5.1 Context: Policing the nation
Using sources for an enquiry into policing
How police forces were organised What sources could help you find out more about policing
-There were many different police forces. There were in Britain in the later 19th century?
separate forces within counties, cities and towns.
-The home secretary (based in Westminster) had little Official statistics
control over local police forces outside London, which -The National Archive has statistics for crime and policing
were usually run by watch committees. -According to the Home office archive, the detective force in
-Exception was the Metropolitan Police force in London, London grew from 216 in 1878 to 294 in 1883, and the
which reported crime directly to the home secretary. number of arrests they made rose from 13000 to 18000.
Manpower Police and court records
-Police work was hampered by insufficient manpower. -Stats from individual police stations are useful but can be
-By 1885, the Met was made up of 13,319 men among a misleading.
population of just over five million. -Freedom licences- official release papers for prisoners- are
-But only 1383 of those officers were available for duty valuable records of convictions and punishments, which are
at any one time not covered by police station records.
-There are also archives of records from court cases. Many
The Criminal Investigation Department ppl arrested in Whitechapel found themselves tried at the
-The main task of the police was to prevent crime, but a Central Criminal court in London.
detective department was added to the Metropolitan
Police in 1842. Memoirs and reports-
-It was tiny and ineffective and there was confusion over -Police memoirs are a source of information
whether detectives meant to prevent or detect crime. -Memoirs need to be treated with care, as people tend to use
-After a corruption scandal in 1877, the Criminal them to present their lives in a positive way.
Investigation Department (CID) was set up in 1878, with
216 officers. Memoir = An individual’s account of his or her life.
-This cleared up confusion as they detected crime. It may be based on diaries and other records.
Commissioner Charles Warren Recording crime
-After a series of strikes and demonstrations against -The way crimes were recorded in important
government policy, the home secretary appointed a -Crime rates seem to have gone down at the end of the 19 th
former general, Sir Charles Warren, as Metropolitan century. Maybe criminals through improvements to policing
Police Commissioner in 1886. made it more likely that they would be caught. A speculation.
-This was a warning to those who were seen as -It is difficult to interpret crime statistics.
troublemaking opponents of the government.
-It was Warren who called in the army to control the The media
protesters in Trafalgar Square on Bloody Sunday. The -One of the easiest ways on monitoring what happened is
police action on that day added to a growing feeling that through local and national newspapers.
the police favoured the middle and upper classes against -These publications may have stories emphasised or
the poor. So, policing in poorer districts was more sensationalised.
difficult. -There were also some newspapers that aimed to challenge
-Warren was criticised by all sides for appearing to enjoy negative views of local policemen in other papers
the action in Trafalgar Square.
-When Jack the Ripper terrorised Whitechapel, Warren
paid for the police’s failure to catch him by being forced
out as Commissioner.
, 5.2 The local context of Whitechapel
Census
-In the 1800s, Whitechapel (in the East End) was one of the capital’s poorest districts, with
-One way of showing
gangs ruling the streets.
the density of housing
-1000 out of the 30,000 population were homeless
at a time.
-Londoners shared the district with more recent Irish and Jewish Eastern European immigrants
-an official count or
-The difficult lives of the inhabitants contributed to high levels of crime
survey, especially of a
population
Sanitation = Conditions
associated with public health,
such as running water and
sewerage systems
Pollution and poor sanitation Overcrowded housing
-London was a heavily polluted industrial city. - Rookeries:
-The prevailing wind from the west carried smoke -The majority of housing was in overcrowded slum areas. These were
and stinking gas fumes that choked the maze-like characterised by dirt, disease and crime. Houses were divided into
streets of the East End. separate apartments. There could be up to 30 people in one
-In Whitechapel, sanitation was very poor. There apartment, sharing beds so densely packed together that it was
was little healthy drinking water and sewers ran difficult to move about.
into the streets. -In 1877, one rookery contained 123 room, with accommodation for
Work in Whitechapel 757 people, where families hovered on the brink of starvation.
-Whitechapel’s most famous factory was the Bell -Lodging houses:
Foundry, where Big Ben was cast. -Accommodation that offered little more than a bed
-Many residents worked in ‘sweated’ trades like -Some had 3 eight-hour sleeping shifts a day, so beds could be used by
tailoring, shoemaking and making matches. the maximum number of people
-They worked in sweatshops which were small, -The smell and heat in summer, along with the presence of rats, meant
cramped and dusty, with little natural light. Hours this form of accommodation was awful.
were long (20hrs a day) and wages were low. -There were over 200 lodging houses in WC at this time, where more
-Others worked in railway construction or as than 8000 people (about quarter of the local population) lived
labourers in the London docks, where the amount
of work on offer varied day to day- leaving familiesModel housing- the Peabody Estate
with an uncertain income. -In 1875, parliament passed the Artistans’ Dwellings Act as part of
-Not everybody found work and the economy London’s earliest slum clearance programmes.
became depressed in the 1870s and -In Whitechapel, a maze of narrow courtyards filled with cramped
unemployment widespread. and unhealthy houses was replaces with 11 blocks of flats.
-These were designed by Henry Darbishire and paid for by George
Workhouses and orphanages Peabody, a wealthy American who moves to London
-Workhouses had been set up earlier in the 19 th -The Peabody Estate:
century as part of the poor relief system. -opened in 1881 and provided 286 flats.
-They offered food and shelter to those too poor to -Weekly rented started at 3 shillings (15p) for a one-room flat. This
survive in the general community. went up to six shillings for three rooms.
-Inmates included the old, sick, disabled, orphans
and unmarried mother. -Thanks to the work of Dr Thomas Barnardo, (who trained as a doctor
-Conditions were deliberately made worse in the local hospital) many younger people who would have been sent
-The aim was to keep costs down by putting poor to a workhouse found themselves in a better place.
people off from entering the workhouse. -His first project was a school for children whose parents had died in
-Inmates were expected to do tough manual labour an outbreak of an infectious disease.
and wear a uniform. Families were split up. -In 1870, Barnardo opened an orphanage for boys. He later opened a
-Vagrants, who stayed just 1 or 2 nights, were held girls’ home.
separately from long term residents, as they were -By the time he died, in 1905, there were nearly 100 Barnardo’s homes
thought to be lazy and a bad influence on others. nationally, caring for an average of 85 children each.
