In 1742, the magistrate Henry Fielding founded the first effectively full time and professional police force in London. The group was formally attached to the magistrate and worked out of his office and court at No.4 Bow Street, travelling nationwide to arrest criminals and serve writs, despite being only intermittently funded. The citizens saw a great need to uphold the order, morals and national values, and the philanthropists of the time deemed it critical to support the notion of “redemptive police”.

In eighteenth century London, the term “police”, related to the word “polished”, referred to the maintenance of a civil order, a civilised society, and a refining process. The police was the practical, consensual expression of a society’s social arrangements, mores and beliefs. The notion of police came to include all those items of importance to the national welfare not completely or adequately handled by public officials. The needs of police encompassed series of political hopes and aspirations that many publicly minded and prolific social commentators, as well as the hosts of ordinary citizens who in a sense they represented, thought central to the maintenance of England’s role in the world and her peace at home.

There was a general consensus among those involved in charitable activities about what sort of society they wished for Britain. Charitable societies maintained that their efforts would promote the national policies because a good national police was not to be achieved solely by politicians, but by publicly concerned, philanthropically minded citizens. They promoted the incarceration of criminals, quarantine of prostitutes, and rescue of poor children for placement with respectable foster families.

Now more than ever, we can all contribute to policing efforts: from donations and volunteering, spreading the stories about the good work done by police, to supporting the officers and their work (including helping them prevent crime and suffering and assisting with whatever needs they have in their routine work).

References:

Donna T. Andrew. Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the Eighteenth Century. Princeton University Press, 1989. pp. 6-7, ISBN 9781400860630

Wikipedia contributors. Bow Street Runners, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bow_Street_Runners (accessed April 18, 2015)

Photo: The Illustrated Police News

Further reading on London Police history in general:

London Lives – Policing

Beattie, John M. Early Detection: The Bow Street Runners in Late Eighteenth-Century London. In Emsley, Clive and Shpayer-Makov, Haia eds, Police Detectives in History, 1750-1950. Aldershot, 2006, pp. 15-32.

Beattie, J. M. Policing and Punishment in London, 1660-1750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror. Oxford, 2001.

Harris, Andrew T. Policing the City: Crime and Legal Authority in London, 1780-1840. Columbus, Ohio, 2004.