The London Police. Before the year 1829, when the present excellent Police Force (for which London is wholly indebted to Sir Robert Peel) was first introduced, the watchmen, familiarly called “Charlies,” who guarded the streets of London, were often incompetent and feeble old men, totally unfitted for their duties. The Police is now composed of young and active men, and the force that has proved perfectly effective for the metropolis (having saved it more than once from Chartist and other rioters, and from calamities such as befel Bristol in 1831), has since been introduced with equal success nearly throughout the kingdom.
The streets of London were long ago infested with a set of disorderly debauchees, unthrifts of the Inns of Court and Chancery, who, under the various cant names of nickers, scowrers, mohocks, &c., insulted passengers and attacked the watch. Shadwell’s comedy of The Scowrers affords a striking picture of the streets of London at night, in the reign of Charles II., and the mohocks are well described in the Spectator and in Swift’s Journal:—
“Who has not heard the Scowrer’s midnight fame ?
Who has not trembled at the Mohock’s name?”—Gray.
These disorderly ruffians seldom ventured within the City, where the watch was more efficient than in any other place, but took their stand about St. Clement’s Danes and Covent Garden, breaking the watchman’s lantern and halberd, and frequently locking him up in his own stand or box. At the beginning of the present century few who resided in the then suburbs of London—in Pimlico—Islington, &c., thought of venturing into London at night, so slender was the protection afforded by the watch; and as late, I believe, as 1829, St. James’s Park was regularly patrolled at night by two of the Horse Guards when the Royal Family were in town. Gay, in his Trivia, recommends great caution in crossing Lincoln’s-Inn-fields on a dark night. The London Police is divided into the City Police and the Metropolitan Police; the latter force consisted, in 1847, of 4792 men. The number of persons taken into custody by the Metropolitan and City Police, between the years 1844 and 1848 inclusive, amounted to 374,710. The gross total number of robberies committed in London, during the same period, amounted to 70,889; the value of the property stolen to 270.945l., and the value of the property recovered to 55,167l., or about a fifth of the stolen property.
Source: A Handbook for London, Past and Present. Peter Cunningham. Published by John Murray 1849.
