat books also reveal that the police were mainly a force devoted to patrolling at night – in Leeds there were 78 night beats, 28 evening ones and 14 day beats. The nature of the nocturnal police presence was different, though: the day man could see a lot more, and was not under an obligation to stop all suspicious characters. All Leeds policemen had timed beat orders such as this: B Division, first section, no. 4 beat. 9.30  Crimbles Bar, on the Meanwood Road, on the front of Crimbles Row, on the road to Meanwood Court, through the Court to Wellington Terrace, to the end of Wellington Terrace, and return to the Meanwood Road, on the Road, on the Front of Oatlands Mill, to the Mill end, No. 67. 9.45 Return across the Meanwood Road, up Oatlands Street to the Top, through a Passage, down Oatlands Row, through the Gate at the Lodge, up the Lane, across the Field to Oatlands House, and return to the Gate.37

This timetable (another of the technologies featured in Foucault’s idea of discipline) demanded extreme punctuality.38 Here, again, the experience of police was representative of broader social trends. As Barbara Adam has pointed out, a concentration on punctuality takes as given the assumption that people can calculate, and have control over, their future actions and that they can organise their lives in accordance with the requirement of keeping appointments at mutually agreed times.39 The place given to workers’ punctuality in the new discipline of the nineteenth-century factory is well known.40

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Richard Jervis, who joined Lancashire Constabulary in 1850, later wrote, ‘the police were strictly confined to patrolling their beats. It was laid down with them it should be duty first and always.’41 In cities, the beats were enforced by the activity of the sergeant, constantly patrolling to check that his men were where they ought to be. Often this was supplemented by ‘conference points’ whereby men on adjacent beats needed to acknowledge one another. In many rural areas, the conference point system was central to control of patrolling – each constable had ‘a list of patrols and points’ (which sometimes linked to neighbouring forces) and: ‘The several places of meeting are frequently visited by the superintendent, inspectors and sergeants, and an immediate explanation forwarded in the event of a point not being kept’.42 In the county forces of the south of England, the average distance between meeting points was between two and four miles.43 The Inspectors of Constabulary were clearly worried that policemen could not be trusted to act correctly if they were not regularly supervised; one of the reasons that Godalming borough’s two-man force was deemed inefficient in the 1850s was because the supervision, by monthly report to the Watch Committee, was ‘not certain or effective’ at night.44 In nineteenth-century London, even detectives were kept within their home divisions by the Met’s standing orders and norms. When giving evidence to the Home Office’s departmental committee on detective work, Inspector Shore replied that ‘if a man left his beat’, ‘He would have to give information where he had been, and that would be an unpleasant thing’.45 These practices meant that the new policeman was continually conscious of the fact that if he was in the wrong place, there was a chance he might be discovered, and hence be in trouble. All this brings to mind Foucault’s verdict on Bentham’s panopticon: ‘to induce ... a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power’.46 Unlike the panopticon, of course, this form of power was a function of a geographically unlimited system ‘out of doors’, rather than located in a certain place. The police as a whole exercised power over the populace through constant surveillance (see Chapter 2 above), but within the police, control was also exercised by the same means. Technological fixes were also used to control the patrol patterns. Grantham Police in the 1850s had their beats regulated by pulling ‘tell-tale clocks, placed in various parts of the borough’.47 Derbyshire

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supplemented their system of conference points with tickets, to be deposited by night patrols at ‘some respectable famer’s house’ at the furthest points of the beat, slipped under the door if necessary with the time written on them.These tickets, along with those exchanged at conference points, were sent to the superintendent once a fortnight. Gloucestershire had a similar system, while Anglesey’s involved cards which needed to be filled in to record conferences: these were then either given to a convenient superior officer, or posted to the force headquarters.48 The sparsely populated counties of Flint and Merionieth relied on diaries, tedious to complete but open to potential inspection by superiors at all times.49 Alfred List, the ex-Metropolitan inspector who was highly influential in introducing and leading police forces in lowland Scotland (also thinly populated), gave his constables a ‘patrol book’ to be signed by the respectable inhabitants of the area.50 The Inspectors of Constabulary were also concerned to make sure that beats were short enough to be controlled: urban night beats averaging 75 minutes (in Northampton) were described as ‘too long’ for this reason.51 They also looked for neighbouring forces to integrate their beats and conference points with one another, welcoming the fact that Cambridge and Leicester boroughs had linked their suburban beats to the surrounding counties.52 The network of patrol needed to be as universal as possible to be effective. Contact points, clocking in, reports, forms, and bureaucratised direction and feedback all combined to impose the human resource management techniques of the factory onto the police organisation. By the twentieth century, many of these techniques themselves became obsolete in practice, but their forms were still followed by police institutions which clearly saw these as an integral part of their activity.53

The enduring problem of discretion Weber put it: Bureaucracy develops the more perfectly, the more it is ‘dehumanised’, the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from official business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational and emotional elements which escape calculation.54

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The message of the instruction books is that police officers need to transform themselves in order to act as parts of a machine. Yet the ‘police force as machine’ was contradicted (indeed, it still is) by one of the basic necessities of police practice: the need for the almost constant exercise of discretion by the police officer. Attempts to give orders which could cover all eventualities led to ludicrous instructions, for example these from Sheffield governing the searching of people found with goods at night. The policeman should: judge from circumstances, such as the appearance and manner of this party, his account of himself, and whether he really has got stolen goods, before he [the policeman] ventures to search or take him into custody.55

The last criterion – ‘whether he has really got stolen goods’ – is obviously meaningless as a guide to whether or not to search someone for them. Performing the police function in situations where perfect knowledge is impossible needs the constant exercise of discretion.56 The way that police should respond to unforeseen situations could never be programmed into manuals or standing orders. The tension between control and complexity was managed in two ways. The first was by the insistence on self-observation and the development of personal character.57 The policeman could not be under orders all the time: nevertheless, he was there to impose an ideal and a set of norms that were more than just the sum of a number of legal statutes. He needed, therefore, to be in control of himself, continually attempting to mould himself to an ideal, if he was to be trusted to act as a ‘domestic missionary’ when out of the control of his superiors.58 The form of authority suggested by the new police manuals is not merely the utterly impersonal model of bureaucratic authority as defined by Weber. A new policeman was not just a cog in a wheel: he was expected to strive for approval and self-betterment through devotion to the organisation. As the nineteenth-century moralist Samuel Smiles wrote: it may be of comparatively little consequence how a man is governed from without, while everything depends upon how he governs himself from within.59

Zeal was not optional: it was, according to Manchester police, mandatory:

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Every officer must rely upon his own good conduct alone for promotion or continuance in the service; for it must be distinctly understood, that seniority alone will give no claim to preferment except in cases of equal merit; and if it shall appear that any individual in the establishment shall discharge his duties in a careless or indolent manner, instead of that decided evidence of zeal, so important in the character of a police officer, such indifference alone shall at any time be considered a sufficient ground for his dismissal.60

So, behaviour which could not be described could still be proscribed if deemed damaging, or rewarded if deemed ‘evidence of zeal’. Zeal – attempting to fulfil the organisation’s aims and values in ways which went beyond the minimum demanded by regulations – could solve some of the problems inherent in an avowedly bureaucratic institution.61 The other way that the problem of discretion was solved was by giving the constable the right to depart from his instructions by using his initiative, provided that this exercise of initiative was crowned with success: It is impossible, in giving general instructions, to formulate such as will apply to every variety of circumstances which may occur in the performance of police duty. Much must of necessity be left to the intelligence and discretion of the officers themselves; and according to the degree in which the latter may show themselves possessed of these qualities, and to their zeal, activity and judgement on all occasions, will be their claim to future promotion and reward.62

Bakewell’s career also illustrates the (sometimes) successful application of initiative: in New Police he makes a point of describing how he caught criminals when, against regulations, he left his beat, and when his intuition was incorrectly overruled by the judgement of his superior officers. He also gives examples of when his initiative went disastrously wrong.63 Through regulations, police institutions attempted to impose a bureaucratic mode of control onto the policeman and also to re-create the policeman so that he could overcome the limitations of this bureaucratic role. This was done by encouraging the zealous exercise of discretion via holding out rewards for loosely-defined good service. Foucault located his innovative disciplined bodies in prison, and much of the subsequent criticism of his concepts

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derived from empirical studies which pointed out how in practice prison discipline did not work as he had predicted. But his descriptions of the intent of disciplinary power are a much closer fit to new police, an example par excellence of the ‘controlled self ’, with the additional element of ‘zeal’, present in the rules of most forces, giving a significant role to self-surveillance.64

Time, promotion and the pension In the nineteenth century, struggles over control of work were often arguments about time. There were practical reasons for this, because industrial systems demanded a high degree of functional specialisation and interdependence, and capitalism rewarded those who could extract the maximum labour in the minimum time.65 These systems replaced older norms of time-discipline. David Landes noted that factory workers in the 1830s took their opposition to supervision with them into the mills, where: ‘The rules of the earliest factories are our best indication of the importance of these issues: the heaviest fines were reserved for absence (the cardinal sin, often worth several days’ pay), lateness, and distraction from the job.’66 But beyond the immediate demands of the factory, mass knowledge of time and subordination to it was part of a broader nineteenth-century culture of betterment. One of the backers and exemplars of this culture, Samuel Smiles, wrote that: The provident and careful man must necessarily be a thoughtful man, for he lives not merely in the present, but with provident forecast makes arrangement for the future. He must also be a temperate man, and exercise the virtue of self-denial.67

One way that the new type of personality was to be brought into being was through the inculcation of knowledge of the future: as stressed in the Manchester police instructions, wherein it was a time when zeal and initiative could be rewarded and slackness and insubordination punished.The policeman’s viewpoint was supposed to be classically bourgeois: ‘constantly directed forward’.68 This can also be demonstrated through an analysis of police recruitment, promotion and pension policy. The desire of police organisations to recruit and retain men of sufficient calibre served as a motivation for the successful development of

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bureaucracy. One way that this could be done was to select men in the first place who had already displayed signs of being committed to long-term future-orientated thinking. By the late 1860s, Sheffield police were being selected after answering a number of different questions. From a mean acceptance rate of 73%, the highest rate was 91% for farm labourers, followed by 90% for men who had friends in the force. Most significant was the next highest rate, 89%, for those who were recorded as ‘belonging to a sick club’.69 Whether for reasons of immediate convenience, or because they were looking for a certain personality type, Sheffield’s Watch Committee were attempting to select for men who had signed up already to the culture of respectability: a culture which was central to the idealised self-image of the policeman. These developments were also encouraged by advice and strategies developed and disseminated at the national level by the Inspectors of Constabulary. All of these men had prior experience of military style hierarchies, and they collected information to monitor retention and set out strategies to improve it. The national pattern of lengths of police service, as revealed in the Inspectors’ reports, was that large numbers of recruits had short careers, but those who stayed, stayed long enough that the majority of men in the forces had several years’ experience or more.70 As well as the close attention to day-to-day time-keeping, police institutions also exhibited another feature of the classic bureaucracy over a long time period: the incentives to perform provided by ‘career, promotion seniority, pension, [and] incremental salaries’.71 In Tasmania – part of the global network of experiment, precedent and example which informed British policing – many police were convicts who received no training, but if they served without condemnation for three years got a lower sentence; three more, a conditional pardon; after nine years total, an absolute pardon.72 Within British policing, the stakes were not so high, but nearly all forces operated systems involving several grades of constable – usually three but sometimes as many as seven – with different levels of wages. Men could succeed to higher classes by seniority, or they could be promoted to them as a reward for merit (some forces also had a separate Merit Class entirely removed from seniority) or, as was the case in many forces, the system could be organised as a mixture of seniority or merit at different levels. As Steedman has pointed out, the system provided ‘a finely graded system of reward and check’.73

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In 1869, one of the Inspectors of Constabulary complained that, 12 years into the compulsory police regime, turnover was still too high, and making forces less efficient. One of his proposed remedies for this problem was to make it easier for men to get incremental promotions, which in too many forces had slowed down as higher classes filled up.  I think it also undesirable to place restrictions upon number in the higher classes; promotion should be dependent upon merit rather than upon length of service, and every encouragement should be given to men of intelligence and energy to enter and remain in the service.74

Another returned to the point in 1872, drawing more attention to the benefits of increments: In several of the forces a system of increased pay for length of service in a grade is established; and this I would beg to observe, is an excellent system, for, if a man feels that with good conduct his position will certainly be improved by time, he will discharge his duties in a satisfied spirit ... unless, therefore, the service has the attraction of a gradual but sure advancement, either through rank or pay, the position of a police officer, with all the incidents of toil and risk and responsibility, will not be sought after by the classes of persons required for it.75

The system of grades was useful, then, because it gave police an incrementally improving career, rather than one (such as that of the parish constable) in which there were no landmarks of income or status between recruitment and retirement. It inscribed the career path onto the years of service in a concrete way. The most important way that time and the police career interacted was of course the police pension. Minute-to-minute control of officers was overlain with control acting on the scale of the lifetime. Security in the shape of a pension was a rarity in the midnineteenth century. Not even bank clerks, whose pay was far higher than policemen’s, received them as a matter of course.76 By 1900 only around 5% of the workforce – half of whom were engaged in non-manual occupations – were in formally constituted pension schemes.77 The benefits conferred by numerous friendly society schemes were more concerned with sickness, unemployment and death than with retirement.78 But police were eligible, from 1862, for a discretionary pension of between half and two-thirds of their final wage: thus they were exceptional therefore as a working-class

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occupational group. From 1890, when the pension was a right, their exceptionalism increased. Pensions for policemen were first adopted by the pioneers of general preventative police, the Marylebone watch, in the 1820s.79 All new police forces had the power to set up pension funds, and the Metropolitan and county forces were obliged to do so. Borough forces had no such obligation, and tended to provide their men paltry benefits.80 The 1859 Police Pensions Act extended the provision to the borough forces, and hence marked the moment that pension provision became a mandatory part of police force organisation.81 But the pension itself remained discretionary: there was no personal right to it. The situation thus created closely fits Foucault’s schema of the temporal nature of disciplinary power. He examined ‘linear time’, and the ways in which it can be used for control, in the context of the military schools of ancien régime France about which he suggested that ‘new time’ allowed ‘the integration of a temporal, unitary, continuous, cumulative dimension in the exercise of controls and the practice of dominations’.82 The discretionary pension met these criteria – it was an exercise in power performed at the end of a man’s career which cast its shadow backwards in time over the whole length of it. The attractions of the new superannuation act were set out for Sheffield’s police officers in 1859, in a general order which also noted that the pension was discretionary, and would only be awarded to a man who had demonstrated ‘faithful and diligent discharge of his duty’.83 Leamington’s 1857 rules reserved pensions to those who were ‘unfit for further labour of any kind’ and had also ‘during the whole time of his service ... conducted himself to the satisfaction of the Board’.84 By 1859 the HM Inspector of the Northern district could report that all boroughs had established discretionary pensions and ‘nothing will be of more value to the forces, or contribute more to their efficiency, than the general establishment of this fund. Officers will now know that all depend [sic] on character, and that if they faithfully and honestly serve during their years of health, they will be provided for in declining years.’ The pension fund also served to lock the police workforce to one employer, since ‘they will not be induced to change from one force to another, as by so doing they will lose their years of service, unless recommended for promotion.85 The mere prospect of a pension was already helping discipline.

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There is a broader context to such statements, which is the role of paternalism, which has been identified by Shpayer-Makov as a key element in the labour discipline of the Metropolitan police in the later nineteenth century.86 Paternalism demanded deference, and a culture of respectability: Respectability was essentially the social expression of a behavioural conditioning, which permeated inner attitudes, outer appearance, and general social conduct ... However, it was important that a working man who modelled himself upon this stereotype should also know his place, and be satisfied with it.87

The known place of the worker demanded that the manager should also occupy a known place. Paternalism was the basis of this relationship: one of mutual yet unequal obligation. Loyal service was rewarded by protection and security, yet the balance was weighted heavily in favour of the employer.88 Exercising paternal authority demanded that the employer have some room for manoeuvre, and this requirement was in opposition to tendencies towards bureaucratisation: tendencies that replaced personal relationships with formal rules.89 Paternalism was not just a moral construct: it was based on a tangible inequality. Similarly, respectability had a material context. When freedom to quit could mean freedom to starve, the ‘respectable’ network of clubs and societies locked men into financial and social relationships and obligations.90 These were underpinned by ideals such as temperance, self-reliance and self-denial. This ideal, and the elusive security it offered, played a key role in creating the policeman. Weber included ‘patriarchal authority’ in his typology of forms of authority: personal authority founded on tradition, which regulates ‘all relationships through individual privileges and bestowals of favour’.91 It conceives of relationships as individual not bureaucratic: privileges not rights.When, in 1850, Sheffield police of all ranks petitioned for (inter alia) a right to eight days paid leave a year, the Watch Committee preferred to leave it in their own gift, and claimed that they ‘have ever given the applications for leave of absence their most favourable and liberal considerations’.92 In 1870, another deputation asked for an advance in wages and a rest day every three weeks. The former was granted: the latter refused, the Committee again preferring to keep leave in their own hands.93 Clearly, police employers valued paternalist discretion as an adjunct to bureaucratic routine,

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perhaps because its exercise bolstered their authority in a way that the mere monitoring of impersonal processes would not have done. The statutory police pension remained discretionary until the landmark year of 1890.94 For more than 30 years, therefore, the pension was as much a weapon against the men as a right enjoyed by them.

Conclusion Several writers have pointed out the distance that inevitably existed between the ideal (or, from other points of view, the spectre) of the policeman as imposer of values, and the fact that, in reality, the policeman had feet of clay: horseplay, drunkenness, skiving, vandalism and even theft all have a strong presence in accounts of what the new police actually did.95 But in that these departures from the ideal were newsworthy, they served to further define the ideal itself: discipline and resistance are two sides of the same coin.96 And while we can acknowledge the fact that the practice did not live up to the theory, the fact that the theory changed so radically between 1780 and 1890 tells us a lot about the kind of society that nineteenthcentury elites wanted to build. The new policeman had the powers and hence the responsibilities of a constable, yet he was disciplined like a watchman. His job was tedious and his work, life and body were closely controlled by an institution which was designed to police him far more rigorously than he could police any of the ultimate targets of his endeavours. In order to perform his task properly, he was exhorted to become a new kind of man, mindful of himself and of his task. To support this process of interior rebuilding, he was offered incentives: he could use initiative to break out of the rules, and could look forward to commendation if this met with success. He might be promoted: he would almost certainly receive gradually higher pay if he made his life in the force. And at the end stood the pension: though only if he could demonstrate that his service had been good. The new police constable was a proletarian compared to his artisan predecessor, but unlike members of other newly proletarianised trades in the nineteenth century, he was selling his labour for long-term reward. In some respects policing moved further and faster towards a totally disciplined workforce than did the nineteenth-century

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factory managers, who initially tended to rely on systems of internal subcontracting.97 In close control of the body, and in the operation of control over time, the new policeman was subject to the kind of disciplinary power described by Foucault in Discipline and Punish. A system of exemplary rules governed and constrained his activity, from the way that he should move his body, to the procedures that he should follow, even up to the point of describing his ideal emotional state. The new police probably did not create any kind of ‘disciplined society’ on the streets; and the multitude of possibilities of easing behaviour (not least the ability to resign) meant that ‘disciplined society’ was never attained inside these forces, but they were a sustained attempt to move in the direction of such a society.

Notes  1 Matthew McCormack, ‘Dance and drill: Polite accomplishments and military masculinities in Georgian Britain’, Cultural and Social History, 8:3 (2011), 315–330; Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, p. 158.  2 Foucault, Discipline and punish, p. 152–153; Smith has critiqued the Foucauldian aspects of military discipline from a historical perspective, but his analysis of it is unconvincing, since it bases itself in developments in military art (notably the increasing salience of small groups) which themselves date largely from the early twentieth century. Philip Smith, ‘Meaning and military power: Moving on from Foucault’, Journal of Power, 1:3 (2008), 275–293.  3 Shpayer-Makov, Making of a policeman, pp. 101–104.   4 W.C. Harris, A Manual of Drill prepared for the use of the County and District Constables appointed under 2nd and 3rd Vict., cap. 93, in the several Counties throughout England and Wales (London: W. Clowes & Sons, 1858), p. 5.  5 Foucault, Discipline and punish, pp. 157–159.  6 Second Report from the Select Committee on Police, PP (1852–53 (715)) 23 June 1853, pp. 107, 108.  7 Reports of Inspectors of Constabulary to Secretary of State, 1857–58, PP 1859 Session 1 (17), vol. XXII 399, pp. 35, 93, 96, 99.   8 See also R. Davies, Secret sins: Sex, violence and society in Carmarthenshire 1870–1920 (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1996), p. 94, for an exploration of the significance of personal belongings in the context of another total institution, the asylum.  9 Bakewell, New Police, p. 9 [italics original]. 10 J.B.B. McHardy, Orders and instructions … Essex Constabulary, etc. (Chelms­ ford, 1840), p. 12.

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Sheffield Watch Committee, Rules, orders and regulations of the watch committee of the borough of Sheffield, for the guidance of the officers and constables of the police appointed to act in the said borough under 5 + 6 of his late majesty King William the Fourth cap. 76 (Sheffield, 1844); Anon., Derby borough police force instructions, 1857 (Derby Local Studies Library), pp. 6–7. 12 Miller, Cops and Bobbies. 13 OUPA Metropolitan Police Orders Collection, GB/2315/METORD 1899, ‘Metropolitan Police Regulations’ (1899), p. 12. 14 Ibid. 15 Anon., Orders and Instructions ... Manchester Police, p. 5. 16 Ibid., pp. 5–6. 17 Anon., Regulations for ... Edinburgh police, p. 39. 18 A. McKinlay and P. Taylor, ‘Through the looking glass: Foucault and the politics of production’ in A. McKinlay and K. Starkey (eds), Foucault, management and organisation theory (London: Sage, 1998), pp. 180–181. 19 Anon., Regulations of the Fifeshire constabulary force, Cupar: Printed in the Fifeshire Journal office, 1840) p. 13; McHardy, Orders and Instructions … Essex, p. 11; Worcester City Council, Watch Committee, General Regulations, Instructions & Orders for the Government and Guidance of the Worcester Police Force (Worcester: Parry & Co., 1861), p. 53. 20 Anon., Regulations for ... Edinburgh police, p. 5; ‘Derby borough police force instructions’, p. 7. 21 Sheffield Watch Committee, Rules, orders and regulations. 22 Sheffield Watch Committee Minutes (WCM) SCA, CA 134 (1), 18 February 1847. 23 Reynolds, Before the Bobbies, p. 151. 24 Young, Malcolm, An inside job: Policing and police culture in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 73–76. 25 Ibid., p. 66. 26 Reports of the Inspectors of Constabulary for the Year ended 29th September 1859, PP 1859 Session 2 (30), LVII 527, p. 10. 27 ‘New police instructions’, The Times (25 September 1829); Emsley, British Bobby, p. 42. 28 J. Armstrong, ‘From Shilliber to Buchanan: Transport and the urban environment’, in M. Daunton (ed.), Cambridge urban history of Britain, Vol. III, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 229. 29 Taylor, New police, p. 92; R. Swift, ‘Urban policing in early Victorian England, 1835–86: A reappraisal’, History, 73 (1988), 220; Emsley, English police, p. 84; T.A. Critchley, the Home Office civil servant, defined the regulatory work as ‘extraneous duties’ and placed all mention of it into a footnote in A history of police in England and Wales, p. 157. 30 Anon., Rules regulations and orders for the government and guidance of the Northampton police force by order of the watch committee Stanton, Northampton 1848 (Northampton, 1848), p. 23. 11

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31 Ibid., pp. 10–12. 32 Criminal and Miscellaneous Statistical Returns of the Sheffield Police Force, Sheffield Local Studies Library. 33 Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, p. 127. 34 McHardy, Orders and Instructions … Essex, p. 12; Northampton ‘Rules’, p. 20. 35 Reports of Inspectors of Constabulary to Secretary of State, 1857–58, PP 1859 Session 1 (17), vol. XXII 399, p. 22. 36 Anon., General Regulations ...Worcester Police Force, p. 18; Anon., Instructions for the Police Establishments of His Majesty’s Dock Yards (Winchester and Varnham: London, 1834), p. 45; Anon., Orders and Instructions ... Manchester Police, p. 7. 37 Edward Read, The Beats of the Police in the Borough of Leeds in the county of York. comprising so much of the said borough as is within the township of Leeds and within one mile of the bars thereof. Divided, and arranged by Edward Read, Chief Constable, and William James, Superintendent of Police 1st September 1844 (Leeds: Walker, 1844), p. 48. 38 Foucault, Discipline and punish, p. 149; Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, p. 179. 39 Barbara Adam, Timewatch: The social analysis of time (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), p. 88. 40 Douglas Reid, ‘The decline of Saint Monday, 1766–1876’ in Past and Present, 71 (May 1976), 76–101, p. 85. 41 Richard Jervis, Chronicles of a Victorian Detective, originally published as Lancashire’s Crime and Criminals (Runcorn: P. & D. Riley, 1995 [1905]). 42 Reports of Inspectors of Constabulary to Secretary of State, 1857–58, PP 1859 Session 1 (17), vol. XXII 399, p. 29. 43 Ibid., pp. 85, 89. 44 Ibid., p. 29. 45 HO 45/9442/66692, Departmental Committee on detective policing 1878. Inspector Shore’s evidence. 29 November 1877, para. 736. 46 Foucault, Discipline and punish, p. 201. 47 Reports of Inspectors of Constabulary to Secretary of State, 1857–58, PP 1859 Session 1 (17), vol. XXII 399, pp. 15, 24–25. 48 Ibid., p. 18, 95, 46. 49 Ibid., pp. 49–50. 50 Smale, ‘Development of new police in the Scottish Borders’. 51 Reports of Inspectors of Constabulary to Secretary of State, 1857–58, PP 1859 Session 1 (17), vol. XXII 399, p. 29. 52 Ibid., pp. 16, 22. 53 In the 1950s in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, beat plans were still issued featuring contact points that had not physically existed for over 30 years.Young, An inside job, p. 304. 54 Weber, Economy and society, vol. 3, p. 975.

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55 Sheffield Watch Committee, Rules, orders and regulations, p. 32; Orders and Instructions ... Manchester Police, p. 17. 56 de Lint, ‘Regulating autonomy’, p. 277. 57 Willem de Lint’s work beautifully describes the ways that the nineteenthcentury constable was subjected to externally imposed disciplinary power. He tends, though, to locate ‘autonomy’ and ‘discretion’ in the twentieth century rather than the nineteenth, thus does not address the issue of selfregulation in the early years of the new police. de Lint,Willem ‘Autonomy, regulation and the police beat’. 58 Robert Storch, ‘The policeman as domestic missionary: Urban discipline and popular culture in Northern England, 1850–1880’ in Journal of Social History, 9:4 (1976), pp. 489–501, 487. 59 S. Smiles, Self-help: with illustrations of conduct and perseverance (Harmonds­ worth: Penguin, 1986 [1859]), p. 20. 60 Anon., Orders and Instructions ... Manchester Police, p. 7. 61 Foucault, Discipline and punish, p. 174. 62 Anon., Orders and Instructions ... Manchester Police, pp. 8-9. 63 Bakewell, New Police, pp. 14, 25; 17, 21. 64 Foucault, Discipline and punish, pp. 174, 202. 65 N. Elias, Time: An essay, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 121; E.P. Thompson, ‘Time and work-discipline’, p. 382. 66 D. Landes, The unbound Prometheus: Technological change and industrial development in Western Europe from 1750 to the present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 114. 67 Smiles, Self-help, pp. 180–181. 68 J. Frykman and O. Löfgren, Culture builders, p. 19. 69 Sheffield City Archives CA95/C3/5. Police Probationers’ Book, 1867–72. 70 Reports of Inspectors of Constabulary to Secretary of State, 1868–69, PP 1870 (27), vol. XXXVI 285, pp. 172–175. 71 R.K. Merton, ‘Bureaucratic structure and personality’, in R.K. Merton et al (eds) Reader in Bureaucracy (Glencoe: Free Press, 1952), p. 367; Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, p. 91. 72 Stefan Petrow, ‘Policing in a penal colony: Governor Arthur’s police system in Van Diemen’s Land, 1826–1836’, Law and History Review, 18:2 (2000), 368. 73 Steedman, Policing the Victorian community, pp. 106–108. 74 Reports of Inspectors of Constabulary to Secretary of State, 1868–69, PP 1870 (27), vol. XXXVI 285, p. 52. 75 Reports of Inspectors of Constabulary to Secretary of State, 1872–73, PP 1874 (25), XXVIII 1, p. 7. 76 Gregory Anderson, Victorian clerks (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976), pp. 31–32; Gregory Anderson, ‘Inequalities in the workplace: The gap between manual and white-collar workers in the Port of Liverpool from the 1850s to the 1930s’, Labour History Review, 56:1 (1991), 36–48, p. 44.

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77 Leslie Hannah, Inventing retirement: The development of occupational pensions in Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 13. 78 Ibid., p. 6. 79 Brewer, Sinews of power, p. 184; Reynolds, Before the Bobbies, p. 119. 80 SCA CA 134 (2) WCM (26 July 1855), p. 536. 81 22 & 23 Vict, c. 32; J. Martin and G. Wilson, Police: A study in manpower: The evolution of the service in England and Wales 1829–1965 (London: Heinemann, 1969), p. 27. Many (though not all) postal workers also began to receive occupational pension entitlements in 1859. Uniformed, disciplined, necessarily trusted, and central to the operation of the state, they shared many characteristics with the police. M. Daunton, Royal mail: The Post Office since 1840 (London: Athlone, 1985) p. 246. 82 Foucault, Discipline and punish, p. 160. 83 Sheffield City Archive, CA 295 C 1/1, General Order Book 1, 31 October 1859. 84 Reports of Inspectors of Constabulary to Secretary of State, 1857–58, PP 1859 Session 1 (17), vol. XXII 399, p. 42. 85 1860 (3) Reports of the Inspectors of Constabulary for the Year ended 29 September 1859, p. 8. 86 Shpayer-Makov, Making of a policeman, pp. 153–158. 87 C. Reid., ‘Middle class values and working class culture in nineteenth century Sheffield: The pursuit of respectability’ in C. Holmes and S. Pollard (eds), Essays in the economic and social history of South Yorkshire (Sheffield, 1976), pp. 275–295, p. 281. 88 Anderson, Victorian clerks, p. 30. 89 Daunton, Royal mail, pp. 237–238. 90 F. McKenna, The railway workers 1840–1970 (London: Faber, 1980), p. 41. 91 Weber, Economy and society, pp. 954, 8. 92 D. Drummond, ‘“Specifically designed”? Employers’ labour strategies and worker responses in British railway workshops, 1838–1914’, Business History. XXXI:2 (1989), pp. 8–31, pp. 11–12; SCA 134 (4) WCM, p. 36, 10 November 1859. 93 SCA 134 (6) WCM, 3 March 1870, p. 192. 94 Steedman, Policing the Victorian community, pp. 124–130. 95 G. Bakewell, New Police, pp. 11, 24; T. Cavanagh, Scotland Yard Past and Present: Experiences of thirty-seven years (London: Chatto and Windus, 1892), pp. 22, 29, 42–43; Emsley, English police, pp. 208–209, Rawlings, Policing, pp. 159–160. 96 Merton, ‘Bureaucratic structure and personality’, p. 369. 97 Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, p. 179.

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4 Time, bureaucracy and the new policeman 1830–1930

The previous chapter analysed the new police as an instrument which acted on the body and the life-span of the individual policeman. This one broadens the focus to look at the institutions of the new police, and the specific techniques deployed to run these institutions. Old police systems did not completely eschew paper, but their dominant modes of operation involved face-to-face contact. Colquhoun’s 1800 treatise on his pioneering Thames Police force (noted in Chapter 2) was strong on the benefits of close control of individuals, but did not mention any written superstructure to underpin and extend this control: it implied that all surveillance was direct, and all reports verbal.1 In the quarter-century between the implementation of this plan, and that for the police of the Metropolis, the nature of putative and existing reformed police forces moved significantly in the direction of bureaucratic control. New policing was as much about paper as it was about people. The key elements of this feature and its development will be outlined and analysed here. The chapter’s end date is fixed in the interwar period not because bureaucracy ceased to play such as role (it did not) but because it became increasingly overlaid with other forms of control. One of Foucault’s components of ‘governmentality’ was: ‘the ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections’, and it is the evolution and nature of the bureaucratic aspect of this ensemble which concern us here.2 Within the police bureaucracy, information needed to be durable: it must be inscribed physically in ways that would last. This process of inscription was not straightforward, however: it inevitably involved overt or implicit filtering of information to fit the organisation’s

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categories, in processes akin to those described by Latour as ‘blackboxing’. Once inside the organisation, however, the information could be processed, rendered into numbers or coherent accounts, and above all audited. Books and forms functioned as key bureaucratic tools: the former largely to record information, the latter to transmit it. Tools could face outwards, gathering information about the world at large, but a surprisingly large proportion of them faced inwards, helping to control the organisation. One tool which has become symbolic of police power – the constable’s notebook – performed both these functions, but it is clear from its pattern of use during the first years of the new police that the former, inwardfacing, function was primary. The introduction of more advanced office technologies, such as card indices and punched cards, was also pioneered for internal uses before being used to deal with the far more complex external world of operations. In this adoption of new technology and methods, British police forces, led by the Met, tended to be among the earliest of adopters: they did not lag behind the private sector. This may well have been linked to the continuing priority given to the skills of clerkship and administration in the promotion of police leaders in the nineteenth century. The foregoing introduction implies that the history of organisation and methods in British government is complex and important, yet it has received remarkably little attention. Historians of British government largely followed the precedent of the Northcote Trevelyan Report, which divided the work of the civil service into mechanical and intellectual labour, and ignored the former.3 Much subsequent administrative history was not about the acts of administration carried out by the mechanical ‘executive’ class of civil servants, but about ‘the administration’: policy-making, carried out by the ‘administrative’ class. Some have moved beyond this preoccupation: Jill Pellew’s analysis of the Home Office consisted of a history of the personnel at its head who were concerned with the making of policy, balanced by a detailed study of two of the inspectorates which were responsible (increasingly) for day-to-day activity.4 Jon Agar has developed the idea of ‘the government machine’ in a very interesting direction, yet he too in the main concentrates on the way that government was viewed, and the systematic ways that it was modified, rather than the everyday tasks which occupied the machine.5 The divide between executive and administrator is also

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significant in that it opens up the question of the level of technical expertise at the top level. Most recently, Moran and Agar have advanced competing hypotheses about the relative significance of amateurs and technocrats in the higher ranks of government: the creation of sophisticated and effective bureaucratic institutions would tend to suggest that it was the latter who were making the running.6 Agar furthermore has shown how one of the most influential figures in the adoption of systematic management in the civil service learned his job through processing criminal statistics for the Home Office in the early twentieth century.7 This coming chapter will look not at the activity of the (intellectual) administrative class, whose job it was to make policy, but the activity of the (mechanical) executive class, whose job it was to carry it out.

The structures of bureaucracy The various elements of Max Weber’s model of bureaucracy (discussed in the introductory chapter) underpinned the everyday activity of all police officers, and was the main task of those in stations and headquarters (which were coterminous in most borough forces). The numbers working in offices were numerically small, but highly important, and the way that the headquarters of a force worked internally bears detailed study, since, in Braverman’s words ‘the purpose of the office is control over the enterprise, and the purpose of office management is control over the office’.8 It can be added that the purpose of the police organisation as a whole is control over the public space in general. Each level of control is, as JoAnn Yates noted, embedded in flows of information – indeed, some schemes for general police reform such as those proposed by Henry Fielding in the 1750s or by George Barrett in the 1780s, both of which involved a regular bulletin of missing property and wanted persons, were based primarily on new information structures.9 Bureaucratic practices filter selected aspects of the complex social world ‘out of doors’ and fix them as abstracted forms of information ‘indoors’. Crucially, this information is useful only insofar as it can be processed: copied, transmitted and indexed; all actions which tend to increase its effectiveness, its potential durability and its latency – the ability that it has to exist and remain useful over

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a long period of time.10 The durability of police authority – its existence over a long period of time – has been identified as one of its key strengths.11 Processability is also necessary to prevent the information becoming burdened with too many questions about its provenance which would make these processing functions impossible; the systems that produce and process it must be ‘blackboxed’. This is a term developed by Latour and Woolgar following their research into the methods and sociology of science in the 1970s, whereby those using complex systems take for granted the mechanisms and procedures which produce certain kinds of information.12 The particular process in use here is filtering, whereby a complex mass of information which well reflects the outside world is stripped down to a series of markers which can be processed within the organisation. One well-known use of this term in an information context is in the ‘filter rooms’ which the RAF used as part of its air defence system in the 1940s, which reduced a complex series of real-time reports to a single picture that was used by controllers to inform their response.13 Filtering has also been recognised as inherent in the process whereby social facts, such as the occurrence of crimes, are categorised to reconstitute them as statistical facts.14 It is also a practice which can be applied to qualitative information: as a manual of early twentieth-century governmental procedure put it, as part of a definition of the bureaucratic practice of ‘noting’: the great majority of communications [to government] are defective in some respect or other.Those sent by post or by hand generally contain recitals of facts and arguments, which must naturally tend to lead the attention away from the chief matter at issue. Those sent by telegraph are usually too brief or too obscure to be understood without some explanation … Over and above all this, every document whether official or otherwise is liable to contain mistakes. Notes are intended to remedy these defects by correcting errors, supplying deficiencies, and elucidating obscurities. But this is not all. Notes must go further and must bring out the points raised, explain the whole position as completely and as clearly as possible and thus enable a correct conclusion to be reached about the matter in hand.15

To fit in with the powerful (because durable and saleable) rationality of government’s bureaucratic processes, information entering the institution from the outside had to be transformed.

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Information was and is a key part in the instrumental nature of policing and crime control: it provides a version of events which can be consulted as a guide to further action, and often also information about personal identities which can be related to those people, and if necessary acted on. But bureaucracy must be seen as more than just a series of processes: it is also symbolically significant as a marker of the way that an organisation has chosen to act. Latour and Woolgar noted the significance of what they called ‘inscription’ in laboratory practice, asserting that ‘writing was not so much a method of transferring information as a material operation of creating order’.16 During his career as a detective in the mid and late twentieth century, Malcolm Young considered the way that police-reported crime figures are derived, and reached the conclusion that ‘statistical reality is best considered as the reflection of the semantic values of a xenophobic and defensive institutional system, largely enacted for the benefit of those inside the organisation’.17 This reality was produced, though, precisely because of the primacy of one measurement – the crime clear-up rate – in the image and self-image of detective officers. Counting helped ‘to stave off ambiguity’ and the rate itself embodied ‘a metaphorical routing of disorder’.18 Again, we see that surveillance practices – in this case statistical measures – were directed internally as much as externally. The bureaucratic patterns of a large late nineteenth-century government organisation (such as the Home Office or the Metropolitan Police) are divinable via the way that the mass of records that they have left were organised, and in the implicit content of many of the internally generated documents. But no manual of office procedure for either organisation survives: indeed, there is no indication that the assemblage of tacit knowledge required to make the system work was ever written down. A surviving manual of government practice for clerks in India describes the practices revealed in the archives remarkably well. In 1922, H.S. Keymer set out a number of crucial steps in the procedure for processing information which had been in use for several decades in government – which he conceived of as ‘a controlling centre for administration and expenditure and ... a receiving and transmitting centre for useful information’.19 ‘Noting’ we have already seen defined above. Before had come ‘docketing’ – a process of summarising the content of a document in one sentence, ideally by using one of a short (24)

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list of key verbs (e.g. ‘confirms’, ‘enquires’, ‘reports’) along with recognised abbreviations.20 ‘Referencing’ was the art of linking new correspondence with previous papers on the same subject to form a file relating to a single topic.21 Once the file had been created, one of the roles of each office was to keep track of it: chasing up replies which were overdue, and regular reports of what work was in arrears.22 The system, then, needed to know itself – including a knowledge of its areas of incapacity – in order to function properly.

Administering police forces In the present day, bureaucracy is commonly cited as the special (and generally undesirable) preserve of the higher ranks of an institution yet, then as now, it pervades all levels. The use of written records for information, supervision and control had been pioneered by the watch forces of the late eighteenth century: in this they show themselves to be the clear institutional ancestors of the new police.23 First, books guarded the boundaries of institutions, recording (at least in theory) what went in and out. For example, when in Sheffield a new chief constable wished to clamp down on confusion caused by officers removing property from prisoners, he mandated that a new book be set up in which all such transactions had to be recorded.24 The significance of written records was not lost on the rank and file: when George Bakewell was dismissed from Sheffield Police, he wrote indignantly that the process had been illegal because at no time when he was held in the cells had the charge been ‘entered on the police sheet’.25 The constable had possession of police property – his uniform and ‘accoutrements’ (equipment) – for which he had to account bureaucratically. For example, one of the duties of Manchester constables in the early twentieth century was to report in writing immediately if any of these were lost or damaged.26 By then, the policeman’s personal notebook was one of the accoutrements: this had not been the case in all the earliest new police forces. The notebook only gradually became an essential tool of the police officer’s job: in 1829, the Met’s constables were not furnished with a notebook. Other first-generation police were: in 1840, the constables in Essex, a county which under John McHardy made itself an

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exemplar for tight procedure, were expected to provide their own notebooks (and produce them when required): but the main line of report was verbal, and significant events – such as the springing of their rattles – were to be recorded not in their own books but – ‘in red ink’ – in the Superintendent’s journal.27 In 1836 Manchester constables were given a ‘memorandum book’, as well as an instruction book.28 Manchester men were not yet mandated to keep it up to date, although the obligation of a non-supervisory officer of this force to record his behaviour in a notebook was already present in this institution in the duties of the four Beadles whose special responsibility was the city’s poor. They were to use their notebooks to: ‘daily make a written report of every circumstance worthy of notice, which may come to their attention. This is not only necessary for the purpose of giving information to their superior officer, but will often be found most important to themselves, as a valuable reference which may support or assist them in future occurrences’.29 The notebook was a reflexive technology which supported the front-line officer, as well as the first place where official information could be written for transmission up the hierarchy. It was a tool for bringing information into the organisation. Personal books also had another potential use: as a supervision tool, in which the officer had to record his actions in order that they could be monitored. The arrival of national inspectors of police in the 1850s gives us a snapshot of practice related to notebooks at that time. One of the three inspectors,Woodford (ex-chief constable of Lancashire Constabulary), recorded the bureaucratic structures of the forces he encountered in 1857, including their use of notebooks. His reports on the Northern district show a distinct pattern in the use of notebooks and rulebooks in 52 forces – nine counties and 44 boroughs – he inspected. The counties nearly all gave each man a journal and a rule book. Of the boroughs, just 12 of 44 issued rule books, and only four gave journals to each constable. Twenty-four – including nearly all the very small boroughs with fewer than 10 men – issued neither. Six, though, and one of the counties, used journals selectively. Some gave them only to supervisory officers. Others, including Lancashire, gave them to constables at detached stations – significantly, these would have been men whose ongoing beat patrol could not be easily supervised by a sergeant. Manchester was still giving every constable

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a ‘memorandum book’ but each supervisory officer received a ‘journal’ to record all inspections that they carried out. In 1858, Bedfordshire and East Suffolk had no system of patrol conference points (explained in Chapter 3) but instead worked ‘by diaries’.30 Journals, to contain ‘an account of all duties and occurrences, of which a copy is sent to headquarters’, operated alongside the conference system in many counties.31 The Duty and Occurrence books of Lancashire constables in the 1850s, which were kept at each out-station, had to be filled in as follows: his daily hours of duty, roads patrolled, the hour and place of visits by his superior, or meetings with other constables, and all matters worthy of note, and in which superintendents, inspectors and sergeants will record their visits.Visits of constables from other stations will also be entered, and the business they come upon.32

Thus, legibility of the whole organisation was demanded by regulations. Manchester’s 1836 Police Instructions mandated transparency: they specifically prohibited constables from concealing ‘or appropriat[e][ing] to himself ’ any ‘information’, instead of reporting it as mandated.33 Here, though it is presented unqualified, ‘information’ is clearly being used in the sense of information directly related to police duty. This kind of admonition was especially strong in the case of detectives, whose work was not amenable to being monitored by the close personal supervision described in the previous chapters. In theory, Metropolitan Police divisional detectives were expected to keep a daily log of their activity, to ‘the officer who has set him in motion’ and this report was forwarded upwards through the hierarchy.34 By the end of the century, skill in reporting events so that knowledge of them could be used by the institution was seen as one of the key skills of the constable. As the Chief Constable of Manchester put it in 1899, ‘In the performance of your duty you are constantly called upon to make reports of occurrences that come under your own observation, and also of incidence brought to your knowledge by others.’35 This remained an aspiration rather than an achievement: he went on to bemoan the standard that most of his men reached, and exhort them to better effort through selfeducation. Meanwhile in London, Metropolitan police regulations put the book at the centre of reporting practice. Pocket-books had to be displayed by constables when they paraded for duty: they were

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to be used to note the details of any ‘accident or occurrence’, which would also generate a report in their station’s Occurrence Book. Both report and notes would then be initialled by the station officer to certify that they were consistent.36 The record of the individual police career was crucially a written record. In this regard, police institutions acted in advance of many private sector businesses which similarly systematised long-term promotions through standardised records. In the Scottish banking sector, for example, this process began only in the last few years of the nineteenth century.37 Police forces gathered whole-career records of identity and behaviour from earliest days – indeed, the Manchester watch were already doing so in 1828.38 In Sheffield from the early 1860s (and as a continuation of other record books which have been lost) each man’s career was recorded in a ‘Conduct Book’.39 This was arranged not by name but by the man’s unique identifying number, and each record consisted of a double-page spread, recording identity, with space to list the dates of promotions to ‘probationer’, second-, first- and merit-class constable, sergeant, sub-inspector, detective officer (a specialist rank rather than an intermediate one) and inspector. The left sheet gave space for a list, in chronological order, of ‘rewards and gratuities for meritorious conduct’, while the right was reserved for ‘fines and punishments for misconduct’. Each gave space for the date, the details of the incident, its consequences, and who had administered them – the Chief Constable or (for punishments more serious than the loss of one day’s pay) the Watch Committee. Each man’s record was thus available to his superior officers at a glance, both legitimising and enabling the exercise of surveillance and control.40 As Foucault noted of nineteenth-century disciplinary organisations generally, such records helped to ‘form a body of knowledge’ about the institution’s subjects.41 The records themselves help to demonstrate the limits, as well as the power, of bureaucratic control. Knowing much about the behaviour of the men in their charge did not in itself solve the Chief Constable’s management problems. He was still obliged to recruit and maintain a force of skilled men, and thus had to retain or in some cases promote men with imperfect disciplinary records – a process which has been well documented by Shpayer-Makov, Steedman, and others.42 To take just one example, Daniel Higgins,

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who joined the force in 1856 and reached the rank of first-class constable by 1860, had a blank sheet for commendations, but six entries under ‘misconduct’, spread evenly over his career, for failing to work his beat, being drunk on duty, failing to appear in court, and ‘being found in a brothel in the company of bullies [pimps] and prostitutes wearing his uniform’.43 Nevertheless he served for 22 years in the force and was given a (discretionary) pension in 1878. The book would have been available to the Chief Constable and Watch Committee when they made the decision (before 1890) about whether or not men would be entitled to receive a pension: as such it was key element in the latency and durability of the organisation’s records. Knowing about weakness does not necessarily equate to intolerance of it: we may also surmise (as Chief Constable John Jackson probably did) that Higgins’ conduct was imperfect on more occasions than this. Perhaps he was merely better at not being caught: other men amassed instances of misconduct at a faster rate, and did not last long in the force. For men to be disciplined, their infractions first had to be noticed. In county forces, the hierarchy usually had three levels above the constable: sergeant, Superintendent, and Chief Constable. Often, though, the distances involved were such that the sergeant functioned more as a senior constable, and the main duty of supervision fell to the Superintendent of a division, who was often provided (or paid to provide himself) with a horse. Written instructions defined the jobs of the supervisors as well as the other ranks – a practice which was also present in the factory system of the 1820s, and this was seen by Foucault as a key element of the disciplinary society in which: ‘the disciplinary principle … constantly supervises the very individuals who are entrusted with the task of supervising’.44 The Essex Police Orders and Instructions (1840) serve as an example of the attention to detail of practice from the start. They were written by Chief Constable John McHardy, who is likely to have drawn upon his experience in the Royal Navy and the Customs service in their composition.45 They gave very precise direction to Superintendents, down to which forms they should use to record events such as fires (Form A), or constables fraternising with those who had come to the attention of the magistrates (Form B), acts of misconduct or requests for special service.46 They had forms for monthly returns for clothing and for constables;

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and were explicitly ordered to ‘govern themselves’ by the form which contained their accounts of extra payments. Completed forms were sent to headquarters and filed there, where the information on some of them was copied to other records: those for charges and refused charges (when police registered a complaint but declined to prosecute) were used by the Chief Constable to compile his report to Quarter Sessions, the police authority. There were limits to the kinds of information which could be contained in standardised forms; thus, letters had a role in the administrative scheme, but they too were to be stylised in the interests of the bureaucracy. Superintendents were to keep a copy of each of their letters to the Chief Constable, and number them sequentially each year, thus creating a file which could be inspected for completeness. Letters should not be discursive communications, but written for easy filing: ‘Two subjects are on no account to be included in the same letter or report.’47 Keymer described the process of ‘noting’ – interpreting information for governance. In the new police forces, internal communications needed no ‘noting’: they were designed from the start so as to conform to the norms of the organisation. The key ingredient of the bureaucratic control of a rural police force was the Superintendent’s journal, a ‘proper book’ large enough to contain all the relevant information for a month, at the end of which it would be sent to the Chief Constable. It was to be written up every day, and kept perfectly clean. Several regulations made it clear that accuracy and transparency were vitally important: 3 That all columns are properly filled up; that they contain the whole proceedings of the Division, and every remarkable occurrence at all connected with the service; the same being perfectly noted in the precise manner in which it occurs. … 6 That the word ‘ditto’ is never used [despite it appearing in the Instructions itself]. 7 That all alterations are made by drawing the pen through the word to be expunged, and no other erasures admitted.48 The regulations embodied a reporting timetable – in this case, of the number of men working in the division, which was a key institutional and financial measure – which was to be kept in real time and validated twice a day by the Superintendent:

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10 Superintendents of Divisions are to take care that the Appearance sheet, at the beginning of the Monthly Journal, is duly kept, and signed twice a day, viz. once AM and once PM … The hour at which it is done is to be entered in the space left for that purpose, and no persons are to be allowed to sign unless actually present at the time, and ready to perform any duty required of them.49 The journal recorded the time and place of all visits to constables. It also functioned as part of a personnel record: all fines levied on constables were recorded in it. The rules used the practice of checking through cross-reference between documents, which was present in the early factory system.50 They defined the journal as part of the structure of future accountability and supervision: if a Superintendent decided to redeploy his men within his division,‘the reasons are to be fully stated in his Journal, in red ink, that he may be prepared at any time to meet a charge of having neglected any part of his Division’.51 The book was transparent to the Chief Constable (though hidden from all other eyes) and the Superintendent was obliged to abstract and tag important information in order to draw it to his boss’s special attention, echoing the administrative act of ‘docketing’. He did this via a duty to ‘place on the first page of their Journal, the dates of such occurrences as are mentioned in their Journals, to which they wish to draw the particular attention of the Chief Constable’.52 Communication in other forces was also based around the use of forms whenever possible. A list of all the forms and books used by Lancashire Constabulary survives as an appendix to the report of HM Inspectors of Constabulary.53 It names 41 different forms: of these, 10 dealt primarily with personnel; recruiting, disciplining and counting the force’s constables. Six were primarily focused on managing links with the courts, and 13 dealt with financial issues. Just four were solely about crime, and only one – reports of fires – dealt with the world at large. Information flows governed by forms, then, were at this point overwhelmingly internal to the criminal justice system. Of the 34 books listed, rather more dealt with ‘the out-door work’ and less with ‘the duties of the office’. Four dealt with personnel, and five with money, but 12 were primarily about crime. Separate index books were provided for those books which

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needed to be checked over a period of time, including the charge and summons books, and the register of publicans with convictions, but also the constables’ misconduct book. Books, it was clear, were more outward-facing than forms: they recorded the nature of the force, but they also provided a way in which the force knew the world. The Metropolitan Police followed a different pattern, as might be expected: from the start, each of its divisions (whose number varied in the nineteenth century, but was around 20) was as large as most county forces, hence it needed an extra layer of reporting and control.54 This was carried out through a complex system of regulations and standing orders governing all aspects of its activity, supported by daily orders which were sent (except on Sundays) to each of its stations, and thus was highly public throughout the force.55 From September 1857 this order was printed (before, it was manuscript), and it performed a number of functions.56 It modified standing orders, especially as they related to specific places, for example regarding the deployment of officers on point duty, or special deployments such as to sporting and ceremonial events.57 It contained information about anti-crime measures such as the details of registered convicts, or of special patrols in certain areas.58 It also dealt with personnel matters by giving details – accessible across the force – of gratuities to widows, transfers, promotions and demotions. All was public, and each man was identified by name and his number, with a letter prefix denoting the division to which he belonged, such as the entry under ‘Fines’ in 1862 which read ‘S PC 192 Hawkins; to live in a Section House, and to send the woman away’.59 Hawkins’ Superintendent was to report in three days if he had complied, which points to another feature of the orders: the visibility of senior officers as well as junior ones. Each morning every division had to pass on to Scotland Yard the crimes reported and what was being done about them.60 The replies from the Commissioner, his Secretary, or one of his Assistants, came back in Police Orders, laconically giving orders about how to deal with specific crimes, in a form which meant that the rest of the organisation knew whose reports had been judged inadequate. For example, one day’s responses included the following under ‘Larcenies’, sorted by the letter identifying the division concerned:

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B (£2 18s) Plain clothes PCs to be employed temporarily to patrol the Sub Division. Superintendent to report in a fortnight C (£15) Further report after enquiry F (£2) Further report of exertions to apprehend N (£20) Further report.61

The whole force below the Commissioner’s Office was subject to bureaucratic control through the Orders: even Superintendents who had their pay docked were also recorded here.62 In addition, some of the admonitions concerned men who were being punished for failing to use the reporting system itself properly: following the announcement of the dismissal of a constable for absence came the order to his Superintendent ‘to report why this man was not placed on morning report of 31st, as being absent without leave’.63 The next week a Sergeant was reduced to Constable, fined 11 days’ pay ‘and specially cautioned as to the strictest accuracy in all statements hereafter’ for ‘making a false report; also gross prevarication when before Commissioner’.64 The messages from the Orders were clear – they were a transparent conduit for reprimands or commendations which remained on the force’s permanent record.

Clerks and police The interlocking systems of reports described in instructions such as those given to the Essex police do not demand a great deal in the way of clerical back-up to ‘operational’ commanders such as Superintendents. Each officer was responsible for reporting on his subordinates in books which would be inspected by his superiors. Other aspects of police work generated more information. Offences had to be noted, and prosecutions had to be managed: on the other hand, the great mass of police prosecutions did not need a great deal of information: the arresting officer had to be able to deliver a credible account of the offence which would sit in a charge book, and this needed to be corroborated in court. Prisoners needed to be properly registered. Lost property – which could conceivably become evidence in a criminal case – had to be booked in, monitored and looked over. Money, from prisoners, as petty cash for minor payments, or as the wages of employees and contractors, needed to be handled.

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There were a variety of different information flows through new police forces. It is generally very hard to assess their volume and precise nature, although sometimes a chance survival of records allows this. In 1891 the Home Office queried the expense of a speaking tube between the pair of constables and a sergeant working in the Telephone Room (which was also referred to as the Telegraph Office) and the Inspector on duty in the Back Hall, where operational police matters were dealt with. The Commissioner was keen to prove that a tube would be cheaper than would a messenger using the lift which connected the two places, so described the traffic in a 24-hour period, during which there were 91 telegrams submitted to the Inspector.65 The ‘principal’ subjects that were covered included a cross-section of the Met’s activity, ranging from descriptions of lost, found and stolen property, or of wanted and missing persons ‘to insert in the printed information’; to notification from divisions of lost property from public vehicles worth more than £5. They also included: descriptions of stolen property and wanted people to pass on to the CID; urgent enquiries from divisions about the contact details of operators of public carriages; enquiries and responses between divisions and the Convict Office regarding Convict Licence Holders and replies to queries from the Inspector in the Back Hall regarding information sent in for inclusion in Police Orders. This snapshot is interesting not merely because it reveals the minute-to-minute traffic, but also because it shows how long-term files – such as the Convicts Register, or the printed Police Orders – were constituted and consulted. It also, implicitly, points to the existence of other slower information flows which were themselves helping to constitute files and registers: for example, the data relating to items left in carriages but worth less than £5 (surely the majority of lost property) would have found its way to the Hackney Carriages Office by a slower route. Many ‘back office’ functions concerned the reproduction of the organisation rather than its operational activity. When the Metropolitan Police Force was set up, its leaders Rowan and Mayne were careful to arrive at very clear instructions to clerks and Superintendents on how the nominal register of men should be kept, and which forms should be used by the force’s divisions to record promotions, demotions and transfers. By the spring of 1830 they had printed a booklet which set out in detail these actions.66

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The administration of the force’s manpower continued to be organised consistently and tightly: exactly one hundred years later, forms for recording additions to the alphabetical register and weekly variation in pay (inter alia) were still in use in exactly the same way.67 In the provinces, HM Inspectors of Constabulary consistently demanded efficiency in the administration of the provincial police forces, but fashions regarding uniformity in administrative procedure changed. At the start, the first Inspector of Constabulary, William Cartwright was keen that forces adopt a model set of books: by the 1920s, the senior Inspector, Dunning, could write of most local police records that ‘so long as they are accurate and accessible to search to the degree which meets local needs, nothing much is to be gained by uniformity in details like form or methods of collection and search’.68 The conventional history of information bureaucracy contrasts a dynamic private sector with a sclerotic public one and, furthermore, a conservative British attitude to office technology (rooted in the already existing investment in human capital) is contrasted with a progressive American attitude.69 It is of course easy to find examples of Campbell-Kelly’s ‘fossilisation and lack of mechanisation’ in the UK police, but they appear remarkably rare in Britain’s larger forces. Police organisations enhanced their ability to control themselves, and the world ‘out of doors’, through innovative use of technology.70 The filing systems of the Met were consistently innovative. From 1904 onwards, the Met’s Registry (its document-handling office) began to study how it could best shift from registers of its correspondence in book format to card indexes.71 Their first innovation was to separate the index from the register itself. A register could only be used by a limited number of people at a time: so there was a limit on how often it could be searched, and it could not be searched while it was being updated. A card index did not have these problems: more than one person could search it at a time, new cards could be inserted without rendering it unsearchable, and it could easily be ‘weeded’ of out-of-date information. It could be scaled up (scaleability is a key bureaucratic attribute) in a way that a book-based register could not. The move to a card index was inspired by the successful use of one by the Convict Supervision Office: they were also following a precedent of the Liverpool Police.72 In this case, systems used for

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classifying police and criminals were modified and adopted to classify and index the correspondence of the force as a whole. The equipment costs involved were relatively small, far lower than the annual salary of a clerk: policing had yet to become capital-intensive.73 The next step mooted, in 1913, was to move the registry and index of all active criminal cases from a book to a card index, again to remove a bottleneck. Before the First World War the Met were already contemplating shifting some of their information banks from cards on to loose-leaf registers: in this respect they were early adopters of information technology, since these systems were still novel enough to need describing and extolling in the journal Public Administration in the late 1920s.74 The Met was relatively advanced in its adoption of information technology: it is significant that in this case they drew on expertise developed in the national database of convicted criminals when they introduced card indexes – a shift from a system optimised for recording stereotyped information about a closed ‘indoors’ population, to a focus on more complex information with a larger ‘out-of-doors’ element.

4.1  The Metropolitan Police Criminal Records Office in the interwar period, featuring numerous file card indexes Source:  Mary Evans image no 10193020

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From at least the late nineteenth century, the Met and the Home Office used a process of systematic management to judge the workload of their staff, with a view to raising efficiency. Regular and stereotyped correspondence was carried out as far as possible by printed forms to save the labour costs of handwriting standardised letters.75 In the late 1920s, the Met adopted automatic printing machinery to centralise the preparation of weekly pay packets, taking the task away from uniformed clerks in the divisions. It was deemed to be a success in that it saved money overall: the time taken under the old and new systems was very closely monitored, and the labour power required for each could be calculated. The machinery needed was relatively cheap; it cost £1,800, with recurring costs of under £100 and it was depreciated on a ten-year cycle. This was a small proportion of the £4,300 it was judged to have saved, replacing the salaries of 22 constables and eight clerks – £7,868 – with those of 18 clerical workers, five of whom were women.76 In the twentieth century, the ‘civilianisation’ of police forces (the replacement of sworn constables by employees in the same roles) was also a key part of their progressive feminisation. This inward-facing mechanisation was followed by the wholesale shift to the use of punched cards in recording criminal statistics and traffic accidents, aided by Walter Desborough, the Home Office civil servant who had moved to the Treasury and become one of the key innovators of government mechanisation.77 The initial systems of rules and regulations presupposed an institution optimised for one thing only: patrolling territory. As police forces gathered other responsibilities related to urban and rural governance – sometimes imposed by statute, at other times adopted for expediency – their organisations rapidly became more complex.78 For example, licences were a key element in nineteenthcentury British governance. They devolved the duty of compliance to the licence-holder, and thus gave them a stake in ensuring their own orderliness over the long term.79 Licensing required a system of application forms, registers of licence holders, and often of inspection and report; all of which were completely dependent on an efficiently functioning bureaucracy. Despite this increase in tasks, the police attitude to these activities remained rule-governed, leading to an ever-growing complexity in internal administration, especially in the larger urban forces. The Metropolitan Police

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regulations for 1829 could be printed in two columns of The Times: the equivalent document from 1899 requires two hands to lift.80 In 1878, the Commissioner, Henderson, resisted suggestions that he give more written instructions to his detectives, on the basis that they were already ‘overdone with instructions’ and ‘I think that the amount of information which is got now is quite as much as our men could master’, declaring himself satisfied with the system of personal training from ‘an old constable’.81 Official printed regulations were not enough, and rule-bound bureaucratic practice also needed unwritten tacit knowledge: more evidence that complex bureaucratic systems can only in fact work if they are flexible. Howgrave-Graham, the Commissioner’s Secretary in the 1920s and 1930s, had this to say about the office expertise at Scotland Yard: There are a number of small affairs that police have to attend to. Each one of them has its own little group of orders and regulations founded usually on some Act of Parliament. For each one of them there is an ‘expert’ (or a bunch of experts) at Scotland Yard – someone ready to give the right answer if a conundrum not covered by standing orders arises in one of the 172 Metropolitan police stations. I am thinking of such matters as firearms, explosives, lost dogs, cruelty to animals, footand-mouth disease, missing persons, suicides, street musicians, pedlars, beggars, house-to-house collections, flag days, etc. There are plenty more.82

This increasing complexity inevitably had an impact in the growing size of the ‘back office’ relative to the front line. At the start of the twentieth century policing costs were almost identical to labour costs: by its end policing was much more capital-intensive.83 However, it is important to remember that the number of police solely involved in paperwork remained relatively low well into the twentieth century. A run of consistent accounts makes it possible to measure this process at work in the Met. As shown in Figure 4.2, the Met did not become noticeably more capital-intensive until the interwar period. There is also evidence of the obvious impact of war on the level of bureaucratisation. In 1865, for every civilian clerk in the Met there were 441 officers, though at this point it contained many constables who were also clerks.86 By 1895, every clerk supported 121 officers: but this process could as well have been explained by civilianisation as

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4.2  The relative cost of Met ‘back office’ functions as a percentage of total costs, 1840–194084

4.3  Officer/clerk ratio in the Met, 1865–194085

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by bureaucratisation: Commissioner Henderson claimed that he had civilianised in the 1870s partly in order to insulate Scotland Yard from the wider force, and end ‘a great deal of gossiping’.87 In the twentieth century, national security and all its attendant regulations led to the ratio shifting still further: in 1920, the figure was just 57; in 1940, 34, as illustrated by Figure 4.3.88 It is less easy to examine the growth of bureaucracy outside London because there is no consistent measure of the different categories of police expenditure for most of this period. After the 1919 Police Act, the Home Office intervened far more in the internal economy of police forces and consistent figures for categories of expenditure are thus available. Tellingly, there was no space in the returns for provincial forces for civilian police employees, nor are details given of any ‘clerk’ versions of any police ranks, so it is impossible to find out which members of the forces’ listed complements were specialist clerks. In 1921, one of the very few years in which expenditure categories for counties and boroughs in England and Wales were disaggregated in H.M. Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) reports, they showed the pattern given in Table 4.1. Transport costs are included in an attempt to note the role that distance and population density played in the balance of costs between the different categories of force. It is reasonable to take expense on stationery and printing as a crude proxy measure for office work, although it is probably also reasonable to note that in both cases the Met could have benefitted from significant economies Table 4.1  ‘Back office’ expenditure on policing in 1921 Force(s)

Total budget (£)

Counties 5,302,755 Boroughs 5,234,438 City of 368,583 London Metropolitan 6,335,592

% vehicles and transport

% stationery and printing

% postage and telecommunications

2.32 0.85 0.68

0.59 0.77 0.25

0.68 0.40 0.12

0.95

0.35

0.25

Source:  Reports of His Majesty’s inspectors of constabulary for the year ended the 29th September 1921, PP 1922 (5), vol. X 303, pp. 44–45.

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of scale in purchasing. Nevertheless, it appears that, in the early 1920s at least, the police forces outside London were, surprisingly, at least as bureaucratised as the Met.

Skills and promotion in the police The skills necessary to run a large organisation could come from a number of different places, but in the British police service of the nineteenth century, two stood out: military experience, and promotion from within the ranks of those policemen whose careers had been dominated by their administrative experience. The men who staffed the top ranks of nineteenth-century Britain’s police forces were highly likely to have had military experience. Before 1920, 92% of County Chief constables and 51% of borough chiefs in England and Wales had such experience.89 Historians such as David Wall have pointed out that this was an indicator of their social status, usually as members of the landed gentry, but also that they thus had organisational experience, and it is this latter aspect which will be explored here. Wall notes that before 1920, over 55% of county chiefs with military experience had attained the rank of major (or equivalent) or above, with only 5% not having held a commission. Borough chiefs – already as a group less likely to be ‘military’ – were correspondingly more junior: only 28% of those with military service (around an eighth of the total) had reached the rank of major, and 33% had never been commissioned at all. In any branch of the British Army officers needed skills in leading their units during operations but their peacetime duties – which took up the majority of the careers of all but the most bellicose – revolved around keeping records: of men, of accounts and resources, of standing orders and of duties. To become a Lieutenant in 1850 required a knowledge of military drill, but also of the army’s regulations, and of the cost and weight of military equipment. To gain promotion required mathematics, familiarity with military law, and perfect understanding of ‘the interior economy of a Troop or Company [a body of a similar size to many county constabularies], the Regulations for the messing and subsistence of the Soldiers, and the established system of keeping their Accounts’.90 They also needed to know about the legal framework of warrants

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which governed ‘the Pay, Provisioning, Pensions, Rewards, Periods of Service, Clothing, and Equipment of the Soldier’. That year was the high-water mark of academic tests for the mid-Victorian army officer corps but, although the requirements to learn mathematics were later watered down, in 1870 the administrative knowledge was still a requirement, as was (for promotion) ‘evidence of having studied some of the standard works on military law’.91 This was ongoing: at the start of the twentieth century, any subaltern who wished to be promoted needed to master ‘regimental duties’, for which he had to be au fait with the ‘interior economy’ of his unit; able to manage the supplies and the premises, and to understand the rules relating to pay, recruitment and severance of his men.92 Hence the many basic organisational and management skills necessary to run a county constabulary could be learned – and perhaps more importantly, mastered – in the army. The shorthand term ‘interior economy’ travelled from the army to the police service, where it was used by Inspectors of Constabulary in their own reports to sum up the various practices and processes concerning employment of police.93 When the government looked for men to supervise at a national level, they also looked to the military. In 1870 a government inquiry into the employment of officers of the Royal Engineers (RE) in the civil government concluded that it had been successful, and recommended that more temporary use be made in peacetime of the skills of these ‘highly-trained public servants’.94 Nearly all of this work made use of their engineering rather than their more general organising abilities, but the inquiry noted that at that time both the Surveyor-General of Convict Prisons and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police were some of the ‘many’ RE officers permanently employed by the Home Office. All RE officers were trained first with the Artillery at Woolwich (entered by open competition) and then for another two years at Chatham, which was regarded as equivalent to attendance at the Army’s Staff College, where, among other things, the use of electric telegraphs was being taught in 1869.95 Between 1850 and 1893, three RE officers in succession (Jebb, Henderson and Du Cane) ran the Convict Prisons – one of the largest institutions directly administered by the Home Office proper – and one of these, Henderson, moved on to become Metropolitan Police Commissioner in 1869, holding the post for 17 years. When

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wanting to bolster the staffing of the Habitual Criminals Office, he proposed that the War Office be asked to lend a Royal Engineer officer to act as temporary Registrar.96 Proven ability to manipulate paper appears to have been valued at least as highly as hands-on policing skills, or the ability to control men in day-to-day operations, in controlling nineteenth-century police forces. In the 1850s the larger boroughs and nearly all of the counties employed specialist clerks, listed in the appendices of the HMIC reports along with Superintendents, although some were civilians.97 Chief Clerks were second only to Chief Constables in their power over the internal workings of the force. In 1909 the Chief Constable of Manchester set out the duties of his force in instructions which made it clear that the Chief Clerk (who was listed in the force’s complement as a Superintendent) was the sole conduit, and hence gatekeeper, for all accounts and reports which were to be seen by the Chief Constable. As well as dealing with the externally-facing paperwork of returns to the government and other external bodies, he ‘will be responsible for the correctness and custody of all books, accounts, records, and documents kept at the Chief Constable’s office’.98 He was also in sole charge of the administration at headquarters, with assistant clerks under him, for whose conduct and efficiency he was responsible. Frustratingly, the practice of listing all clerks as ‘Constables’ in government returns (which made them eligible for the government grant which covered a proportion of their salaries) conceals how many assistant clerks worked for him. Manchester did not stand out in employing a Chief Clerk: in 1909, 36 out of 57 county chiefs were assisted by them, and 70 out of 128 borough chiefs.99 Of the boroughs that lacked Chief Clerks, the vast majority had a complement of less than 40. By the end of the century, one notable and prevalent way for men to rise from the ranks to command was via the position of clerk. The career sketches of various senior police chiefs carried by Police Review in the 1890s show how this was done. George Lee Fenwick, for example, became Chief Clerk of Leeds City police at the age of 23 in 1860, then moved to Chester as Chief Constable at 27, a post he then held until retiring aged 61 in 1898.100 Lancaster’s Chief between 1884 and 1902, Frank Ward, gained the job after a brief spell as a constable in Leeds, followed by work there as a

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clerk and detective: he too was Chief Clerk in Leeds, at the age of 28, before moving to lead in Lancaster.101 James Withers, Chief Constable of Bradford between 1874 and 1894, began his career in Preston police in 1862 as their Chief Clerk.102 Looking at the chief constables of the late twentieth century, sociologist Robert Reiner decided that the best name for a newer breed of men whose forte was in administration was ‘bureaucrats’, as opposed to ‘bobbies’ or ‘bosses’: yet these men, all of whom had a significant degree of experience as beat constables, were not such specialised bureaucrats as some of their Victorian forebears, who spent their whole police careers working in offices.103

Analysing the performance of the criminal justice system After 1856 when policing became compulsory and partially statefunded, new ways of thinking statistically about crime and manning, and of judging the performance of police officers and police forces generally, began to emerge. The knowledge that was embodied in internal police reports shared some, but by no means all, of its characteristics with that of the nascent social sciences. It was couched as an objective account of the world: at the higher level of abstraction, this was nearly always represented through a statistical process which sought to create a pattern by aggregating many different events; at the lower level, the knowledge was usually represented as a report – an objective account of the important aspects of a single series of connected events. The overall effect of both modes of representation was similar to that of social science (as analysed by Hans Erich Bödeker) in that it involved the critical observation of the institution’s own acts, and in its modes of writing and construction encapsulated the idea of an ordered and policed reality.104 But unlike social science, they were not, for the most part, open: the contrast between academic assumptions that knowledge should be made available, and police assumptions that it should not, has been noted and explored by Malcolm Young, who combined the careers of senior police officer and academic anthropologist.105 Internal reports on cases, on quotidian police activity and on policy remained restricted, and fear of access by criminals to internal documents was

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expressed in 1878 in graphic terms: the problem was ‘information oozing out’.106 Self-awareness could be technocratic as well as visceral. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police began to deploy statistical methods to investigate the effectiveness of some of their own bureaucratic practices. In the 1860s, one perhaps perverse result of the newly collected and accurate statistics on the numbers of criminals at large was an increased desire to put them under surveillance, which led to the passage of the Habitual Criminals Act in 1869, under which all those convicted of felony had their details recorded on a central register. After some years of operation the effectiveness of the procedure was reviewed by the Home Office and Metropolitan Police. Both the Home Office’s Prison Commission (in the shape of Du Cane, the Royal Engineer who was running it) and the Metropolitan Police (in the shape of May, the Chief Clerk) used statistical analysis of the files to judge the scheme’s effectiveness.107 This included referring to annual returns of the number of identifications and to more or less random samples of the names on the register, to check the extent to which it was picking up hardened criminals or simply a mass of petty offenders. Later Edmund Henderson (also a Royal Engineer) as Commissioner deployed numerical returns of the types of crime solved by locally based detectives to inform the Home Office’s 1878 inquiry into his force, giving it ‘statistical facts’ on which to base its recommendations.108 Bureaucracy itself was a suitable subject for study by its masters. Organisational tension relating to information also arose over the supervision of detectives. In uniformed police practice, information needed to be open and shared within the organisation (if not outside it) but detective branches, often working to entrepreneurial incentives in a way similar to the ‘old’ police, did not share information, and this lack of fit between working practices was the focus of a number of scandals and inquiries in London and beyond. In preventive policing, information largely had a value for the organisation as a whole rather than any one individual within it. In the more competitive world of detective policing the reverse was often true. Detectives had many incentives for keeping information to themselves. Personally solving crimes increased their chances of promotion, and the solving of a prominent crime often involved a

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reward from the victim or other interested parties. This reward need not merely enrich the detective but would often be split between him and his various informers, thus incentivising a detective with a tip-off to keep it to himself. When the failure of its detective branch to work together was blamed for a botched prosecution in 1858, Sheffield’s Watch Committee investigated its workings and blamed rewards for a culture in which officers ‘withheld their information from the Head of the Police, from the Solicitor for the prosecution, and from each other’.109 In 1878 an internal departmental commission carried out a long inquiry into how the Met’s detectives worked (or failed to work) together. Their diagnosis of the problem focused on the lack of co-operation between detectives from Scotland Yard itself and the force’s divisions, and couched this in terms of information: ‘they often keep back information which might lead to an arrest, rather than allow the interloper, as they call him, to carry off the prize’.110 One of their witnesses, Superintendent Williamson, saw the ‘centralisation of information’ as a desirable reform.111 Another revealed that his division kept records of local criminals which were not shared on a regular basis with Scotland Yard.112 The inter-force networks of information exchange necessary to bring to justice even minor mobile criminals were not always slick: writing in 1895, the Chief Constable of Wolverhampton noted to the Home Office that whereas ‘routes’ (standardised forms containing the photograph and details of a suspect, circulated with a request for more information) from Gloucestershire, Sheffield and Nottingham were excellent, ‘to receive a route of any kind from Bristol is rare and a photographic one would be almost a unique curiosity – the informations received from this force are so meager [sic] as to render it almost impossible to act on them’.113 Despite its unevenness, it is clear that the work of local detectives was continually influenced by the national flow of information. When these ‘routes’ arrived at another force, they still had the power to leave their imprint in local paperwork: in Manchester in the early years of the twentieth century, each detective had to make a monthly report on a dedicated form of all enquiries made by him upon routes during the month, including the result of his investigations into each case.114 Stereotyped information transmitted on forms allowed information to be robustly shared between institutions.

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Conclusions The new police’s assemblage of practices is a clear example of a Weberian bureaucracy. These practices did not merely guide the way that the institutions reacted from day to day, it extended their reach across time and across space. Their official actions and their everyday practice were inscribed on forms, in ledgers, and on card indices and other retrieval systems, with the result that they were visible to those in other places and at other times, not just at the point at which they were performed. Actions had a resonance in their future, as parts of an interlocking system of information which could be audited and checked. They also cast shadows in their own past: the prospect of a future inspection was designed to enforce compliance in the present: hence constables on lonely rural beats assiduously filled in their journals in the expectation that their sergeant could arrive at any time to check that they were maintaining a correct record. The prospect of future court action cast a shadow on the practice of the constable writing up a minor crime in his notebook. The prospect of a future request from Scotland Yard for more information was present in every Superintendent’s daily return. Ideally, information used in internal governance was filtered to give it uniformity, securely stored to give it durability, and often processed via systems of cross-reference to give it visibility. Police information structures relied on the consistent operation of data-recording processes. Although historians and other later analysts have concentrated on statistics, the report was perhaps more significant in the governance of law and order within systems of new police. Reports and (more so) returns were the building blocks of statistics, but very few reports ended up abstracted to the level of statistic: everyday bureaucratic governance of discretionary police activity was far more a qualitative process than a quantitative one. Numbers and returns relating to internal economy were an exception to this trend: books, complements, pay slips, receipts for property, and other disbursements all had to balance. Unlike measures of criminality or police activity, such indicators were by definition already calculable: the audit of monetary accounts was the easiest to carry out, but it ought not mask the fact that one of the key technologies of new policing was the ability to audit accounts of events.

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Far from being sclerotic in their adoption of technological and management techniques, the men in charge of police bureaucracy were willing to modernise and embrace new technology when they thought that this would increase effectiveness, efficiency or both. Such adoption was guided by a sophisticated ability of the system to analyse itself. Police bureaucracy was ubiquitous, yet has remained remarkably invisible in historical treatment of policing, compared to attention paid to the action of police on the streets. Similarly the role of bureaucratic expertise, through mastery of the art of the clerk and of the army-trained administrator, in promotion of nineteenthcentury police leaders, has been underplayed. In both cases this invisibility is a result of one of the myths of the British police style: that it necessarily lacks specialist officer class. Despite the theoretical commitment to a rule-based order, bureaucracy was never total, and there was always a role for tacit knowledge of how to make the institution work which went beyond the precise instructions.

Notes   1 Colquhoun, Police of the River Thames.     2 Foucault, ‘Governmentality’, p. 102.   3 Northcote Trevelyan Report.   4 Pellew, Home Office 1848–1914, p. x.   5 J. Agar, The government machine: A revolutionary history of the computer (London: MIT Press, 2002).   6 M. Moran, The British regulatory state: High modernism and hyper-innovation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Agar, Government machine.   7 Ibid., pp. 167–173.   8 Braverman, Labor and monopoly capital, p. 306.   9 Rawlings, Policing: A short history, p. 94; George Barrett, Essay on police, p. 5.  10 Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, p. 65.   11 Muniz and Proenca Junior, ‘Stop or I’ll call the police!’.   12 Latour and Woolgar, Laboratory life, p. 243.   13 John Busby, Air defence of Great Britain (London: Ian Allen, 1973), p. 116.   14 Chris A. Williams, ‘Counting crimes or counting people: Some implications of mid-nineteenth century British police returns’, Crime, History and Societies, 4:2 (2000), 88.   15 E.S. Keymer, The Government Clerk’s companion: A complete and comprehensive exposition of the system of office procedure employed in government secretariats (Chunar: Sanctuary Press, 1922), pp. 46–47.   16 Latour and Woolgar, Laboratory life, p. 245.

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 17 Young, An inside job, p. 377.  18 Ibid., p. 255.  19 Keymer, Government Clerk’s companion, p. 8.  20 Ibid., pp. 22–25.  21 Ibid., p. 33.  22 Ibid., p. 132.  23 Reynolds, Before the Bobbies, pp. 260–261.   24 SCA 295 C1/1 ‘General Order Book Number 1’, 4 April 1859.  25 Bakewell, An address, p. 6.  26 R. Peacock, City of Manchester police instruction book (Manchester: John Heywood, 1909), p. 82.  27 Reports of Inspectors of Constabulary to Secretary of State, 1857–58, PP 1859 Session 1 (17), vol. XXII 399, pp. 19, 20; McHardy, Orders and instructions … Essex, pp. 5, 10.  28 Anon., Orders and Instructions ... Manchester Police, p. 6.  29 Ibid., p. 9.  30 Ibid., pp. 14, 38.  31 Ibid., p. 100.  32 Reports of Inspectors of Constabulary to Secretary of State, 1856–57, PP 1857–58 (20), XLVII 657, p. 78.  33 Anon., Orders and Instructions … Manchester Police, pp. 6–7.  34 HO 45/9442/66692, Detective Police (Departmental) Commission, 1878, p. v.  35 Robert Peacock, Powers and responsibilities of the police in relation to the betting, gaming, highway and licensing laws (Henry Blacklock and Co Ltd, Manchester, 1900).  36 OUPA, Metropolitan Police Regulations (1899), p. 14.   37 Alan McKinlay,‘Dead selves: The birth of the modern career’, Organisation, 9:4 (2002), 598.   38 Dodsworth, ‘Masculinity’, p. 48.   39 SCA 295/C 3/1, Sheffield Police Conduct and Commendation Book, 1831–1887.  40 Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, pp. 95, 97.  41 Foucault, Discipline and punish, p. 220.  42 Shpayer-Makov, Making of a policeman; Steedman, Policing the Victorian community; Emsley, English police.   43 Sheffield Watch Committee, Rules for conduct of police (Sheffield Local Studies Library Pamphlet Collection, 63:16, n.d.), p. 58.  44 Pollard, Genesis of modern management, p 184; Foucault, Discipline and punish, p. 177.   45 Maureen Scollan, ‘McHardy, John Bunch Bonnemaison (1801–1882)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).  46 McHardy, Orders and Instructions ... Essex, pp. 24, 30, 31.

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 47 Ibid., p. 29.  48 Ibid., p. 34.  49 Ibid., p. 35.  50 Pollard, Genesis of modern management, pp. 253–254.  51 McHardy, Orders and Instructions … Essex, p. 35.  52 Ibid.   53 Reports of Inspectors of Constabulary to Secretary of State, 1856–57, PP 1857–58 (20), vol. XLVII 657, pp. 76–78.  54 The Commissioner, Henderson, put it thus in 1878: ‘with a centralised system such as ours is, you must have a good deal of reporting. You cannot avoid it.’ HO 45/9442/66692, 1 ‘Report on the Detective Force of the Metropolitan Police’, 1878, p. 220.   55 They were copied out by constable clerks. See Cavanagh, Scotland Yard Past and Present, p. 16; HO 45/9442/66692 ‘Report on the Detective Force of the Metropolitan Police’, 1878, p. viii.  56 Commissioner of Police of Metropolis, Report, 1872, PP 1873 (C.839), vol. XXXI 291, p. 3.   57 OUPA, Metropolitan Police Orders: 5 May 1862, Point duty on Hyde Park; 8 November 1862 Deployments for Lord Mayor’s Procession; 9 August 1888, Dispositions of men in Trafalgar Square.  58 Ibid., 4 August 1862, Convicts on tickets of leave; 14 August 1862, Patrols against street robbery.  59 Ibid., 18 July 1862, ‘Fines’.   60 HO 45/9442/66692,‘Report on the Detective Force of the Metropolitan Police’, 1878, p. v; Metropolitan Police Regulations, 1899, p. 370.   61 Metropolitan Police Orders, 4 November 1862.  62 Ibid. 11 September 1862 records the reinstatement with a loss of one week’s pay of Superintendent Mark of Woolwich.  63 Ibid., 3 November 1862.  64 Ibid.   65 HO 45/9766/B841N, Letter from Bradford to HO, 2 April 1891.   66 MEPO 4/157, Office Regulations relating to pay of the Metropolitan Police, 1830.   67 MEPO 4/301, Specimen forms, 1930.  68 Reports of His Majesty’s inspectors of constabulary for the year ended the 29th September 1921, PP 1922 (5), vol. X 303, p. 10.   69 Campbell-Kelly, ‘The railway clearing house’, pp. 7, 68, 70.  70 Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, pp. 123–124.  71 MEPO 2/1693, ‘Commissioner’s Office: General Registry-system of searching and record 1904–1919’. This activity predates the arrival at the Home Office of the interwar pioneer of punched cards, Walter Desborough. Agar, Government machine, p. 167.  72 MEPO 2/1693, ‘Commissioner’s Office: General Registry-system of searching and record 1904–1919’, memo of 19 September 1904.

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 73 Ibid.   74 John Robson, ‘Labour-saving in clerical work’, Public Administration, 7 (1929), 278.  75 HO 45/9518/22208, Register of Habitual Criminals, Working of and transfer to Prison Department, memo from Mr May, Metropolitan Police Chief Clerk 16 May 1874.   76 HO 45/16594, ‘Metropolitan Police: Introduction of mechanical devices for central preparation of pay sheets. 1929–1931’.  77 Agar, Government machine, pp. 175–176.  78 Steedman, Policing the Victorian community, pp. 53–55.   79 Mariana Valverde,‘Police science, British style: Pub licensing and knowledges of urban disorder’, Economy and Society, 32:2 (2003), 234–252, 243, 249.  80 ‘New Police Instructions’, The Times (25 September 1829); OUPA Metropolitan Police Orders Collection, GB/2315/METORD 1899, ‘Metropolitan Police Regulations’ (1899).   81 HO 45/9442/66692,‘Report on the Detective Force of the Metropolitan Police’ (1878), p. 222.   82 H.M. Howgrave-Graham, Light and shade at Scotland Yard (London: John Murray, 1947), p. 31.  83 In 2004 20% of the Metropolitan Police’s expenditure was related to capital goods: 80% to personnel costs. Metropolitan Police Service and Metropolitan Police Authority Joint Annual Report 2004–2004, p. 48.   84 Metropolitan Police Accounts, Parliamentary Papers.  85 Ibid.   86 Cavanagh, Scotland Yard Past and Present, pp. 52–54.   87 HO 45/9442/66692,‘Report on the Detective Force of the Metropolitan Police’ (1878), p. 221.   88 Metropolitan Police Accounts, Parliamentary Papers.  89 Wall, Chief Constables of England and Wales, p. 273.  90 Instructions by Commander-in-Chief respecting Examinations required on Admission or Promotion of Officers in Army, PP 1850 (592), vol. XXXV 101, pp. 1–2.  91 Royal Commission to inquire into State of Military Education, and Training of Candidates for Commissions in Army: Minutes of Evidence, Digest of Evidence, PP 1870 (C.25, C.25-I), vol. XXIV 1, 585, Appendix VI, p.VI.  92 S.T. Banning, Administration, organisation and equipment made easy (Aldershot: Gale and Polden, 1905), pp. 114–121.   93 [L.A. Atcherley]. Reports of His Majesty’s inspectors of constabulary for the year ended the 29th September 1921, PP 1922 (5), vol. X 303, p. 15.  94 Committee to inquire into Employment of Officers of Royal Engineers in Civil Depts. of State, Report, 1870, PP 1871 (C.276), XIV 139, p. vii.  95 Royal Commission to inquire into State of Military Education, and Training of Candidates for Commissions in Army: Minutes of Evidence, Digest of Evidence, PP 1870 (C.25, C.25-I), vol. XXIV 1, 585, pp. 65, 353.

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  96 In the end the post was filled by the Met’s chief clerk. HO 45/9509/16260, Habitual Criminals Register: Staffing. Letter from Henderson to Liddell, 30 September 1872.  97 Reports of Inspectors of Constabulary to Secretary of State, 1857–58, PP 1859 Session 1 (17), vol. XXII 399, pp. 40, 49, 69.  98 Peacock, City of Manchester Police Instruction Book, pp. 52–53; Reports of His Majesty’s Inspectors of Constabulary for the year ended 29th September, 1909 (Police and Constabulary: Counties and Boroughs), PP 1910 (106), vol. LXXV 587, p. 69.  99 Ibid., p. 110. 100 Police Review (24 April 1893), p. 198. 101 Ibid. (22 May 1893), p. 271. 102 Ibid. (21 August 1893), p. 403. 103 Robert Reiner, Chief Constables: Bobbies, bosses, or bureaucrats? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 104 Hans Erich Bödeker, ‘On the origins of the “Statistical Gaze”: Modes of perception, forms of knowledge and ways of writing in the early social sciences’, trans. William Clark, in Peter Becker and William Clark (eds) Little tools of knowledge: Historical essays on academic and bureaucratic practices (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), p. 188. 105 Young, An inside job, pp. 35, 38. 106 HO 45/9442/66692,‘Report on the Detective Force of the Metropolitan Police’, 1878, p. ix. 107 Chris A.Williams, ‘Labelling and tracking the criminal in mid-nineteenth century England and Wales: The relationship between governmental structures and creating official numbers’, in Ann Rudinow Sætnan, Heidi Mork Lomell, and Svein Hammer (eds), The mutual construction of statistics and society (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), pp. 157–171. 108 HO 45/9442/66692,‘Report on the Detective Force of the Metropolitan Police’, 1878, pp. xi, 299. 109 SCA 134, Watch Committee Minutes. 7 January 1858. 110 HO 45/9442/66692,‘Report on the Detective Force of the Metropolitan Police’, 1878, p. vi. 111 Ibid., p. 14. 112 Ibid., p. 60. 113 HO 45/10421/R99, Statistics, letter from Chief Constable of Wolverhampton, of 28 October 1895. 114 Peacock, City of Manchester Police Instruction Book, p. 128.

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5 Real-time communication 1848–1945

Electronic communications could greatly speed up the various processes of feedback and of control in police organisations. Their use therein was just one aspect of the way that in the nineteenth century they (in Dandeker’s words) ‘unified national populations across time-space’.1 This chapter will examine the ways that telegraph and telephone technology were adopted by police in the nineteenth century, noting how these technologies both fitted into existing practice and re-shaped it. These will also be shown in the context of public (and professional) ‘anticipation’ of technology: the predictions that were made about the ways that new and emerging technologies could fit into law enforcement. Real-time communications were a new mode of control which enabled some elements of the complexity of face-to-face instructions to be delivered at a distance.Their weak point as a replacement for paper-based communication was a difficulty in leaving a durable and hence auditable record; thus, the relationship between the introduction of telephone and telegraph technology shows the transactions where durability was, and was not, a prime requirement.Telegraphs facilitated vertical communication up and down hierarchies: telephones seem to have been better suited to horizontal communication within institutions, and between police and other institutions. Their introduction was also distinctive in two ways. The first was the start of a crucial relationship between police institutions and private sector bodies which had technological expertise. The second, linked, relationship was that between political crisis and innovations in police technology: crises of state power often provided the catalyst for the adoption of techniques which had been prohibitively expensive in normal times.

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Ongoing adoption was not a straightforward process. As with the written word, communications technologies could fit into institutions in a number of different ways: one illustration of this mutually constitutive process is given by the two ‘waves’ of adoption of the telephone box, which served very different purposes.

Ways of thinking about police communications There is little systematic work on the antecedents, implications and significance of the momentous shift in the organisation of policing from a largely ‘manual’ to a mechanised service. Bunker’s comprehensive history of communications in the Metropolitan Police sets out the narrative of technical and organisational development in this key force, but was never intended to assess its significance.2 Bunker’s account (like his history of the police box) is an excellent example of what Edgerton has referred to as the tradition of ‘historiography from below’ in the history of technology: ‘accounts of what the academic elite did not, and does not, find of interest’.3 Paradoxically, it also sometimes displays one symptom of Edgerton’s ‘anti-histories’ of British technology: a view which portrays the overall situation as one of technological conservatism, by referring disproportionally to moments when enthusiasm for technology was thwarted.4 In addition to technically-centred accounts such as Bunker’s, the emerging ‘professional’ historiography of twentieth-century policing has recently begun to engage with communications.5 Emsley has dealt with changes in communication technology in broad terms, Klein has examined its specific impact in three cities, and Laybourn and Taylor have looked at the significance of changing communications and transport technology for policing in the interwar years.6 A body of more critical work exists, since ‘police technology’ emerged overtly as a focus for commentary in the 1970s, at a time of heightened political polarisation; this elicited criticism (in both senses of the word) of them from left-wing analysts of policing. While useful as far as it goes, this critique was almost wholly confined to political policing – it did not address the impact of technology on quotidian operational policing.7 The key process at work was the arrival of systems of telecommunications, which integrated communication and control, both

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through procedures and through specialist technologies, notably that of the control room. Despite its salience in popular culture as well as in the history of organisations, the ‘control room’ has not received a great deal of academic attention. One exception is the work of Bruno Latour, deriving from his study of systems of knowledge, who has identified the concept of a ‘centre of calculation’ which enables ‘action at a distance’, and linked it to the strengthening of power relations.8 There is some useful analysis contained in the more action-oriented work on the topic carried out by ergonomists – notably that of Artman and Garbis on the way that the control room can be seen as a cognitive whole.9 Here it will be defined as a place for the manipulation of symbols in real time so that the operator deals with a visual display produced from external inputs, and is in close touch with agents in the world ‘outdoors’. It involves the filtering of external inputs derived from reality, and their translation into symbols that can be manipulated within the control room. As has been noted by Bogard, it is a more structured and intensified example of an institution that complies with the main features of Weber’s ideal-type bureaucracy (described in Chapter 4 above) but adds an emphasis on real-time interaction.10 It is usually linked (through access to files and other archived information) to use some records of a more enduring bureaucratic nature as an input; it itself generates written records in forms such as logbooks. As has been shown, during the later nineteenth century police supervision was characterised by feedback loops, transmitted in the form of inspections, verbal and – above all – written reports, with an interval between them that was proportionately longer towards the top of the hierarchy. This feedback system was overlaid by a very different one when centralised control and dispatch arrived. Radio allowed conscious control to be exercised in real time. The existence of communications technology enabled this extension of control but it was the accelerated feedback – enabling people at the centre to make decisions which were instantly communicated to their agents – which altered institutions and created a new mode of control. As one promoter of these schemes wrote in 1926, its most attractive point was the way that technology enabled the centralisation of the intelligence operating in the organisation: ‘what the telephone has accomplished more than anything else is the quickening up of the speed at which thought travels.’11

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Fixed telecommunications ‘indoors’ The telegraph was developed in mechanical form by the governments of Britain and France in the late eighteenth century. Both systems were the product of institutional rather than material innovation, in that the mechanics of the systems relied on technology which had been available for centuries. The historian of information Daniel Headrick thus argues that its development was not a response to technological change, but was something impelled by the ‘age of reason itself ’.12 After the Napoleonic wars ended, the British mechanical telegraph system lapsed, but the French one continued, funded by the Ministry of the Interior and used for policing purposes. The electric telegraph was developed in the UK as a key enabling technology for railway signalling and, by the early 1840s, the rudimentary railway network which covered England was accompanied by both the railway companies’ own telegraph systems and lines which they leased to other companies for general communications.13 Both networks proved highly useful in the state’s suppression of the Chartist movement’s insurrectionary threat. The Home Office and the War Office relied on privately owned telegraphs to learn about threats to public order and to quickly send troops and (Metropolitan) police to threatened areas.14 In the spring of 1848 the government was clearly anticipating intensive use of the telegraph, hence the Home Office requested the Electric Telegraph Company (ETC) to assess the costs of directly connecting themselves to the telegraph system.15 The price quoted for this connection was £1,000 a year, but the government would still be charged the standard rate for telegrams between the ETC’s central station and the rest of the country. As Chartist agitation reached a peak, in April the Home Office used statutory powers ‘in case of public emergency’ dating from the ETC’s formation in 1846 to take possession of its entire network for a week at a cost of £300.16 Home Secretary Sir George Grey requested regular situation reports from provincial towns and cities: this pattern of regular reports, including ‘all well’ negative reports (which would allow reserves to be deployed elsewhere), was a key element in the state’s response to systemic disorder over the next century.17 The central point of decision – which was now for the first time defined by its closeness to a telegraph office – was not yet

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clear: some messages were directed to Grey, some to Commissioner Rowan at the Metropolitan Police, and others to the Admiralty.18 In addition, provincial police chiefs, mayors and magistrates used the networks of the railway companies, who also refused to carry messages in cipher from unknown clients in order to prevent the Chartists communicating nationally.19 Some of the biggest towns were connected, but many were not: the railway companies used a combination of telegraph and trains to move some dispatches to London.20 The government also paid for the swift installation of additional telegraph machines at seven key places, including Clapham, near to the Chartist mass assembly point on Kennington Common. Thus, although the network was largely used for strategic rather than tactical control, the Home Office clearly felt it worthwhile to maximise the speed of communication within London for this key event.21 The telegraph was so useful that Grey contemplated setting up a national system usable by the government, and requested a plan from the Electric Telegraph Company. They offered to organise and maintain ‘a complete system of telegraphic communication’ between London and over 50 towns and cities in England and Scotland for £6,000 a year.22 The network itself followed the thenextant railway lines, hence though it included the industrial centres of the north and midlands it did not cover the tempestuous valleys of South Wales: given this, the inclusion of rural market towns like Hertford,Ware and St Ives (Cambs) in the list of those covered made the headline number less impressive. It would connect to both the Home Office and the Horse Guards (the headquarters of the British Army), give priority to government messages over other traffic, and employ a cipher limited to the government. Twenty-fourhour watch would be provided by just two clerks at each office, a reminder of the utility of cheap labour for nineteenth-century institutions. When no contract was forthcoming, the ETC’s directors used the threat of withdrawing ad hoc co-operation from the government to get one, pointing out that, as well as communication with provincial towns, the system could also communicate ‘the state of every district of the Metropolis’, all the better to inform the movement of police and troops. By then, though, the Chartist threat had passed and the ETC’s appeal to fear of its re-emergence was faced down.23 No government system was created: nevertheless,

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the government had learned ‘the utility of the telegraph in times of disturbance’.24 Confronted with the problem of policing the Great Exhibition of 1851, Mayne sought and received funding to link its Hyde Park site with Scotland Yard, expressly to prevent ‘tumult’, and telegraph connections between the Crystal Palace’s entrances and local rail stations were also used to prevent overcrowding.25 The ETC’s 1848 appeal for a contract set out an agenda which was returned to over and again in discussions about the adoption of new communications technology over the next century and a half. They conceded the increased cost of their system, but justified this with several claims: first, it would protect the state from disorder such as had been threatened by the Chartists; second, it would lead to (unspecified) increases in economy of the country’s police and military establishments; third, it would directly increase these establishments’ efficiency.26 It was the first point, the threat to the integrity of the state, which had prompted the Home Office to spend several hundred pounds on new communications technology: just as it was the eclipse of such a threat which enabled it to refrain from making such capacity permanent. As Jean-Paul Brodeur noted, the police exist to protect the state as well as to enforce the law and maintain order from day to day.27 Such haut police considerations have played a significant role in the adoption of new technology by police institutions. Moments of crisis or perceived crisis prompted chief officers and police authorities to use innovative technology for which there was little call in everyday policing. With a return to normality, these were often abandoned (as was the 1848 proposal to the ETC) owing to their lack of cost effectiveness, but the organisation thus gained firsthand experience with technology and knowledge of its capabilities. Similarly, some ongoing tasks related to protecting the central organs of the state were given a priority high enough to justify the high costs of new technology, which could then be disseminated to other parts of the organisation as its cost fell and its practicality rose. I call this phenomenon the leading sector. As a model explaining the adoption of technology within UK policing, it does not always work: but it is prevalent enough to be a useful starting point for a general understanding of this concept. Sometimes, as in this case, a private enterprise played a key role in facilitating the initial use of technology, but these interventions and subsequent attempts to

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lock the state into lucrative contracts usually went unrewarded: for all the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth, the client – government – dominated the contractor – private industry – and a security-industrial complex did not emerge. Telegraph technology was also a part of the developing public imagination of police power and reach. Such anticipation of the powers of new technology gives us an understanding of the ways that (some) people wanted police power to be exercised. Perhaps the earliest expression of anticipation was in 1824, when Glasgow Mechanics Magazine reported the arrest of a thief who had been seen picking pockets from the city’s camera obscura. It drew the conclusion that: Would it not be an eligible plan, indeed, to employ the Camera Obscura of the Observatory … to take a view of what is passing in the streets in the town, and communicate the result, if necessary, to the Police Office, or the Jail, by means of a telegraph? … By this means, the necessity of sending out emissaries to reconnoitre the conduct of the lieges would be superseded, since everything would then take place, as it were, under the eye of the Police; and, if any impropriety or misconduct were observed, it would only be necessary to send a posse to the particular spot where it happened.28

New police were symbols of surveillance; they were also symbols of the exchange and preservation of information, and thus it is not surprising that the instantaneous communication of the telegraph would be associated with them. Soon after the practical invention of electric telegraphy, Edwin Chadwick proposed in the 1830s that police use it to prevent suspects escaping by train.29 In 1854, a correspondent to Notes and Queries wrote to suggest that detached residences in remote country districts should be connected (at the householders’ own expense) with the nearest police station ‘to which an alarm might be conveyed in cases of danger from thieves or fire’.30 In 1857 the potential of the telegraph for communication within a police force was recognised by a correspondent to the Daily News who claimed somewhat implausibly that with the telegraph, news such as that of the recent discovery of human remains in London, known across the Met police area in under three hours, could be delivered by telegraph ‘in as many minutes’.31 Manufacturers of telegraph equipment also saw its potential for police use. In 1876, two different companies demonstrated equipment designed to

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signal an alarm ‘adapted to fire police and domestic purposes’ before the Society of Telegraph Engineers.32 The telegraph was adopted for routine communication by police in London (with the Met trailing the better-funded City Police) in the 1860s.33 The Reform Bill crisis of 1866 prompted sudden interest by the Met in the existing private telegraph lines which could be used for communication between Divisions and Scotland Yard: following the riots of July 1866, a firm plan for connecting them in a telegraph system was adopted.34 Again, a threat to the state acted as a spur for the adoption of technology. Bunker describes the way that the telegraph became a key part of the police communication network from the 1870s onwards, connecting the principal stations in each division. Initially the operation of the telegraph system was limited to Inspectors: in the late 1870s this rank restriction was removed, which further increased the volume of traffic, and created a new field of specialist knowledge and skill for these constable clerks (whose career mobility was demonstrated in the previous chapter) who learned to operate the telegraph machines.35 The telegraph system was again reviewed following the failure of the Met to prevent serious disorder in January 1886. One immediate reaction, in place before the next large left-wing demonstration, was to order all Divisions (and the police post in the venue, Hyde Park) to report regularly via telegraph to Scotland Yard; another was to issue printed forms on which messages would be written.36 Both these steps structured the communication system and made it more amenable to later audit, and thus placed those working it under greater surveillance. One Superintendent referred to the frequency of left-wing demonstrations in his Division to justify a request for more telegraph links: this does not mean that he had no other reasons for wanting such a link; it does imply that he felt this justification might produce results. Although these key moments of threat to public order in the capital all provided impetus for strengthening the Met’s telegraph system, its everyday use was more prosaic. The examination of the traffic between Scotland Yard’s ‘Back Hall’ and ‘Telegraph Room’ in 1891, as described in the previous chapter, demonstrates how most of the messages passed were routine descriptions of property and persons, which needed quick action but were no cause for unusual measures. The telegraph was also capable of being used to support

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policing on a remarkably tactical level for ‘ordinary’ crime. In 1892, Inspector Redstone of the Met learned that a burglar had gone into Hyde Park, and successfully ‘set the telegraph to work’ to block every exit.37 It was also used for regular police work outside London; the telegraph was the focus of an early example of co-ordinated lobbying by the chiefs of borough police, who in 1886 unsuccessfully petitioned the Home Office to back up their demand for free intercommunication by telegram (by then a Post Office monopoly), claiming that in many cases of minor theft forces were unable to afford the cost of contacting their neighbours with the key information about crime and suspects. The petition points to a desire to use the telegraph more fully, as well as one to shift the financial burden of this use on to central government. The Home Office, which at this time had a very ‘hands-off ’ attitude to its governmental responsibilities and a clear desire not to increase these, was not convinced: enthusiasm for technology had its limits.38 In the twentieth century, the telegraph continued to carry the bulk of police messages within forces, chiefly because it was usually used in ways that generated a written record; police regulations were consistently stringent on the need for permanent records of telegraphed messages.39 To develop its effectiveness in this respect, from 1889 the Metropolitan force converted many of their most important internal links to use automatic printing and sending machines, which left a written record.40 It also remained a way for the Home Office to co-ordinate political policing: one key element of the government’s emergency planning for unrest in the 1920s was to instruct all chief constables in industrial areas to send in a daily report, to which the Post Office would give priority.41 This was the system of 1848 in action again. The need to print out communications was combined in the twentieth century by more sophisticated networks. The teleprinter system brought in by the Birmingham Police in 1930 – the Creed system – also allowed messages to be broadcast: typed in at one central point but then automatically relayed to several different destinations at once, rather than being laboriously re-sent; thus it expedited the exercise of command and control from the top.42 Buckinghamshire installed telex in 1932 for communication between HQ and its divisions, to speed up the circulation of urgent messages from other forces regarding suspects and stolen property. This replaced a process

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of phoning each in turn to dictate messages, which could take up to five hours.43 The telex system of the 1930s combined many of the functions of telephone and telegraph. Like the former it communicated over the existing (and now highly widespread) telephone network directly between sets in its subscribers’ offices, without intermediaries; like the latter it accepted and delivered messages as written text.44 This flexibility, security, and durability made telex attractive to police forces but, although the focus of much discussion in the 1930s, it was not then taken up on any significant scale. In this respect police forces followed a general trend: there were only 1,700 subscribers in the UK by 1954. In 1933, demonstrating once more that police forces were far from conservative technologically, several brought telex machines in anticipation of general adoption of the system, but this failed to materialise, and most of these early adopters removed their machines.45 That year the Met proposed to connect themselves via teleprinter (different from telex in that it used dedicated lines rather than the public system) to the headquarters of their neighbouring forces, some of which were already employing this system themselves. When Glasgow Police adopted the telex system in 1936, the Home Office were reluctant to follow suit, largely on the basis that this would overlap with the functions of their existing teleprinter network. They, and the Met, were interested in the applications of long-distance communication between regional clearing houses for crime data, and between their network of civil commissioners’ centres, but were also anxious that such a system could be used in ‘civil or war’ emergencies, which led them in the end to prefer buried cables or wireless: both highly expensive for peacetime use.46 The police adoption of telex and teleprinter technology provides an example (radio, dealt with in the next chapter, is another) of the way that in the interwar period British police were early – perhaps premature – adopters. The telephone was not as immediately attractive to the police as the telegraph, because it was difficult to get a durable record of the messages passed through it. As late as the 1930s, communication within Scotland Yard by written notes through its pneumatic tube system was recommended in preference to the telephone, to minimise errors.47 The telephone’s use by police followed three phases: in the first, it had particular specialist uses ‘indoors’ within police institutions; in the second, its use went ‘outdoors’ in specialised

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boxes and pillars, involving the constable for the first time; and in the third, it became ubiquitous ‘indoors’ for many informal tasks, though it never completely replaced text-based telecommunication. By 1899 all London’s stations were connected by telegraph, but the telephone network was far slimmer. It was used from 1881 by very senior officers, including for communication with senior political figures.48 One of the first internal networks set up by the Met took in the police post at Buckingham Palace and enabled the Queen’s office to contact Scotland Yard instantly. Again, the role of the police in defending the centre of the state was one of the first to be mechanised.49 Once the ‘commanding heights’ had been connected, the next stage in the establishment of an internal network was to join Divisional stations to the centre, which was begun systematically from 1903.50 This allowed staff at Scotland Yard to talk to Superintendents instead of calling them in for briefings or conferences. Even before these internal links were in place, many of a different nature were adopted, which connected the force to other institutions. Stations on London’s outskirts were connected to their counterparts in Hertfordshire, Essex and Surrey by 1898.51 Before 1900, key installations such as munitions factories and barracks, and problematic ones such as lunatic asylums and workhouses, were connected to their local stations.52 Afterwards, the courts, as well the City and Buckinghamshire police forces, joined the network. The pattern of adoption of telephone links, both internal and external to the institution, shows that priority was given to those connections where swift verbal interaction was more important than the need to fit into existing paper-based bureaucratic systems. For a few uses, some inter-force bureaucratic communication – such as the system of ‘routes’ described in the previous chapter – was possible, but this was very limited. Verbal communication was the best way to intermediate between the different forms and structures of the various institutions concerned, even when these were other police forces. In 1934 the Home Office conducted a survey of telephone communications in 23 provincial police forces in order to assess the utility of a national police teleprinter network. The outcome was a picture of the pattern of day-to-day communications within and between police forces in Great Britain. Telephone traffic was not hierarchical in the manner of written reports. Instead it crossed force borders in a pattern driven by geographical proximity rather

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than administrative priority. While the headquarters of Lancashire Constabulary only rang Manchester City Police about 200 times a year, the nearby Bury Division of Lancashire rang them around 1,400 times, and the neighbouring Old Trafford Division, nearly 10,500 times.53 The overall pattern was clear: the vast majority of the telephone traffic was between divisions of county forces (and the headquarters of borough forces, which were far more centralised) rather than between county force headquarters. As the Home Office recognised in its own analysis of the data, ‘the traffic is not over a limited number of well-defined channels but is “net work” traffic from all sorts of points in all sorts of directions’.54 Police officers were far more inclined to deal with their neighbouring colleagues than those colleagues’ ultimate bosses.55 Hence any telex network which could replace the telephone for police messages needed to join each division, which would have been prohibitively expensive, rather than the far simpler task of joining each HQ. The 1934 survey returns also presented an interesting snapshot of the level of traffic between divisions and headquarters within many of the selected county forces.56 These forces had a mean number of seven divisions each, with half having between six and eight, and the median number of men per division was around 60. The number of messages sent to each division averaged 267 per year: the number received at headquarters from each, 206. The telephone link between the division and the headquarters was not, therefore, an especially busy one. The effect was that, overall, the headquarters received a median 1,600 calls per year: 17 received between one and three thousand. Calls out followed a broadly similar pattern, but the ratio of messages per man was far more variable. The median here was seven per year; however the range was great: from Durham and Cheshire with just two, to Nottinghamshire with 20 and Wiltshire with 23. Thus, we can see that the information system was structured far more by the number of divisional nodes than the number of individuals: the numerical size of each force did not have much of a bearing on the amount of telephone traffic. Furthermore, even in the more telephone-intensive forces, the absolute number of telephone messages was not great. Seven calls per man needs to be set against the volume of entries in duty books and notebooks that each constable would generate in a year, in addition to any extra reports he would be expected to write: higher ranks (those most

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likely to be using the telephone) would be generating yet more paper information. Within the organisation, nearly all information continued to flow on paper rather than through wires: at this time, not every county police station was on the telephone.57

Fixed telecommunications ‘out of doors’ The main innovative police use of the telephone was through attempts to allow the man on the beat ‘outdoors’ to communicate with his station. In the 1880s the Metropolitan police experimented with two different street-based telephone/telegraph systems, including one which was sold on its ability to give ‘complete supervision’ by superior officers over their men, and require ‘increased vigour’ on the part of the latter.58 One promoter (who funded the experiment) claimed that supervision systems based on personnel were always flawed but claimed from experience in Boston (USA) that: Every signal box is a silent monitor, continually reminding the officer of his duty, and enabling him to make his own record, and to prove that he was faithfully attending to his business.Thus a superior officer can at any time, by simply looking at the recording instrument satisfy himself that his men are attending to their duty.59

It would also protect honest officers from false accusations of laziness, and intimidate criminals with the knowledge that it could be used to summon vehicle-borne reinforcements. In the end, nether system was adopted: when consulted on one ‘the Superintendents of the Inner Divisions thought that the system might be usefully applied to the Outer Divisions, and the Superintendents of the Outer Divisions thought that the system might usefully be applied to the Inner Divisions’.60 The telephone technology of the time could not be made robust enough to function reliably. In 1893, Newcastle Police experimented with telephones which could be plugged into the city’s network of fire alarms, and thus make contact with the city’s fire station. To use the system, constables had to carry a ‘handy and light’ telephone handset with them. No link appears to have been installed between the fire station and the police station next door, however, implying that the system was never integrated into the ongoing management of the force.61

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By the turn of the century, a few (seven in 1901) police boxes were set up by the Met to provide single points of communication for outlying districts of the metropolis, or those fixed points where constables were continually present, but communication with the local station was useful.62 This followed a pattern set by Glasgow, whose first tranche of boxes, installed in 1891, were in the city’s outskirts.63 In London, many were installed following a notorious murder in the course of a suburban burglary, specifically to reassure the public with a nearby link to the police, whilst simultaneously resisting pressure from householders to connect direct lines to the nearest police station.64 Thus they acted as both a symbol of police puissance, and as a filter system to control the number of applications for police pouvoir. The police box system widely adopted in the 1920s, following an initial innovation by Sunderland Police, was a technologisation of the conference point and emergency communication systems.65 It did not add much to flexibility in police response: rather it mechanised the surveillance by the sergeant, and the process of regular and predictable beat patterns examined in Chapter 3.66 It was a system of control designed to make an inflexible system work as reliably as possible. In a departure from these systems, however, the constable often did not need to report for duty at a central point and parade before being marched off to his beat: instead he was trusted to go straight from home to beat and ‘book on’ by telephone, often after reading a list of printed orders of the day delivered to each box.67 In this respect his working life became more like that of the county policeman. Thus the closely drilled bodily habitus of the early new police was becoming less significant, although the activity of the interwar police remained closely controlled: many constables expressed their frustration at the procedures they needed to follow for ‘ringing in’ by (deniably) sabotaging boxes or procedures.68 The box system offered the ability to supervise the constable who was patrolling low-density areas. The classic foot beat system demanded a high density of population to work, given that the main driver for police numbers was population. Beats had grown beyond the size that could be monitored by a sergeant on foot. But new lower densities of mass housing development in the early twentieth century created spaces which were hard to patrol on foot: the police box was taken up systematically to fill that gap in suburban areas.69

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5.1  A Metropolitan Police Constable uses a box phone from the external door of a police telephone box, some time in the mid-twentieth century Source:  Mary Evans image no 10413393

The telephone box also allowed upper supervisory echelons to be mechanised: in 1928 the Met used them in a trial scheme in outer London designed to save money and increase effectiveness.70 London’s large area meant that the Met would always retain an estate of police stations, thus they did not emulate those provincial

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forces which sold theirs and ordered their constables to book on in the box: instead constables and their sergeants were to parade at stations.71 Both ranks were given a schedule for ‘ringing in’ through their shifts: a book in the box was set aside to record these calls. The role which this trial streamlined was that of the Inspector, traditionally responsible for checking on the sergeant. Now, each Inspector would cover more than one station area: he was instructed to patrol in a car and ring in every hour from telephone boxes or stations every hour (the calls were recorded at his home station). Although he was free to respond to emergencies, the objects of his continuing attention were ‘the Stations and men on duty’. He was encouraged to use his car to make his movements unpredictable, since: One of the most valuable assets in respect of this duty is the element of surprise or uncertainty; this applies no less to the supervision of the Sergeants and Constables than to the general protectionary supervision as exercised in ordinary police duty.72

Again we see how the disciplinary techniques used on the public by the police were also used within police forces: here, of course, police officers were subject to far greater control than the public through mandatory reporting times. The Met’s box systems of the 1930s in selected outer suburbs constituted a technical network of the boxes themselves and the wires between them: but it was also a concomitant administrative network of detailed timings, locations and procedures for overlapping and interlocking patterns of beat patrols, ordinary patrols (along thoroughfares), ‘extra patrols’ and traffic patrols.73 The box system was largely for routine communication to the centre; it also used an external indicator light, which was used to alert the beat-man that he should ring in immediately. Not every communication was with the officer’s local station: in 1936 Met constables were advised to use the telephone to refer complex cases regarding the legal status of suspects directly to the Information Room, and to follow the instructions of the Inspector and CID Sergeant on duty. The network, then, was not straightforwardly hierarchical: it could be accessed in more than one way.74 As originally conceived, the telephone was accessible to the public, who could use the box to obtain assistance, or advice from the police. In practice, boxes were not used very often by the public to contact the police.75 Nevertheless, their worrying (for many police)

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potential to lead to an expansion in the demand for policing was first voiced – by a London Superintendent – as a response to one of the earliest experiments, in 1894: ‘the greater facilities the public have for communicating with the police, the more police will be required to attend to them.’76 When London’s first box system was installed in the western suburbs around Kew, it was demonstrated to the press as a miniature police station, from which the public could raise alarms, and vehicle-borne help could quickly be summoned in the event of a crime or an accident. The press release did not mention serious crime – ‘motor bandits, burglars, and other lawbreakers’ – but it is clear that the verbal presentation did.77 The mundane world of internal police discipline was difficult to convert into a compelling narrative: crime-fighting was not. Nationally, the box was never the default form of communication for beat officers: even in 1950 Moriarty’s police handbook, which was a semi-official publication designed to be relevant to all British forces, considered telephones only in the shape of private and business phones on a constable’s beat, which he was advised to familiarise himself with so that he could use them in an emergency: much the same advice as had been given to all Metropolitan constables in 1910.78 But some systems were both successful and durable. Officers in Newcastle-upon-Tyne relied on their network of boxes, and the same set of regulations which had accompanied their introduction, into the 1960s.79 County forces could not afford to buy telephone boxes to cover their rural beats, but in the interwar period most made sure that their constables’ houses were connected by telephone.80

Conclusions Inter alia, threatened revolution loomed large in the history of police communications before 1939. War’s threat – and its arrival – played a role in their development after 1919. The peacetime operational requirements of British policing did not justify a national network of teleprinter machines, but the process of mobilisation for war involved a strong focus on communications. The country’s regional civil defence organisations were linked to police forces, and organised into regions with integrated communications within them and

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secure links to London.81 We should not make too much of the relevance of the civil defence network in constructing new communications networks for police in the second world war: police networks were less important for emergency communications than the purpose-built ones of the ARP and fire service, and of the armed forces.82 However, existing police communications networks were singled out by the Ministry of Home Security for connection to the headquarters of Regional Commissioners.83 During set-piece ‘high policing’ tasks, such as the challenges of 1848, 1866, and 1939, bringing more information to a central point was not a radical departure: it was relatively straightforward and highly successful, because such events were often controlled from the centre of policing organisations, relying on a constant input of up-to-date information to inform decisions. In contrast, the information flowing in the activities of everyday policing was still mainly processed by the officer on the street.84 Indeed, this had to be filtered at street level by him or (from this point onwards) her, since it would otherwise overload the system entirely. Centralised control systems will always be overloaded unless they only deal with heavily filtered information – of the kind which public order policing both requires and produces. It is possible to draw several significant conclusions from the analysis of police telecommunications in this chapter. Some are related to patterns of adoption. First we can see that in the case of telegraph, telephone and radio (and, indeed, pneumatic tube) adoption was not complete and total but uneven: after the physical letter, there was never a single communications technology which monopolised police communication. Instead, each technology tended to be adopted on its perceived merits for fulfilling specific operational requirements. Which ones were adopted where, and when, can tell us about the nature of the institutional links in question. High speed text links were used for urgent reports and orders, and none were more urgent than those related to perceived threats to the state. Long-distance verbal interaction, for example, was most useful among very senior staff, whom we can assume would have been used to face-to-face discussion. But it was also adopted as a way to connect police forces with outside institutions. The utility of the telephone for informal horizontal communication, compared to the telegraph’s optimal use – formalised contact

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within a hierarchy – explains why the national picture from 1934 of telephone use between police stations was networked rather than centralised. Public telephones could be used to set up a reassuring public police presence, and filter contact with the public, but also to mechanise the existing supervision role of the sergeant, or even the inspector. The overall picture of the adoption of fixed-line communications is one in which the police institutions remained dominant: they were able to fend off hard sells from the private sector; they adopted technology to fit their own needs; and they were if anything over-enthusiastic in their embrace of systems which promised to fit existing operational needs. The relationship was not one-way, however: in faster written communication within the hierarchy, in the expansion of potential verbal conversation, and in the direct link between the constable and the street, these technologies also changed policing.

Notes  1 Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, p. 84.  2 Bunker, Rattle to radio.   3 J. Bunker, The rise and fall of the police box (Studley: Brewin Books, 2011); D. Edgerton, Warfare state: Britain, 1920–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 334.  4 Ibid., p. 193; Bunker, Rattle to radio, p. 47.   5 C.A. Williams, ‘Introduction: British policing in the twentieth century’, in C.A. Williams (ed.) Police and policing in the twentieth century (History of policing, volume III, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), p. xi.  6 Emsley, English police; J.M. Klein, ‘Traffic, telephones and police boxes: The deterioration of beat policing in Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester between the world wars’, in G. Blaney (ed.) Policing interwar Europe: Continuity, change and crisis, 1918–40 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), pp. 216–236; K. Laybourn and D. Taylor, Policing in England and Wales, 1918–39:The Fed, flying squads, and forensics (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2011).  7 S. Manwaring-White, The policing revolution: Police technology, democracy and liberty in Britain (Brighton: Harvester, 1983); C. Ackroyd et al., The technology of political control (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977); BSSRS, TechnoCop: New police technologies (London: Free Association Books, 1985).  8 Latour, Science in action, pp. 227, 232, 259.   9 H. Artman and C. Garbis, ‘Situation awareness as distributed cognition’, conference paper, published in Proceedings of ECCE ’98, Limerick.

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10 W. Bogard, The simulation of surveillance: Hypercontrol in telematic societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 1. 11 P. Burtt, Control on the railways: A study in method (George Allen and Unwin, London, 1926), p. 77. 12 Headrick, When information came of age, pp. 198, 200, 213. 13 A.A. Huurdeman, The worldwide history of telecommunications (Chichester: Wiley, 2003), pp. 68–69. 14 F.C. Mather, ‘The railways, the electrical telegraph, and public order during the Chartist period’, History, 38 (1953–44), 40–53. 15 HO 45/2410, Electric telegraph papers, letter from Electric Telegraph Company to Sir O. Le Merchant, 9 March 1848. 16 Bunker, Rattle to radio, p. 37; HO 45/2410 Electric Telegraph Papers/884 Invoice from ETC to Home Office, 20 May 1848; Electric Telegraph Company Act 1846 (9 & 10 Vict.) c. xliv, s. 49. 17 HO 45/2410, Electric Telegraph Papers. 18 Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, p. 90; HO 45/2410, Electric Telegraph Papers, /873 Message from Liverpool, /849 Message from Glasgow, 10 April 1848. 19 HO 45/2410, Electric Telegraph Papers, Letter from Midland Railway Company, 8 April 1848. 20 HO 45/2410/855, Electric Telegraph Papers, Message of 10 April 1848. 21 HO 45/2410/885, Electric Telegraph Papers, Invoice from ETC to Home Office, 20 May 1848. 22 HO 45/2410/881, Electric Telegraph Papers, Letter to Sir George Grey from Ricardo (Electric Telegraph Company), 3 May 1848. 23 HO 45/2410/896, Electric Telegraph Papers, ETC to HO, 19 July 1848. 24 HO 45/2410/903, Electric Telegraph Papers, ETC to HO, 19 July 1848. 25 Bunker, Rattle to radio, p. 39. 26 HO 45/2410/906 Electric Telegraph Papers ETC to HO, 19 July 1848. 27 J-P. Brodeur, ‘High policing and low policing: Remarks about the policing of political activities’, Social Problems, 30:5 (1983), pp. 507–520. 28 The Glasgow Mechanic’s Magazine, 32, quoted in Humphrey Jennings, Pandaemonium 1660–1886:The coming of the machine as seen by contemporary observers (London: Deutsch, 1985), p. 164. 29 Bunker, Rattle to radio, p. 31. 30 Notes and Queries, 9:230 (1854), p. 270. See also Bunker, Rattle to radio, p. 41. 31 O. Rowland, ‘Police Telegraph’, letter to editor, Daily News (13 October 1857). 32 ‘Society of Telegraph Engineers’, Daily News (19 December 1876), p. 2. 33 Bunker, Rattle to radio, pp. 46, 48–55. 34 Ibid., p. 48. 35 Ibid., pp. 61–62. 36 Ibid., p. 70. 37 Police Review (21 August 1893), p. 401.

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38 HO 45/9665/A45080, Concession to Police Service of the County of the free use of postal telegraphs or at reduced charges. Refused, 1886; C.A. Williams, ‘Rotten boroughs?’, p. 160. 39 Open University Police Archive, Metropolitan Police Regulations 1899, p. 190. 40 Bunker, Rattle to Radio, pp. 75–86, 94. 41 Laybourn and Taylor, Policing in England and Wales, 1918–39, p. 55. 42 HO 45/24104, Teleprinter facilities 1930–1950, Letter from Chief Constable Rafter to Watch Committee, ‘Teleprinter and Telex System’, 16 September 1932. 43 HO 45/24104, Teleprinter facilities 1930–1950, Bucks Standing Joint Committee Teleprinter Sub-Committee, 2 January 1934. 44 R. W. Barton, Telex: A detailed exposition of the telex system of the British Post Office (London: Pitman, 1968), p. 2. 45 HO 45/24104, Teleprinter facilities 1930–1950, Letter from Receiver’s Office to Home Office, 16 March 1934. 46 HO 45/24104, Teleprinter facilities 1930–1950, Teleprinter service, London-Provinces, Memo to Kirwan, 20 June 1936. 47 Bunker, Rattle to radio, p. 77. 48 Ibid., pp. 100, 102. 49 HO 45/9766/B841N, New Scotland Yard. Telephones, 21 March 1904 ‘Receiver of Police’. 50 Bunker, Rattle to radio, p. 118–119. 51 Ibid., p. 104. 52 Ibid., p. 116–117. 53 HO 45/24104, Teleprinter facilities 1930–1950, ‘Summary of telephone calls frequently made by certain selected forces’. 54 HO 45/24104,Teleprinter facilities 1930–1950, Letter of 14 August 1933 to Mr Taylor [Post Office]. 55 For another example of this phenomenon, in the perhaps surprising location of the Irish border, see Jason Lane, ‘The development of Irish cross-border police co-operation, 1922–1999 (PhD dissertation, Queen’s University Belfast, 1999). 56 Unfortunately, this data did not include a comparable breakdown from the two very large forces in the sample, West Riding and Lancashire. HO 45/24104, Teleprinter facilities 1930–1950, ‘Messages between headquarters and divisions in county forces’. 57 H. Kenneth Birch, The history of policing in North Wales (Pwllhelli: Llygad Gwalch, 2008), pp. 258, 283. 58 MEPO 5/139, Police Telephone Box Scheme, ‘The “Public Safety” Signal Association’, 13 August 1887, letter from William Lee, Commissioner of Police of Boston. 59 MEPO 5/139, Police Telephone Box Scheme, ‘The “Public Safety” Signal Association’, 13 August 1887, p. 2.

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60 MEPO 5/139, Police Telephone Box Scheme, Memo ‘The Police Box System’, 15 July 1929, p. 5, 6. 61 Police Review, 15 (10 April 1893), p. 169. 62 MEPO 5/139, Police Telephone Box Scheme, letter by E.R.C. Bradford of 3 July 1901 (copy); Open University Police Archive, Metropolitan Police Regulations 1899, p. 694. 63 D. Grant, The thin blue line: The story of Glasgow City Police (London: John Long, 1973), pp. 49–50. 64 Bunker, Police box, p. 32. 65 Ibid, pp. 37–61. 66 Bunker, Rattle to radio, p. 150; Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, p. 127. 67 B. Beazley, Peelers to pandas: An illustrated history of the Leicester City Police (Derby: Breedon Books, 2001), pp. 130–131. 68 Klein, ‘Traffic, telephones and police boxes’, pp. 228–229. 69 Ibid., p. 228; B. Weinberger, The best police in the world: An oral history of British policing from the 1930s to the 1960s (Aldershot: Scolar, 1995), p. 35. 70 MEPO 5/139, Police telephone box systems: introduction of, 1928–31. 71 Klein, Invisible men, p. 67. 72 MEPO 5/139, Police telephone box systems: introduction of, 1928–31, ‘Buildings Committee, outline of proposed new scheme’, 5 April 1928, p. 3. 73 MEPO 4/53, Telephone beat books Lewisham, 1933. 74 MEPO 4/59, Constables’ Technical Examination, 1936, p. 18. 75 Laybourn and Taylor, Policing in England and Wales, 1918–39, p. 242. 76 MEPO 5/139, Police Telephone Box Scheme, Memo ‘The Police Box System’, 15 July 1929, p. 5. 77 MEPO 5/139, Police Telephone Box Scheme, press reports, newspaper cuttings, November 1929. The most sensationalist account appeared in The Times. ‘Police Telephone Boxes’, The Times (20 November 1929). 78 C.C.H. Moriarty, Police procedure and administration (London: Butterworth, 1950), p. 48; MEPO 4/166, Duty hints for constables and section sergeants 1910, p. 60. 79 Young, An inside job, p. 304. 80 A.A. Clarke, Country coppers: The story of the East Riding Police (Hornsea: Arton Books, 1993), p. 69. 81 HO 144/21423, Civil Defence: War organisation: report centres, first aid posts, service depots, communications, etc; appointment of Regional Commissioners, 1939–1940. 82 HO 186/1844, Communications, Region No 6: establishment of local communications committees; reports of meetings of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Communications Committee; activities of Bucks County Communications Committee; reports of meetings of Weymouth Communications Committee; reporting of interruptions to

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telecommunications system; use of broadcast relay system under emergency conditions; protection of wireless relay stations. 1939–1944. 83 HO 144/21423, Civil Defence Organisation, 1939, 1940, ‘Note on Present Policy’ K. Best, 19 January 1940. 84 P.A.J. Waddington, ‘Police (canteen) sub-culture: An appreciation’, British Journal of Criminology, 39:2 (1999), 287–309.

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6 The arrival of the control room 1919–1975

The mid-twentieth century saw another complete change in the way that policing was organised: the shift from a predominantly beat-based and relatively inflexible system to one in which radio allowed the police officer to be in constant touch with a control room – a place in which the location of elements of the force could be known and directed from minute to minute. Elements within police forces therefore became dirigible in real time, through the use of electronic communications technology. This chapter narrates the arrival of radio – a communications technology which promised great flexibility in controlling the police officer without reference to location. Telephones and telegraph promised instant communication at a distance between ‘indoor’ locations, but most police work takes place ‘outdoors’ and could only be revolutionised by wireless links. The key milestone described here is the arrival of 24-hour control over the deployment of police officers, which marked the arrival of ‘operational’ control into everyday policing. This development was accompanied by a greater role for publicity in policing, and technology was placed at the centre of the new image of policing. The adoption of radio-based control systems could have been in response to one of several challenges: from the ‘motor bandit’ and serious but rare crime; from re-structuring of the deep state to meet a new era of industrial unrest; or from the desire to run the everyday operation of policing more efficiently. The last-mentioned – everyday policing – is the most convincing. The radio was (and is) the way in which police officers keep in touch with their commanders and are directed accordingly.1 The utility of this technology was so obvious to all concerned to the extent that

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it sometimes appears that analysis is redundant. One aspect of this utility was the prospect of determining officers’ locations automatically: a prospect of ongoing interest to police chiefs. The adoption of police radio was influenced by the balance of power between central government and police chiefs, the role of private industry in promoting police technology, and perhaps most importantly by the impact of total war.2 The technical and operational legacy of the Great War was clearly apparent in the design of control rooms as well as in the personnel and technology of radio telegraphy.The Second World War was comparatively less important, but also fed into the adoption of radio telephony: neither outcome is surprising given the nature of the UK as a ‘warfare state’ at this time. Edgerton’s conceptualisation of the UK’s orientation between warfare and welfare receives further corroboration with the universal adoption of police personal radios in the late 1960s: a time when central government attempted to civilianise military technologies.3

Technology, society and the adoption of radio The existence or otherwise of a ‘security-industrial complex’ was one question posed by the critics of political policing in the 1970s: the appropriate analogy would be with Eisenhower’s warning about the ‘military-industrial complex’, wherein certain defence contractors would grow so powerful as to be able to lobby the government to adopt policies which would guarantee demand for their products. As Steve Wright put it: ‘The demand for new technologies of political control has led to a mushroom-like emergence of a policeindustrial complex and a new growth industry – internal security supplies.’4 It is worthwhile, therefore, to pose the question of how influential were private interests in the adoption of these new police technologies. The concrete issue is the extent to which developments in police institutions and their attendant technology were driven not by demand for capabilities but by profit-driven companies ‘pushing’ them. The process by which radio was adopted illustrates one way in which the relationship between technology and police forces shifted in the interwar period. In the UK, most police forces had not adopted the telegraph and telephone box at the point at which

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they became technically viable. Instead, the technology, especially that of the telephone box, was only adopted when a clear police requirement existed. With radio, on the other hand, the timetable of adoption was very closely dictated by the limits of affordable technology. Police leaders even displayed a conscious effort to invest in improving the performance of radio technology in order to make it effective. One obvious reason for this shift was the great utility of radio for policing: static call systems could never be as fast as radio at communicating with motor or foot patrols and this was felt by senior officers to be a defect which should be remedied.5 Other novel factors were also at play: notably, the First World War left a legacy of technology, technicians and technocrats, which between them made the adoption of radio much easier and gave it automatic supporters. Additionally, crimes and the means to repress them were being talked about in new ways: policing was responding to criticism of its legitimacy by being seen to embrace science and technology. Developments in radio technology were happening in the context of a number of well-reported police experiments with wireless telephony all over the world.6 In the USA in 1918, August Vollmer, the pioneer of professional and technocratic police science, installed radios in some of the cars of his Berkeley police force, since 1914 the world’s first all-motorised one.7 The nascent field of ‘police science’ also provided an intellectual environment for developments in communications. In 1938, one of Vollmer’s protégés, V.A. Leonard, published Police Communication Systems out of the Bureau of Public Administration at Berkeley, which Vollmer had persuaded the University of California to set up.8 This volume was a manual of technical and organisational development, which included exhaustive detail on the state of the art in radio communications and in addition described how they could be integrated into the day-to-day control of policing. It involved a Taylorist (scientific management) analysis of the problem of connecting a call for help to the arrival of a police officer, breaking down the various tasks involved and analysing how each could be performed at maximum efficiency.9 ‘Police science’ also had a political dimension, which was apparent on two levels. The first was the immediate circumstances of its birth, as part of the reaction by the Progressive movement in the USA to what they saw as corrupt practice in city policing.10 Re-casting policing as a science which could only be

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properly carried out by professionals – rather than as a trade suitable for run-of-the-mill political placemen – was a powerful argument for putting police authority in commission and thus out of the direct power of elected officials.11 The second level was the way that the concept was publicly deployed in the US and beyond. In the UK, technology was related to crime fighting in news stories and in police presentations, which asserted that a scientifically modern professional and proactive police was the best defence against new crimes born of urbanisation and anomie. As Jean-Marc Berlière has pointed out for France in the early part of the twentieth century: ‘The police and public authorities wanted the public to believe in a ‘science of policing’; the public also wanted to believe in it. Does this not have the makings of a myth?’12 This criticism can usefully be extended to the twentieth-century UK. The narrative of police science was matched against another: the supposed arrival of the aggressive and mobile criminal referred to as the ‘motor bandit’, who combined the use of stolen motor cars and guns to engage in daring robberies.‘Motor bandits’ were not entirely fictional: before the First World War, the French anarchist Bonnot Gang had pioneered the violent motorised getaway.13 In a period when access to motor vehicles became widespread, the corollary of the excitement engendered by the freedom to roam was a fear that this freedom would be used by criminals. After examining this concept, Alyson Brown has concluded that the fears derived from offenders’ new-found mobility, and especially of their propensity to violence, were ‘disproportionate to the threat actually posed’.14 Very little crime outside London involved cars, and within the capital the picture was of thefts from or of motor vehicles, not robberies using them.15 Nevertheless the ‘motor bandit’ was a powerful figure in public discourse. Radio arrived with the twentieth century as a predominantly military and state-centred technology.16 Long-distance point-topoint wireless transmission was enthusiastically taken up by the British military establishment before the First World War. In the first decade of the twentieth century, the Royal Navy developed an assemblage of radio and cable communication, and an accompanying doctrine of real-time intelligence collection, which enabled them to make the Admiralty an operational headquarters under a ‘Master Mind’ for the first time.17 After the war, long-distance radio

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was not developed by British police, although other European police forces (with more borders to police and hence greater need to communicate with neighbouring forces, and lacking Britain’s near-monopoly of cable routes) pursued it in this period.18 In the 1920s only Lancashire and the West Riding used long-distance radio operationally, to link stations which were not joined up to the force’s telephone system: the latter abandoned wireless when those stations were connected to landlines.19 Lancashire’s system was based around communication between fixed points, for use in emergencies, and their wireless vans only operated when stationary. In the mid-1920s the Home Office was unwilling to push for any kind of national police wireless system designed to connect forces: although it organised conferences of police chiefs in 1925 and 1926 to consider this point, the ensuing report played down the benefits of any such (costly) scheme.20 The British police also rebuffed attempts by foreign forces to involve them in comprehensive international schemes for police communication.21 In 1930, the Home Office and the Met agreed that there was no need to explore international police communication by wireless: there was little demand for urgent communication between headquarters. At the start of the 1920s, the Home Office and the Met had concluded that there were three potential roles for wireless. First, for communication between police headquarters and vehicles within a single police district. Second, for communication between a headquarters and out-stations, either in the absence of a telephone or as a back-up to one. Third, as a means of broadcasting urgent messages to a number of forces. They noted some disadvantages: capacity would be restricted by limits to the frequencies they could use; reception was not reliable under all atmospheric conditions; and eavesdropping would be possible thus confidential messages would need to be encoded, with a consequent loss of speed.22 The great expense of wireless communication meant that it was only worth using when a telephone connection was impossible. ‘Broadcasting’ services seemed attractive – showing the importance interwar police leaders attached to the timely dissemination of information at a national level – but would either be impractically expensive since they would require all stations to listen in all the time or, if they transmitted only at certain set listening times, they would lose their speed advantage over the telegraph. The still-spreading

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telephone network and the later teleprinter service met two of these operational requirements of the early 1920s: it was the first requirement – mobile communication – which was filled by wireless, and which received the most attention in the 1920s, in the shape of experimental installations designed to test and develop the technology in the hope of advancing it past the perceived ‘extremely limited’ operational potential it held in 1922.23 In the 1920s, nearly all of Britain’s experimental use of mobile police radio happened in London, with its far greater resources and government support and high demand for policing services. In the immediate post-war period, the first experimental use of radio by Scotland Yard was at the Derby at Epsom: a major public order event on the edge of the Metropolitan Police District. Radio was used to keep officers in the area in contact with their counterparts at Scotland Yard: performing essentially the same service that the fixed link from Hyde Park had provided for events there since the previous century. A mobile patrol service – the first ‘Flying Squad’ – began in 1920 and was equipped with radio in 1923.24 In 1925 the Met were operating two Flying Squad vans able to receive Morse only, as well as one wireless van which could transmit (when stationary) and receive (when mobile) Morse and voice.25 These tentative beginnings were, however, well publicised: an Evening News reporter took advantage of a trip in the wireless van to write a story about ‘Talking to the “Yard” from [a] Speeding Car’.26 During the interwar period the most influential re-organiser of British policing was the civil servant Arthur Dixon, who became Permanent Under-Secretary in the Home Office’s Police Department. He was committed to modernisation and efficiency in policing, using technology where appropriate, and personified the newly activist agenda of the Home Office (which had been given much more responsibility for the organisation of policing in 1919) which contrasted with its more passive role before 1914. External commercial interests – in the shape of the Marconi Company – also supported development. Marconi himself had played a similarly active role in the refinement of radio technology for use by civil and military vessels before the war.27 In 1923, a Marconi engineer, Harold Kenworthy, was seconded to the Metropolitan Police to assist in wireless development: he held this status for six years before being made part of the permanent

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staff of the force. Kenworthy joined the Receiver’s office where he worked as part of a small wireless team. The office of the Receiver of the Metropolitan Police was not under the Commissioner but reported direct to the Home Office, and had the power to equip and maintain the force. In the interwar period, the Receiver’s Engineering Branch grew quickly: by 1926 it was maintaining and operating over 180 vehicles for various purposes, and employing 80 drivers and 50 fitters.28 In 1922 the Marconi Company hosted (and the Daily Mail sponsored) a demonstration of wireless telephony for the Chief Constables’ Association.29 The company’s efforts to lend equipment to the Met in the 1920s were not themselves sufficient to ensure the large-scale adoption of radio: this demanded both the perception of a crisis, and the re-modelling of police institutions to enable its use.30 Through the 1920s the media and enthusiasts within the police were keen to play up the performance of mobile radio as well as its potential.31 This picture was overly optimistic: despite the demand for mobile radio, its delicate sets housed in unreliable vehicles were far from technologically mature: the Metropolitan Police engineer estimated in 1930 that the very best availability he could provide was 75%.32 When Dixon demanded copies of the Flying Squad’s actual call logs in 1925, he learned that they passed just four operational wireless messages each month, and concluded testily in an internal document that: Obviously the talk we sometimes see about chasing thieves by wireless and the importance of the Flying Squad being in touch with Scotland Yard is all twaddle. This does not mean that the vans are no use. They may well prove very useful in special contingencies of relatively rare occurrence.33

The Met and the Home Office were not a monolith; the latter’s interests in technological investment did not always coincide with those of the officers responsible for developing (and thus promoting) it. One ‘special contingency’ was the General Strike of 1926, which demonstrated the limited extent to which the use of wireless for counter-subversion was a leading sector for its general adoption.The head of Special Branch, Wyndham Childs, hurriedly bought longand short-wave radio receivers and direction-finding equipment

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from Marconi’s and put them to work in an attempt to detect putative seditious communication with the Soviet Union.34 His efforts were in vain, and although the Home Office eventually paid for the ‘stunt’ (they had granted him permission under the impression that the equipment had been lent) neither they nor the Metropolitan Police were prepared to fund an ongoing wireless monitoring service.35 The episode demonstrated that threats to national security, combined with manufacturers eager to offer a technical solution to them, could lead police to use innovative technology such as direction-finding vans but, in this case, the lack of an obvious operational requirement for core policing tasks meant that such expensive and dedicated technology – which had no ‘scalps’ to its credit – was not adopted permanently. Later the Metropolitan Police did become involved in radio monitoring for the Security Service (MI5), but this role was never integrated into the rest of their communications structure.36 There is a significant difference between a communications system available on demand for special occasions and one upon which the organisation relies permanently and continually.

The challenge of the dispersed public and the arrival of the control room As noted in the previous chapter, in the 1920s, police practices were under pressure from broader socio-economic developments. The British police service as a whole became increasingly preoccupied with the challenge to its traditional modes of operation – which largely involved preventative surveillance via foot patrols – that was presented by the increasing use of the motor car and the concomitant growth of low-density suburbs. More police needed to be detached to traffic patrol and enforcement duties, leading to strained relations with many middle-class motorists who were not happy in their new roles as the objects of police attention.37 As well as this, criminals threatened to move faster than police, not least because they could easily cross boundaries between local forces. In the words of one chief constable, before slum clearance ‘one knew with some certainty where to look for suspected persons in relatively circumscribed areas’.38 Now the combination of suburbs and the

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motor car had created ‘the travelling criminal’, while manpower was strained by shorter working hours for the police, and by the need to control traffic.39 In Nottingham in 1930, 126 constables (out of a total force of 306) were available for patrol at any one time: thus comprehensive beats would have to be 8¼ miles (three hours) long. Senior police officers looked to motorisation and faster communications as solutions to these problems.40 In November 1929, the central conference of chief constables decided to re-open the question of wireless, with the specific aim of setting up fast communications designed to stop criminals escaping in motor cars.41 One of the Inspectors of Constabulary, Major-General L.W. Atcherley, implicitly referred to this decision in his report of 1930, in which he wondered: to what extent patrol work can be relaxed with efficiency in a police system which professes a preventative object. It is a difficult problem, but at all events everything points to the practical use of mechanical transport and good communications if any solution is to be found consistently with considerations of economy. A single constable on foot patrol is obviously at a disadvantage for the purpose of dealing with car parties, and this situation has to be faced and met with proper provisions.42

He concluded that the solution lay in the use of cars combined with ‘telephone, and possibly wireless, communication’. The Flying Squad, part of Scotland Yard’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID), patrolled with two detectives per car, plus specialist drivers and wireless operators, and most of their business concerned looking out for stolen cars. In 1927, four more cars were added to the Met’s small fleet for ‘anti-bandit work’.43 Perhaps aware of Dixon’s doubts about their effectiveness, the organisation made sure its non-mechanised parts drummed up business for the mechanised ones: in March 1929, a police order was issued telling officers to report directly to Scotland Yard ‘any information leading them to suppose that persons with a motor car had committed a crime, to enable patrols to be warned by wireless’.44 Incoming messages were dealt with by a team of three or four officers manning the central office, in touch with the same number of vehicles on patrol.45 The Flying Squad used its total figure of arrests (176 in 1925, rising to 515 in 1929) to justify its use of wireless.

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In the early 1920s, Dixon had been in favour of experimenting with operational mobile control by radio. In 1925, he thought that the experiment had failed, but by 1931 he was back in favour of it. In 1930, he first led a review of the Metropolitan Police’s use of wireless technology, and later chaired a Home Office conference where provincial police could discuss the latest wireless developments. 46 Though he made reference to one-off serious crime of the ‘motor bandit’ kind, he was clear that radio could be best used for everyday operational control rather than during one-off events. Introducing a presentation to police chiefs from London and the provinces, he set as their priority the ‘admitted difficulty of ordinary police work, the maintenance of contact between headquarters and the police on duty, particularly mobile police’.47 Dixon urged those present to consider not merely the technical problems inherent in radio communication, but also the ‘organisation and methods of working’.‘Organisation and methods’ was the label for the Treasury’s attempt in the Second World War and post-war era to rationalise the British government’s procedures and institutions: they adopted the term only in the 1940s.48 Dixon was ready with grants for provincial police to carry out pioneering work, and with direct funding for the Met’s radio experiments. More generally, at this time the Home Office was increasingly inclined to favour capital-intensive solutions over labour-intensive ones: in a discussion over the proposed introduction of specialist traffic wardens to direct traffic, their position was that automatic signals would be a preferable alternative.49 It was desire for greater efficiency, and fear of the suburb rather than of revolution or the motor bandit, which impelled the generalised operational use of radio. In 1932 Dixon told the Metropolitan Police to go ahead with an expansion in the number of cars fitted with radio receivers, and to continue experimental use (described below) of personal radios.50 He soon made this policy change national. At the Home Office conference on ‘Wireless Telephony and Telegraphy’ in November 1932, at which 14 of the forces experimenting with wireless were represented, Dixon pronounced that the time had come to take stock of the various disparate experiments and arrive at plans for the future. He confirmed that his attention had shifted away from the immediate detection of important crime, towards ‘ordinary day to day work’.51 In addition, he proposed that forces co-operate in

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area wireless systems. Private companies remained keen to sell technology to police forces. In 1932, the Standard Telephone Company demonstrated in Bradford and lent a transmitter to Brighton, while the Marconi Company demonstrated to Oldham, Sheffield, and Doncaster, and both demonstrated to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Stockport’s system of the same year was made by Messrs Hollingdrake, who had also delivered an experimental system to Manchester and demonstrated them in Oldham and Bradford. 52 Police officers – sometimes specialist engineers, sometimes uniformed enthusiasts such as Bradford’s PC Thistlethwaite, who patented a new form of call-up signal and experimented with personal radios – also developed specialised radio gear.53 The experimental vans of the 1920s were not well integrated into the day-to-day operation of Scotland Yard: embedding wireless in police practice only became possible when institutions and practices were changed to accommodate it. The practice of centralised command and control on an operationally significant scale was first introduced in the Met by Lord Trenchard during his term as Commissioner between 1932 and 1935. Hugh Trenchard

6.1  A police officer places markers on a map table, mid-twentieth century Source:  Mary Evans image no 10425160

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made his name as Chief of the Air Staff in the First World War, and as the architect of the peacetime RAF in the early 1920s.54 In 1934 he pioneered the Area Wireless Scheme, which involved an ‘Information Room’ and an adjacent ‘Map Room’, the two together acting as a real-time operational headquarters in which the position of nearly one hundred radio-equipped cars was plotted on maps using coloured counters to indicate their status. The Met’s Information Room functioned as a ‘central organisation through which suitable information’ could be collated and disseminated.55 It was manned 24 hours a day by four telephone operators and a wireless operator, since ‘the very essence of the work of the Information Room is that all messages must be dealt with promptly on receipt.’56 The telephonists were constables, working under the immediate control of a CID sergeant, who was able to monitor and cut into their conversations with the public and patrols.57 An inspector on duty was available for consultation, and the Room was also connected to the rest of the Yard by telephone and pneumatic tube.58 The structures of power within the Met were hard-wired into Scotland Yard. In practice, this scheme converted Scotland Yard into a permanent operational headquarters, entirely bypassing the hierarchy of divisions and stations in the control of area cars. The control room was an example of the kind of ‘distributed cognition’ pioneered in the military general staffs of the nineteenth century.59 In the absence of the Sergeant-in-charge, the PCs were not trusted to exercise discretion over serious cases, but had to contact the duty Inspector before passing on any messages ‘involving the arrest or detention of persons’.60 The Met was utilising its constables not as independent agents but as cogs in a wheel whose job it was to apply some intelligence, but not too much, to their role. Trenchard himself, indeed, wondered whether or not civilian clerks could be employed in this role, but he became convinced that ‘police knowledge’ was necessary to perform it.61 Meanwhile, the main body of police needed to be trained in how to integrate mobile systems into their work, which was achieved through ‘precise instruction and visits to the Headquarters organisation’.62 What had been created was what Bruno Latour calls a ‘centre of calculation’: a place into which lots of information is concentrated, so it can be used to shape perceptions of the world outside, and inform decisions intended to change aspects of that world.63

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Military antecedents of police technology We have seen above that there was little direct influence on policing from the early British mastery of long-range radio for military purposes. This was not true of real-time mobile radio control. The ‘control room’ per se was developed in the UK by the organisations which pioneered ‘major advances in the surveillance capacities of the capitalist firm’ (Dandeker): the railway companies.64 In 1909, working from a modified version of control systems in use in the USA, a number of railway companies started to centralise control of train movements. Such practices were widespread by 1914 and thus became one of many advanced technologies adopted by the British Expeditionary Force (BEF)’s supply organisation.65 The BEF looked to the civil sector for the necessary expertise, and in April 1915 the innovator of the railway control room, Cecil Paget, was commissioned direct from the Midland Railway to head the BEF Railway Operating Division.66 The BEF’s own transport networks were thus developed on the principles of real-time central control, and these technologies were adopted by General Edward Ashmore, of the Royal Flying Corps, when in 1917 he was tasked with defending London against daylight air raids, which had proved politically (if not physically) devastating. Ashmore’s London Air Defence Area (LADA) was led from the Operations Room, a ‘control room’ (Ashmore used the phrase) in the Horse Guards building. The design addressed key inherent problems of a control room: the filtering of information, and its presentation to the operator.67 The procedures, internal arrangements and external linkages conflated with the individuals within the room to produce a single unit; a socio-technical system.68 LADA’s Operations Room had both physical and procedural elements: it contained large-scale gridded maps of south-eastern England, on which coloured counters could be placed to chart the positions of attacking bombers and defending fighters.69 An officer from Scotland Yard was also present in the Operations Room, in charge of communicating air raid warnings via police stations. Plans for the co-ordination were formulated at a meeting between Ashmore and Arthur Dixon, who was the Home Office representative to LADA.70 Among the distinguished visitors to the Operations Room in early 1918 was the Chief of the Air Staff, Major-General Trenchard.71

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The Met’s first radios were installed by veteran technical ratings who had learned their craft in the Royal Navy, itself a pioneer of wireless telecommunications.72 This is hardly surprising, given that the UK was (in Edgerton’s term) a ‘warfare state’, if anything over-disposed to apply technological solutions to the problems of government.73 Initial experiments in radio by the Met were led by Thomas Vessey, the Force Engineer, who had finished the war as a Major in the RAF. The essential structural elements of Trenchard’s Information Room had a clear origin in military practice in the LADA. Both used grid maps, coloured counters moved by plotters, a strict demarcation of tasks, centralisation of information, and a senior officer able to cut into his subordinates’ lines.74 In the 1930s, the input from air force experience was more than merely conceptual. Air Ministry staff lent their expertise to experimental police radio trials in both Glasgow and London in 1932, where Scotland Yard and RAF technicians collaborated on experiments involving voice receivers directly adapted from the systems used to communicate between aeroplanes and ground stations.75 Trenchard’s scheme was not the first British mobile wireless system: Nottingham’s had been in operation since 1930, set up with just one man per car, sending and receiving Morse through headphones and a key mounted on his steering wheel. The city was divided into nine areas, each with its car and, by 1932, 600 messages were sent per day, of which about 100 were operational.76 The Chief Constable, Athelstan Popkess, pointed to a decrease in crime statistics, and also the ‘moral[e] effect of the new system on travelling thieves’. In Nottingham, RAF influence was not crucial: Popkess relied for technical input on a local member of the Radio Society, and worked closely with him – a similar pattern to that in the Liverpool and Manchester forces, which both relied on the expertise of the same radio engineer.77 The Nottingham scheme, though, was not immune from ‘Air’ influence: Popkess’s training school for police radio operators was an exact replica (in terms of both wiring and curriculum) of the equivalent facilities at the RAF College in Cranwell, Lincolnshire. Popkess was very much a product of the First World War, and had had extensive experience as an army officer in East Africa and Ireland, as well as with the paramilitary Palestine Gendarmerie.78 He was also a promoter of the police use of technology in general (with Home Office support he established a pioneering forensic

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laboratory) and radio-equipped cars in particular, and he lectured on the subject in the 1930s and published an operational manual, Mechanised Police Patrol, in the 1950s.79 He expressed the view that policing needed to be more scientific, and one way that this could be achieved was through using wireless to place ‘tactical power’ in police hands.80 Although he disclaimed ‘militarisation’, his discourse was unapologetically militaristic: there is no difference, in principle, between the enemy of the State with a bayonet in his hand, and the enemy of the State with a jemmy in his hand. I suggest that the same principles, or Rules of War, apply in dealing with them both.81

Through the application of these same principles (‘Offensive action, Surprise, Concentration, Economy of Force, Co-operation, Information and Mobility’), he concluded that by using wireless control ‘a jumble of vehicles without any policy had been turned into a live entity that could not only be used as a tactical unit to fight crime, but could also fulfil more humdrum and domestic duties’.82 A genuinely mobile force demanded real-time wireless control. Popkess spoke on the concept of ‘Wireless Communication and the Mechanised Crime Patrol’ to the Scottish Police College in 1936. In the lecture, he named four categories of police vehicle: ‘Uniform Cruisers’, unmarked ‘Q cruisers’, ‘chasers’ and ‘odd job vehicles’. ‘Q’ is another military reference, to the ‘Q ships’ of the First World War, anti-submarine vessels disguised as innocuous merchant ships.The mode of their deployment was described in military terms as well: they were used ‘for what we call “putting down a barrage” for want of a better name’ in keeping several streets in an area under simultaneous observation.83 One of the most significant instrumental aspects of Popkess’s re-modelling of the force was the way that it had been transformed from a bureaucratic institution dominated by routine whose turnaround time for command decisions was measured in hours, to one which could be controlled tactically on the model of a military unit. Speaking generally, my Force is operated, as a unit in emergency or special circumstances, by an individual known as the Co-ordinating Officer located at Mechanised Division Headquarters. This individual is in direct communication by line with the wireless station, headquarters, Officers in charge of Foot Divisions, the CID and outstations (wireless).84

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The Mechanical Division’s Headquarters was, operationally, the HQ of the force as a whole. Popkess claimed that the new policies had made a big impact on car-based crime, but given the weakness of police statistics of reported crime, the objective effectiveness for crime fighting of his scheme is hard to judge.85 Elsewhere, the Home Office also funded Brighton’s City police to experiment with the first man-portable radio-telephones.86 As the 1930s progressed, other provincial police forces experimented with radio systems and greater or lesser degrees of attendant centralisation of control.87 The Chief Constable of Manchester, John Maxwell, returned from a visit to the US and Canada in 1936 to set up the city’s radio-equipped ‘Crime Information Room’ to communicate with (initially) a lone radio-equipped vehicle.88 Wireless schemes had their own propagation properties, which tended to cross over existing jurisdictional borders, and made co-ordination of frequencies between forces necessary. From 1935, Manchester Police developed a regional wireless scheme in collaboration with its adjoining county and borough forces; the propagation limits for radio waves were shaping the pattern of policing, over and above the old administrative boundaries.89 By 1938, the Home Office had developed a policy for regional wireless schemes and frequencies, and was attempting to apply it nationally.90 This required a degree of central control, especially over the independent urban forces, and it might be tempting to see Whitehall’s desire to amalgamate forces and centralise political control as being technologically determined, but in reality it had been settled policy since the immediate aftermath of the First World War.91

Mobile wireless In 1951, Popkess published a book-length manual on the topic Mechanised Police Patrol, which presented what he considered to be the essential features of his system. One of these was the necessity of publicity, so that the public would see themselves as a part of this system and call the police when necessary.92 The new technology was frequently framed as being a response to serious crime, especially from the so-called ‘motor bandit’.93 Thus, when the local Newcastle papers reported some successful radio experiments in

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1932, it was under the headline ‘New wireless net to trap bandit’.94 Bradford police experiments, conducted with much publicity in the same year, described highly exciting test messages which emphasised public service as well as law enforcement: a smash-and-grab raid, the news of a death, and a race to find a man who had mistaken poison for medicine.95 Although the official Home Office line was to play down the significance of wireless as a means to solve serious crime, the provincial forces who were anxious to use it, and the companies anxious to sell it to them, dramatised its potential in the interests of public support for their plans. Early successes of police radio were made much of by the press: for example, the Daily Mirror in 1934 trumpeted the Brighton triumph of a ‘pocket radio detective’ which ‘Gets its man fifteen minutes after a theft’: the use of ‘its’ rather than ‘his’ confirms that it is the radio itself which was cast as the detective, rather than the arresting officer. The article went on to list the forces already using radio, describe the near-term plans of the Met to expand its number of radio-equipped vehicles, and to predict the ubiquity of such technology.96 When the Information Room was set up, the Met encouraged members of the public to phone up and use it, on the basis that it would ‘facilitate the prevention of crime and the arrest of criminals, more particularly motor thieves, house-breakers, and smash-andgrab raiders’ provided only that the public rang Whitehall 1212 as soon as they saw a crime, or a person acting suspiciously.97 In effect, the police were appealing to the entire law-abiding public of London as the first line of surveillance. Public contact was solicited, systematised, and put at the heart of the police control system. As the Times put it in October of 1935: the telephone has given the private citizen a means of setting afoot a hue and cry faster and more certain than of another age. A voice that tells the police headquarters in London or Nottingham of a crime committed will set in motion in a minute or two an elaborate mechanism of detection and pursuit.98

In London, the Met’s policy was that the proper use of radio control required co-operation between police and public: the latter were informed by means of ‘suitable publicity in the press and broadcasts on the BBC’.99 The early activities of the Flying Squad had been represented to the public in ad hoc releases of information, but the

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systematic technological advances of the 1930s were represented to the public in a correspondingly systematic fashion. By 1936, two years after its creation, the number of messages the Information Room received had grown from 4,500 per month to 7,900, and six men were on duty at all times to ensure a prompt response.100 Technology has both an instrumental and a symbolic aspect, and the police use of radio technology remained symbolically prominent. In 1934, a police history intended for juveniles presented Nottingham police’s mechanisation experiments as one key example of police modernisation.101 Scotland Yard’s Information Room quickly became totemic as a symbol of the modernity and technical competence of London’s police. When in 1951 the boys’ comic Eagle carried a six-part factual series on the police of London, one episode was devoted to the Information Room, under the title ‘Fighting crime with 999’. It featured the work of the ‘team of alert cops’ who manned the telephones and radio, and showed how the information room was connected to 180 police stations, as well as to the rest of Scotland Yard via pneumatic tube.102

Personal radio Even before mobile wireless systems had been implemented successfully in vehicles, British police were drawn to the ability of wireless to communicate with officers on foot patrol. From 1930, Wigan police began experimenting with a pocket radio telephone receiver made by the police engineer, which could cover the whole borough, but they felt the lack of a call-up device. If the police officer was focused entirely on the communications network, he could not perform his role. Hence, one key enabling technology was an alert signal – a light or a sound signal which was intended to catch the officer’s attention.103 Following initial experiments in 1930 with a receiver fitted into a helmet, Brighton Police experimented with a pocket device, made by the Wireless Telephone Company, which did have a call-up buzzer.104 The Met’s engineers tested out the Brighton personal radio in 1931, but found it fragile and unreliable. At this time, nobody was envisaging two-way personal radios, but by the summer of 1932, the Home Office could confidently inform the Post Office that they were ‘certain that before long the

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use of pocket wireless sets will become a definite feature of police practice’.105 Reliable ‘walkie-talkies’ were developed during the Second World War, and after it, but they were too heavy for use on the beat. In the 1950s, police chiefs and their supporters saw the portable personal radio as the single most useful new technological advance that they could deliver. Enthusiasm was sometimes hyperbolic, as expressed in the Commons by Philip Holland MP, who urged the Met to adopt a paging system which would be ‘the greatest advance in policing effectiveness since his right hon. friend’s illustrious predecessor, Sir Robert Peel, first put the “bobby” on the beat’.106 Again, Nottingham under Popkess took the lead; he proclaimed of an experimental system in 1959 that it would revolutionise foot policing, allowing the man on the beat – hitherto ‘lost to us’ in between telephone reports – to be called up at any time.107 Chief Constables were keen to equip their men with personal radios, and slow to listen to practical objections concerning the propagation properties of available frequencies, robustness and convenience of the equipment, and the capacity of the chosen suppliers to manufacture the required number of sets. One case in point was Lancashire, which, under the control of another self-promoting Chief Constable, Eric St. Johnston, developed a workable VHF personal radio set, in-house, but was unable to find a manufacturer able to produce enough to make it ubiquitous.108 Police enthusiasm for the technology ran ahead of its capacities: as a government committee put it in 1967, ‘operational demand for them became apparent before the electronics industry had produced a viable solution’.109 The Home Office was the conduit for technical caution, the HMIC report for the year ended 1962 noting that ‘the plan to provide two-way pocket wireless sets has been delayed pending further development work’, while a year later they described progress as ‘disappointingly slow’. By 1964 the report was acknowledging criticism from police over delays in supplying radios, calling it ‘not altogether justified however much it may be regretted’.110 On taking over as Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins made radio equipment a top priority for policing: additional resources for this were the first thing he asked for in an early memo to the Chancellor.111 Jenkins’ intervention in 1966 was based on a view expressed within the Home Office that there was a perceived ‘crime wave’ needing

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to be tackled, both in itself and in order to see off ‘a real danger of a generally illiberal attitude on penological matters growing up’, which could only be prevented by equipping the police with the best possible tools for their job.112 It is hard to know whether the paper in which these words appear was written by Jenkins’ civil servants in order to link their own modernising agenda with his perceived liberalising one, or if it accurately reflected his thinking. In either case, the technocratic allure of scientific policing was being drawn upon. It can be seen as part of the general process which Edgerton has identified as the end of the classic British ‘warfare state’, as the share of national income spent on welfare exceeded that spent on warfare for the first time, and Wilson’s government attempted to re-orient the technologies and institutions which had supplied the war ministries towards civilian needs.113 His intervention also came at an opportune point: the problems of reliability and production volume which had hampered adoption in the past were being dealt with. Intervention was also an attempt to solve the problem of standardisation by meeting police authorities’ demands for radios before they equipped themselves with their own incompatible systems. Jenkins saw the acquisition of radios as a solution to the problem of falling police morale, and his plan was to order the largest possible number – one thousand in 1966–67 and five thousand in the next financial year. Together with sets purchased outside the Home Office scheme, this would lead to a total of 13,000 available sets by the end of 1968. The desire for more technological policing could not easily be satisfied, though, and press attention tended to focus on spectacular technologies of the future, even to the exclusion of those coming into service. Thus in 1966 the police minister’s announcement that the personal radio was the most significant new piece of police equipment, and that numbers would treble by 1968, was overshadowed by her mention of helicopters and infra-red cameras.114 Despite the false starts of the 1960s, by 1975 every UK police officer had a personal radio, and the dynamics of their interaction with the public and between constables and their own supervisors were thus very different from when they were essentially on the beat on their own.115 The individual officer’s gain was the responsive public servant’s loss: the impact of process whereby American police equipped themselves with cars and radios was summed up thus:

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The police, thus equipped, were able to move of [sic] the sidewalks and onto the streets. They were given the advantages of mobility, command and control, and flexibility. However, these benefits were at least partially offset by the loss of personal contact with the citizenry and perhaps even played a significant role in the diminution of the concept of the neighbourhood.116

The cybernetic system created by the mechanisation of control is usually limited to the positioning of police officers: ‘dispatching’. It is this which allows them to subvert it, notably by failing to follow orders to notify the control centre when an incident finishes, which would make them available for dispatch to another.117 In everyday uses, central control enables real-time dispatching, but does not necessarily deliver supervision. For many officers, integration into closer teams with their colleagues appears to have been ‘welcomed as providing improved efficiency and job satisfaction for the police’.118 On the other hand, the surveillance and control of the way that police officers’ time is allocated has led to resentment over de-skilling and over-supervision, sometimes even leading to deliberate vandalism of communications equipment.119

Other communications developments and their significance During the Second World War, police officers had become net exporters rather than importers of technology within government: Dixon led the creation of the Home Office’s emergency institutions, while its communications chief, the naval veteran Commander Kenneth Best (who had been appointed to the Met by Trenchard), was in 1938 moved by Dixon to manage communications for the Air Raid Precautions organisation.120 During the war, the Home Office accelerated the implementation of police mobile wireless systems covering all forces in one area. However, although post-war police did not inherit the Civil Defence network itself, wartime saw them establish their own teleprinter networks: by 1946 these linked all the Met’s divisions, and the decision was taken to extend them to all other stations.121 After the end of the war, a renewed difficulty in recruiting manpower led to an increase in the desire to substitute capital for

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labour in policing. Various systems of ‘unit beat’ policing were developed, in which teams composed of police in vehicles and on foot worked together (often with another officer in the specialist role of ‘collator’ of information) to police a defined area.122 During the 1950s and 1960s, centrally-controlled radio-equipped police cars increasingly supplemented and in a few cases supplanted the tactic of foot patrol.123 In the late 1940s, the mobile telegraphy of the 1930s was replaced by two-way wireless telephony, which drew on the technical heritage of the Second World War.124 Although the move towards more responsive mobile policing was represented at the time by senior officers such as Eric St. Johnston as the apotheosis of professionalisation, it quickly became a key part of a critique about militarisation, on the basis that it had divorced the police from contact with the public which they served.125 This critique was present at the start of the mechanisation process. In his part of the 1938 report, HMIC Gordon Halland wrote of his unease that too many men had been shifted from beat roles to specialist ones, including mobile units and answering telephone calls from the public, thus diluting the local knowledge and the contact with the public enjoyed by the remaining beat officers, and risking a shift from ‘the original basis of our police organisation more in the direction of that of a fire brigade’.126 He went on to appeal for vigilance in the use of modern technology, balancing its adoption against contact with the public, so as ‘not to be entangled in a vicious circle and create greater opportunities for crime while at the same time steadily improving an expensive machinery for dealing with offences when committed’. Hence although he welcomed mechanisation in the abstract, his report concentrated its detail on measures designed to increase the overall manpower available to the police service. The problem of supervision remained. The first generation of control rooms relied on the officers in vehicles accurately reporting their positions (and their ‘state’ – meaning whether available for dispatch or not) verbally. As well as relying on the honesty of the dispersed officers, this generated a lot of radio traffic which set a limit either to the frequency of status reports or to the number of vehicles which could be controlled at any one time. Hence, it is not surprising that police leaders were keen to develop a system which solved these problems.127 The first step was to allow digital reporting of manual location and ‘state’ data, which could be fed

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in to control rooms in a way which did not impede the dispatching. The second was to generate location data automatically, which would thus track all vehicles and make it impossible for officers to lie about their locations. The automation of ‘state’ data, including whether the vehicle had serviceability problems, and whether or not the crew were ready to be dispatched to a new job, was far more difficult and continued to rely on manual reporting: thus it remained one of the conduits for ‘friction’ in the control system. Once semi-automatic systems to allow digital transmission of local data became available in the 1960s, Chief Constables, organised in the ACPO Communications Committee, recognised their requirement for these devices and were keen to evaluate them.128 They remained in the gestation stage in the early 1970s, when they were the subject of sustained analysis by the Home Office’s Directorate of Telecommunications, including visits to Germany and the USA to evaluate systems in use there.129 PEDEX was the personal equivalent: a Home Office technical experiment in the early 1970s, designed to test the limits of data transmission with the police officer on the beat.130 Its initial specification dealt only with data transmission from the mobile to the base station; from officers to their headquarters. The data was an identifying number and a code relaying the user’s position (which had to be manually entered from a map). Thus, the priority was finding out the whereabouts of police, not (yet) passing them information.131 By the late 1970s, the Home Office’s Directorate of Telecommunications were able to offer ‘Resource Availability Systems’ to forces, which could display the location and status of vehicles and officers.132 As well as vehicle location, the centralised command structure put in place in the 1930s became the site for the introduction of other new technologies such as Closed Circuit Television (CCTV). The configuration of CCTV – remotely-controlled cameras, cable links, and monitors – was available from the late 1950s, but it took institutions time to find operational requirements it could meet. The Met experimented with it for surveillance in Trafalgar Square during public events in 1963, but found no compelling reason to pay the high prices demanded by the Post Office to lay cables. In 1964, Liverpool Police made much of their use of CCTV cameras as part of ‘Operation Commando’, designed to combat car crime in the city centre: the Home Office considered that the accompanying

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deployment of scores of plain-clothes officers was probably the more important factor. The symbolic effect of CCTV as a totem of police power was already clear, and when the Met deliberately encouraged rumours about a non-existent hidden camera in an effort to deter crime in Hatton Garden, they showed that they were using the technology as an outdoor panopticon: a system designed to change behaviour because the subjects were uncertain if they were being watched or not.133 By 1967 the Met decided to try a systematic experiment with four cameras in order to gauge the extent to which cameras – first covert and then overt – could reduce crime in an area. This experiment was truncated when a more urgent (and permanent) operational requirement arrived. In the summer of 1968, worried about a repeat of the disorder outside the US Embassy which had happened in March at a demonstration against the Vietnam War, the Met installed their first permanent open-street closed circuit TV system in time for an October demonstration feeding four monitors and a video recorder in the Information Room itself, as well as a repeater screen located in the office of the Home Secretary, James Callaghan.134 The old bureaucratic structure – wherein the feedback loops in police command and control got slower at the top of the hierarchy – had been replaced by one in which those at the top could be instantly apprised of the success or failure of the entire chain of command under them. CCTV, like radio (and the use of aircraft), was added to operational control for set-piece public order policing operations, for which maintaining control was a political imperative.135 In this case, as with the installation of the telegraph in the nineteenth century, political policing acted as a ‘leading sector’. For these tasks, the expense necessitated by new technology was justified by the immediate priority, and obviated by the absence of a requirement for expensive continuous use. It was not the only such sector, though: the desire to control the flow of traffic on motorways and through London’s arterial roads also independently led to the adoption of centralised CCTV technology.136 Radios and the equally important control infrastructures associated with them gave police a completely new set of operational orientations. The significance of centralised control is obvious when we look at the changes that it enables in the relationships between the police organisation as a whole and the social world in

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which it operates. To use the terms defined by Bruno Latour, the Metropolitan Police Information Room and its associated communication structure provided a ‘centre of calculation’, enabling ‘action at a distance’ to be authorised, controlled and monitored. It performed a key enabling function for bureaucracy in that it reduced the complexity of outside developments to ‘such a scale that a few men and women can dominate them by sight’.137 This dominating gaze looked outwards to the world at large, receiving and responding to human and cybernetic inputs, but it also looked and responded within the organisation, and in the first instance it was as likely to be primarily prompted by internal considerations as by the desire to better control the world outside. We can also draw some conclusions about features of the adoption of communications technology. The first is that at no time in this period was technology successfully ‘pushed’ to police on any significant scale. Marconi was a willing partner in the 1920s, but it was the Metropolitan Police, largely backed by the Home Office, who were most keen to develop workable mobile wireless. In the 1960s, police forces again used in-house resources to design, and in some cases even build, their own personal radios, resisting pressure from central government to wait until better technology was ready: clearly the ‘pull’ from the buyer was at least as significant as any potential ‘push’ from the seller. More important was the military legacy, which had a highly significant impact on the adoption of innovative mobile control systems in the interwar period: this is an example of one of the ways that the technology of the inward-facing British state was derived from its experience as a warfare state. But this did not make the British police any more likely to build their communications infrastructure around counter-subversion alone. Indeed, the orientation of pioneering control room technology was towards the solution of a largely ‘civil’ issue: how to respond to the policing challenges delivered by a more mobile public more likely to live in dispersed suburbs. The creation of this infrastructure also allowed more efficient political policing (as in the case of the arrival of CCTV) but it was not primarily designed for such a task. Radio and other communications technologies ‘out of doors’ offer a number of different models of innovation. Police inherited a technical heritage from the First World War which they put to work to improve their operational efficiency and their public image.

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Significant effort was expended by police (chiefly in London) and private industry in order to perfect this technology for everyday police purposes. Successfully harnessing radio and telephone together into a system of responsive dispatch created a new policing revolution, in that elements of the organisation became dirigible in real time from a central control room. Vehicle radio changed to telephony after the Second World War but, despite the considerable advances in communications technology this conflict fostered, it took the peacetime development of the transistor to make the personal radio practical. This last step was crucial in that it extended the ability to dispatch in real time to all police officers.

Notes   1 S. Ackroyd et al., New technology and practical police work:The social context of technical innovation (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1992), p. 72.   2 Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, p. 106.   3 Edgerton, Warfare state, p. 230.   4 Steve Wright, ‘New police technologies: An exploration of the social implications and unforeseen impacts of some recent developments’, Journal of Peace Research, 15:4 (1978), p. 313.    5 HO 45/15641,Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless telephony and telegraph-use by police’, ‘City of Bradford Police Radio Experiments’.    6 ‘Aids for Paris Police’, The Times (11 October 1927), p. 13; A. Vollmer, ‘Aims and ideals of the police’, Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, 13:2 (1922), 253; E.W. Puttkammer, ‘Recent improvements in the Chicago Police Department’, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 23:4 (1932), 710; Bunker, Rattle to radio, pp. 162, 169; R.F. Pocock, The early British radio industry (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), pp. 88–91.   7 N. Douthit, ‘August Vollmer, Berkeley’s first Chief of Police, and the emergence of police professionalism’, California Historical Quarterly, 54:2 (1975), 108.   8 V.A. Leonard, Police communication systems (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1938).   9 Ibid., pp. 157–171.   10 Douthit, ‘August Vollmer’, p. 102.  11 Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, pp. 122–124.   12 Jean-Marc Berlière, ‘The professionalisation of the police under the Third Republic in France, 1875–1914’, in C. Emsley and B. Weinberger (eds),

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Policing Western Europe: Politics, professionalism, and public order, 1850–1940 (London: Greenwood, 1991), 36–54, p. 49.   13 Richard Parry, The Bonnot Gang: The story of the French illegalists (London: Rebel, 1986).  14 Alyson Brown, ‘Crime, criminal mobility and serial offenders in early twentieth-century Britain’, Contemporary British History, 25:4 (2011), 564.   15 Laybourn and Taylor, Policing in England and Wales, p. 199.  16 Pocock, Early British radio industry, p. 168–172.  17 Nicholas A. Lambert, ‘Strategic command and control for maneuver warfare: Creation of the Royal Navy’s “War Room” System, 1905–1915’, Journal of Military History, 69:2 (2005), 378.   18 Priya Satia, ‘War, wireless, and empire: Marconi and the British warfare state, 1896–1903’, Technology and Culture, 51:4 (2010), 829–853.   19 HO 45/15641,Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless Telephony and Telegraph-use by police’, Wireless Equipment: notes of conference held at the Home Office on 29 April 1930, p. 2; ditto ‘Police wireless:-Wavelengths’, ‘Police sending stations, 29 May 1929.  20 HO 45/15641, Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless Telegraphy, possible use by police’, Notes of conference held at the Home Office on 29 October 1925; Notes of conference held at the Home Office on 25 February 1926.   21 HO 45/15641,Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless Telephony and Telegraph-use by police’, ‘International Police Wireless Wave: proposed conference’, Dixon to Phillips, 28 August 1929.   22 HO 45/15641,Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless telephony and telegraph-use by police’, Notes of conference held at the Home Office on 25 November 1932, p. 2.  23 HO 45/15641, Police: Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921– 1934, ‘Wireless telegraphy and telephony, use of by British Police’, Memorandum to Swiss Legation, 17 October 1922.  24 The Times (28 May 1924), p. 11; Bunker, Rattle to radio, pp. vii, 169–173.  25 HO 45/15641, Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Met Police Wireless Van’, Letter from Moylan to Dixon (10 December 1925).  26 Evening News (19 January 1925).  27 Pocock, Early British radio industry, pp. 131–133.   28 MEPO 5/300, Organisation of Engineering Branch 1920–1939, memo 18 August 1926.  29 The Times (3 June 1922), p. 5.  30 Bunker, Rattle to radio, p. 162.  31 The Times, ‘Traffic control by wireless’ (7 June 1923), p. 14; The Times, ‘Wireless and crime’, (8 January 1925), p. 9; Daily Express, ‘Wireless watch on crime’ (23 August 1929), p. 1.   32 HO 45/15641,Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless Telephony and Telegraph-use by police’, Wireless Equipment: notes of

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conference held at the Home Office on 31 January, and 11 February, 1930, Major Vitty to conference, p. 3.  33 HO 45/15641, Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Met Police Wireless van. Memorandum as to the use which has been made of the van.’ Minute of 19 December 1925.   34 HO 45/15641, Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, Letter from Moylan (Receiver) to Newsam (HO) 19 October 1926.   35 HO 45/15641, Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, Minute of 27 October 1926.  36 Bunker Rattle to radio, p. 199.  37 C. Emsley, ‘“Mother, what did policemen do when there weren’t any motors?” The law, police and the regulation of motor traffic in England, 1900–1939’, Historical Journal, 36 (1993), 357–382; P. Lawrence and P. Donovan, ‘Road traffic offending and an inner-London Magistrates’ Court (1913–1963)’, Crime, History and Societies, 12:2 (2008), 119–140.   38 A. Popkess, ‘Wireless communication and the mechanised crime patrol’, in W.B.R. Morren (ed.) Advanced lectures to senior police officers in Scotland (Leith: William Nimmo, 1936), p. 186.   39 Martin and Wilson, Police: A study in manpower, p. 78.   40 F.E. Robinson, ‘The use of wireless telegraphy and telephony for police purposes’, Police Journal, 3 (1930), 226–234; J.H. Harker, ‘The invisible arm’, Police Journal, 4 (1931), 590–597.   41 HO 45/15641,Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless Telephony and Telegraph-use by police’, Wireless Equipment: notes of conference held at the Home Office on 31 January 1930 and 11 February 1930, p. 4.  42 Reports of His Majesty’s Inspectors of Constabulary for the year ended 29th September, 1931 (Counties and Boroughs), PP 1931–32 (36), vol. XII 639, p. 11.   43 HO 45/15641,Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless Telephony and Telegraph-use by police’, Wireless Equipment: notes of conference held at the Home Office on 29 April 1930; ‘Fleet of cars, etc., for “Anti-bandit” work:-Commissioner’s proposal’, paper of 12 October 1927.   44 HO 45/15641,Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless Telephony and Telegraph-use by police’, Wireless Equipment: notes of conference held at the Home Office on 31 January, and 11 February 1930, p. 3.   45 HO 45/15641,Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless Telephony and Telegraph-use by police’, Wireless Equipment: notes of conference held at the Home Office on 31 January, and 11 February 1930, p. 7.   46 HO 45/15641,Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless Telephony and Telegraph-use by police’, Wireless Equipment: notes of

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conference held at the Home Office on 31 January, and 11 February, 1930; Notes of conference held at the Home Office on 29 April 1930.  47 Ibid. Notes of conference held at the Home Office on 31 January, and 11 February 1930, pp. 1–2.   48 The Treasury’s adoption of this role pre-dated its adoption of the phrase. Agar, Government machine, p. 163.   49 Laybourn and Taylor, Policing in England and Wales, p. 148.   50 HO 45/15641,Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless Telephony and Telegraph-use by police’, Memo to Secretary of State, 9 September 1932.   51 HO 45/15641,Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless Telephony and Telegraph-use by police’: notes of conference held at the Home Office on 25 November 1932, pp. 1, 3.   52 HO 45/15641,Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless Telephony and Telegraph-use by police’: notes of conference held at the Home Office on 25 November, 1932; letter Johnson to Rawson (CC Bradford), 2 August 1932.   53 HO 45/15641,Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless Telephony and Telegraph-use by police’, letter from CC Rawson (Bradford) to Home Office, 17 July 1932; City of Bradford Police Radio Experiments 20 June 1932; ‘The Use of Wireless’ Police Review, 8 April 1932.  54 James, The Paladins, pp. 80–84; A. Boyle, Trenchard (London: Collins, 1962), p. 362.  55 MEPO 2/2507, ‘Palestine police and wireless’, Letter of Metropolitan Police secretary in answer to Palestine Police query, 16 December 1938; MEPO 2/5368, ‘Staff required for Operation, Map, and Information Rooms’, Commissioner to Home Office, 11 May 1934.  56 MEPO 2/5368, ‘“D” Department: staff of Information, Map and Operations Room’, Commissioner to Home Office, 27 January 1936.   57 MEPO 2/5368, Minute from Chief Inspector, D.1 branch, 23 February 1935; Bunker, Rattle to radio, p. 198.  58 Ibid., p. 77.  59 Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, p. 87; H. Artman and C. Garbis, ‘Situation awareness as distributed cognition’.   60 MEPO 2/5368, Memo to Supt, Communications Dept, 17 June 1936.  61 MEPO 2/5368, Minute from Commissioner Trenchard, 1 February 1935.  62 MEPO 2/2507, Palestine police and wireless, Letter from HowgraveGraham, 16 December 1938.  63 Latour, Science in action, pp. 232–233.  64 Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, pp. 57, 168–169.   65 ‘Train control.What it achieves, a means to efficient operation’, The Times, 15 August 1921, p. 14; ‘New department for controlling train working on the

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Midland’, Railway Magazine, (May 1907), p. 430; ‘The Midland’s improvements in traffic working’, Railway Magazine (February 1909), pp. 164–165; The Railway Engineer, ‘Notes [‘Mr Cecil W. Paget’]’, 28:328 (1907), 129; The Railway Engineer, ‘Train dispatching by telephone’, 29:345 (October 1908), 316; Burtt, Control on the railways, pp. 94–119; ‘Traffic control by telephone on the Great Western Railway’, Railway Magazine (April 1910), p. 340.   66 E.A. Pratt, British railways and the Great War: Organisation, efforts, difficulties and achievements (London: Selwyn and Blount, 1921) vol. 2, p. 631; H.A.M. Henniker, Transportation on the Western Front, 1914–1918 [History of the Great War] (London: HMSO, 1937), p. 168.   67 C. Kelly, Manual and automatic control: A theory of manual control and its application to manual and to automatic systems (New York: Wiley 1968), p. 77.   68 Artman and Garbis, ‘Situation awareness as distributed cognition’.   69 Imperial War Museum Archive 02/37/1, ‘Papers of Major-General E.B. Ashmore’, Ashmore Diary, 9 May 1918; E.B. Ashmore, Air defence (London: Longmans & Co., 1929), pp. 92–94; Ashmore Diary: ‘information system’, 13 August 1918; inspections: 4 March 1918, 14 May 1918, 1 July 1918, 10 September 1918; feedback: 22 August 1917, 18 December 1917, 19 May 1918, 22 September 1918; detail of filtering: 2 September 1918, 11 September 1918; 17 September 1918.  70 Ibid., 27 August 1917.  71 Ibid., 15 February 1918.  72 Pocock, Early British radio industry; Bunker, Rattle to radio, p. 162; HO 45/15641, Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless Telephony and Telegraph-use by police’, Wireless Equipment: notes of conference held at the Home Office on 31 January, and 11 February 1930, p. 4.   73 D. Edgerton, England and the Aeroplane: An essay on a militant and technological nation (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), p. xiv; D. Edgerton, Warfare state, p. 13.  74 E.B. Ashmore, ‘Anti-aircraft defence’, Royal United Service Institution Journal, 72 (1927), 10; M. Smith, British air strategy between the wars (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 73, 190; J. Terraine, White heat:The new warfare 1914–18 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1982), pp. 270–271.  75 The Times (6 January 1934), p. 12; The Times (26 January 1933), p. 7.   76 HO 45/15641,Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless Telephony and Telegraph-use by police’: notes of conference held at the Home Office on 25 November 1932, p. 2.   77 Laybourn and Taylor, Policing in England and Wales, p. 195; O.B. Kellett, ‘Forty years on: The history of the Directorate of Telecommunications and the formation of the Home Office Regional Wireless Service’, Intercom, 13 (1979), p. 3.   78 HO 45/24711, Police, ‘Athelstan Popkess Curriculum Vitae’, November 1930.

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 79 A. Popkess, ‘Pursuit by science’, Police Journal, 8 (1935), 119–214; A. Popkess, ‘Wireless’; A. Popkess, Mechanised police patrol (London: Police Journal, n.d. [1951]).   80 Popkess, ‘Wireless communication and the mechanised crime patrol’.  81 Popkess, ‘Wireless communication and the mechanised crime patrol’, p. 185.  82 Ibid., p. 188.  83 Ibid.   84 Ibid., p. 198.   85 H. Taylor, ‘Forging the job: A crisis of ‘modernisation’ or redundancy for the police in England and Wales, 1900–39’, British Journal of Criminology, 39 (1998), 113–135, although see R.M. Morris, ‘“Lies, damned lies, and criminal statistics”: Reinterpreting the criminal statistics in England and Wales’, Crime, History & Societies, 5:1 (2001), 111–127.  86 The Times (1 June 1933), p. 4; The Times (14 June 1935), p. 9.  87 H. Irvine, The diced cap: The story of Aberdeen City Police (Aberdeen Corporation, Aberdeen 1972), p. 97.   88 Laybourn and Taylor, Policing in England and Wales, pp. 92–93.  89 Ibid., p. 195.  90 Critchley, History of police in England and Wales, p. 212.   91 C.A. Williams, ‘Britain’s police forces: Forever removed from democratic control?’ in History and Policy (1 December 2003). www.historyandpolicy. org/archive/policy-paper-16.html.   92 Popkess, ‘Mechanised police patrol’, p. 105.   93 Laybourn and Taylor, Policing in England and Wales, p. 186–188.  94 North Mail and Newcastle Chronicle (19 November 1932).  95 Yorkshire Observer (14 July 1932); Leeds Mercury (14 July 1932).   96 ‘Pocket radio detective’, Daily Mirror, 18 January 1934, p. 7.  97 The Times (25 May 1934), p. 14.   98 ‘The wireless hue and cry’ leader, The Times (11 October 1935), p. 18.  99 MEPO 2/2507, Palestine police and wireless, Letter from HowgraveGraham, 16 December 1938. 100 MEPO 2/5368, Commissioner to Home Office, 27 January 1936; Bunker, Rattle to radio, pp. 205–208. 101 A. Solmes, The English policeman, 871–1935 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1935), pp. 216–217. 102 Eagle (26 October 1951). 103 HO 45/15641,Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless Telephony and Telegraph-use by police’, ‘City of Bradford Police Radio Experiments’. 104 HO 45/15641, Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless Telephony and Telegraph-use by police’,‘Inspection of the Police Constable’s Wireless Receiver at Brighton’, Memorandum by G.A.Wootton, 24 October 1930; ‘The tests on the Dean pocket wireless set ...’, 2 December 1931.

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105 HO 45/15641,Wireless equipment of police forces. 1921–1934, ‘Wireless Telephony and Telegraph-use by police’: notes of conference held at the Home Office on 25 November, 1932, p. 4; Letter to Phillips, 24 August 1932. 106 Hansard, HC Debate 22 June 1961, vol. 642, col. 1652. 107 ‘Radio in tunic pocket: Calling constable on his beat’, Manchester Guardian (7 January 1959), p. 1. 108 ‘Make-do-and-mend in radio communications: Difference between police forces’, Guardian (21 February 1962), p. 15; E. St. Johnston, One policeman’s story (Chichester: Barry Rose, 1978), p. 167. 109 Home Office, Police manpower, equipment and efficiency (London: HMSO 1967), p. 89. 110 Report of Her Majesty’s chief inspector of Constabulary for the year 1964, PP 1964–65 (251), vol. XXI 221, p. 65. 111 HO 287/410, Policy on pocket radio sets, draft memo to James Callaghan, 12 January 1966. 112 HO 287/410, Policy on pocket radio sets, ‘Draft Paper for the note by the Home Secretary Police Pocket Wireless Sets’, n.d. [1966]. 113 Edgerton, Warfare state, p. 230. 114 ‘PCs to keep an infra-red eye on crime’, Daily Mirror (15 September 1966), p. 21. 115 ‘Why so many police fail to stay’, The Times (4 February 1965), p. 13; S. Holdaway, ‘Changes in urban policing’, British Journal of Sociology, 28:2 (1977), 128. 116 C.P. McDowell, ‘The police as victims of their own misconceptions’, Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science, 62: 6 (1971), 434. For Britain in the 1970s, see Holdaway, ‘Changes in urban policing’, p. 126; a similar process in a historical context is also visible in E.J. Watts, ‘Police response to crime and disorder in twentieth-century St. Louis’, The Journal of American History, 70:2 (1983), 340–358. 117 Ackroyd, New technology, p. 85. 118 Emsley, English police, p. 176. 119 R. Ericson and K. Haggerty, Policing the risk society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 38; Ackroyd, ‘New technology’, pp. 83–85. 120 HO 186/1844, Establishment of local communications committees, Note from Directorate of Communications, Ministry of Home Security, n.d. (September 1943); Kellett, ‘Forty years on’, p. 5. 121 HO 45/24104, Teleprinter facilities 1930–1950, ‘Met Police: teleprinter system to sub divisional stations’, minute of 30 September 1946; Cdr K.B. Best, ‘Wireless for the police’, The Times (25 October 1969), p. 8. 122 Critchley, History of police, pp. 307–308; Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, pp. 130–131. 123 Emsley, English police, pp. 175–176. 124 ‘Report of Metropolitan Commissioner’, Police Review (18 July 1947).

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125 For praise of the system see St. Johnston, One policeman’s story, p. 169; for the critique, J. Young and J. Lea, What is to be done about law and order? (London: Penguin, 1984). 126 Reports of His Majesty’s Inspectors of Constabulary for the year ended 29th September, 1937 (Counties and Boroughs), PP 1937–38 (53), vol. XIV 521, p. 21. 127 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 50 Coms/1 Communications Committee C 40/6, Circular letter to Chief Constables, 20 September 1973. 128 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 50 Coms/1 Communications Committee C 40/6, Item 6,‘The Application of electronic techniques to Police Command and Control Procedures’ a proposal for a police patrol Car Position Reporting and Display system; Minute from ACPO Communications Committee 15 January 1964;‘Ferranti Ltd Edinburgh’, minute from ACPO Communications Committee 18 May 1971. 129 Intercom, 4 (1973) p. 5; OUPA, ACPO Papers Bag 50 Coms/1 Communications Committee C 40/6, Briefing for Met Commissioner for delivery to ACPO Council 12 Oct 1972. 130 G.W. Reynolds, ‘PEDEX’, Intercom, 5 (1974), pp. 18–20. 131 Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, p. 129. 132 ‘Police telecommunication systems’, Intercom, 11 (1978), p. 6. 133 Williams, C.A., ‘Police surveillance and the emergence of CCTV in the 1960s’ in M. Gill (ed.) CCTV (Leicester: Perpetuity Press, 2003), pp. 9–22. 134 MEPO 2/9956, ‘Use of closed-circuit television by police for traffic control and crime detection 1960–1969’, Memo from Commander ‘A’ (Operations), 1 August 1968; OUPA October 68 (City Police Film Unit, 1968). 135 P.A.J. Waddington, ‘Dying in a ditch: The use of police powers in public order’, International Journal of the Sociology of Law, 21 (1993), 335–353. The Paris police also pioneered police use of airborne radio in the counterdemonstration role. Bunker, Rattle to radio, p. 164. 136 MEPO 2/10898, Central Integrated Traffic Control (CITRAC) 1967– 1975. I am indebted to Ben Taylor for this insight. 137 Latour, Science in action, pp. 227, 232, 259.

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7 Computerising the back office 1955–1980

The last major shift analysed in this book is the arrival of the Police National Computer (PNC), a centralised real-time system which dramatically reduced the distance between patrolling police officers and some key elements of the information structures on which they relied. Beginning with a short survey of the relevant historiography of government computing in the mid-twentieth century, this chapter will sketch out the process whereby the British police forces and the Home Office (HO) first began to explore the use of electronic computers in their work, and conceived, planned and implemented the PNC. It also traces the failure to fulfil one particular operational requirement – the computerisation of the Modus Operandi (MO) system – in order to draw some conclusions about which police functions resisted computerisation and why. These crucial developments were carried out by a state which was neither monolithic nor isolated, and the role of the different elements within the state and external to it will be considered: it will explain the interplay between central, local and professional authorities, and between the public and the private sector, and between national and international contexts. Finally, it places the PNC in a broader picture of later developments, notably the attempt to computerise the management of police resources. Despite being a radical break with the physical technologies of the past, electronic computing demonstrated a high degree of continuity when it came to the key issues that shaped its application, notably the central place of filters in the system.

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Information technology in the 1950s The desire to access reliable information which could be processed, analysed and trusted as a guide to future action had been a critical part of the police’s aims for centuries.1 Policing, especially new policing, was about information a long time before mechanical computers arrived. As was pointed out in Chapter 4, new police were new partly because they relied upon standardised bureaucratic methods to operate and make sense of the world.2 The computerisation of government has been contextualised in a number of ways. In his Surveillance, Power and Modernity, Christopher Dandeker takes a broad-brush approach to its significance, noting three ways that police use of the abilities of computer systems had an impact: first, to store and cross-reference large and increasing amounts of information; second, to provide much faster access to that information, and third, to store and process management information related to issues such as deployment of resources in order to do so more efficiently and in a more dirigible fashion.3 As with the communications technology detailed in the previous chapters, contemporary analysis of the implications of police computerisation was largely produced by the left, which saw these mainly in political terms.4 The relative lack of subsequent work on the PNC is a reflection of the general dearth of research on the administrative (as opposed to the technical) aspects of the early history of computing. For example, automatic teller machines (ATMs) and computerised banking have only recently found their historians.5 Jon Agar’s approach to the history of computing, The Government Machine, has examined the way that electronic and mechanical computing co-evolved with the institutions of government. He focuses on the Treasury’s Organisation and Methods (O&M) section which became the leading edge in the modernisation process, and in the 1950s encouraged other government departments to set up their own feasibility studies into what was then called Automatic Data Processing (ADP). This was geared towards a swift move away from manual and punched card technologies towards electronic computing. The vehicle for this policy was a series of ADP projects within other departments, but supported by the Treasury. The British civil service embraced a policy of simultaneously modernising government work and influencing the UK’s growing computer

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industry.6 These two objectives did not always march in step, and the PNC project was delayed to resolve a political issue: the extent to which the HO should compromise its desire for maximum performance and cost effectiveness in the face of other competing government priorities, notably buying British and encouraging regional economic development.

Computer technology and policing In the late 1950s, with the backing of Treasury O&M, the Metropolitan Police, the Prison Commission, and their parent body the Home Office formed an organisation to investigate the potential for automatic data processing in their organisations: the Joint Automatic Data Processing Unit (JADPU). JADPU studied the state of the art in communications and computer technology, with a view to applying it to HO and police-related needs.7 Its work involved a number of different paths, but its first major project was to pilot, install and run a computerised system for the pay and pensions of the Met.8 This involved the processing of controlled information in well understood ways, thus was an obvious low-risk test bed for new technology. Within a few years it was clear that its main priorities would be to employ computer techniques to manage and search a number of national registers related to persons or items under suspicion. Although authorised by national statute and monitored through the Home Office, some of these records, such as the Habitual Criminals Index, were still held by the Metropolitan Police, which also had some statutory duties relating to the keeping of national records.9 JADPU defined this particular key aim as to ‘increase police efficiency through the development of an efficient system of nationally integrated comprehensive and up-to-date operational support records’.10 This decision locked them into the development of a centralised system on a national scale. To carry this out, they formed a specific working group in 1964, tasked with developing a Police and Aliens Record Computer (PARC). As other functions – including the keeping of migration records – were given a lower priority, the police records function became relatively more important, and by 1968 this became the Police National Computer (PNC) project,

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which swiftly dominated the remainder of the work of JADPU, itself folded by 1972 into the Home Office’s more general research structures. The PNC was the product of a period of debate and experiment which essentially lasted between 1962 and 1969, and JADPU’s aims for the PNC project were defined by 1966.11 It took until the end of 1968 to determine the number of functions they could afford, and how they were to be implemented. From 1969 the project proper went under way until, following significant delays largely caused by software systems, it went on line in 1975.12 The overriding motivation was a desire to control more information more quickly. Police controlled a vast number of datasets, and many of these were considered for computerisation. The registers considered for computerisation between 1960 and 1975 included: Vehicle licenses; Driving licences; Stolen vehicles; Missing persons; Firearms licences; Deployment information; Crime statistics; Traffic accidents; Fingerprints; Fingerprint index; Modus Operandi (MO); Outstanding warrants; Convicted criminals; Lost and stolen property; and Aliens. This examination of police priorities quickly led the various project committees to focus on the then-new feature of real-time applications. At the time, the usual mode of operation for computing was batch processing and, while this was sufficient for tasks such as payroll calculation and the preparation of statistics, it would not allow the creation of a series of databases that could be continually updated and instantly interrogated.13 The need for national reach also demanded a national communications network able to interrogate and update the central register and, given the large number of links involved, working out the best way to solve this problem became a major undertaking. By 1969, the project team were offering a number of reasons to justify the massive expenditure: the system would prevent technical fragmentation in the police service caused by individual forces installing incompatible systems (there are echoes here of the HO’s view of radio in the 1930s); it would provide a better national criminal record service at a time when the existing paper systems were ‘approaching the limits of their size’; and it would enable police to consult centralised car registration records.14 Within the Home Office, the project was supported because it promised to save up to 400 police and civilian jobs in record processing, and to hold out the prospect that ‘police efficiency in the field of detection of criminals’

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would see substantial improvement.15 Detailed design considerations were aided by a number of JADPU-sponsored feasibility studies which took the form of ‘dry runs’ for police computerisation projects.16 When the Home Office squeezed JADPU’s resources in 1968, the latter gave the PNC priority at the expense of their other projects: they had requested 20 staff for prisons work, but consented to work with four; 12 for the aliens index became two, and the work on analysing crime statistics and on firearms registration (five each) was abandoned. The PNC project was allocated 26 staff from the 34 requested, and 60% of JADPU staff were employed on it.17 At the start of the project, three tasks related to fingerprints were considered: automatic recognition and coding of fingerprints from images; searching the single-print forensic indices (which indexed several tens of thousands of individuals) intended to match with prints from the scenes of crimes; and the searching of the far larger (2 million in 1966) ten-finger index which was used to establish the identity of suspects. The ten-finger index was to be computerised; the others both dealt with far more complex and unpredictable data. Optical recognition systems could not replicate the skill of a fingerprint coder, even when working on ten-finger sets taken in controlled circumstances, and forensic prints were yet more difficult to recognise.18 The search process which was initially computerised was one which was wholly ‘indoors’ and already fully understood. The PNC project was nationally significant. The Home Office were able to successfully argue that they were a special case, able to avoid two significant limits on their freedom of action which derived from broader state policy objectives. One concerned location: government policy was to disperse large-scale administrative projects to locations outside London in order to spread employment and to minimise pressure on the capital’s infrastructure. The Home Office stressed the imperative need for the operational computer to be located near to the development expertise, if it was to work well enough from its inception to give confidence to the police officers who were using it.19 The other limit was procurement: the British state in the late 1960s was trying to boost the development of an indigenous computer industry through a single national computer supplier, ICL.20 The Home Office managed to argue that they could only guarantee the success of the PNC project if they tendered for it internationally, rather than reserve it for a probably inferior product

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from ICL, who had not developed real-time operating technology.21 Both disputes were resolved in the end by reference to the fact that this was a real-time computer, which had to be accessible by nonspecialists, rather than one destined to be used for batch processing in a back office.The other salient reason was the high priority given to the PNC project by central government. The project used a significant amount of staffing resources and, perhaps more important, was always predicted to do so. In early 1969, JADPU were expecting that, at the peak of development in 1973, 158 staff would be required to work on the project, the majority of them executivegrade officers skilled in computing.22 One significant external driver of the PNC’s development was the transferring of the vehicle and driving licence records from local authorities to a centralised installation under the control of the Ministry of Transport (MoT).23 Agar suggests that this centralisation was one of the underlying spurs to the PNC project itself. It is clear that it was one of several factors which helped to give the project momentum. Its main significance, though, appears to have been related to internal debate within Whitehall once the project was under way.24 As a JADPU civil servant smugly put it to the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) conference in 1969, when the project was safely under way: there is nothing like being blackmailed, to have a time table one has to keep to, this has been an absolutely invaluable argument in dealing with the Treasury. We have shielded behind the broad back of the Ministry of Transport in a rather clever manner, I think.25

He may have been making a virtue of a necessity, but the evidence points to the HO being able to jointly fashion its destiny. The link with the Ministry of Transport’s plans to centralise licensing data – which was supported by the Home Office’s Police Department as well as by JADPU – only began in the autumn of 1967, when the main aims of the ‘Police Records Computer’ had already been defined.26 Chief Constables were anxious to increase the police’s ability to identify vehicles quickly and on a national scale from their registration plates and also from fragmentary descriptions, with a view to using this information against crimes such as theft, as well as traffic offences. The JADPU brief for the tender in 1969 gave equal priority to the vehicle records which would enable the PNC to

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mesh with the Ministry of Transport’s computer and to the index to the main fingerprint collection, followed by the indices of wanted persons, disqualified drivers, and those on suspended sentences, then by the criminal names index itself.27 Thus the priorities were given to lists which were already pre-registered, in the sense that they consisted of data which was (in theory) understood, durable, verifiable and complete. The next priority was for people at liberty whose rights were already (potentially) curtailed, traditionally the focus of most police attention. The Treasury’s O&M department were also consulted, to support JADPU’s conclusion that the most efficient division of labour was for the MoT to operate a batch-processed system updating their database during office hours, while the 24-hour access to the data

7.1  Police officers using 1970s vintage video display units Source:  Mary Evans image no 10500172

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was carried out by the police computer.28 The need to collate and interrogate the vehicle databases was real, and the data itself – official information about people and cars, derived from licences – were amenable to standardisation. The link with the driving licence shows the close relationship between already existing registration and successful data processing. The institutional back-up for linking names, addresses, and registration plates to people and things in the real world was already robust (though of course it was not perfect): thus data searches and cross-references based on this information were likely to produce results which correlated with reality. In James C. Scott’s terms, vehicle registration was a successful ‘state project of standardisation and legibility’: the same judgement can be made of the fingerprinting of suspects.29 The PNC project which went live in 1975 had the following characteristics. It had been paid for by central government and was based in Hendon, sharing a site with the Metropolitan Police’s training centre. It had a direct and secure communications link to the headquarters of every police force in Great Britain, using video displays as well as printers. The searchable registers it contained were the list of missing and wanted persons, the criminal records index, the fingerprint register, the register of licensed (and disqualified) drivers, and the registration details of vehicles.30 Every evening the driver and vehicle information was updated from the Ministry of Transport’s computer in Swansea. Its ongoing operating costs were shared between the HO and Britain’s provincial police authorities.31

The failure of the MO system Within this apparently teleological tale of ever more integrated and powerful information systems, it is worth focusing on one of the tasks selected for computerisation which was not successfully dealt with by the PNC project: the Modus Operandi (MO) index. The MO system was a way of classifying and filing reports of crimes so that patterns could be detected. It bureaucratised reality so that it could be understood, searched, and ultimately controlled, through the arrest of the criminal whose MO had been identified. Modus Operandi was first conceived in the late nineteenth century, and a comprehensive MO index was produced by Chief Constable Atcherley of the West

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Riding (later one of HM Inspectors of Constabulary) in 1913. It was championed by reforming twentieth-century police technocrats such as August Vollmer in the USA and Athelstan Popkess in the UK.32 Vollmer’s collaborator, Raymond Fosdick, summed up the basic logic behind the MO as follows: first, most criminals are recidivists; second ‘every criminal stamps his individuality on his crime’; third, ‘the methods of criminals, known and unknown, [can be] accurately classified for immediate reference’; fourth, therefore, there can exist ‘a central clearing-house ... where this material ... can be sifted, sorted, and stored for future reference’.33 Vollmer hoped that MO would work as follows: 1 The crime of burglary (A-1) has been committed in an apartment house (B-2) where a room was entered through a second story rear window (C-52) via the fire escape (D-6) sometime between 7 P. M. and 9 P. M. Sunday evening (E-6) and jewellery (F-13) was stolen. A book-agent (G-31)[sic] was seen loitering in the halls of the apartment house. He had a German accent (H-46) and was accompanied by another man (1-16). The blinds were pulled down while the thief operated (J-17). The Modus Operandi Formula: A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

1

2

52

6

6

13

3

46

16

1734

Thus, the encoded crime would create a pattern which could be used as a key to search the similarly-coded list of habitual criminals for – say – German thieves who passed as book-agents and stole jewellery. The identity of the criminal would reside in the code. MO was widely taken up. The Met’s 1947 detective handbook, their edition of Gross’s Criminal Investigation, defined ‘the investigator’ as chief categoriser and collator of clues. It had this to say on the subject: the Investigator must learn to recognise, by studying previous cases of theft, the procedure of certain known thieves, and local registers should be kept in those districts in which they generally carry on their operations, in addition to the Central Register of Criminals classified according to their characteristics and methods which is to be found nowadays in almost all countries.With the help of such a compilation it may be established whether or not a certain crime is characteristic of the usual methods of such an individual.35

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But Gross and his editor – the senior Met detective Ronald Howe – left the detail of which facts to record entirely to the detective’s intuition: only he who has learned to dismiss from notice trifles of no importance is able to appreciate details of real value; points of no significance and no precise character should be rapidly observed in passing, and a full stop be made only at essentials ... he will know how, with more or less rapidity, to arrange all such points into different groups each bearing a mark indicating one and the same origin.36

The system relied on the kind of uncodifiable tacit knowledge that notoriously resists both communication and simplification, since, as the theorist of knowledge Michael Polanyi put it: ‘we know more than we can tell’.37 By the 1960s, like those of many other countries, British police forces and the regional criminal records offices (CROs), all kept MO registers and were thinking about mechanising them. The North-Eastern CRO, for example, had more than 25,000 MO files and was sorting them with punched card technology by 1964. That year, the PARC team analysed the potential for processing the Met’s MO index by punched card.38 By 1966, the Met had implemented this operationally, and that year the Home Office listed MO as one of three ‘everyday police processes’ – the others being criminal case history and personal records – they wished to computerise.39 MO was listed in 1966 as the first tranche of functions for the PNC.40 In 1967 Leeds police began batch processing MO records on the City Treasurer’s computer. As a contemporary press report noted, ‘Criminals tend to be creatures of habit and the computer, a master [of?] method, is their perfect monitor.’41 Computers too fitted into the pattern of anticipation of crime-fighting technology. Despite this use and these claims, not all detectives supported MO. An ACPO meeting of senior detectives in 1969 heard conflicting opinions about its utility, some considering it ‘largely a waste of time’, while one officer noted that in his opinion MO only worked in cases of fraud and offences against the person.42 Others thought that it was successful and could be expected to be more so once it was ‘on the computer’: the meeting concluded that there remained a need to prepare a list of police requirements for MO and criminal intelligence which the PNC project could fulfil. But such a list

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was never prepared. The PNC project team were unable to get a coherent operational requirement for an MO index out of their police advisors. By 1969 the JADPU brief for the tender specifically noted that no priority was to be given to work on MO for the next five years, and raised the prospect that MO might in fact be dealt with on a regional basis.43 When the PNC went live not only was an MO index absent, but it had been dropped from the plans for the next tranche of computerisation. In his address of 1975 to the Chief Constables, Mr Maxted, who was leading the PNC project for the Home Office, dismissed MO from further serious consideration, concluding: In the case of MO however I think that the police service have got to take a long hard look at this and make up their minds as to the operational value of MO as it stands. Certainly there appears to be very mixed views not only as to whether MO indexes are worthwhile at all but, if so, what they should contain and how they should be operated. It will be for the Police service to make decisions about this so that if necessary timely discussions can be held with the Computer Unit to devise an MO system which is acceptable to the Service as a whole.44

All the realised functions for the PNC could be reduced to a digital form. For example since around 1910 there had been general agreement about how to measure and record the distinguishing characteristics of people at large, including their fingerprints, to definite and measurable values. MO, on the other hand, relied on a process of tacit knowledge concerning the interpretation of analogue and narrative information, which could not be reduced to a series of simple and replicable procedures. This trend was not confined to policing systems, of course: the same tendencies were visible in medicine, where the potential of total and integrated knowledge was recognised in the 1960s, even as the ongoing implementation of this ‘dream’ raised new problems about just what form the integration should, or could, take.45 James C. Scott points out in Seeing Like a State that the state’s most powerful techniques rely on a process of simplification, whereby knowledge is filtered into forms which are replicable across many cases, in ways that strip facts of their peculiarity and instead stress their similarity.46 He concludes that ‘the utopian, immanent, and continually frustrated goal of the modern state is to reduce the chaotic, disorderly, constantly changing social reality

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beneath it to something more closely resembling the administrative grid of its observations’.47 The abortive attempt to systematise MO is a clear instance of this impulse, but also an example of its frustration.

The location of power The development of the PNC was a landmark in the centralisation of British policing. As was noted by the earliest observers of its impact on the US policing world, the application of computer technology to policing meant that ‘changes in organisations, techniques, or decision making processes often result in some shift or redistribution of the relative power of the actors involved’.48 In the post-war period, critiques of British police power often focused on the largely unaccountable institution of ACPO.49 This is consistent with Dandeker’s view that ‘senior police officers have become the core of an autonomous police professionalism, with considerable discretion in the formulation of police policy within the state’.50 Given the intimate links between police professionalism on the one hand, and the claim by senior officers to independence based on technical expertise on the other, we could expect this body of senior officers to have had a decisive influence on the PNC project.51 Yet it is clear from the documentary record that ACPO was not in the main decision-making loop when the key plans were made in the period 1966–1969. Instead, the HO itself was dominant, aided by officers seconded from the Met. In 1969 ACPO officers were brought in to act as police advisors to the PNC project, but they were implementing the detail of a vision which was not their own.52 Instead, ACPO’s official representatives spent the 1960s looking at the administrative implications of computing, and at some small-scale feasibility studies. In parallel to the initiatives taken by the Treasury, the local government associations were also exploring the best ways to use computers. They represented the interests of Britain’s police authorities, who co-funded provincial policing. In the early 1960s an increasing number of local authorities were purchasing computers for batch processing administrative work, and many of them hoped to use them also for functions ancillary to policing. The Local and Public Authorities Computer Panel set up a Police Applications Group (PAG) and this pursued a number

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of projects in the 1960s regarding the keeping of police records, administrative information, and management information, at a local level. Police forces were also experimenting with advanced processing and communications on a local level: between 1967 and 1972, Sussex police developed and installed a mobile scheme for wireless transmission of faxes to police cars.53 JADPU were represented on PAG, but – crucially – not vice versa; the local authorities and ACPO were excluded from the definition of the PNC. This exclusion mirrored the political division of the time in that, following the 1964 Police Act, the HO had acted to eliminate the vestiges of any executive control by police authorities over police forces, limiting their responsibility to administrative matters only.54 So, between 1966 and the end of 1968, the official word from the HO to ACPO was that an announcement on the PNC would be made shortly and there was therefore no settled policy to communicate or to critique.55 Once the announcement was made, it was as a fait accompli, describing a project too urgent to modify – HO civil servants were honest enough to concede the justice of the local government representatives’ protest on discovering the situation.56 There were some good reasons for this delay – notably the debates with the Treasury over the origin and location of the computer – but it also had the effect of keeping the Met and the HO in control of PNC development and sidelining other players.57 Indeed the HO claimed to the Treasury that one of the PNC’s objectives was to pre-empt the growing desire of local forces to experiment with their own incompatible computer systems.58 Even after this point, the senior officers did not develop any unified policy. ACPO nominees participated on the HO’s various PNC policy and advisory committees through 1969 and 1970, but it was not until the start of 1971 that ACPO’s steering committee, worried about the lack of a forum which ACPO could use to develop their own ‘positive policy’, gathered some of those working with the HO into a Computer Development Committee.59 Ten years after the start of the development of police computing, ACPO finally began to take active positions on it, rather than merely responding to questions and requests posed by other organisations. The picture revealed by this position is a long way from the image of the all-knowing ACPO which had developed by the 1980s.60 From 1969 ACPO’s Computer Development Committee monitored the development of the PNC.61 It sought to reduce

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the reliance of ACPO on the local authority-initiated PAG, and to remind the HO that the PNC only fulfilled a small number of the police’s many data processing needs. It concluded that local authority computers were not secure enough for police applications, and also noted that, as computers got more able and cheaper, there would come a time when it would be reasonable for a police force to own and operate one of its own, separate from that of its local authority. Interestingly, when ACPO proposed to the HO that police and civil servants form a study group with no input from the local authorities, the HO’s considered response was to keep the authorities on board, by supporting the work of their Police Applications Group and arguing for more police representation on it.62 Indeed, while ACPO were firm that the local authorities should be excluded from operational involvement altogether, the HO countered that since it was ‘impossible to draw a clear distinction between administrative and operational applications’, thus they ought to remain linked up. The inference from this is that while the HO were working to keep ‘their’ directly-controlled police force – the Met – in the critical path, they wished to resist the over-large involvement of ACPO: officers from forces over which they only had indirect control. Subsequent developments appear to have shown the wisdom of this centralised approach. Naylor has shown how when, in the late 1970s, individual forces attempted to computerise a more complex set of records on a local level, the amount of help they gained from the Home Office was not sufficient to guarantee success: two out of three of these cutting-edge projects failed, largely because in this project the Home Office could only advise, not dictate, to provincial police chiefs who prioritised the autonomy of their forces over modifying their procedures to maximise the efficiency of their information systems. This problem, though, also stemmed from their ‘burning ambition to have their own force recognised as the first to achieve a working system’.63 As Edgerton has noted, the problem with the British and technology is more often over- rather than under-enthusiasm.

Private industry and the international dimension For the first time since the involvement of Marconi’s in the 1920s, and on a far larger scale, the PNC project relied on significant input

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from an external private contractor.What was the nature and significance of this relationship between the public and the private sectors? In the case of CCTV, commercial providers had been very keen to sell equipment to police, but this in itself did not persuade the police service to buy: what did was their recognition that technology could meet an existing or expected operational requirement.64 Computing appears to have followed the same model. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the UK government made great use of private contractors, but it jealously reserved to itself the development work needed to define and issue operational requirements and tenders. In 1961, ACPO and the HO had co-operated to organise a large-scale Police Equipment Exhibition. The cataloguing categories devised for it included a space for ‘computers’, but nothing was actually exhibited in this category.65 The first corporate player to actively market computing technology to British police was IBM, which had gained a reputation for using hard-selling techniques on public service clients, involving demonstrations and offers of free data processing, and cultivating supporters and champions within the client organisation.66 However, both ACPO and the HO were opposed to IBM’s attempts to lobby individual chief constables. In 1968, for example, the offer to host senior officers at a two-day seminar with the head of IBM’s US law enforcement division was rebuffed by ACPO.67 A similar response greeted an attempt to showcase the equipment which would power IBM’s bid in 1969 for the PNC contract.68 The desire by police officers and civil servants to remain neutral in the tendering process was more than just a sham. It derived from a corporatist mindset which appreciated the positive advantages of technical development by the state. The Home Office’s technical staff had a culture which valued in-house control of development above the attractions of cheaper off-theshelf equipment.69 HO administrators also saw the PNC project itself as a means to help prevent individual forces from deciding to respond to marketing from computer companies.70 The purchase of the hardware for the PNC itself, from the American Burroughs corporation, was consumer-led. One British company, ICL, and three American ones, bid for the contract. As noted above, the HO had freed itself from automatic dependence on the British computer industry. In 1969, it therefore felt able to reject the ICL proposal, which would have been 50% sourced

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from American components, more costly, and several years late, and furthermore was based on over-optimistic estimations of how long it would take to write the software.71 Of the American bids, Univac’s was also rejected on the grounds that, owing to their lack of relevant experience, their bid would need considerable bespoke work and be more expensive than its US rivals. This left Burroughs and IBM in the running and, although IBM were seen as more experienced and able to fit the cheapest system, Burroughs were preferred because their real-time architecture had far more potential for growth and development: the PNC was not intended to be the last word but the core of an evolving system. Burroughs’ promise that they would relocate some of their production to a new site in Scotland appears to have helped their case, even though they had not submitted the lowest bid. The Treasury allowed the HO to spend what they thought necessary to give them the required operational capacity, just as they had also been allowed to be an exception to the government policy which called for all new large-scale IT projects to be dispersed outside London. In terms of public and private, therefore, the consumer interest was dominant over the producer one; there was as yet no ‘police-industrial complex’. The PNC project emerged in a world where national prowess in computing was seen as highly important. The public’s anticipation of new technology was increasingly being associated with other countries, allegedly more advanced than the United Kingdom, who were seen as the harbingers of Britain’s future state. One key anticipated feature was a system to automatically index and sort (which was easy) fingerprint, which had been automatically recognised and encoded (which was not).72 The FBI had been automatically searching their coded fingerprint index using a punched card machine in the 1930s: Scotland Yard was aware of this, but did not attempt to emulate it because they saw no operational advantage in so doing.73 This attitude changed when JADPU realised soon after their creation, in 1959, that electronic computing could offer an advantage, and in 1964 they conducted a systematic experiment to assess the extent of this advantage.74 This experiment was the basis of the fingerprint index system which was adopted as part of the PNC project. By 1966, press reports on police fingerprint scanning still mentioned America, but now recognised that the problem had yet to be solved, even though ‘almost every police force in Europe as

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well as America is interested in this apparently Utopian solution to the fingerprinting problem’.75 In fact, fingerprints were manually coded for decades: the key technology that computers provided in the 1970s was to quickly search the very large and complex indices to these codes and hence establish the identities of those in custody.76 Another governmental desire was for a computer-driven management information system which could predict the pattern of crime well enough to make police deployment far more effective: in 1967 one MP was asking whether or not Britain could emulate the system in Chicago where ‘it is said’ they were able to ‘get a forecast of where crime will take place at the weekend’.77 In fact, the desire to make computers ‘a tool for decision making, [and] strategic planning’ was indeed present in the USA, but the first-generation attempts to deploy this in practice uniformly failed.78 The private sector helped to nurture the international context: in 1963 IBM convened a seminar at Vevey, Switzerland, which was attended by a senior civil servant from JADPU and a Chief Superintendent attached to the HO’s police research branch, along with representatives from most of the west European countries.79 They heard the Paris police claim that they were using a punched card machine to identify stolen property, and other lectures, including one by IBM of which they commented: ‘The usual IBM Education Division policy of intensive instruction without overt salesmanship was followed at this seminar’.80 IBM speakers were already renowned for eliding projects in use with those under development or even merely proposed.There are indications that ongoing informal contact networks between police computer experts grew up here and elsewhere, and it is likely that these links helped to puncture some of IBM’s claims about processing capacity.81 At this stage, most police projects were tentative, and the presentations proffered and received tended to be general, precisely because no one had advanced far enough to have worked out what it was that they needed to know. IBM’s 1963 claims were overblown (most of them were punch card systems not electronic computers, and most computers were not supporting operations) but, concluded the British delegates, the company still dominated the market. The first Vevey lecture mentioned the proposed seat reservation system for Pan American Airlines which was the first real-time system to read and write to a database, and was (it later transpired) developed from

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the USAF air defence system SAGE.82 When this became operational in 1966, JADPU sent a team to Pan Am’s London office to inspect it.83 JADPU also followed up the claims advanced at Vevey by making two visits to the Paris Police to check out the nature of their punched card system for indexing stolen property. The British were interested in how the information arrived, who coded it and checked it, and how it was processed, how long cards were kept, how many enquiries there were, and how long they took. Their report includes copies of forms and the punched cards as used.84 This sort of information – the micro-politics of the bureaucratic form – was as crucial to the operation of centralised police information systems as journals and rule books had been in the early days of the new police. The problem which became apparent even at this early stage was that the nature of what ‘police work’ entailed was different from country to country. Laws defined existing procedures, and these in turn structured computer systems, to the extent that common computer projects could not be defined even for seemingly generic tasks like vehicle registration.85 IBM could not define ‘general police work’ and offer computer systems to do it: the differences in national police information systems were so great that each needed a bespoke system. The topics covered at Vevey – management information systems, processing statistics, managing personnel, MO analysis – had all already been identified by JADPU as having potential for development.86 The Home Office’s internal information bulletins specifically disclaimed international emulation (‘Keeping up with the Joneses’) as a motivation, in favour of cost effectiveness: although they admitted that external developments could play a role as feasibility studies, and that multinational events were significant clearing-houses for what was ostensibly possible. 87 International arenas had some significance to the development of the PNC, but the critical path was largely autonomous. The Vevey seminar concluded with an appeal from Interpol that they were best placed to co-ordinate ADP research, and IBM offered to assist in this process. JADPU noted that, hospitality notwithstanding, it would be unwise to let the small proportion of international crime in the total ‘distort national criminal systems’, nor would it be useful to enable IBM ‘to unreasonably infiltrate into this area of work to such an extent as to gain a monopoly advantage’. Though the British

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paid some attention to the Interpol conference in Caracas in 1964 which discussed the tentative progress of ADP, they never backed Interpol’s proposal for a multinational development effort. There were significant and clear limits to the influence of internationalism and of cross-border crime on computer development. IBM’s approaches in the latter half of the decade were based on their strong position in the US police market, and they invited (with indifferent success) senior British police officers to a succession of seminars detailing these developments.88 An IBM conference in the USA in 1965 was made the centrepiece of a fact-finding visit by a number of JADPU staff which explored the use of computers for police work in the USA and Canada.89 This concluded that automated fingerprint coding was unlikely to happen soon, and that though a number of forces were using computers for administrative purposes, few were yet using them for operational support.90 By now, JADPU’s specialists were in regular direct touch with their counterparts in the US and Europe, and able to keep abreast of developments. European seminars held by IBM and Interpol in late 1965 confirmed to the British that nobody else looked likely to be able automate fingerprint scanning, and that here too operational support by computer was still at the planning stage.91 British officers also visited the international police exhibition in Hanover in 1966, where they saw an ostensibly real-time link in operation, as demonstrated by the force from Alameda County, Oakland, USA.92 This stood out not merely because it was an unprecedented advance, but also because it closely resembled the type of system that the British had already envisaged. The operational requirement, determined indigenously, preceded the overseas demonstration. By 1967 the Home Office could take a bullish line in Parliament: the police minister rejected an allegation that in ‘other parts of the world’ computers were better used to fight crime, with the words: ‘in this area we are as advanced as anyone’.93 This was true: the FBI’s pilot ‘National Crime System’ went live in April 1967, but this was only running on an experimental basis and covered very few locations in the US.94 The next year the Home Secretary responded to the claim that computerised fingerprint recognition had been going on in the US ‘for many years’ by referring to ‘a substantial development at Scotland Yard’.95 By 1968, the press reports of foreign achievements related them to indigenous achievements.96 By 1967

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the specification of the tender for the PNC had been largely fixed, and when in 1968 the schedule of the PNC slipped and Home Office civil servants were being questioned by a select committee, other countries were now referred to in order to emphasise the UK’s relative advancement, not its backwardness: ‘I do not think any other country has done anything of this sort before. A rather simpler thing has been done in the United States’.97 JADPU’s visit to the US in April 1969 was far more targeted than its earlier one, and its observers more informed. Its ostensible aim was ‘to gain background knowledge about the current and proposed use in the USA of computers for police record purposes’, and to pay special attention to machinery supplied by those who were bidding for the PNC contract.98 Much of the basic knowledge of the existence of the systems and what they did was already known to JADPU, who were keeping a close eye on the published capabilities of all US police systems.99 The length of the delegation’s stays in the 17 locations visited by the three-week mission was planned in terms of their relevance to British developments. Some non-police applications were visited, justified because their technical specification was of specific interest as a model to emulate or even as a source of software: for example, ‘operating in real time, uses a large data bank, has a fairly high activity rate and because it is in some way compatible with our scale of activities’.100 At each institution, the mission recorded in detail the technical specifications of the system, its performance, and the number of operators. What stands out from this report is the focus on administrative rather than technical matters: the report notes the technical achievements, but the main detail concerns the staffing of the system: it sets out the precise limits of civilianisation, the number of grades, the wage rates, and the training arrangements, for the States of California and Washington.101 These were precisely the details which were occupying the PNC implementation team at the time.102 It also noted the extent to which consultants were used in the procurement and development process, the amount of support derived from the manufacturing companies, and the operational readiness which the systems could achieve. Particular attention was paid to the nature of faults which caused an interruption of service. As far as procurement was concerned, the mission concluded that IBM’s market dominance was as much a product of purchasers already being locked in

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to their punched card systems as of any obvious technical superiority of their computers – an opinion which perhaps prefigured the British decision to buy from Burroughs. One of the few concrete and new conclusions that the Home Office did draw largely from American experience was the concept of ‘suppressed demand’: the volume of internal enquiries was likely to increase as the speed of response, efficiency and effectiveness grew with computerisation.103

Conclusion: Implementing a vision The most important successor project to the PNC gives a clear indication of the ways that the computer was expected to change policing. The Mobile Automatic Data Experiment (MADE), run by JADPU from 1970, aimed to explore and advance the technology needed to give mobile personnel ‘virtually two-way access to centralised information’.104 It marked the next step in the acceleration of feedback loops between the officer on the ground and the organisation as a whole, and the erosion of the distinction between the bureaucratic files of an organisation and its immediate operational needs. Computing techniques also increased the ability of the centres of calculation within the organisation. Like the CCTV camera, high technology allowed the organisation to put itself under surveillance as never before. Communications and control systems were structured so as to maximise their potential for informing management information systems: so the ACPO communications committee in 1971 were impressed by a digital vehicle location system partly because it lowered everyday workload, but also because its output could be ‘converted into management data for future references and analysis by means of a computer’.105 Management information had been one of JADPU’s initial priorities and, although it was far too complex to attach to the PNC, by the late 1960s its pilot projects were assessing what was possible on a local level. One of the aims of the MADE experiment was to see what happened when police had access to data and were ‘under the continuous positive direction of a command and control headquarters’.106 Computerisation brought into being an operational police dispatching system: in 1972 the HO funded experiments in Birmingham and Glasgow which used a computer to analyse and

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mediate deployment and dispatching patterns. Using some of the technologies pioneered by MADE, this system marked the merging of computing and communications into an information technology. As well as improving the efficiency of dispatching, they also generated and automatically processed information about the use of resources, which could be employed by management to reconfigure police dispositions.107 The advance of computerisation and its integration into police systems continued in the 1970s: by 1978 every 999 call to the RUC was recorded on a computer, for example.108 The PNC was important for a number of reasons. It centralised the holding and consultation of these key police files with the most relevance to the majority of interactions between the police and the public. The ability of the police officer on the street or at the roadside to consult the national database of suspect persons or (especially) registration plates constituted a policing revolution, and reminds us that the PNC depended on a national communications network built around personal radios. This centralisation was mirrored in the concentration of nearly all police computer development in the hands of the Home Office: a concentration which stemmed directly from the nature of mainframe computer technology of the time, and ended when smaller mini- and microcomputers were introduced. This centralisation helps to explain the great priority given to the PNC: the single-minded concentration on it by JADPU, the support from the Home Office, and the agreement of the Treasury. Its development was also concentrated nationally rather than being dispersed internationally. International comparisons – often inaccurate – helped to generate political support for the project, and the fact that other states were attempting similar tasks created a supportive context, and allowed the British to investigate what worked and what did not. Nevertheless, the development of the PNC was largely autonomous, and followed priorities independently arrived at. Centralisation also meant that the state had an advantage in negotiating with private contractors, given the extent to which JADPU had carried out detailed development work on the tasks that they wanted to computerise. The nature of the policing tasks which were carried out by the PNC points to the significance of registration as a concept. Pre-filtered and registered data, such as the fingerprint records of criminals, their the names and addresses, or the number plates of vehicles, could be

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compiled, analysed and consulted far more easily than could openended data such as that which MO files struggled to contain. There were clear limits to actionable knowledge.

Notes    1 A classic example of a policeman constructing files and thus ‘imposing a framework on the world’ is given by Robert Darnton in The great cat massacre, pp. 145–147.    2 Philips and Storch, Policing provincial England, p. 225.   3 Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, p. 128.   4 Chris Pounder, Police computers and the Metropolitan Police: Report of an investigation (London: Greater London Council, 1985).    5 B. Batiz-Lazo, ‘Emergence and evolution of ATM networks in the UK, 1967–2000’, Business History, 51:1 (2009), 1–27; Ian Martin, ‘Centering the computer in the business of banking: Banks and technological change, 1954–1974’ (PhD dissertation, Manchester University, 2010), pp. 22–24.   6 Agar, Government machine, p. 308.    7 MEPO 2/10222, 1a, Paper from Receiver’s Office, 17 August 1961.    8 MEPO 2/10222, 5a, Letter from HO to S.R. Walker, Receiver’s Office, 16 March 1962.    9 C.A. Williams, ‘Labelling and tracking the criminal’, pp. 157–171.  10 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 21, Item 3, ‘Computers 1964–1967’, Local Government Computer Committee, ‘The Use of Computers for Police Records’ May 1966, p. 6.   11 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 21, Item 3, ‘Computers 1964–1967’, Home Office and Metropolitan Police Joint ADP Unit, ADP Report No. 52, ‘Report on the feasibility of a National Computer System for Police Records’, June 1966.   12 Home Office, Police National Computer (London: HMSO, 1978).   13 Martin,‘Centering the computer in the business of banking’, pp. 206–208.  14 HO 287/1506, D.J. Trevelyan, ‘Police National Computer Project. Operational Planning Assumptions’, pp. 2–3.   15 HO 287/1506, Letter to Miller, 12 February 1968.  16 OUPA, Bag 21, Item 3, Computers 1964–1967 ‘First Report of the Joint computer working party on police records, May 1966, p. 3; HO 337/89, ADP Articles, ‘The Use and Development of Computers in Law Enforcement in the United States’ [written in December 1968 for HO Police Research and Planning Branch Bulletin].   17 HO 287/1506, ‘ADP Work Priorities 1968–69’, 23 May 1968.   18 Home Office and Metropolitan Police Joint ADP Unit, ADP Report No. 52, ‘Report on the feasibility of a National Computer System for Police

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Records’, pp. 12, 119–120; HO 287/1506, Police National Computer Policy, 1968–69, ‘Note on Computers for Lords Debate on the Police on 6th March’.   19 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 21, Item 3 ‘Computers 1964–1967’. Home Office and Metropolitan Police Joint ADP Unit, ADP Report No. 52, ‘Report on the feasibility of a National Computer System for Police Records’, June 1966, pp. 19–20; HO 287/1504, ‘Notes on progress in deciding location of police records computer’, October 1967.  20 J. Hendry, Innovating for failure: Government policy and the early British computer industry (London: MIT Press, 1989).   21 HO 287/1506, Home Office and Metropolitan Police Automatic Data Processing Committee: minutes 1969, Letter from Miller (HO) to Kelly (Treasury), 3 September 1968; ‘Police National Computer Project. Operational Planning Assumptions’, D.J. Trevelyan, p. 1.  22 HO 287/1506, ‘Future Staffing Requirements of Police National Computer: Note by Head of Joint ADP Unit’, pp. 3–4.   23 HO 287/1504, ‘Police Enquiries about disqualified drivers and vehicle owners’, 1967.  24 Agar, Government machine, p. 346.   25 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 19, Item 2, ‘Computers 1968–1969’.Trevelyan to Association of Chief Police Officers of England and Wales Sixth Autumn Conference ‘Crime and the Computer’, 25 September 1969.  26 HO 287/1504, Police National Computer, business case, 1967, ‘Police Enquiries about Disqualified Drivers and Vehicle Owners’.   27 HO 287/1506, ‘Police National Computer Project: Operational Planning Assumptions’, note by Chairman of the Project Committee, pp. 3–4.  28 HO 287/1506, ‘Vehicle Licensing particulars, Note by F2 Division’, January 1969, p. 2.  29 Scott, Seeing like a state, p. 61.   30 Home Office, Police National Computer (London: HMSO, 1978).  31 HO 287/1509, ‘Memorandum on the sharing of costs of the police national computer project’, n.d. 1970.   32 MO was part of the curriculum at the Berkeley Police Training School in 1929. George T. Ragsdale, ‘The police training school’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 146 (1929), 176; Athelstan Popkess, ‘Wireless communication and the mechanised crime patrol’ in Morren, Advanced lectures, pp. 183–204.   33 Raymond B. Fosdick, ‘The Modus Operandi system in the detection of criminals’, Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, 6:4 (1915), 563, 565.   34 A.Vollmer, ‘Revision of the Atcherley Modus Operandi system’, Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, 10:2 (1919), 233.   35 R.M. Howe (ed.), Criminal investigation: A practical textbook for magistrates, police officers and lawyers, adapted from the System De Kriminalistik of Dr Hans

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Gross, trans. J. Adam and J.C. Adam (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1949), p. 261.  36 Howe, Criminal investigation, p. 263.   37 Erkki Patokorpi, ‘Low knowledge in cyberspace: Abduction, tacit knowledge, aura, and the mobility of knowledge’, Human Systems Management, 25 (2006), 213–214; Michael Polanyi, The tacit dimension (Routledge and Kegan Paul: London, 1967), p. 4.   38 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 21, Item 3, ‘Computers 1964–1967’. Home Office and Metropolitan Police Joint ADP Unit, ADP Report No. 52, ‘Report on the feasibility of a National Computer System for Police Records’, June 1966, p. 2.  39 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 21, Item 3, ‘Computers 1964–1967’. Local Government Computer Committee ‘The Use of Computers for Police Records’, May 1966, pp. 4–5.   40 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 21, Item 3, ‘Computers 1964–1967’. Home Office and Metropolitan Police Joint ADP Unit, ADP Report No. 52, ‘Report on the feasibility of a National Computer System for Police Records’, June 1966, p. 49.  41 ‘Criminals have new foe – the computer’ in The Guardian (29 March 1967), p. 16.   42 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 19, Item 2, ‘Computers 1968–1969’, Extract from Minutes of Standing Committee on Regional Criminal Record Offices, 7 October 1969.   43 HO 287/1506, ‘Police National Computer Project: Operational Planning Assumptions, Note by Chairman of the Project Committee’, January 1969, p. 4.  44 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 74, Item 2, ‘Computers-Computer Development Committee agendas and letters’ Address by G. Maxted (F7 Div HO) to ACPO AGM 25 September 1975 ‘Operation 2000Computer development’, p. 2.   45 Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Starr, Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1999), p. 127.  46 Scott, Seeing like a state, p. 81.  47 Ibid., p. 82.  48 Kent W. Colton, ‘The impact and use of computer technology by the police’, Communications of the ACM, 22:1 (1979), 11.  49 Lustgarten, Governance of police, pp. 108–111.  50 Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, p. 125.  51 Ibid., p. 124; Berlière, ‘The professionalisation of the police’, pp. 36–54.  52 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 19, Item 2, Computers 1968–1969. ‘Police National Computer’, Minutes of Local and Public Authorities Computer Panel Police Computer Applications Group, 5 December 1968.   53 T.C. Williams, ‘Sussex Constabulary’, Intercom, 2 (1972) pp. 12–16.   54 C.A. Williams, ‘Rotten boroughs’.

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 55 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 21, Item 3, ‘Computers 1964–1967’. Local Government Computer Committee ‘The Use of Computers for Police Records’ May 1966, p. 6.   56 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 19, Item 2, ‘Computers 1968–1969’. Minutes of meeting of PAG, 6 February 1969, p. 1; HO 287/1508, Police National Computer: Negotiations with local authorities. Minute by Trevelyan, 10 July 1969.   57 HO 287/1504, Paper from Bampton to Waddell, headed ‘ADP Report No. 67’, 18 August 1967.   58 HO 287/1506, Home Office and Metropolitan Police Automatic Data Processing Committee: minutes (1969), Letter from Miller (HO) to Kelly (Treasury), 3 September 1968; ‘Police National Computer Project. Operational Planning Assumptions’ (no date).  59 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 74, ‘Computer Development Committee’ Minutes of ACPO Steering Committee, 5 November 1970.  60 Lustgarten, Governance of the police, p. 52.  61 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 74, ‘Computer Development Committee’, Report of CDC to ACPO council, 5 September 1971.  62 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 74, ‘Computer Development Committee’, Report of CDC to ACPO council, 13 January 72; CDC report of meeting with HO, 26 January 1973.   63 Alan Naylor, ‘A critique of the implementation of crime and intelligence computing in three British police forces, 1976–1986’ (PhD dissertation, Edinburgh Napier University, 2008), p. 321.   64 Williams, ‘Police surveillance and the emergence of CCTV’, p. 13.   65 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 21, Item 3, ‘Business Efficiency Exhibitions’ ‘Police Efficiency Exhibition: Schedule of Exhibits’, n.d.   66 Jarle Brosveet, ‘IBM salesman meets Norwegian tax collector: Computer entrepreneurs in the making’, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 21:2 (1999), 5–13.   67 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 19, Item 2, ‘Computers 1968–1969’. Letter of ACPO Gen Sec to Evered, IBM UK, 16 July 1968.   68 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 19, Item 2, ‘Computers 1968–1969’. Minutes of ACPO Executive committee, 23 April 1969.  69 J.N. Hallett, ‘How did we get here and where do we go from here?’ Intercom, 2 (1972).   70 HO 287/1506, Home Office and Metropolitan Police Automatic Data Processing Committee: minutes (1969), ‘Police National Computer Project. Operational Planning Assumptions’, note by D.J. Trevelyan, p. 2.   71 HO 287/1509, PNC Policy Committee – Evaluation of tenders, n.d.   72 Lord Gardiner in Hansard, HL Debates, 15 July 1964, vol. 260, col. 247.  73 HO 337/89, ADP Articles, ‘Main Collection Fingerprints’ [written in May 1967 for HO Police Research and Planning Branch Bulletin], pp. 31–32.

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 74 HO 337/89, ADP Articles, ‘Automatic Data Processing and the Metropolitan Police’ [written in May 1967 for HO Police Research and Planning Branch Bulletin], p. 22.  75 The Times (24 November 1966).  76 HO 287/1506, Police National Computer Policy, 1968–69, ‘Note on Computers for Lords Debate on the Police on 6th March’.   77 R. Gresham Cooke, in Hansard, HC Debates, 9 February 1967, vol. 740, col. 1875.   78 Colton, ‘Impact and use of computer technology’, pp. 12, 14.   79 HO 337/26,Visit to Préfecture of Police in Paris, July 1964: use of ADP equipment in police work p. 1; HO 337/21 IBM Seminar for national and international police agencies, Vevey, Switzerland: 20 - 22 November 1963.  80 Ibid., p. 1.  81 Ibid., p. 2.  82 Duncan G. Copeland and James L. McKenney, ‘Airline reservations systems: Lessons from history’, MIS Quarterly, 12:3 (1988), 353–370.  83 HO 242/54 Working Party on the Use of Computer for Criminal Record Indexes by Sussex Police: interim report, 1966, p. 8.   84 HO 337/26.   85 HO 337/21, p. 6.  86 Ibid., pp. 7–8.  87 HO 337/89, ADP Articles. D. E. Luke, ‘Introducing ADP’ [September 1966 for HO Police Research and Planning Branch Bulletin], p. 2.   88 JADPU Report 52, ‘Feasibility of a National Computer System for Police Records’ June 1966, p. 1; Open University ACPO Archive, Bag 21, Item 3, Computers 1964–1967. D-COMP/1 C.46, 27 November 1967 letter from IBM UK (Evered, Special Rep Local Government) to Willison, CC Worcestershire, ACPO Secretary; Bag 19, Item 2, Computers 1968–1969. C/46/Computers, 6 July 1968, letter of ACPO General Secretary to IBM Europe.   89 Open University ACPO Archive, Bag 21, Item 3, Computers 1964–1967. D-COMP/1 C.46, ‘Delegation to USA and Canada to study police computer installations’.   90 HO 337/119, p. 2; JADPU report 52, June 1966, p. 4.  91 Ibid.   92 HO 242/54, p. 8.   93 J. Langford Holt, R. Taverne in Hansard, HC Debates, 9 March 1967, vol. 742, col. 1741.   94 HO 287/1504, ‘NCIC Progress Report’.  95 J. Callaghan, B. Whitaker, Police Forces (Electronic and Mechanical Equipment) in Hansard, HC Debates, 15 February 1968, vol. 758, col. 1559.  96 The Times (2 August 1968).

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 97 Second report from the Estimates Committee together with part of the minutes of evidence taken before sub-committee, PP 1968–69 (89), vol. XI 161, para. 136, Police. Mr Whittick (Under-Secretary in Police Department, Home Office), 4 December 1968.  98 HO 337/119, ‘Police National Computer Project: visit to US police computer installations’, November 1969.   99 HO 337/89, ADP Articles. ‘The Use and Development of Computers in Law Enforcement in the United States’ [written in December 1968 for HO Police Research and Planning Branch Bulletin]. 100 HO 337/119, p. 52. 101 HO 337/199, pp. 3, 54, 56. 102 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 19, Item 2, ‘Computers 1968–1969’, ‘Communication requirements of the Police national computer system.’ November 1968. 103 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 19, Item 2, ‘Computers 1968–1969’, Miller to ACPO conference ‘Crime and the Computer’, September 1969. 104 HO 377/115, Mobile Automatic Data Experiment, ‘Police Scientific Branch Research Note 9/72’, p. 1. 105 OUPA, ACPO Papers, Bag 50, Coms/1, Communications Committee C 40/6, Minute from ACPO Communications Committee 18 May 1971. 106 HO 377/115, ‘Mobile Automatic Data Experiment’, Police Scientific Branch Research Note 9/72, p. 1. 107 Ackroyd, New technology and practical police work, pp. 89–91; K. Koetter, ‘Moderne Fuehrungs- Und Einsatzmittel Der Britischen’ in Polizei Technik Verkehr, 5 (1977), 184–188; Dandeker, Surveillance, power and modernity, pp. 128, 158; F.R. Hodges, ‘Computerized systems and police efficiency’, Police Journal, 46:1 (1973), 78–95. 108 Amanda Hoey, ‘Inside the RUC: Information technology and policing in Northern Ireland’, International Review of Law Computers & Technology, 12:1 (1998), 23.

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8 Conclusion

In 1957, a local television station made a short documentary dealing with ‘Nottingham by Night’.1 As befitted the city which pioneered the combination of police, radio and cars in Britain, some of the footage from the City Police’s headquarters features officers at their desks and consoles in the force’s control room. One scene, though, shows a group of the City’s police at parade, before their night shift. They hold out their truncheons, handcuffs and notebooks for inspection by their sergeant and inspector, before turning in unison and marching from the room. Real-time control is clearly in place here, but the drilled body remains part of the repertoire of police technologies. Each of the new modes of controlling police was innovative when introduced, but none of them (with the possible exception of the culture of reward) has entirely vanished yet. The British constable may still be sued under Common Law, and she or he certainly has to learn physical drill, file reports and follow bureaucratic procedures, which are now embedded in increasingly complex systems for information and control. Meanwhile, handheld digital radios now allow police on the street access to a great number of their organisation’s back-office databases, including those on the Police National Computer. Different generations of control technologies overlap with one another. The main step changes in the structures of British policing have been made clear in this book. The first was the shift from old police to new, which was characterised by giving the legal office of constable to uniformed and disciplined institutions run along the lines of London’s parochial watch forces. Thus the constable’s status shifted from artisan to proletarian, and he was placed at the bottom

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of a hierarchy of supervision. The constable’s supervisors were also waged labourers, albeit more highly skilled, and their duty too was laid out very closely by rules and regulations. As well as through uniform and physical drill, the new police at all ranks were disciplined through the way they were ordered to create records of their activity (and that of their subordinates) which were open to later inspection and audit. In many important respects, the life of the new police fits the blueprint of the ‘disciplinary society’ set out by Foucault. These timekeeping and rule-bound systems were adopted at the same time as in the private sector: the police’s reliance on systems of bureaucratic records appears if anything to have been innovative. In addition to drill, uniform and regulations, one legacy from the military was leaders who, in addition to being socially acceptable and able to set the organisation’s priorities, were familiar with the detailed paperwork of a disciplined organisation. The closeness of police to other national institutions – such as central government

8.1  Police parade before going out on duty, holding their equipment for inspection, late twentieth century Source:  Mary Evans image no 10193113

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and the railways – also came into play when high technology – the telegraph – was enthusiastically embraced by the Home Office and the Met in order to present the strongest face possible against the Chartists of 1848. Further expansion of the telegraph network, and greater minute-to-minute control in its operation, were inspired (or perhaps merely justified) by the threat of riot. Telephones could not produce the written record so useful in bureaucratic management, but they found an initial niche as the best way for senior officers to stay in touch with one another. They then were used as a means of contacting other institutions, mediating between different bureaucratic systems rather than linking them directly. The police telephone box system had a two-fold purpose: it mechanised the traditional nineteenth-century pattern of beat supervision, and it provided a means for police to respond to claims for coverage and response which were coming from the new suburbs, with their lower urban population densities. Police boxes, like mobile radio systems and their associated control rooms, were developed as a response to the ongoing problem of providing an effective (and visibly so) police service. These twentieth-century communications technologies were intended to be used for everyday policing, but they rendered police forces into bodies of men and machines which could be quickly mobilised for any eventuality. The adoption of radio (like that of CCTV systems) by the British police was prompted not by efforts of manufacturers to sell them, but by the identification by police of an operational need which fitted into their existing priorities.2 Radio was only adopted after several years of expensive experimental operations to render it usable. With mobile radio (as with portable radio) the vision of the future was the easy bit: in the 1960s much money was wasted by Chief Constables whose desire to equip their forces with radios ran ahead of the technology. What was desirable, of course, was not always possible: and what was technically possible was nearly always limited by economic and political considerations. One theme of this book is the way that political policing was often a leading sector for technologies such as the telegraph, radio and CCTV. Few of the technologies used to help control police forces came from the ‘prisoner-facing’ parts of the criminal justice system: the main exception to this was the adoption by the Met of card indexes from the Prison Commission.

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Real-time centralised control of policing was a clear example of the transmission of technology from military to law enforcement.3 This parallels the situation in the USA, where many police technologies (such as tear gas) were originally military ones.4 In the 1920s the spread of radio may have been supply-driven, by the sudden arrival in the civilian world of trained men and hardware from the First World War. Later, when the main source of supply and innovation was the private sector, it was more demand-led. One constant in the evolution of police technologies from paper forms to computerisation is that they appeared first to deal with transactions within the organisation, and were only used to record the wider world later. Surveillance technology is reflexive. In the shape of widespread CCTV coverage as well as police systems such as in-car cameras, it opens up the possibility of a panopticon-style overview of the police themselves, in which their detailed actions on the streets may be open to later scrutiny by senior officers. This surveillance is only fitfully available to those outside the organisation: police institutions are well-placed to subvert the potential for CCTV to be used by the public at large to monitor them.5 The turn of the twenty-first century has seen the apotheosis of the control room as a police management strategy – William Bratton’s use of the COMPSTAT system in New York City, which under the guise of ‘zero tolerance’ has been taken as a model for the re-assertion of police power globally. COMPSTAT uses an internal disciplinary system based around the visual display of weekly crime statistics to supplant the traditional hierarchical management within senior ranks, and thus to reduce the feedback delay between the police chief and the area commanders.6 The public nature of this process performs a key symbolic function in that police are seen to be responding to a concrete and discrete threat, as portrayed in detail on the map. It provides another example of the way that bureaucracy necessitates filtering and simplification so that symbols can be manipulated.7 The initial labelling of varieties of public activity into one or another legal category of crime or disorder is itself a contingent, problematic and often contentious process, which can be driven as much by symbolic factors as instrumental ones.8 Yet, despite the fact that it is undoubtedly over-sold, real-time control and the

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associated bureaucratic practices are significant to the practice of modern police. These technologies can also raise the stakes in the relationship between police and public. Computerised information systems can be dangerous in that they could support an attitude on the part of police that they need not rely on co-operation from the local community to get information, but instead need only use their computer. In Britain, police reached a nadir of separation from many communities in the 1980s, adopting a mode which criminologists called ‘military policing’. It failed. The subsequent focus on ‘community safety’ as the main organising concept for policing in the late 1990s can be seen as a direct reaction against this tendency.9 But ‘community policing’ in its various guises remains highly dependent on communications technology and is ostensibly intelligence-led, implying use of information systems. There are continuing constant pressures on police bosses to adopt the most effective possible means of control within their forces, the better to deal with the problems and crises thrown up by the unpredictable external world. Within the police organisation itself, centralised control is an example of what Ericson and Haggerty see as the desire of police forces for ‘organisation security’ via ‘their ability to structure knowledge within predictable apparently fact-based formats, and to transmit this knowledge rapidly to members of the organisation in various locations’.10 Yet too much knowledge can be a dangerous thing. The automatic burglar alarm was a necessary element in any automated police response; its failure to deliver illustrates both the continuing attractiveness of the vision of such a response and the difficult, perhaps insurmountable, problems that needed to be solved before this response is possible.11 The invention of the automatic dialler in 1938 allowed intruder alarms to be connected to police telephone systems, and these generated a sharply increasing volume of calls. In the early 1950s, police chiefs such as Popkess had held out the prospect of the motorised response to the automatic alarm as the epitome of technological policing but, in reality, the system was being deluged with too much noise to lead to increased efficiency.12 As the 1950s and 1960s progressed, the number of inputs to the police control system rose. In 1950 there were 3,562 calls of this type arriving in the Met’s Information Room annually, rising to 16,934 in 1960 and 94,214 in 1970.13 Over 96% of the calls in 1970 were false

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alarms and only 0.2% of them resulted in an arrest. The communication and control system was good at generating inputs, but it demonstrated the extent to which the overall process of policing could not be automated. Systems to connect the world ‘indoors’ and that ‘outdoors’ could be planned and implemented, but their consequences were far harder to predict than for those which largely functioned ‘indoors’. The emergent properties of sociotechnical systems are structured by their hardware, by the initial intentions of their human operators, and by the other systems they are connected to.14 As the ease with which the police could be contacted increased, the prediction made by a Met Superintendent in the 1890s – when he rejected police boxes with telephones for public use – was proved wholly correct: if the public could easily contact the police they would want more than could ever be delivered. By the 1990s, public demand on the police was still rising and needed to be managed, often by cost-saving use of civilians, and by careful sorting of reports to give each the ‘appropriate’ speed of response.15 There had been other visions: visions of police not overwhelmed by information, but able to use technology to know and to plan. When Chief Constable Popkess lectured the Scottish Police College on the benefits of motorised, wireless-controlled police, his starting point was the scientific nature of modern policing, and the fact that it ought to be more scientific. He listed the most important innovations in police science as fingerprints, the Modus Operandi (MO) system, and ‘wireless and mechanisation’. Like fingerprinting, the MO system was another attempt to bureaucratise reality so that it could be understood, searched, and ultimately controlled through the arrest of the criminal whose MO was identified.16 Like mobile wireless, MO functioned as a simplifier, transforming information from a complex external reality into forms that allowed meaningful data processing within the institution. These systems do not merely sample, summarise or reproduce the external reality, they also constitute the ways that it can be understood. They are filters, but their role is not to uniformly attenuate reality but to pass through a few selected attributes at the expense of others. Garbis and Artman concluded from their study of emergency management situations that artefacts in control rooms, in this case diagrams, maps, diaries and communication equipment:

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are not simple filters of reality but rather active elements in the construction of the operators’ model of what is happening at the scene of the accident. In other words, these artefacts are essential in the process where the team members construct a model of the system they control and are responsible for.17

Centralised systems of control necessarily refract the perceptions of reality held by those who are the human actors in the sociotechnical system. The Police National Computer constituted another revolution in police control. The PNC project in fact only computerised a handful of the indices used by police. In doing so, though, it created a national information infrastructure. Previously, the Home Office’s common police services had been related to batch-processed backoffice functions such as training, technical and other standards and the maintenance of records. The PNC project for the first time brought a national institution into the real-time control of policing. For the HO and the Met, centralisation of police computing under their control was a crucial step in the functional centralisation of British policing. In 1975, the PNC went live to British police, who were now less than 10 minutes away from the national registers of suspicious people and suspicious vehicles. Over the last 200 years, British police control systems have evolved in concert with the country (and, latterly, with the world) around them. Symptomatic of the closeness of police power to the modern state, police technology has been backed by successive governments who have given police leaders the money to invest in up-to-the minute systems, further developing these to suit their own requirements if necessary. Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in police organisations usually being among the most advanced in their use of administrative, communications and information technology. They have remained closer to the state than to the private sector: by 1975 there was little or no sign that the government would respond to any attempt to create a security-industrial complex in Britain.There are, of course, seductive reasons to extend the analysis beyond this date. One of these concerns the continuing influence of high politics and political crises on the adoption of technological innovations for policing. It is possible that the experience of counter-insurgency in Northern Ireland also played this role, and impacted on the everyday practice of policing in the 1980s and 1990s, in processes similar to

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that whereby the anti-pIRA ‘ring of steel’ in the City of London pioneered the technology for the UK-wide automatic number plate recognition system. But a search for evidence to test this hypothesis must be left, for now, as unfinished business.

Notes   1 Media Archive for Central England, ‘Know your Midlands: Nottingham by night’, video, created 19 August 1957.   2 S. Graham and S. Marvin, Telecommunications and the city: Electronic places, urban places (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 94–101; Williams, ‘Police surveillance and the emergence of CCTV’.  3 Manwaring-White, Policing revolution; G. Marx, ‘What’s new about the “New Surveillance”? Classifying change and continuity’, in Surveillance and Society, 1:1 (2002), 9–29, p. 23; Center for Research on Criminal Justice, The iron fist and the velvet glove: An analysis of the U.S. police (Berkeley: Center for Research on Criminal Justice, 1977), pp. 75–81; BSSRS, TechnoCop, p. 66; Wright, ‘New police technologies’.   4 D.P. Jones, ‘From military to civilian technology: The introduction of tear gas for civil riot control’ in Technology and Culture, 19:2 (April 1978), 151–169.   5 Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary for Scotland, The investigation of complaints against the police in Scotland: A fair cop? (HMICS 6 April 2000), 11.5.  6 W.F. Walsh, ‘Compstat: An analysis of an emerging police managerial paradigm’ in Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 24:3 (2001), 347–362.  7 P.K. Manning, ‘Police technology: Crime analysis’ in Criminal Justice Matters, 58 (2004/05), 26–27, p. 27.   8 Williams,‘Counting crimes or counting people’, pp. 88–89; C.A.Williams, ‘Catégorisation et stigmatisation policières á Sheffield au milieu du XIXe siècle’ in Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 50:1 (2003), 104–125.   9 Young and Lea, What is to be done about law and order?, pp. 172–173. 10 Ericson and Haggerty, Policing the risk society, pp. 389–390. 11 ‘Society of Telegraph Engineers’, Daily News, 19 December 1876. 12 Popkess, Mechanised police patrol, pp. iix, 107–108. 13 E. Matthews, ‘Automatic burglar alarms – a police viewpoint’ in Wiles, P. and McClintock, F.H., (eds) The security industry in the United Kingdom: Papers presented to the Cropwood Round-Table Conference July 1971 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology, 1972), pp. 24–36. 14 L. Dubbeld, ‘The role of technology in shaping CCTV surveillance practices’ in Information, Communication & Society, 8:1 (2005), 84–100.

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15 Chloë Jolowicz and Tim Read, Managing demand on the police: An evaluation of a crime line, Police Research Series: Paper Number 8 (London: Home Office Police Research Group, 1994). 16 D.G. Browne and A. Brock, Fingerprints: Fifty years of scientific development (London: George C. Harrap & Co., 1953). 17 Artman and Garbis, ‘Situation awareness’, p. 4.

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Unpublished papers Lane, J., ‘The development of Irish cross-border police co-operation, 1922–1999 (PhD dissertation, Queen’s University Belfast, 1999). Martin, I., ‘Centering the computer in the business of banking: Banks and technological change, 1954–1974’ (PhD dissertation, Manchester University, 2010). Naylor, A., ‘A critique of the implementation of crime and intelligence computing in three British Police forces, 1976–1986’ (PhD dissertation, Edinburgh Napier University, 2008). Rigg, K. ‘From “pounding the pavement” to “pushing the pedal”: A constable’s perspective of the detraditionaliseation of policing in a small county borough police force, 1947-1968’ (PhD dissertation, Teesside University, 2013). Reynolds, E.,‘The night watch and police reform in Metropolitan London, 1720–1830’ (PhD dissertation, Cornell University, 1991). Scollan, M., ‘Parish constables versus police constables: Policing early nineteenth-century Essex’ (PhD dissertation, Open University, 2007). Smale, D.M., ‘The development of the new police in the Scottish Borders’ (PhD dissertation, Open University, 2007). Weaver, M.,‘As if every vestige of English honesty had for ever fled: George Bakewell’s criticisms of the new police in early-Victorian Britain’, unpub. paper delivered at the Southwestern Historical Association Conference, San Antonio, USA, April 1999. Williams, C.A., ‘ “I am not on the beat now, the New Police have come there.” Using the Old Bailey Online to study the changing enforcers of the law in London, 1730–1834’ (unpublished paper, 2006).

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ACPO 147, 149, 163, 174, 183, 185–187, 188 and Police National Computer, 174, 185–187, 188 Acts of Parliament see Statutes Adam, Barbara 69 Admiralty, the 122, 144 Adorno, Theodore 47 Agar, Jon 86–87, 175 alarms 124–125, 206–207 Anderson, Clare 12 anticipation of technology see technology: predictions about area car 5 Army, British see British Army ARP see civil defence artisans 46, 57 see also police: as artisans Artman, Henrik 120, 207 Ashmore, Edward 153 Assize 25, 27, 29, 33 associations for prosecution of felons 27, 28, 29 Atcherley, L.W. (HM Inspector of Constabulary) 149, 181 audit, auditability 112, 118 Automatic Data Processing (ADP) 175 see also Home Office, JADPU Bakewell, George (police constable) 43, 54–57, 60n.59, 63, 65, 73, 90 Ball, Kirstie 45

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Bank of England, employing constables 28 Barnard, T.P. 7 Barrett, George (moral entrepreneur) 37, 87 Beadle see Parish Officers, Beadle beat diaries see police: pocketbooks, notebooks, journals and beat diaries beats, police see police: beats Becker, Peter 2, 10 Beniger, James 11, 23, 47 Bentham, Jeremy 47, 70 Berkhamsted, old police in 33 Berlière, Jean-Marc 144 Best, Kenneth 161 Birnie, Richard (magistrate) 35–36, 50 Black, Alistair 10 black-boxing 86, 88 Bödeker, Hans Erich 109 bodies, control of see policing and drill Bogard, William 120 Bow Street Officers Ruthven, George 29–30 Vaughan, George 27 Bow Street Police Office 27, 29, 36, 50 information, and 10 patrols 22 Bratton, William 205 Braverman, Harry 15–16, 47, 87 British Army 106–108, 122 Brodeur, Jean-Paul 3, 123

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Index 233 Brogden, Michael 44 Brown, Alyson 144 Bunker, John, 9, 119, 125 bureaucracy 4, 10–11, 62, 85–113, 100, 103–106, 112–113, 205, 207–208 definition of 13–14 historiography of 6 legibility in 92, 126, 181 limits to 103, 128 parish constable, and 24 scalability of 6, 100 tools of 12, 85, 88, 89–90, 93–95, 108–113, 120, 129–130 Weber’s model of 4, 13–14, 71 see also information Burroughs Corporation 188–189, 194 Callaghan, James (Home Secretary) 164 camera obscura 124 Campbell-Kelly, Martin 10–11, 100 car see motor car card indexes 12, 86, 100–101, 204 career, the 45 Cartwright, William (HM Inspector of Constabulary) 100 CCTV 163–164, 188 centres of calculation 120, 152, 165 Chadwick, Edwin 124 Chandler, Alfred 11 Chartism 121–123 Chester, Norman 9 Chief Constables Fenwick, George Lee 108 Jackson, John 94 List, Alfred 63, 71 Maxwell, John 156 McHardy, John 90–91, 94 Popkess, Athelstan 154–156, 159, 182, 206, 207 St Johnston, Eric 159, 162 Ward, Frank 108–109 Withers, James 109 see also police ranks, Chief Constable

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Childs, Wyndham 147–148 City of London 209 civil defence 135, 161 civil service 13 civilian employees, civilianisation see police: civilian employees Clapham 122 Clark, William 2 10 clerks 76, 98, 103–105, 122 see also police: clerks closed circuit television see CCTV Colquohoun, Patrick (moral entrepreneur, magistrate) 43, 48–49, 50, 52, 85 commercial organisations see private sector 5 Commissioner of Police see Metropolitan Police, Commissioner Commissions and inquiries 1822 Committee on the Police of the Metropolis 50 1854 Northcote Trevelyan Report 8 1878 Departmental Committee on Detective Work 110–111 Common Law 52, 56, 202 communications [in general] 9, 118–136 see also feedback; reports; telegraph; telephone; teleprinter COMPSTAT 205 computing, in government 175–176 computing, police 5, 187 see also Police National Computer conference points 70, 71, 92, 131 constable of the night 35, 36, 42n.72 constable status of 52 superintending 38 constables, parish actions against 32–34 disorder and 33 Essex, in 39 law and 25, 26, 31–34 masculinity and 25 professionalisation and 29

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234 constables, parish (continued) reform and 34 rewards and 26, 30, 34 Sheffield, in 28–29 see also police, old 24–34 control 47, 95–96, 160–161, 166, 206 mechanisation of 151 control revolution 11, 23, 47 control room 120, 141–142, 152, 153–154, 162–165, 166 Convict Supervision Office 100–101 coroner 36 corruption of (old) police 27 crime communications and 134, 140 fear of 144 prevention of 49–50 criminal records, and Police National Computer 177, 195 Dandeker, Christopher 7, 15–16, 118, 153, 175, 185–187 de Lint, Willem 3, 44–45, 52, 83 Departmental Committees see Commissions and inquiries Departmental Enquiries see Commissions and Inquiries Derby, the Epsom 146 Desborough, Walter (HO civil servant) 102 de-skilling 15, 43, 57 see also proletarianisation of police Detective Committee 1878 see Commissions and Inquiries detective work 5, 92, 110–111 disciplinary power 48, 77 discipline 52 Metropolitan Police, in 52, 78–79 new police, in 56, 66–68 time 45, 74 watchmen, and 35–38 dispatching 120, 161–163, 166, 194–195 Dixon, Arthur (HO civil servant) 146, 147, 150–151, 153, 161

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Index docketing 89, 96 Dodsworth, Francis 1, 25, 31, 44, 55–56 drill see policing and drill Du Cane, Edmund 108, 110 Dunning, Leonard (HM Inspector of Constabulary) 100 Dunstall, Graeme 7 durability of information 87–88, 126–127 Eagle, the 158 Edgerton, David 9, 119, 154, 160 Eisenhower, Dwight 142 Electric Telegraph Company 121–123 Emsley, Clive 2, 44, 119 Ericson, Richard 206 Essex, parish constables in 39 Evans, Michael (parish constable) 30 factory system 15–16, 46–47, 53, 69, 71, 74, 79–80, 94, 96 feedback 71, 118, 120, 155, 164, 194, 205 Fenwick George Lee (Chief Constable) 108 Fielding, Henry (magistrate) 10, 87 Fielding, John (magistrate) 10 files 14, 90, 100–101 filters, filtering 16–17, 85–86, 87–89, 131, 135, 153, 174, 184, 205, 207–208 fingerprints, fingerprinting 12, 178, 207 and Police National Computer 177, 178, 189–190, 195–196 Finlayson, Alan 47 Finn, Jonathan 11 Finnane, Mark 7 fire brigade policing 162 First World War 4, 142–144, 152, 154–155, 165 foresight 74 forms 71, 86, 94–97, 99, 102, 111, 112, 125, 191, 205 old police 31 see also bureaucracy: tools of

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Index 235 Fosdick, Raymond 182 Foucault, Michel 10, 14–15, 47–48, 62, 63, 69, 70, 73, 80, 85, 93, 203 and disciplinary institution 14 and disciplinary power 77 and disciplinary society 47–48, 203 and governmentality 14–15, 85 and security 15 and time 15 Garbis, C. 120, 207 Gellner, Ernest 47 General Strike 1926, 147 Glossop, George (Chief Constable) 60n.61 Gray, Drew 44 Great Exhibition, 1851 123 Greenwich, old police in 33 Grey, George (Home Secretary) 121 Gross, Hans 182 habitus 65, 131 Haggerty, Kevin 206 Halland, Gordon (HM Inspector of Constabulary) 162 Harris, William (Met Assistant Commissioner) 63 Hatton Garden 164 haute police see policing: political Headrick, Daniel 10, 120 helicopters 160 Henderson, Edmund (Metropolitan Police Commissioner) 103, 107–108, 110 Higgins, Daniel (Police Constable) 93 HM Inspectorate of Constabulary 54, 69, 70, 71, 75, 76, 77, 91, 96–97, 100, 105, 149 HM Inspectors of Constabulary Atcherley, L.W. 149, 181 Cartwright, William 100 Dunning, Leonard 100 Halland, Gordon 162 Woodford, John 91 Holland, Philip 159 Hollingdrakes 151

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HOLMES 5 Holtzendorff, Baron 46 Home Office 50 air defence, and 153 civil servants in Desborough, Walter 102 Dixon, Arthur 146, 147, 150–151, 153, 161 Troup, Edward 8 Directorate of Telecommunications 163 emergency planning, and 126 habitual criminals, and 110 historiography of 8–9, 86 JADPU 176–181, 186, 188, 195, 208 see also Police National Computer Metropolitan Police, and 99, 145–148 Ministry of Transport, and 179–180, 181 Police National Computer, and 174, 189–190 see also Police National Computer provincial police forces, and 105, 110, 186 radio, and 145–148, 156 reviews own bureaucracy 110 Royal Engineers and 107–108 statistics, and 87–89 telegraph, and 121–123 Home Secretary 9, 50, 51, 121, 159–161, 164, 192–193 Callaghan, James 164 Grey, George 121 Jenkins, Roy 159–160 Peel, Robert 50, 52 Horse Guards 122 Howe, Ronald 183 Howgrave-Graham, H.M. 103 Hyde Park 52, 125, 126, 146 IBM 188–189, 190–192, 193–194 ICL 178, 188–189

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236 information durability of 87–88, 126–127 history of 9–11, 100, 175 latency of 87–88 processability of 88–89, 94–95, 100 see also bureaucracy; feedback information technology 101, 195 see also policing: information technology and initiative, police use of 73 inscription 11, 89 instruction books new police see police: rule books old police 30–32, 66 international police exhibition (Hanover 1966) 192 Interpol see policing: international Ireland 52, 154, 208 Jackson, John (Chief Constable) 94 JADPU see Home Office: JADPU James, John 9 Jebb, John 107 Jenkins, Roy (Home Secretary) 159–160 Jervis, Richard (police constable) 70 Journals see police: pocketbooks, notebooks, journals and beat diaries Justices of the Peace see magistrates Kennington Common 122 Kenworthy, Harold 146–147 Kenyon LJ 26 Keymer, H.S. 89–90, 95 Kinsey, John (parish constable) 33 Klein, Joanne 2, 119 labour process 15 labour relations 46 Landes, David 74 latency of information 87–88 Latour, Bruno 11, 86, 88–89, 120, 152, 165 law and parish constables 25, 26, 31–34

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Index Laybourn, Keith 119 leading sector 118, 121, 123–124, 135, 164, 205 Leonard, V.A. 143 Levett, Alan 3 licences and police 102, 177, 181 List, Alfred (Chief Constable) 63, 71 Little, John (parish constable) 27 Little, William (parish constable) 27 local authorities, and Police National Computer 174, 185–186 Löfgren, Orvar 43, 45–46 Lombroso, Cesare 12 London Air Defence Area 153–154 London 22, 35, 122, 131–132, 164 new police in 49–53, 54 see also Metropolitan Police loose-leaf registers 101 Lustgarten, Lawrence 44 MacDonagh Oliver 9 MADE 194–195 magistrates 29, 33, 35–36, 38, 48–50, 122 Birnie, Richard 35–36, 50 Colquohoun, Patrick 43, 48–49, 50, 52, 85 Fielding, Henry 10, 87 Fielding, John 10 managerial revolution 11 see also systematic management; Taylorism Manchester 68 manuals see police: rule books Marconi company 146–148, 151, 187 Marconi, Guglielmo 146 Margulis, Stephen 45 marshal (City of London) 37 masculinity 25, 56 and parish constables 25 Maxwell, John (Chief Constable) 156 May, Edmund 110 Mayne, Richard (Metropolitan Police Commissioner) 99, 123 McHardy, John (Chief Constable) 90–91, 94

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Index 237 mechanical telegraph see telegraph, mechanical mechanisation of control 151 of policing 100, 102, 136, 150–152, 158, 161–162 media see publicity Merit class constable 75 see also police ranks: constable, grades within Metropolitan Police 43, 52, 67–68, 77 Assistant Commissioner, Harris, William 63 Area Wireless Scheme 152 beats 63, 65, 133 Commissioner 51, 97, 103, 107, 115n.54 Henderson, Edmund 103, 107–108, 110 Mayne, Richard 99, 123 Rowan, Charles 99, 122 Trenchard, Hugh 151–154 communications 122–125, 127–128, 130–134, 146–148, 150–152 creation of 38, 51 detectives 92, 110–111 discipline in 52, 78–9 Flying Squad 146, 149, 157 information systems 90, 99–101, 110, 112, 133 see also Police National Computer innovation in 100–102, 133 JADPU and see Home Office, JADPU organisation of 89, 97, 100, 103 Receiver’s office 147 regulations, instructions and orders 67, 70, 92, 97–98, 99 Special Branch 147–148 turnover in 53 weapons, and 54 MI5 (Security Service) 10, 148 Midland Railway 153 military legacy see police: military legacy in Miller, Wilbur 45, 51, 65

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Ministry of Transport 179–180, 181 modernisation 15 Modus Operandi (MO) 181–185, 207 and Police National Computer 174, 181–185, 191, 195–196 Monkonen, Eric 3 moral entrepreneur 43 Barrett, George 37, 87 Colquohoun, Patrick 43, 48–49, 50, 52, 85 Moran, Michael 87 motor bandits 134, 140, 144, 150 motor car 148–149 Nadin, Joseph (parish constable) 27–28, 30 Nassau, Maurice of 63 Neocleous, Mark 44, 51 network (telephone) 129 new police 37, 38 79–80 critique by George Bakewell 55 discipline in 56, 66–68 London, in 49–53, 54 precursors of 49 New Scotland Yard see Scotland Yard Northamptonshire, parish constables in 26 Northern Ireland 208 notebooks see police: pocketbooks, notebooks, journals and beat diaries old police see police: old orders, police see police: rule books Organisation and Methods (O&M) 150, 175, 176, 180 Paget, Cecil 153 Pan American Airlines 190, 191 panopticon 48, 51, 62, 70, 164, 205 Parish constables (institution) see constables: parish parish constables (individuals) Evans, Michael 30 Kinsey, John 33 Little, John 27 Little, William 27

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238 parish constables (individuals) (continued) Nadin, Joseph 27–28, 30 Smith, Thomas 28 Waterfall, John 28, 30 Parish watch forces see watchmen paternalism 78–79 PEDEX 163 Peel, Robert (Home Secretary) 50, 52 Pellew, Jill 86 pensions 76–79, 84n.81, 94 pensions, police and 62, 77–80 Philips, David 2, 22, 25, 27 photography, police use of 11–12, 111 pneumatic tube 127, 135, 152, 158 pocket book see police: pocketbooks, notebooks, journals and beat diaries Police and Aliens Record Computer (PARC) 176 Police Authority 96 Police Constables Bakewell, George 43, 54–57, 60n.59, 63, 65, 73, 90 Higgins, Daniel 93 Jervis, Richard 70 Police Equipment Exhibition 1961, 188 Police forces borough forces 91, 105, 126 county forces 91, 105, 129–130, 134 Alameda County (USA) 192 Anglesey 71 Bedfordshire 92 Berkeley (USA) 143 Birmingham 54, 126, 194–195 Boston (USA) 130 Bradford 109, 151, 157 Braintree 37 Brighton 151, 156, 157, 158 Bristol 111 Buckinghamshire 53, 126, 128 Cambridge 71 Canadian 156, 192 Cheshire 129 Chester 108 City of London 37, 38, 50, 128

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Index

Derbyshire 70–71 Doncaster 151 Dorset 65 Durham 129 East Suffolk 92 Edinburgh 53 Essex 65, 90–91, 94–96, 128 Europe in general 192 FBI 189, 192 Flint 71 German 163 Glasgow 131 154, 194–195 Gloucestershire 71, 111 Godalming 70 Grantham 70 Hampshire 65 Herefordshire 65 Hertfordshire 128 Huntingdonshire 69 Irish Constabulary 5 Kidderminster 54 Lancashire 70, 91, 92, 96–97, 129, 145, 159 Lancaster 108 Leeds 69, 108, 183 Leicester 71 Leicestershire 53–54 Liverpool 100, 154, 163 Lothians 63 Manchester 53, 66, 91–92, 93, 108, 111, 129, 151, 154, 156 Marylebone Watch 35, 37, 77 Merioneth 71 Metropolitan 5, 45 see also Metropolitan Police Middlesborough 53 New York 45, 205 Newcastle-upon Tyne 82, 130, 151, 156–157 Northampton 68, 71 Nottingham 111, 149, 154–156, 159, 202 Nottinghamshire 129 Oldham 151 Palestine Gendarmerie 154 Paris 190–191

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Index 239 Preston 109 Sheffield 37–38, 53, 56, 65, 67, 69, 72, 77, 78, 90, 93–94, 151 South Shields 20n.58 Staffordshire 65 Stockport 151 Sunderland 131 Surrey 128 Sussex 186 Tasmania 75 Thames River 48–49, 50, 85 USA in general 65, 156, 163, 192 West Riding 145 Wiltshire 129 Wolverhampton 111 police manuals see police: rule books Police National Computer 174–181, 184–196, 202, 208 ACPO, and 174, 185–187, 188 criminal records, and 177, 195 development of 176–181, 185–196 fingerprints, and 177, 178, 189–190, 195–196 Home Office, and 174, 189–190 international context of 187–195 JADPU, and 176–177, 178–180, 186, 193 local authorities, and 174, 185–186 Modus Operandi, and 174, 181–185, 191, 195–196 vehicle registration, and 177, 179, 181, 184, 191, 195–196 police ranks Chief Constable 53, 94, 106 constable, grades within 50, 68, 75–76, 93 High Constable 22 Inspector 67, 125 Sergeant 68 Sergeant of the watch 35, 37 Superintendent 67, 91, 95–97, 96, 99, 125, 128, 130 Police Superintendents Association police administration 105–106 artisans, as 1, 24, 202

232-244 PoliceControl Index.indd 239

beats 63, 68–71, 131, 149, 202 conference points 70, 71, 92, 131 orders concerning 69 body language of 65 books and ledgers 93, 95–97, 100 see also pocketbooks, notebooks, journals and beat diaries civilian employees 102, 103–105, 177–178, 193 clerks 96, 103–106, 108–109, 125 computing see computing, police de-professionalisation of 44, 47 ‘domestic missionaries’, as 72, 79–80 helicopters and 160 historiography of 2–3, 22, 44–45, 119 leave 78–79 licensing role 102, 177, 181 manuals, instructions see police: rule books military legacy in 106–107, 143, 153–155, 165–166, 203, 205 misconduct 94 new see new police old 22–30, 34–38, 51, 66 in Berkhamsted 33 in Greenwich 33 in Southwark 33 in Suffolk 32 in Yorkshire 32 patrol tactics 131, 149 pensions and 62, 77–80 pocketbooks, notebooks, journals and beat diaries 37, 38, 71, 86, 90–93, 95–96, 191, 202 professionalisation 4, 43, 44 proletarianisation 4, 37, 43, 46–47, 56–57, 202 public and 33, 36, 51, 66–68, 131, 133–134, 136, 156–158, 160, 162, 195 recruitment 75 rule books 4, 53, 57, 65–66, 66–68, 72, 134, 191

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240 police (continued) self-observation 72–73 styles of 68 supervision of 37–38, 48–50, 53, 55–56, 62, 70, 90–92, 94, 100, 110, 130, 133, 150–152, 161–163, 203 uniforms 62, 66–68, 90, 202–203 use of initiative 73 weapons and 53–54 policing discretion and 72 drill and 62–66, 106, 131, 202–203 information technology and 113, 122–128, 150–152, 194–195 see also communications; Police National Computer international 145, 191–192 masculinity and 25, 56 mechanisation of 100, 102, 136, 150–152, 158, 161–162 political 3, 119, 123, 135, 164, 204–205 rewards and 23, 27–29, 35, 73–76, 93, 111 science of 143–144, 155, 160, 207 space and 112, 118 time and 45, 51, 62, 74, 78–79, 112–113 political policing 3, 119, 123, 135, 164, 204–205 Pollard, Sidney 15–16 Popkess, Athelstan (Chief Constable) 154–156, 159, 182, 206, 207 Post Office 10, 84n.81 post-Fordism 67 prisons, Prison Commission 14, 48, 73–74, 107, 110, 176, 178, 204 private sector, role of 5, 13, 93, 100, 118, 121, 122–123, 142–143, 146–147, 165, 174, 187–195, 203–204, 208 professionalisation of police 4, 43, 44 proletarianisation of police 4, 37, 43, 46–47, 56–57, 202 Pryor, John 27

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Index public and the police, the 33, 36, 51, 66–68, 131, 133–114, 136, 156–158, 160, 162, 195 publicity 141, 147, 156–158 punch clocks see tell-tale clocks punched cards 12, 86, 102, 175, 183, 189, 190–191, 193–194 punctuality 69 Quarter Sessions 25, 27, 37–38, 95 radio 4, 135, 140, 144–161, 204 long distance 145 personal 142, 150–151, 156, 158–161, 165–166, 195 vehicle mounted 148, 150, 154 railway companies 121, 122, 153, 204 Rawlings Philip, 2, 44 real-time control 88, 118, 144, 152–155, 161, 174, 202 recruitment of police 75 regulations see rules Reiner, Robert 109 reports 112, 120 rewards 23, 27–29, 35, 73–76, 93, 111 and parish constables 26, 30, 34 Rigg, Kevin 20n.58 Ritson, Joseph 30–31 Rock, Paul 22 routes, 111 128 Rowan, Charles (Metropolitan Police Commissioner) 99, 122 Royal Air Force 88, 151–152, 154 Royal Commissions see Commissions and inquiries Royal Engineers 107–108, 110 Royal Flying Corps 153 Royal Navy 94, 144, 154 rules 62, 74 Ruthven, George (Bow Street officer) 29–30 SAGE 191 science of policing 143–144, 155, 160, 207 Scotland Yard 99, 125

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Index 241 Information Room 152, 157, 158, 165 see also Metropolitan Police Scott, James C. 16–17, 181, 184 Second World War 134–135, 142, 159, 161, 162, 166 security-industrial complex 142, 165 Sekula, Alan 12 Select committees see reports Shapyer-Makov, Haia 2, 44, 78, 93 Sheffield, parish constables in 28–29 Smiles, Samuel 72, 74 Smith, Adam 46 Smith, Thomas (parish constable) 28 social sciences 109 Society for the Suppression of Vice 31 Southwark, old police in 33 speaking tube 99 St Johnston, Eric (Chief Constable) 159, 162 Standard Telephone Company 151 state power, policing and 118 statistics 49, 87, 88, 89, 102, 110, 154, 177–178, 205 of police performance 109 status of constable 52 Statutes 1824 Vagrancy Act (5 Geo. 4 c.83) 34 1833 Lighting and Watching Act (3&4 Will. 4 c.90) 37 1839 Birmingham Police Act (2&3 Vic. c.88) 54 1839 Metropolitan Police Act (2&3 Vic. c.47) 51 1842 Parish Constables Act (5&6 Vic. c.109) 51–52 1850 Parish Constables Act (13&14 Vic. c.20) 51–52 1856 County and Borough Police Act (19&20 Vic. c.69) 52, 54 1859 Police Pensions Act (22&23 Vic. c.32) 77 1869 Habitual Criminals Act (32&33 Vic c.99) 110

232-244 PoliceControl Index.indd 241

1919 Police Act (9&10 Geo. 5 c.46) 105 Steedman, Carolyn 3, 44, 93 Storch, Robert 2, 22, 25, 27 suburbs 131, 148–149, 150, 165, 204 Suffolk, old police in 32 superintending constable 38 supervision of police 37–38, 48–50, 53, 55–56, 62, 70, 90–92, 94, 100, 110, 130, 133, 150–152, 161–163, 203 of watchmen 34–38 surveillance 16, 48 by police 70, 124 by public 157, 158 of police 48, 70, 74, 93, 130, 136, 205 Surveyor-General of Convict Prisons 107 systematic management 102, 143 tacit knowledge 89, 103, 183 Taylor, David 2, 119 Taylorism 67, 143 technology definition of 12 patterns of adoption 134–136, 142–143 predictions about 118, 124, 183, 189 telegraph mechanical 121 policing and 4, 99, 118, 121–128, 135 political policing and 121–124, 125, 204 riots and 125 telephone 4, 99, 118, 127–126, 152, 204, 206 boxes 119, 130–134, 207 patterns in police adoption of 127–128, 135 teleprinter 126–127, 161 telex 126–127 emergency planning and 127 tell-tale clocks 70

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242 Thompson, E.P. 46 time 15, 45, 85 policing, and 45, 51, 62, 74, 78–79, 112–113 time-discipline 45, 74 timetable 69 see also policing: time and Trafalgar Square 163 Treasury, the 102, 150, 175–176, 179–180, 186, 189 Trenchard, Hugh (Metropolitan Police Commissioner) 151–154 Troup, Edward (HO civil servant) 8 turnover in Metropolitan Police 53 Tyburn Ticket 27 uniforms 62, 66–68, 90, 202–203 unit beat policing 162 Univac 189 urban space 68 Vaughan, George (Bow Street Officer) 27 vehicle registration, and Police National Computer 177, 179, 181, 184, 191, 195–196 Vesey, Thomas 154 Vollmer, August 143, 182

232-244 PoliceControl Index.indd 242

Index wage labour see police: proletarianisation Wall, David 2 106 Ward, Frank (Chief Constable) 108–109 warfare state 142, 154, 160, 165 watchmen 23 34–38, 67 and discipline 35–38 and magistrates 36 and supervision 34–38 Waterfall, John (parish constable) 28, 30 Weber, Max 4 13–14, 71, 72, 87, 120 Wharncliffe Lord 37–38 wireless see radio Wireless Telephone Company 158 Withers, James (Chief Constable) 109 women employees 102 Woodford, John (HM Inspector of Constabulary) 91 Wright, Steve 142 Yates, JoAnne 11, 87 Yorkshire, old police in 32 Young, Malcolm 67, 89, 109 zeal 49, 62, 72–73 Zedner, Lucia 6

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