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The Identification of Criminal Suspects by Policing Agents in London, 1780-1850

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The Identification of Criminal Suspects by Policing Agents in London, 1780-1850 The Identification of Criminal Suspects by Policing Agents in London, 1780-1850 Eleanor Bland A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Sheffield Faculty of Arts and Humanities Department of History September 2018 Abstract This thesis examines policing practices, and the impact of these practices on patterns of arrest and prosecution, in London between 1780 and 1850. Scholars have long recognised that the received historical record of crime is a reflection of prosecutions, rather than of criminal activity itself, which is very difficult to quantify in the past. However, this research suggests that it is also partially a record of policing. The thesis examines in particular the idea of ‘proactive policing’: the occasions on which policing agents exercised discretion to arrest defendants on suspicion that they had recently, or were about to, commit an offence. Using court records, including the Old Bailey Proceedings, and police or magistrates’ court reports in newspapers, this thesis examines the reasons that policing agents gave for their arrests, and it also considers the characteristics of those arrested. This evidence suggests that individual police officers made active choices using their discretion, and their actions shaped patterns of arrests and prosecutions. By examining the period between 1780 and 1850, this thesis highlights continuities and changes in policing practices before and after the establishment of the Metropolitan Police force in 1829. It examines the expectations placed on the wide variety of different officials responsible for law enforcement on the streets of London. This was an era of concern over policing provision, debate over criminal justice administration and fears of growing criminality. It is the contention of this thesis that policing practices, and proactive policing agents themselves, contributed to the prevalence of criminal stereotypes. These criminal stereotypes were closely related to the emerging fears that there was a ‘criminal class’, believed to be responsible for the majority of criminal activity. The policing highlighted by this research affected both the received record of criminal activity, and perceptions of criminality. 2 Table of Contents List of abbreviations ................................................................................................................................ 4 List of tables, graphs and figures ............................................................................................................ 4 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................. 6 Chapter One: Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 7 Chapter Two: Expectations of policing agents, 1780-1850 .................................................................. 35 Chapter Three: Proactive policing: defendants and policing agents, 1780-1815 ................................. 60 Chapter Four: Policing practices: scrutiny, debate and reform, 1812-39 ............................................. 91 Chapter Five: Proactive policing: defendants and policing agents, 1816-50 ...................................... 123 Chapter Six: Arresting repeat offenders ............................................................................................. 167 Chapter Seven: Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 201 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................ 217 3 List of abbreviations BL British Library BPP British Parliamentary Papers HC House of Commons LMA London Metropolitan Archives OCR Optical Character Recognition OBPO Old Bailey Proceedings Online TNA The National Archives WCA Westminster City Archives List of tables, graphs and figures Figure 1.1: Edward Mogg, ‘London in Miniature, with the Surrounding Villages Entire New Plan in which the Improvements both present and intended are actually reduced (by permission) from the surveys of the Several Proprietors’, 1806. ............................................................................................ 29 Graph 3.1: Comparing the ages of defendants (grouped at three-year intervals) in proactive policing cases with all those tried at the Old Bailey, presented as percentages of the total number of defendants in each dataset, 1780-1815. .............................................................................................. 70 Table 3.1: Categories, descriptions of terms and proportions of policing agents in the collection of proactive policing cases from the Old Bailey Proceedings, 1780-1815 ................................................ 81 Table 3.2: Proactive policing agent examples and their Old Bailey cases ............................................ 82 Graph 5.1: Comparing the ages of defendants (grouped at three-year intervals) in proactive policing cases with all those tried at the Old Bailey, presented as percentages of the total number of defendants in each dataset, 1816-50.. ............................................................................................... 130 Graph 5.2: Comparing the ages of male defendants (grouped at three-year intervals) in proactive policing cases with all male defendants tried at the Old Bailey, presented as percentages of male defendants in each age category, 1816-50. ........................................................................................ 131 Table 5.1: Categories, descriptions of terms and proportions of policing agents in the collection of proactive policing cases from the Old Bailey Proceedings, 1816-29 .................................................. 133 Table 5.2: Categories, descriptions of terms and proportions of policing agents in the collection of proactive policing cases from the Old Bailey Proceedings, 1830-50 .................................................. 133 Graph 5.3: Number of cases featuring police officers identified with each Metropolitan Police division and the City of London in proactive policing cases in the Old Bailey Proceedings and police court reports in newspapers, 1830-50.. ............................................................................................. 135 Figure 5.1: J. Whitbread, William Jeffreys and Millard Fillmore, ‘Whitbread’s New Plan of London, Drawn from Authentic Surveys’, 1853. Annotated to show the distribution of proactive policing cases identified from each Metropolitan Police division and the City of London, 1830-50………………………137 4 Table 5.3: Proactive policing agents and their Old Bailey cases ......................................................... 138 Graph 5.4: Number of cases with arrests recorded at each time of day in proactive policing cases in the Old Bailey Proceedings, 1780-1850. ............................................................................................. 152 Graph 5.5: Recorded time and date of arrest in proactive policing cases in the Old Bailey Proceedings, 1780-1850, compared with the times for dawn, sunrise, sunset and dusk in 1815.. ... 154 Table 5.4: Terms used to identify expressions of time in cases in the Old Bailey Proceedings for the sample cases ....................................................................................................................................... 156 Graph 5.6: Number of cases with arrests or detections of offences recorded at each time of day in sample cases from the Old Bailey Proceedings compared with proactive policing cases, 1780-1850 ............................................................................................................................................................ 156 Graph 5.7: Recorded time and date of arrest for sample cases from the Old Bailey Proceedings, 1780- 1850, compared with the times for dawn, sunrise, sunset and dusk in 1815. ................................... 157 Graph 5.5 (repeated for ease of comparison): Recorded time and date of arrest for proactive policing cases in the Old Bailey Proceedings, 1780-1850, compared with the times for dawn, sunrise, sunset and dusk in 1815. ................................................................................................................................ 157 Table 6.1: Numbers of repeat offender cases and proactive repeat offender cases per decade, and as percentages of the total number of Old Bailey cases and of the repeat offender cases, 1780-1850. ............................................................................................................................................................ 181 Graph 6.1: Comparing the ages of all repeat defendants, repeat defendants in proactive cases and all Old Bailey defendants, grouped at three-year intervals, presented as percentages of the total number of defendants in each dataset, 1780-1850.. ......................................................................... 183 Graph 6.2: Number of cases featuring police officers identified with each Metropolitan Police division and the City of London among repeat offender cases, 1830-50 ........................................... 192 Figure 6.1: J. Whitbread, William Jeffreys and Millard Fillmore, ‘Whitbread’s New Plan of London, Drawn from Authentic Surveys’, 1853. Annotated to show
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