CENTURY OF POLICE.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18203, 2 March 1929, Page 9

CENTURY OF POLICE.

PEEL AND THE “PEELERS." TIHS YEAR’S CELEBRATION« Among the anniversaries that will be celebrated this year none will make a wider or more sympathetic appeal to the public than the British police centenary. It was in 1829 that the forces for the preservation of law and order were established on their present basis, under an Act of Parliament formulated by Sir Robert Peel. Although this was the third revolution through which the police system of the City of London had passed within a few hundred years it was by no means the least important. When the Peel reforms came into operation the policing of the “square mile," good as it was of its kind, was found to be antiquated and altogether behind the necessities of the City of London. The fine record of service performed by the police is attested by the criminal statistics for the last hundred years. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was roughly speaking, one criminal to every twenty-two of the population of Great Britain. To-day the proportion is one criminal to about every 300 persons. The earlier methods of detecting crime and preserving law and order were obviously much less effective than they are in these da/s; instead of being a terror to evil-doers in the real sense, the men who kept watch and ward ever us were often the butt and victims of practical jokers. All these things were changed, however, when, after several - official inquiries had been held into the causes of the increase of crime, Sir Robert Peel introduced his measure of reform which was passed by Parliament and placed on the Statute Book as the Metropolitan Police Act. Out of that statute was evloved the present police system, and with its general adoption throughout the United Kingdom dis-quaintly-attired force cf night-watchmen. Drastic Change Resented. It is not altogether surprising, perhaps, that when the old-fashioned methods of police supervision were abandoned serious objection should have been offered to the new and more efficient system. The resentment to such a drastic change in civil government was based mainly on the assumption that a good police force could only be attained at the expense of liberty, and that it necessarily involved some “arbitrary principle opposed to the free constitution of the country." Such an assumption received even official countenance in some quarters, it being suggested in the report of one Committee of inquiry that it was “difficult to reconcile an effective system of police with that perfect freedom of action and exemption from interference which qre the great privileges and blessings of Society in the country." With such misgiving in the public mind, was it to be wondered at, when the system was actually introduced, that cries were raised in the streets of “down with the new police," and that constables were frequently followed by hooting crowds, who gave vent to their feelings by calling them opprobrious names? With these outbursts of derision originated the epithets of “Peelers" and “Bobbies," as applied to the police in association with the name of the statesman responsible for their inception—names that are perpetuated to the present day, but without the reproach that was at first attached to them. A Chartist Collision. For nearly three years after their establishment the police met with open hostility in different parts of the country, and the opposition culminated in a collision between the new representatives of the law and a meeting of Chartists in Coldbath Fields, in May, 1883, when three police officers were stabbed, one of them mortally. At the inquest the coroner’s jury returned a verdict of “justifiable homicide," in spite of the evidence that had been abduced. The Crown authorities, disagreeing with this surprising verdict, applied to the Court of King’s Bench and the inquisition was quashed. An inquiry was ordered by the House of Commons into the circumstances which led to the fatal melee, and also as to an allegation that policemen were present at the Chartist meeting as spies. ed, the police “emerged with credit," notwithstanding the fact that indivldliad been “undue exercise of powei calling for greater control." Front this date the popular hostility to the police gradually lessoned and eventually ( : cd out altogether.