The Birth of Modern Policing

C.A. Asbrey

Ask most people which police force was the first and more often than not, they’ll tell you that it was the Metropolitan Police in London. They could not be more wrong, and fact the Met had to drop claiming to be the oldest or first police force after an upheld complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) told them to do so.

So who was?

The first possible claim goes to the French. The Maréchaussée (liked to the root of the English word ‘marshal’) had originally been created to keep order in the military, but in 1536 their remit was expanded to include civilians; especially the ‘free companies’ and écorcheurs; unemployed soldiers and mercenaries who formed groups to pillage the countryside after the Hundred Years’ War. In 1670 legislation broadened the jurisdiction of the Maréchaussée to include burglary and popular disorder and confirmed their power to arrest any offender and included policing of cabarets, road and waterway transport. Arguably, they were more military than civilian, and notoriously corrupt. In the revolutionary years they were renamed the Gendarmarie Nationale, but remained military in nature and an auxiliary to the National Guard militia. On the basis of the military nature of their employment, and not civilians, I’m going to dismiss them as a contender, but definitely an influence on how policing proceeded in many other countries.

Sticking to the civilian nature of modern policing, England used watchmen, constables, thief-takers, and the public; the later being the use of ‘hue and cry’, pushing responsibility on the public to assist in maintaining law and order. The posse comitatus originated in ninth century England, and anyone who is a fan of westerns will be familiar with the use of a posse to pursue and detain offenders. Scotland had a similar system with ‘watch and ward’, town guards, and night watchmen. London formed the Bow Street Runners in 1749; a force of men attached to the Bow Street magistrates’ court. They fail to meet the definition of a police force in that they did not patrol, but served writs and arrested offenders on the authority of the magistrates, travelling nationwide to apprehend criminals.

But we’re getting closer to one.

Glasgow Magistrate and merchant Councillor, Patrick Colquhoun (1745-1820) is credited with writing down the concept of preventative policing in ‘A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis”.

In 1779 magistrates in Glasgow appointed James Buchanan as an inspector to run eight police officers to patrol and apprehend troublemakers and lawbreakers. However, they still don’t meet the modern criteria as they also fought fires, called the hours, and swept the streets, similar to the older city watchmen. That early attempt failed due to lack of funding in 1781. In 1788 six magistrates proposed that a force of eight men would provide twenty-four hour patrols every single day of the week, that they would be uniformed, with numbered badges inscribed with the word ‘police’. Each member would lodge £50 to ensure their good behaviour and honest conduct, and that they would supplement the Police Watchmen placed at static points throughout the city to prevent crime and detect offenders.

According to the Glasgow Police Museum https://www.policemuseum.org.uk/ their duties fit comfortably into the basic duties of policing today, included:

Keeping record of all criminal information
Detecting crime and searching for stolen goods
Supervising public houses especially where criminals frequent
Apprehending vagabonds and disorderly persons
Suppressing riots and squabbles
Controlling carts and carriages

Glasgow instigated preventative policing forty years before Robert Peel established preventative policing in London, And they were under the control of the people, not the magistrates. They reported to annually elected commissioners, and that was revolutionary. Colquhoun moved to London, but not before he saw the effectiveness of his force, and took this knowledge to London where he was instrumental in the creation of The Thames River Police in 1800. This second force failed due to delays in parliament and not least because of a delay in royal assent of the act; a UK legal process in getting legislation ratified.

Although the Thames River Police was established on the 28th July 1800, the Glasgow Police Act was passed four weeks earlier on the 10th June 1800, making The City of Glasgow Police the earliest modern police force in the world.

And this is where we circle back to France. Glasgow City Police is modelled on the Parisian model of policing, not in the military sense, but on structure. Napoleon basically established a police state. Put simply, where each arrondissement (district) had a supervisor, and those supervisors answered to a head office to maintain oversight and consistently. That meant that Glasgow built police stations throughout the city, as opposed to the older model of answering to magistrates and being based around the court system. Those stations answered to a head, and he answered to an elected body.

There were three reliefs; one on duty for twenty-four hours, one resting for twenty-four hours, and the third on patrol duty for twenty-four hours. That meant that those patrolling could call on back-up from the other team on duty but not patrolling. This was a small start, but was highly effective. Other forces were established in the Gorbals, Anderston, and Calton, and they were amalgamated into one larger for with divisions., with the new headquarters being built in South Albion Street in 1825

In 1819, Peter McKinlay was appointed the as first ‘Criminal Officer’; with a remit to actively follow the evidence to track down criminals after the crimes have been committed. Two years later he was provided with an assistant, forming the first Criminal Department; the first detective department in the world. That’s ten years before the Met were founded and twenty-three years before the Met formed a detective department in 1842.

Other Scottish forces were also established well before the Met; Edinburgh City 1805, Aberdeen City 1818, Dundee City 1824, Alloa Burgh 1822, Airdie Burgh 1821, Greenock Harbour 1817, Perth Burgh 1811; just to name a few; and all used the same model of policing that was pioneered by The City of Glasgow Police.

Glasgow was innovative in many other ways. In 1880 a phone line was installed between the Western and Central police stations, and in 1881 a line was installed between the chief constable’s house and Central Police station. In 1886 The National Telephone Company fitted a grid of phones between the all police and fire stations and the chief constable to the general telephone exchange. They developed the watchmen’s sentry boxes into police boxes: essentially little stations used by each officer patrolling on his beat. Members of the public seeking help were able attend at their local police box and wait for the beat officer to come around on his beat. They could leave messages there, and each box contained a fire extinguisher, first aid kit, and before technology improved things, a bell that could be rung to alert the beat officer that he was needed. They even had a mechanism whereby central headquarters could remotely light the gas lamp to alert officers. In 1891 Glasgow introduced a telephone system in the boxes that meant that officers could call each other, and police stations, and for the public to access the emergency phones too. The National Telephone Company took these boxes internationally to sell, where places liek Chicago. The lighting was replaced with an electric system in 1912.

There were many other firsts too, In 1861 the force was the first to establish a telegraph system between the stations. In 1862 they were the first to use photography to aid in criminal identification and detection. In 1878 they started to use horse-drawn prisoner vans that became known as ‘Black Marias’. Whilst prison wagons had been about for centuries, this was purpose-built, specially reinforced, and was deployed not just to transport. At large events or kicking out times for pubs, the sight of one just sitting there meant that multiple miscreants could be arrested, left to cool their heels in the wagon, while the officers could get back to policing the rest of the crowd. The term ‘frog march’ comes from two police officers walking a non-compliant prisoner to a station using pain compliance by forcing arms up their back and their head forward. Sometimes they did this for quite some distance. It sounds simple to us, but before then, an arrest often took the officers off to the station, and sometimes even had to transport struggling men strapped down on handcarts. Glasgow were the first to use these vehicles as portable cells in this way.

And they employed women first too. In 1878 they integrated females into the support staff roles. Make no mistake, they found women could do the same work more cheaply, and it was hardly altruistic, but it was an admission that women were capable of doing the same work as men. And whilst Edith Smith was the first female police officer in 1915, Glasgow trumped that by having a female special constable in 1875. A special constable in the UK is a part-time, volunteer police officer who holds the exact same legal powers, uniform, and responsibilities as a full-time, regular police constable.

‘Big’ Rachel Hamilton was was 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) tall and weighed around 17 st (240 lb; 110 kg), and married to a man with ill- health. She was born in what is now called Northern Ireland, and crucially to a sectarian Scotland, was a Protestant. Had she been a working class Catholic, they would have entertained her, but that’s another post for another time.

The pipe-smoking matron had a formidable reputation in the area as the main breadwinner for the household who not only worked, but got promoted over men. She was a labourer in Tod and McGregor’s shipbuilders, then a forewoman navvy at a Jordanhill brickworks around the same time and later worked on a farm in Anniesland. A force of nature, Rachael was mistress of the kind of stare that made people quail, and could back it up in sheer physical strength and presence. You have to understand that a navvy at that time shifted a minimum of twenty tons (often above their heads) a day. To get promoted, you had to be able to exceed that. And she did.

A three-day riot sparked by clashes between Catholics and Protestants meant that the police needed reinforcements, and swearing in respected citizens as special constables was a way to achieve it. Even the newspapers of the day state that the Orangemen were instrumental in inflaming the violence at the time. She took responsibility for restoring order in her streets seriously, and without regard for which side of the religious divide miscreants came from. She took no nonsense and strode in amongst rioting men throwing bricks and anything else they could lay their hands on. Not only did her towering presence intimidate rioters in a way that singled out her contribution in the riots, but she was notorious for seizing violent men in a headlock, and literally, cracking heads. Her duties continued after the riots, anyone who ignored her warnings—even for minor offences like swearing in the street—ran the risk of being dumped off the nearest dock into the River Clyde. Few were foolhardy enough to ignore her.

So I think we found it. The first modern police force in the world, and it was Glasgow. It’s worth noting that Allan Pinkerton also came from Glasgow, and that he also created a number of firsts, including the first fully professional and properly skilled female detectives in the world – and HIS father was a sergeant in the City of Glasgow Police. Successful mindsets tend to influence progress in other areas.

In the 19th century, Glasgow was seen as the second city of empire due to its growth, manufacturing, innovation, and global influence. Scotland always had closer links to continental Europe than England, and that gave the tiny country that was unafraid to be influenced by both Europe and England a unique place on the world stage.