University of Huddersfield Repository Taylor, David Beerhouses, Brothels and Bobbies - policing by consent in Huddersfield and the Huddersfield district in the mid-nineteenth century Original Citation Taylor, David (2016) Beerhouses, Brothels and Bobbies - policing by consent in Huddersfield and the Huddersfield district in the mid-nineteenth century. University of Huddersfield Press, Huddersfield. ISBN 978-1-86218-140-3 This version is available at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/30220/ The University Repository is a digital collection of the research output of the University, available on Open Access. Copyright and Moral Rights for the items on this site are retained by the individual author and/or other copyright owners. Users may access full items free of charge; copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided: • The authors, title and full bibliographic details is credited in any copy; • A hyperlink and/or URL is included for the original metadata page; and • The content is not changed in any way. For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at: [email protected]. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/ BEERHOUSES, BROTHELS AND BOBBIES POLICING BY CONSENT IN HUDDERSFIELD AND THE HUDDERSFIELD DISTRICT IN THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY DAVID TAYLOR Published by University of Huddersfield Press University of Huddersfield Press The University of Huddersfield Queensgate Huddersfield HD1 3DH Email enquiries [email protected] First published 2016 Text © 2016 David Taylor. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Images © as attributed Every effort has been made to locate copyright holders of materials included and to obtain permission for their publication. The publisher is not responsible for the continued existence and accuracy of websites referenced in the text. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior permission from the publisher. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-86218-139-7 Designed and printed by D&M Heritage Dunn & Mills Business Park Red Doles Lane Huddersfield HD2 1YE http://www.dandmheritage.co.uk/ COVER IMAGE: View of Huddersfield, William Cowen (1791–1864) © Kirklees Image Archive To Thelma Contents Acknowledgements VII Tables IX Maps & Illustrations XI Abbreviations XII Chapter 1: Introduction: Themes, Sources and Context 1 Part 1: Huddersfield Chapter 2: The Development of the Borough Police Force: Continuity and Change 15 Chapter 3: The Watch Committee, Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary and the Management of the Huddersfield Police Force 49 Chapter 4: The Men of the Borough Force 77 Chapter 5: Beats and Streets 107 Chapter 6: Criminals or Victims? 133 Part 2: The Huddersfield District (Upper Agbrigg) Chapter 7: Thomas Heaton and the Superintending Constable System 159 Chapter 8: The Early Years of the West Riding County Constabulary 181 Chapter 9: Trouble in Honley and Holmfirth 209 Chapter 10: Crime, Custom and Culture 233 Chapter 11: Conclusions and the Contentious Question of ‘Policing by Consent’ 263 Author Biography 287 Index 289 vii Acknowledgements THE inspiration FOR this book is very personal. My late father was a hard-working, semi-skilled working-class man, who always had the utmost respect for the law and brought up his children to ‘know right from wrong’ and yet also had a profound suspicion of the police. Much of this, I later discovered, grew out of his minor scrapes with the law as he grew up in a poor family, in a less than respectable district of north London. Nonetheless, there was a tension, an ambivalence, if not an outright contradiction, in his attitude towards the police. This I found perplexing – and, to a lesser extent, still do. This book, although focusing on a different place in a different time, has given me an opportunity to explore and reflect on the complexities of our attitudes towards agents of law enforcement. The arguments advanced in the following pages are firmly rooted in the realities of policing in mid-Victorian Yorkshire but, in developing these ideas, my father’s once-perplexing attitude towards the police (and indeed my own) have become more comprehensible. In writing any book one incurs many intellectual and personal debts, some going back over many years. The intellectual debts are abundantly clear from the footnotes and my thanks go to the many scholars who have added to my understanding of Victorian policing. I am also very grateful for the courteous and efficient service I have received from the staff of the Library and Computing Services of Huddersfield University, Huddersfield Local History Library and the West Yorkshire Archive Service. I am particularly grateful to Graham Stone and Sue White, who have overseen the production of this book, Hazel Goodes, not least for her careful copy-editing which viii beerhouses, brothels and bobbies has greatly enhanced the text and Sarah Harding for her assistance with the maps of Huddersfield. In addition, special mention must be made of the members of the Huddersfield branch of the University of the Third Age, who not only came to various classes, encouraging me to extend my knowledge of the local area and, most kindly, correcting some of the worst errors made by a ‘comer- in’. My knowledge, particularly of the geography of the area, has been increased considerably and any errors that remain cannot be laid at their door. Finally, special thanks go to my wife, Thelma, to whom this book is dedicated. Not only did she – yet again – read and comment on every draft of every chapter, she also spent several hours poring over microfilm versions of the local press and, most importantly, instilled a sense of proportion into the whole venture. The book is better for her contributions and its shortcomings are entirely mine. ix Tables 2.1 Persons per constable & acres per constable: West Riding of Yorkshire, 1862 22 2.2 Huddersfield borough police: rates of pay, 1848 25 2.3 Huddersfield borough police: pay increases, 1856 & 1865 26 2.4 Huddersfield borough police: length of completed careers, 1848–68 31 2.5 Huddersfield borough police: completed career outcomes, 1848–68 32 2.6 Huddersfield borough police, resignations and dismissals, 1848–68 33 2.7 Huddersfield borough police: disciplinary record, 1848–68 34 2.8 Huddersfield borough police: length of service, 1860 42 2.9 Huddersfield borough police: Supt. Withers’ reorganisation, 1868 43 8.1 Upper Agbrigg: length of service, 1857–68 186 8.2 Upper Agbrigg: career outcomes, 1857–68 187 8.3 Upper Agbrigg 1st police cohort: previous police experience and place of birth 188 8.4 Upper Agbrigg 1st police cohort: length of service and career outcomes 188 8.5 Upper Agbrigg: length of service, 1868 189 10.1 Proceedings under the Vagrancy Acts in Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire 243 10.2 Game Law Prosecutions in the 1860s 245 10.3 Poaching Prosecutions in Upper Agbrigg by parish, 1857–62 245 xi Maps and Illustrations Maps Association of British Counties Map of Yorkshire. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 UK: England and Wales License. 2 Huddersfield, 1848 13 The Castlegate District, 1851 110 The Upperhead Row District, 1851 121 Upper Agbrigg, 1844 157 Illustrations (All courtesy of the Kirklees Image Archive) Illustrations follow page 148 xii Abbreviations B.Obs Bradford Observer HC Huddersfield Chronicle HEx Huddersfield Examiner HIC Huddersfield Improvement Commission LM Leeds Mercury Sheff.I Sheffield Independent WRCC West Riding County Constabulary chapter 1 1 Introduction: Themes, Sources and Context WE LIVE – AND have lived for more than a century – in a policed society. We may be critical of the ways in which policing is organised and carried out but few would argue that we should not have uniformed, bureaucratically organized and accountable police forces. Yet (in historical terms) it is not that long ago that the introduction of such forces, the so-called ‘new police’, that replaced an older system based on parochial constables and night watchmen, was highly controversial. In the last fifty years police history has been a dynamic part of both academic and popular history. We now know so much more about the development of the ‘new police’ that few, if any, would subscribe to the comforting, ‘Whiggish’ narratives of the earliest police historians, such as Captain W L Melville Lee and Charles Reith.1 But if we are all ‘revisionists’ now, there is considerable scope for disagreement, not least over the nature and extent of ‘policing by consent’, that supposedly distinctive feature of British policing. Further, despite the upsurge in publications our knowledge of the development of policing remains patchy, particularly in geographical terms. A considerable amount of attention has been devoted to the history of the police in London and the major cities but, with a few honourable exceptions, we know little about the policing of medium-sized towns and the counties. Given the importance of the West Riding to the socio-economic and political development of the country in the nineteenth century, it is surprising that so little research has been done on an area noted for its economic dynamism, social tensions and political agitation. This book goes some way to filling that gap by focussing on the 2 beerhouses, brothels and bobbies advent of the ‘new police’ in Huddersfield and the Huddersfield district (that is, Upper Agbrigg) in the period c.1840 to 1868, which constituted the first generation of ‘new policing’ in the district. 1840 was a crucial year.