Seventeen Shillings and Thruppence Ha’penny

C.A. Asbrey

Seventeen shillings and thruppence ha’penny. For those of you not old enough to understand pre-decimalised British currency, or even British currency at all, means seventeen shillings and three-and-a-half-pence(written as 17/3½d in shops for pricing- the slash means shillings before the pennies). That’s eighty-six-and-a-half-pence or $1.15 USD in today’s rate. That was the amount paid to the first constables in the first modern police force in the world per week; The City of Glasgow Police.

To put that in perspective, it was smack-bag in the middle of the average wage of a skilled tradesman in that place and time, like a stonemason or a bricklayer. A miner earned around twelve shillings a week, and a labourer around a shilling a day, so it was a decent wage for the time, allowing the force to pick the best people. And constables at that point did not work nights. Those were covered by watchmen, and they earned less at around eleven shillings a week.

To earn that pay, there were no standardised recruitment strategies or examinations. Like most jobs of that time, it was down to who you knew, who would speak for your character, and who you were related to.

That meant that once people you knew were part of that force, they would be listened to, if they were of good standing, if the recommended someone for the job. Such recruitment practices were everywhere in the 19th century, making workplaces were homogenous; populated by family groups, people from the same churches, schools, and classes. Patronage and nepotism were rife, and that impacted early policing as much as every other area of employment.

Many were Highlanders, as you can see from the illustration on the right. They were often a perfect fit; most were Protestant as only around 4-5% were Catholic, with the Scottish Reformation leaving only pockets of Catholicism in some areas. There’s a popular misconception that most of the Jacobites were Catholic, but that’s incorrect. Most clans switched allegiances in line with their chiefs, and the chiefs did what stopped their lands being seized, or having troops stationed on your land. Not only did that mean direct government oversight and interference in your local rule, but the locals had to provide for billeting and food where the barracks system was not available. Local homes and inns were forced to take soldiers in, often under inadequate renumeration, so local people lost a lot of money. Overall, it was easier and cheaper to to go with the flow and follow the prevailing powers, so most did.

As well as being conveniently Protestant, Highlanders tended to be far taller and stronger than the city dwellers. Rural Scots had a better diet and lifestyle than city dwellers, and grew up on traditional, nutrient-dense diets like oatmeal, milk, fish, potatoes, and kale. Highlanders were around an inch taller than their English counterparts at around 5’7″-8″, and around three inches taller than their inner-city comparators. The myth that all Highlanders were immensely tall stems from the elite Highland regiments, where only the tallest of the tall were selected and much-covered in the press for propaganda purposes. By the latter half of the 19th century, around half of the City of Glasgow Police were Highlanders and made up around 40% of the police in Scotland, despite making up only 15% of the population. They had an added advantage of being outsiders, with no local of family allegiances to sway them, and young men totally dependent on their employer for housing and wages were more likely to make sure they toed the line. Scots ending military service in the 19th century often found it easier to join up wherever they were de-mobbed, so England found a great many Scots joining the police there too, especially where events like the clearances, potato famines, and the industrial revolution meant there was little to go back to where they had been born. Irishmen found the same, but not in Scotland, unless they were Protestants. The sectarian divide in Scotland was too great. That’s not to say there were no Irish Catholics in the police in Victorian Scotland. It was just a less attractive career for them due to what was called the “stained-glass ceiling” hampering their career prospects. England was a far better option for them.

Of course, many Lowlanders joined up too, but what about other demographics?

That can be hard to assess as there were thousands of watchmen and parish constables around the country and the pay was low, so it attracted all kinds of people willing to do long hours to keep them out of the workhouse. Their ethnicity wasn’t noted as it wasn’t seen as important at that time. As there were around 15,000 people of colour living in the UK around 1800, it’s hard to believe that none of them did that kind of work; especially in port cities like London and Bristol. Obviously, the British Empire had local people working successfully in law enforcement across the globe, but I’m primarily looking at the United Kingdom in this post.

The Old Bailey has records of Thomas Latham, in records from 1746 as “Negro, Constable. An Old Bailey constable was not a police officer as we know it, but they were a forerunner to the Bow Street Runners. They executed warrants, conducted searches, and arrested accused people on the instruction of Old Bailey magistrates. They were local citizens chosen or appointed to serve part-time, often unpaid or poorly compensated. There is no record of him becoming a Bow Street Runner when they began in 1749.

To find the earliest black or mixed-race policeman recorded in the UK, we look to Carlisle in England in 1837. John Kent was the son of Thomas Kent, a man brought from the West Indies to work on an estate. He was said to have been ‘considered a slave’ but slavery was illegal in England from 1772. We do not know when Thomas arrived and the name ‘Kent’ is said to have come from his port of entry. Thomas married Mary Wilson in 1778 and had nine children. John was the eighth, and also married a woman called Mary. John Kent and was described as a “quiet, inoffensive man” as well as a “big powerful man” who laid paving stones for a living. He was known as ‘Black Kent’, and when he was an officer, he was used as a kind of boogieman to scare misbehaving children into believing he would take them away. For balance, the threat of the local police constable taking bad children away was used in working class areas all over the UK right into the twentieth century, regardless of the ethnicity of the officer, and shows that he stood out as a robust upholder of the law.

His service shows courage, handcuffing one suspect to the fire grate in his own home so he could pursue his accomplice, and left his wife with a gun and instructions to shoot him if he tried to escape. He also gave evidence in the murder of a police officer in a riot in 1841.

Water was not commonly drunk at that time. It was unsafe due to contamination, so consequently being drunk on duty was not uncommon. The new chief constable had cracked down on it, and John was put on report after reporting for duty under the influence. He was found to have been late a few times too, and the watch committee decided to sack him in 1844 after seven years’ service. John was well-regarded though, and accounts then show he was a court bailiff and then a parish constable in the Eskdale ward. By the time he was 78, he was working as an attendant in the railway station at Citadel Station in Carlisle. He died aged either eighty or eighty-one in 1886.

To find the next we move to the Metropolitan Police. They recruited Robert Branford on September 24, 1838 (Warrant No. 14153). Robert was born around 1820 to Sarah Branford, an unmarried English mother. His black father is largely unknown, but was said to be a sailor or dockworker from Ipswich. He appears to have been raised by his grandparents, as his natural grandfather, Richard Branford was listed as his step-father who was a farm bailiff in Stoke-by-Nayland. I was not uncommon for illegitimate children to be raised by grandparents while the mother went off to work to pay for their upkeep. Robert was 5’11’, which was unusually tall for the time. We know he was literate, which was not common amongst farm labourers in England at that time. Less so in Scotland, where every parish was obliged to run a school since 1669, and had the highest rate of literacy in Europe. Robert’s family must have been relatively well-though-of as Met Police L Division Superintendent Grinsell co-signed a recommendation for Robert’s employment alongside Charles Pearson of Stoke-by-Nayland. As a bailiff managed the day-to-day operations, tenants, and labourers of a large rural estate on behalf of the landlord, the Branford family interacted directly with the local gentry and parish authorities. Charles Pearson was almost certainly either the landowner Richard worked for, a neighbouring estate owner, or a prominent parish official who knew the family’s reputation first hand. As said earlier, connections were everything in gaining employment in Victorian society, and he joined the Metropolitan Police on 24 September 1838. It also appears that Robert was able to ‘pass’ as white, although police records describe his skin as ‘dark’ and his hair ‘black.’

Robert Branford married his wife Sarah Honey, daughter of Arthur Honey from Borden, Kent, on 12 January 1841 at Trinity Church. His wife was illiterate, as she made her mark on the marriage registration rather than a signature. The couple lived in Bermondsey. As I said earlier, it was common for agricultural labourers at the time not to have education, and it was not a judgement on their intellect. They simply had not had the opportunity to learn, and that especially happened to girls. Their intelligence was judged in other ways, such as memory, retention, how quickly the acquired a new skill, or the ability to use sharp, practical reasoning. They called that ‘mother wit’, hence the saying, “an ounce of mother wit is worth a pound of clergy.” Clergy related to clerical skills or school learning, as most basic reading was based around being able to read the Bible.

He spent his entire career in M Division’s Stone’s End Police Station (Southwark), and it looks like he shared police housing with officer William Fidge and his wife Eliza Jane. He was promoted to sergeant on 9th December 1846, and made inspector on 25th April 1851. That may have been temporary he was demoted a couple of months later and no reasons were given. He may have been filling in by doing what the police call “acting up”, which was likely as there was no reason not to permanently promote him to Inspector on 27th May 1852. His final promotion was on 10th April 1856 to the rank of Superintendent.

Branford seems to have made a positive impression on a young officer called Timothy Cavanagh. When he retired as an ex-Chief Inspector of London’s Metropolitan Police Force, he published “Scotland Yard, Past and Present: Experiences of Thirty-Seven Years” in 1893 by Chatto & Windus, the book chronicles his lengthy career spanning from 1855 to 1892 and includes personal accounts and professional opinions of notable contemporary figures of the force, including Commissioner Sir Richard Mayne, Detective Jonathan Whicher, and Detective Chief Superintendent Adolphus “Dolly” Williamson. He said of Branford, “Not an educated man, but what to my idea was of much greater importance, he possessed a thorough knowledge of police matters in general.”

Robert Branford died young, aged forty-eight. He retired in 1866, due to ill-health with a pension of £166 13s and 4d a year, equivalent to a little over £18,100 today ($14,000 USD) and lived in Little Waldingfield, where he died of kidney failure in 1869. He left an estate of under £100 for his widow. They never had any children. Branford’s wife subsequently worked as a domestic servant until her death in 1881 and was buried next to her husband.

Ethnicity was not generally noted, and those we have become aware of, have come to our attention through other sources like court records, newspapers, and books, and even then their race often wasn’t noted as an issue. That’s not to say that racism did not exist, just that it was different to the form it took post WW2 when many immigrants were asked by the British government to come and help rebuild. It mattered less to the poor in Victorian society, as workers often felt similarly oppressed. Where there were resentments, they grew from immigrants being perceived as competing for their jobs, women, and driving down wages, and that rarely happened in the first half of the nineteenth century. Religion was not noted on early police applications, even in Scotland where it was the primary driver of discrimination, but as any Scot will tell you, there were other ways to establish the facts they wanted.

Until recently, it was common in some areas of Scotland to be asked which school you went to, no matter how old you were. It happened in workplaces, pubs, and anywhere people met socially. It was an indirect way for people to know which side of the religious divide you were on as Catholics and Protestants went to different schools. Jews mostly attended the same schools as the Protestants as they were non-denominational from 1872 under an act of parliament, but Catholic parishes and religious orders funded their own schools throughout the nineteenth century. That meant that the name of a school immediately marked out the Catholics, as did their names, place of birth, who gave their character reference, and even their home address. There were Catholic and Protestant streets in most cities. So as things weren’t recorded, it’s hard to assess whether people of colour were police officers in the Victorian era, but we can guess their religion based on the information I itemised above. That’s especially true in Scotland where skin colour was mattered less than your religious denomination.

We have only identified one black or mixed-race policeman in Scotland from this era; William Fitchie. He was born around 1815 in London, according to the marriage certificate. He married Janet Tindal in 1846, and they had two children. It’s worth noting that this was a major seafaring area, and is probably how William got to Forfar from London, but as there were many people in the area with the surname, he may have been drawn there by a family connection. He was recorded as a merchant at that point. Janet died in 1857 at the young age of thirty-four after four hours of apoplexy with no medical attendance. Her blacksmith father registered the death, her husband being absent for reasons you’ll see below. They had two sons before he left her. I could find no record of her seeking child support or maintenance. An aliment case would have been a civil case, but they were fairly common, and the City of Edinburgh Police would have treated such a claim as matter of internal discipline. There’s no record of such action, adding to the evidence that he walked away from his family and claimed to be a single man with his dependents having no idea where he had gone.

We do not have the date he joined The City of Edinburgh Police, but we do have his date of dismissal – 2nd September 1855. A senior officer said, “The prisoner was at one time a constable of the Edinburgh police, ending about 2 September 1855. On that day some complaints were made by the neighbours of the place where he lodged (Bedford St), of some noisy conduct which had occurred early in the morning between him and the woman with whom he lodged. I caused enquiry to be made. Evidence was not found sufficient to bring a charge against him in court, but enough came out to make us think that he was not a very suitable person to be a policeman, and we dismissed him.“

By the census of 1851, Fitchie’s wife was living with her father in Forfar, and he was certainly involved in repeated disturbances with another woman in Edinburgh. As morality mattered to the police, he had either lied about being unmarried (again, not uncommon at a time), or was passing off his partner as his landlady. It’s hard to believe that a landlady would put up with too many repeated fights if he was not involved with her. She was not named in the dismissal, but subsequent legal actions and precognition papers have named her as Elizabeth Clark and confirm a relationship. It appeared that Fitchie had come home around two in the morning, and severely beat her for failing to answer the door quickly enough. He then threw her out into the street. Both were taken to the police station and Elizabeth refused to make a complaint or tell anyone what had happened. Neighbours claimed not to have seen anything either; common in cases of domestic violence at that time. Faced with insufficient evidence to prove a case in court given Scotland’s higher levels of proof in a criminal trial, the lieutenant decided that he could not prove a case of assault, but there was enough evidence to dismiss him from service immediately.

After he had been dismissed, he left the lodgings in Bedford Street where he had been creating disturbances and moved to 17 South St James Street, Edinburgh. Given that the day of dismissal was a Sunday, it’s fair to guess that the confrontation followed an alcohol-fuelled Saturday night, and that the dismissal came before he was released from custody.

Elizabeth, (born 25th Feb 1821 to a clockmaker father, James, and her mother Ann Thompson) was alternately called a prostitute, a madam, or a woman of ill-repute in 1856, but she was never convicted of anything in her life. We must be mindful of the Victorian tendency to call poor working women prostitutes when they were not. The records do accuse her of running what was essentially a high-class brothel. My problem with this is that the police would never have permitted Fitchie to lodge with such a woman before he was sacked, but that incident may have been what brought her to police attention. These more upmarket places recorded the rooms as being rented to seamstresses and servants, rather than the more obvious brothels in the infamous fleshpots of the nearby Danube Street and Rose Street. She was the primary leaseholder of 21 Brunswick Street, and sublet rooms to women, or to patrons for an hourly rate. She claimed to have lived with Fitchie for two years and that he was repeatedly violent.

But that wasn’t the end of the matter. It was an attack on Elizabeth Clark at 21 Brunswick Street, Stockbridge that caused his imprisonment. As this was not listed as his home address at that time, they appear to have broken up by 1856. By that time ,he had been reduced to working as a labourer and was reported to be increasingly bitter, blaming Elizabeth for his circumstances and especially for losing his job.

On the afternoon of June 30th 1856 Fitchie was overheard telling Elizabeth that “that night he would keep her from seeing any man, and any man from speaking to her” and declaring his intention to prevent her from getting “into any decent way of life.” That night, he tracked her down to her home and carried out the threat, throwing the sulphuric acid directly into her face. The burns must have been dreadful as the acid was strong enough to remove half his thumb. He was arrested and claimed that he did not know what the substance was, and that he only wanted to damage her clothes and that he was “aiming for her shawl”. His aim was to claim that it was a heat-of-the-moment prank rather than the serious assault that it actually was. The court was told of his police past to make it clear that he had knowledge of the law and exactly what he was doing. The court seems not to have noticed that he also lied under oath when he said, “I am forty years of age. I was born in Forfarshire, I reside at South St James Street Edinburgh. I am a labourer. I am not married.”

His wife did not die until the following year, and I can find no trace of him being born in Scotland, let alone Forfar.

The court saw right through his story and sentenced him to four years penal servitude, but his missing thumb marked him out as an invalid, limiting the hard labour he could do. It is the prison record that gave us his skin colour, as jails did note it. Elizabeth sued for damages as well as legal and social protection. She probably knew that he had no money, no property, prospects or family assets, but it cemented her place as the innocent victim of a violent attack in the eyes of the law and protected her in the future. Anything Fitchie earned in the future was likely to be seized to pay the debt if he stuck around, so it was a way to drive him off.

Elizabeth quietly vanished from the records, probably changing her name and home as I could find no record under her own name. Fitchie got himself moved from Scotland to Wakefield in Yorkshire, Portland in Dorset, and finally to Chatham in Kent, where I lost him too.

It’s important to note that Fitchie’s story was remarkably common. In a world where sex before marriage was frowned upon, unsuitable marriages were often forged by external pressures and didn’t last. In the 19th century, abandoned wives were as common as domestic violence, and both Janet and Elizabeth had to live with a system that tolerated things we would never countenance today.

And this is a good time to look at the crime of vitriolage – throwing acid as an act of violence and revenge. This is now largely associated with the Asian Sub-continent, but it actually started in the West during the Industrial revolution, and became so common that specific statutes were passed to differentiate it between acts of serious violence because of the nature of the motives behind it, not to mention the lasting effects on the victim.

The industrial Revolution made corrosive acids easy to acquire, and it didn’t take violent minds long to see the possibilities. Sulphuric acid (then commonly known as “oil of vitriol”) was first mass-produced in 18th-century Britain. It was primarily used for bleaching textiles, processing metals, and manufacturing batteries. In the 1820s and 1840s, vitriol was thrown in labor disputes in Scotland and during political or sectarian tensions in Ireland against machines, mills, and figures of authority. The first recorded acid-attack sentencing in the UK took place in 1833, followed by a notable wave in Glasgow in 1834 described as a stain on the national character. Throughout the Victorian period and into the early 20th century, historical research (such as work by Oxford Brookes University) showed that women were frequently the primary perpetrators, often throwing acid at men over romantic rejections or jealousy. Literary references, such as in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848) and Sherlock Holmes stories, reflected its presence in popular culture. The British imported these industrial processes and chemical products into the Indian subcontinent. Because the acid was necessary for local industries it became cheaply and readily available to the general public, and, of course, people made the same connection with it as a potential weapon. In 1833, a servant named Hugh Kennedy was tried in a Glasgow court for “throwing vitriol”. Out of revenge over a domestic dispute, Kennedy poured strong sulphuric acid onto the face of a fellow servant, James Cairney, while he slept. Cairney survived the attack but was permanently disfigured and lost an eye. Hugh was hanged for that offence even though the victim survived. Capital punishment for non-fatal corrosive attacks was eventually phased out, and the crime was officially integrated into standard non-capital statutes via the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 in England. In Scotland it was subtly revised, keeping the death penalty but adjusting the evidentiary requirements regarding intent to murder.

While the crime faded in Europe by the mid-20th century, it began to emerge in Asia. The first officially documented case of an acid attack in India occurred toward the end of British rule on September 6, 1920, in the Bombay Presidency. In this instance, a man named Ali Mohammed Farag threw sulphuric acid at another man, Abdullah Mohammed Jabli, over a personal dispute. Though early historical cases in both Britain and India often involved male-on-male disputes or financial rivalries, vitriolage evolved differently in South Asia over the late 20th century. It transformed into a highly gendered crime, predominantly used by men as an act of domestic terrorism against women following rejected marriage proposals or family disputes.

It faded in Britain because of a mixture of hardline law and punishments, regulations restricting the availability of acid, and a change in industrial processes making it harder to find them in the workplace in general. It worth noting that when used in relation to men, it was seen as far more serious than when in domestic violence.

The reason it persisted in India is down to the regulations on sentencing and availability in India were fundamentally weaker under British colonial rule and structured differently compared to those implemented in Britain. For more than 60 years after independence, acid attacks were handled under generic colonial statutes for “grievous hurt” (Section 326 of the IPC). Following the recommendations of the Justice J.S Verna Committee (formed after the 2012 Delhi gang-rape case), the Indian Parliament finally passed The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, creating dedicated acid violence laws: Section 326B criminalised the attempt to throw acid, carrying a mandatory prison term of 5 to 7 years and section 326A Formally criminalised voluntarily causing grievous hurt by the use of acid. It mandated a minimum punishment of 10 years in prison, which could be extended to life imprisonment, alongside a mandatory fine paid directly to the victim to cover medical costs. However, the problem of violence against women largely rests in a deeply patriarchal society that protects the male perpetrators, and corrupt police who enable that system by becoming a monumental barrier to justice. But let’s not forget that British Colonialism took the problem there in the first place without exporting the solutions.

Henry Solomon (1794 – 14 March 1844) was the first Jewish police officer in the UK. He was born in the East End of London and trained as a watchmaker before moving to Brighton. He became involved in local politics, and was appointed commissioner in 1821, and then Joint Chief Police Officer alongside William Pilbeam. He became sole chief in 1836, and then Formally appointed as the first Chief Constable of the Brighton Borough Police. He oversaw two superintendents, three inspectors, twenty-four constables, and a night constable; a total of thirty-one officers for a population of around 47,000.

On the evening of the 13th of March 1844, John Lawrence was brought into the station for stealing a roll of carpet. The accused was in great distress, demanding a knife to end his life, so he was led to the chief constable’s office and seated in front of the fire to calm him. Lawrence dived up, grabbing a poker from the hearth and beat Solomon on the right temple with all his strength. Despite the interventions of two surgeons, Solomon died the next day, leaving a wife and nine children.

Lawrence claimed that he had no ill-will against Solomon and did not intend to kill him, and his lawyer subsequently made a plea of insanity. Solomon had been a popular and respected man, and the public were having none of it. The judge reminded the jury that even though Lawrence seemed aggravated and intended to take his own life, there was no need to end someone else’s and did not grant an excuse for the murder of Henry Solomon. The trial lasted only three hours, and it took a mere twelve minutes for the jury to find Lawrence guilty. On the 6th of April 1844 he became the last public execution at Horsham jail. A mask was made of his face to be exhibited later, and a fee was charged to see his body.

A fund was created for Henry Solomon’s widow and children with around £146,000 ($195,598.39 US) in today’s money being collected. Queen Victoria very publicly donated herself. To this day, Henry Solomon has the sad distinction of being the only chief constable murdered in his own station.

Because of the way Scottish police were recorded and the greater degree of assimilation in Scotland, we are unable to identify the first Jewish officer there.

East Asian, and more specifically, Chinese people tended not to join up for a complex mix of reasons. Firstly, they were fewer of them until later into the twentieth century. Secondly, as a culture they came to give their children better lives and tended to be laser focused on education for their children; preferring them to go into science, business, the legal profession, or medicine. Thirdly, many of the Chinese in the UK came from Hong Kong and had experienced colonial policing; something very different to the style of policing in the UK. The colonial police may have been run by the British, but in 1960s and early-1970s Hong Kong, the colonial police force was widely associated with institutionalised bribery, protection rackets over street vendors, and extortion syndicates, so many immigrants carried over a deep-seated cynicism toward uniformed authority figures. In fact, it was often difficult for British police to get the Chinese community to even report crimes against them, let alone speak up as witnesses at that time. Fourthly, by the time the Chinese were in the UK in any numbers, the forces had medical and height restrictions that often precluded them. Height restrictions varied by force in the 1970s; the shortest being 5’8″ for men and 5’4″ for women. Some forces went as tall as 5″10, and Nottingham asked for a minimum of six feet. The average Hong Kong Chinese man was 5’5″ and the women were 5’1.5″, so were knocked out on the height limits. Then there was the eyesight requirement.

Officers were allowed to have their eyesight deteriorate with normal age-related limits once they passed probation, but there was a minimum 20/20 requirement on joining. East Asians have a significantly higher rate of myopia. Studies comparing East Asian and Caucasian eyes indicate that East Asian eyes often exhibit a steeper retinal curvature and smaller vertex radius, which can influence how light focuses across the retina. Myopia fundamentally happens when the eyeball grows too long from front to back (axial length). Research notes that Chinese and East Asian eyes tend to display specific posterior eye shape characteristics—such as less oblate or more prolate (elongated) geometry—that correlate strongly with myopic refractive error. Furthermore, genome-wide studies show that East Asian populations (including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean groups) carry specific genetic loci and higher baseline risks that influence eye growth and hyperopic reserve (the natural farsighted buffer children need to prevent near-sightedness). On top of all that, long hours of academic near-work impacts eye development as does limited outdoor time and lack of natural sunlight exposure, which regulates eye growth. Long hours studying, combined with a cultural preference for pale skin meant that children were less exposed to sunlight than their European counterparts; yes, even in notoriously unsunny Scotland. So, even if East Asian applicants could meet the height requirement, they had a better than average chance of failing their medical on the eyesight test.

That changed in the 1990s when height requirements were dropped and then phased out completely as forces recognised the impact the indirect discrimination had on certain communities. Fitness tests replaced height requirements. The first Chinese officer in the UK was George Lee who joined the Met police in 1981. He reached the rank of Chief Inspector and founded the Black Police Association to address racism within the criminal justice system, worked as an instructor at Hendon Police College and Bramshill Staff College, and completed secondments to MI6, Hong Kong, and China before leaving the Met in 1998. He completed his undergraduate studies in Oriental Studies at Trinity College, Cambridge, then completed a PHD in understanding the impact of economic modernisation on institutional decision-making, and is now an internationally respected business consultant. The first Scottish officer of Chinese descent was Anna Wong who joined Lothian and Borders Police in 2005, but resigned before being fired in 2009 after being found guilty of accessing data on the Chinese community in Scotland.

Dilawer Singh became Scotland’s first Asian police officer when he joined Strathclyde Police in 1970, later serving over 30 years and reaching the rank of Inspector. his is a prime case for those who claim (incorrectly) that Scotland isn’t racist. He had already been a special constable for two years, but when he applied to join the regulars, the recruiting officer told him he wa an inch too short. Dilawer knew that the officer was incorrect, but got a doctor to confirm his height. The doctor told him that he met the required height and to go back. He did, and this time saw a different recruitment officer who signed him up. He forever boasted that he was the man who grew an inch in a week.

Rashid Awan is recognised as Britain’s first Asian police officer, officially joined West Yorkshire police force in 1967 and spent his entire career in the Bradford area before retiring in 1991. He passed away in 2013 at the age of 75, but not before earning a Police Long Service Medal in 1991 and an MBE by King Charles in 2008.

Karpal Kaur Sandhu was born in Zanzibar, and came to Britain in 1962, becoming a nurse before joining the Metropolitan police in 1971. She was married, but separated from her very traditional husband who deeply disapproved of her performing a role he saw as both unsuitable and unladylike. Karpal persevered, seeing the job as a way to provide a future for her and her two children. In an attempt to force her hand, her husband took the children to India, but she got leave, boarded a plane and brought them back again. Her husband initially stayed behind, but soon followed and confronted her outside her home in Walthamstow where he fatally stabbed her. The Met Police named a training classroom in her memory at Hendon, and a movie about her life, titled A Winter’s Lion, is currently in post-production. I’ve decided not to name her husband as, quite frankly, I think that hers is the name that matters.

As I’ve explained, the major recipients of overt discrimination in Scotland were the Catholics. Although they did join the police right from the start. In the nineteenth century, Scotland faced a complex net of anti-Catholic feeling fuelled by large-scale Irish immigration, deep-rooted Calvinist-Presbyterian institutional norms, and occasional sectarian tension. Scotland had her own Catholics, mainly Highlanders, and while they moved south to the cities driven by their own potato famines, the Highland clearances, and poverty, they tended to disperse across the city. The Irish stuck together in districts and streets where they felt there was safety in numbers, and they had good reason to do so. Violence was a constant threat, and far too often a reality, not just in the streets, but in public gatherings and workplaces.

Although also seen as Irish, the Protestants who came from Ireland for exactly the same reasons as their Catholic counterparts faced a much easier ride in housing, employment, education, and opportunity, but some Catholics did join the police, albeit in far smaller numbers than England. They were actually prevented from doing so until the passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 (Catholic Emancipation) officially restored civil liberties and allowed Catholics to legally hold public office and join civil professions, including local constabularies. The City of Glasgow Police was notoriously the worst in discriminating against them. Although there was no official ruling against Catholics, vetting was used to ensure most were ruled out. Those with overtly Irish names had to have someone with very Protestant credentials to establish their status as non-Catholics, and everyone knew which schools were Catholic, so education was a dead giveaway.

The culture within many 19th-century Scottish constabularies was deeply intertwined with Protestant networks and Freemasonry, and the Catholic Church strictly prohibited membership under penalty of automatic excommunication. Masonic Halls were often where things like promotion were decided, and they chose their own. Catholic officers frequently faced an unwritten restriction, making it incredibly difficult to advance past basic ranks like sergeant, and were lucky to make it that high all at. Freemasonry was heavily embedded in Scottish police forces, and acted as both gatekeeper and a barrier in recruitment and promotion.

By the start of the twentieth century, only one percent of the police in Scotland were Catholics, compared to five percent in England. We have to look shockingly late for the first to break through the ‘stained glass ceiling’. Sir Patrick Hamill made chief constable of Strathclyde Police in 1977, the first Roman Catholic of Irish descent to gain the top role, and not long afterwards I remember people commenting on how times had changed when another Catholic with an Irish surname made inspector in the late seventies in Lothian and Borders Police.

Compare that to England’s first Roman Catholic Chief Constable in England, Sir John Dunne, taking charge of the joint police forces of Cumberland and Westmorland on January 1, 1857, and Sir James Flanagan appointed Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) on November 1, 1973 in highly sectarian Northern Ireland, and you can see how shameful it is that Irish Catholics were so discriminated against in Scotland for so long.

As you can see, immigrants have impacted policing in the UK, opening up the ranks to make communities feel more represented and the officers more approachable. Officers from diverse backgrounds can bridge language and cultural gaps making it easier to talk with residents, resolve conflicts, and gather important information about local crimes. That makes for more effective policing, increases access to intelligence, and makes people more responsive to the law. Policing by consent has long been a model in the UK. They derive their power from public approval and trust rather than fear or military force, focussing on community cooperation, prevention over repression, and using the minimum necessary physical force.

Of course, minorities’ paths through life have been as varied as everyone else’s; some good, some bad, some truly remarkable, and some cut short far too young, and some had a lot more obstacles to face than others. This is not a definitive list, and was never intended to be. I think I’ve got most of the firsts, but I may have missed someone, and I’ll be very happy to post about them if you think there’s somebody I’ve overlooked or who you think deserves a mention. So, over to you. Who do you want to see mentioned?