Bibliographie
Bramham, P., Parish Constables or Police Officers ? The development of a county force in the West Riding, Regional and Local Studies, 1987, pp. 68-80.
Briggs, A. (ed.), Chartist Studies, London, Macmillan, 1959.
Critchley, T. A., A History of Police in England and Wales, London, Constable, 1978.
Cunningham, H., Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, London, Croom Helm, 1980.
Eastwood, D., Government and Community in the English Provinces, 1700-1870, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1997.
Emsley, C., The English Police : A Social and Political History, 2nd ed., Hemel Hempstead, Longman, 1996.
Emsley, C., Crime and Society in England, 1750-1900, 3rd ed., London, Longman, 2004.
Emsley, C., The Great British Bobby, London, Quercus, 2009.
Godfrey, B., Judicial impartiality and the use of criminal law against labour, Crime, History & Societies 1999, 3, 2, pp. 47-72.
Godfrey, B., Cox, D.J., Policing the Factory : Theft, Private Policing and the Law in Modern England, London, Bloomsbury, 2013.
Griffiths, D., Pioneers or Partisans ? Governing Huddersfield 1820-1848, Huddersfield, Huddersfield Local History Society, 2008.
Griffiths, D., Joseph Brook of Greenhead : ‘Father of the Town’, Huddersfield, Huddersfield Local History Society, 2013.
Haigh, E.A.H. (ed.), Huddersfield : A Most Handsome Town, Huddersfield, Kirklees Cultural Services, 1992.
Hargreaves, J., “A Metropolis of Discontent” : Popular Protest in Huddersfield c.1780-c.1850, in Haigh, E.A.H. (ed.), Huddersfield : A Most Handsome Town, Huddersfield, Kirklees Cultural Services, 1992, pp. 189-220.
Harrison, B., Drink and the Victorians : The Temperance Question in England, 1815-1872, Keele, Keele University Press, 1994.
Harrison, J.F.C., Chartism in Leeds, in Briggs, A. (ed.), Chartist Studies, London, Macmillan, 1959, pp. 65-98.
Hay, D. & Snyder, F. (eds), Policing and Prosecution in Britain, 1750-1850, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989.
Innes, J., Inferior Politics : Social Problems and Social Policy in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009.
Jenkins, D.T., Textiles and other Industries, 1851-1914, in Haigh, E.A.H. (ed.), Huddersfield : A Most Handsome Town, Huddersfield, Kirklees Cultural Services, 1992, pp. 241-74.
Lawrence, P., (ed.), The New Police in the Nineteenth Century, Farnham, Ashgate, 2011.
Leigh, J., Early County Chief Constables in the North of England, 1880-1905, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Open University, 2013.
Morris, R. M., Lies, damned lies and criminal statistics : re-interpreting the criminal statistics in England and Wales, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/Crime, History & Societies, 2001, 5, pp. 111-27.
Palmer, S.H., Police and Protest in England and Ireland, 1780-1850, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Philips, D., Crime and Authority in Victorian England, London, Croom Helm, 1977.
Philips, D., Good Men to Associate and Bad Men to Conspire : Associations for the Prosecution of Felons in England, 1760-1860, in Hay, D., Snyder, F. (eds), Policing and Prosecution in Britain, 1750-1850, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 113-170.
Philips, D., Storch, R.D., Policing Provincial England, 1829-1856 : The Politics of Reform, London, Leicester University Press, 1999.
Pye, N., The Home Office & the Chartists, 1838-48 : Protest and Repression in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Pontypool, Merlin, 2013.
Springhall, J., Youth Popular Culture and Moral Panics : Penny Gaffs to Gangsta-Rap, 1830-1996, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1998.
Storch, R.D., The Plague of Blue Locusts : Police Reform and Popular Resistance in Northern England, 1840-57, International Review of Social History, 1975, 20, pp. 61-90.
Storch, R.D., ‘The Policeman as Domestic Missionary’, Journal of Social History, 1976, 9, pp. 481-509.
Storch, R.D., Policing Rural Southern England before the Police, in Hay, D., Snyder, F. (eds.), Policing and Prosecution in Britain, 1750-1850, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989.
Taylor, D., The New Police in Nineteenth-Century England, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1997.
Taylor, D., Policing the Victorian Town : The Development of the Police in Middlesbrough c.1840-1914, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2002.
Taylor, D., Hooligans, Harlots and Hangmen : Crime and Punishment in Victorian Britain, Santa Barbara, ABC-Clio, 2010.
Taylor, D.,”The Police v the People” : Protest and Consent in the Policing of the West Riding of Yorkshire, c.1850-1875, Northern History, 2014, 51, 2, pp. 290-310.
Taylor, H., ‘Rationing Crime : the Political Economy of Criminal Statistics since the 1850s’, Economic History Review, 1998, 51, pp. 569-90.
Weiner, M.J., Reconstructing the Criminal : Culture, Law, and Policy in England, 1830-1914, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Williams, C. A., Police Control Systems in Britain, 1775-1975, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2014.
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Notes
Second Report of the Select Committee on Police, 1852-3, (715), Resolution 3.
See particularly Emsley (1996, 2009) ; Innes (2009) ; Lawrence (2011) ; Philips, Storch (1999) ; Storch (1989) ; Taylor (1997).
Similar approaches to reformed rural policing can be seen in the proposals of the semi-professional, entrepreneurial Bedfordshire constable, J.H. Warden and the Hampshire magistrate, Sir Thomas Baring in the 1820s and 1830s respectively. Storch (1989, pp. 217-19).
Williams (2014, p. 52).
Storch, Philips (1999, p. 215). See also Emsley (1996, pp. 47-9). Buckinghamshire, Herefordshire and Lincolnshire also adopted this system.
Critchley (1978, p. 93) ; Emsley (1996, pp. 47-49 & 249) ; Palmer (1990, p. 449).
Emsley (1996, p. 39).
Philips (1977, p. 62).
Philips, Storch (1999, p. 231 but see also pp. 216-18). This conclusion is based on the direct evidence from Buckinghamshire and the assumption that ‘similar cautiously negative conclusions were being drawn elsewhere.’ (p. 218). This was not the case in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
First Report of the Select Committee on Police, 1852 (603). Evidence of William Hamilton, esp. QQ 1014-5 ; and of David Smith Second Report, 1852-3, (715) esp. QQ 3672 and 3691-2.
First report of the Select Committee on Police, 1852 (603). Evidence of Capt. J Woodford, First Report, esp. QQ 1693 and 1699.
Second Report of the Select Committee on Police, 1852-3 (715). Resolution 3. H M Clifford, chair of the Hereford Quarter Sessions was one of the few witnesses to speak in favour of the superintending constable system. See esp. QQ3824, 3839, 3872 and 3874.
Hansard, vol.140, Police (Counties and Boroughs) Bill, 5 February and 10 March 1856. Philips, Storch (1999 Epilogue).
Palmer (1990, pp. 448-49) is one of the few historians to acknowledge that the 1842 Act was “an attractive alternative” to “the generally unpopular county police”. See also Emsley (2004, p. 231) for a recognition that certain witnesses to the 1852/3 Select Committee were satisfied with the superintending constable system.
Storch & Philips (1999, p. 325, fn.).
Critchley (1979, p. 107). Even more misleadingly, Eastwood (1997, p. 144) claims that the 1839 Rural Constabulary Act was adopted by “all counties with sizable urban populations” even though this act was rejected on more than one occasion by the magistrates of the West Riding.
Pye (2013, p. 178). See also Bramham (1987) for a brief discussion of the origins of the West Riding County Constabulary.
Leeds Mercury, 18 April, 12 & 26 September 1840 and 17 April 1841 ; Sheffield Independent, 1 July 1843 ; Huddersfield Chronicle, 10 April 1852. See also Philips & Storch (1996, pp. 202-06).
Bradford Observer, 29 June 1843 and Sheffield Independent, 1 July 1843.
West Riding Quarter Sessions Committees : Minutes and Reports, Lock-up Committee Minutes, 1843-59. 3 April 1843 meeting, p. 1 ; 5 May 1843 meeting, p.5 and 9 June meeting, p.8. West Yorkshire Archive : Wakefield QC/4. Bradford Observer, 29 June 1843 and Sheffield Independent, 1 July 1843.
Seven were superintendents of lock-ups and parish constables and fifteen for parish constables only. Parliamentary Papers, 1852-3 (675) Returns of Superintendent Constables.
At which point he became superintendent of the Upper Agbrigg (Huddersfield) division of the newly-founded West Riding County Constabulary.
Jenkins (1992).
Captain Fenton to General Bouverie, 29 December 1832 quoted in Hargreaves (1992, pp. 208-09). See also Pye (2013).
Petty sessional records for the Huddersfield district (or the Upper Agbrigg petty sessional district as it was more properly known) held in the West Yorkshire Archive cover the period from 1879 onwards.
For Hobson’s earlier political activity see Harrison (1959) and for Huddersfield early local politics Griffiths (2008, 2013).
Huddersfield Examiner, 17 November 1855. For the wider debate on police reform and changes in attitudes by the 1850s see Palmer (1990).
Limited use was made of the regional press but coverage here was sporadic and heavily focussed on high-profile events.
The Huddersfield district comprised the parishes of Almondbury, Kirkburton and Kirkheaton and also that part of the parish of Rochdale (the Saddleworth district) that fell in the West Riding of Yorkshire. In addition it included the parish of Huddersfield but not the area covered by the town’s improvement act of 1848. Part of Heaton’s salary was paid by Huddersfield ratepayers within the limits of the act and, as a consequence, Heaton was expected to render assistance when asked by the superintendent of Huddersfield police.
Bradford Observer, 29 June 1848.
The relieving officers were essentially the front-line forces of the New Poor Law, determining the fate of those applying for relief. Hostility to the New Poor Law was particularly strong in Huddersfield. Hargreaves (1992).
Sheffield Independent, 1 July 1843.
For the relationship between magistrates and chief constables in the late nineteenth century see J Leigh, ‘Early County Chief Constables in the north of England, 1880-1905’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Open University, 2013, esp. chap. 3.
The Worsted Acts and the committees responsible for prosecution were the most important weapons used against workplace embezzlement. Godfrey describes “the worsted committee and their inspectors” as “a private, state-funded detection and prosecution agency”. (1999, p. 58 fn.5) See also Godfrey and Cox (2013) and for prosecution societies see Philips (1989).
Storch (1976, p. 484).
Castlegate was a notorious street, some 200 yards in length, in which there were thirteen beerhouses, many of which doubled as brothels, and two public houses. The adjoining yards, in which lived many poor Irish families, were frequently denounced for their squalor by the public health reformers of the 1840s and 1850s. Leeds Mercury, 24 September 1848.
Interestingly, this was the last time that ‘traditional’ November 5th celebrations took place in the centre of Huddersfield. For a general discussion of the ‘problem’ of working-class leisure see Cunningham (1980).
The extent to which Heaton’s concern with Sabbath-breaking was driven by religious beliefs is unclear. He makes no explicit reference to his personal beliefs when bringing prosecutions but, in a town with strong non-conformist traditions he may well have had a strong religious belief but one that he did not feel appropriate to articulate. It is clear that other enthusiastic figures, such as William Payne acted on strong religious beliefs.
See Huddersfield Chronicle, 3 June and 29 July 1854. Among his more bizarre but successful prosecutions was that of a 70-year old man for shaving another man on a Sunday. On another occasion he prosecuted three men for watching a cricket-match also on a Sunday, but the case was thrown out.
For similar examples see Huddersfield Chronicle, 14 December 1850, 11 January, 22 February & 28 June 1851, 7 August 1852, and 15 October 1853 and Huddersfield Examiner, 3 June 1854.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 16 June 1855. For a more general discussion of anxiety over working-class juvenile leisure see Springhall (1998, esp. chap. 1) and of Victorian explanations of criminal behaviour Weiner (1990, chaps. 1 & 4) and Taylor (2011, chap.5).
For example, Huddersfield Chronicle, 5& 12 May 1855.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 19 April 1856.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 19 April, 10 & 24 May 1856.
Hull Packet, 27 April 1849, Leeds Mercury, 21 & 28 July 1849.
Jonathan Wilde, the notorious 18th century thief-taker, avoided arrest and trial by betraying other criminals to the authorities.
Leeds Mercury, 4 & 18 November 1848.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 15 Dec. 1855. For details of the incident see Huddersfield Chronicle, 17 November 1855. Wilson’s other crimes are detailed in Huddersfield Chronicle, 10 April 1852, 16 February 1853, 3 & 24 June 1854, 15 September 1854, 11 November 1854, 20 Jan. 1855, 5 & 12 May 1855, 23 June 1855, 28 July 1855, 2 February 1856, 3 May 1856, 7 June 1856, 30 Aug 1856, 1 November 1856 & 20 June 1858.
Leeds Mercury, 19 January & 16 March, 1850, Huddersfield Chronicle 21 January & 14 December 1850. For the national context see the discussion sparked by Howard Taylor (1998) ; Morris (2001).
Huddersfield Chronicle, 22 February 1851. For similar successes in arresting thieves see the Leeds Mercury, 13 July 1850 and the Huddersfield Chronicle, 15 March 1851.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 5 April 1851. For other cases of horse theft see Huddersfield Chronicle, 16 August 1851, 30 October & 27 November 1852, 10 & 17 November 1855 and 23 & 30 August 1856.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 26 April & 19 July 1851. There was an element of the melodramatic in the arrest of George Senior, who had to be dragged from a chimney in which he had secreted himself.
See for example Huddersfield Examiner 23 February 1854 and Huddersfield Chronicle 3 January, 26 June & 18 December 1852 ; 29 January, 11 June, 2 & 9 July 1853, 20 January 1855 & 16 February 1856. See Taylor (2002, chap.4) for an analysis of crime in Middlesbrough in the North Riding of Yorkshire.
See for example Huddersfield Chronicle, 8 February, 1 March, 14 & 21 June 1851, 29 April & 27 May 1854 ; and Huddersfield Examiner, 13 December 1851 & 13 March 1852. See also examples of Kaye working with parochial constable Earnshaw, Huddersfield Chronicle, 4 January 1851, 13 September 1851, 14 May 1853 & 14 July 1855 but see Huddersfield Chronicle 2 November 1850 for magisterial complaint that Heaton was misusing the Worsted Act.
For example, Kaye assisted Heaton in an arrest for gambling in Scammonden. Huddersfield Chronicle, 21 September 1850.
Illicit distillation was probably on the decline in the 1850s in the country as a whole. See Harrison (1994, pp. 305, 327 & 359.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 24 May 1851. It is not clear from the report whether there was a suspicion that there was also a case of embezzlement. Kaye appears to have taken his civic responsibilities seriously, on one occasion coming to the aid of a town constable who was being assaulted by the brothers Hulke and on another occasion trapping a mad dog and restraining it until it could be shot ! Huddersfield Chronicle, 20 March 1852.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 20 August 1853, 12 August 1854, 19 January & 14 June 1856, 10 January & 7 February 1857.
Leeds Mercury, 25 May 1850.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 13 April 1850 and 3 & 10 November 1855.
See for example Huddersfield Chronicle, 7 June 1856 when parochial constable Hoyle was charged with wilful neglect of duty, having been the only parochial constable not to attend during the peace rejoicings. It is difficult to establish how often Heaton took out disciplinary proceedings.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 26 April 1851.
The handbook appears not to have survived but see Huddersfield Examiner, 22 April 1854 for reference to first publication date.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 19 April 1856.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 19 May & 16 June 1855.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 16 November 1850. For examples of his involvement with petty crime see Huddersfield Chronicle 11 May 1850, 3 & 31 May, 13 September & 27 December 1851, 14 February, 29 May, 4 September, 13 November 1852, 8 January, 16 April, 25 June, 17 September, 12 & 26 November and 10 December 1853, 18 February, 15 April & 2 September 1854, 12 & 26 May 1855, 30 August & 20 December 1856.
Huddersfield Chronicle 13 September and 27 December 1851. See also 28 May 1853 & 20 December 1856 for similar joint action.
Huddersfield Chronicle 9 April 1853.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 10 February 1855.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 18 February 1854. Netherwood had given evidence against the same man in December 1852 and there was an ongoing feud between the two men.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 10 February 1855.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 19 April 1856. In contrast, Heaton claimed other parochial constables could not always be relied upon to respond to orders and discharge their duty.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 19 April 1856.
Ibid.
Huddersfield Examiner, 22 January and 12 November 1853.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 18 February 1854 for a brief reference to the constable of Marsh and Huddersfield Chronicle 17 September 1853 for a longer piece on Goodall.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 8 March 1851. Assaults on Glover are reported on 11 May & 17 August 1850 & 18 January 51 (the assault took place on Christmas Day, 1850).
Huddersfield Chronicle, 12 April 1851.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 8 March 1851.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 12 April 1851.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 26 July 1851. One assault led to a trial for cutting and wounding with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm, for which sentences of seven years’ transportation and twelve months hard labour were handed down. Both men had previously been fined for assaulting Glover, though it was claimed on behalf of one of the defendants that he had been the victim of three or four summonses from Glover. See also Huddersfield Chronicle 26 April, 12 July 51 & 25 October 1851.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 11, 18 & 25 September 1852. Two years later but “there appeared an overwhelming majority against a paid constable” because it was widely (but erroneously) believed that it would mean “a policeman in uniform with a salary of some £50 or £60 per annum”. Huddersfield Chronicle, 24 February 1854.
Huddersfield Chronicle and Huddersfield Examiner, 17 February 1855.
Huddersfield Chronicle and Huddersfield Examiner, 8 March & 5 April 1856.
Huddersfield Chronicle and Huddersfield Examiner, 17 February 1855.
See also Huddersfield Chronicle 17 August 1850, 1 February & 16 August 1851 for examples of Heaton working with men of the Huddersfield force to deal with dog-fighting, prize-fighting and cock-fighting respectively and 17 June 1854 for a joint venture with the Kirkburton constable to prevent a cock-fight. In November 1854 Heaton broke up a gambling den in Golcar in conjunction with Superintendent Thomas and two other senior men from the Huddersfield force.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 25 August & 3 September 1856.
The following account is drawn from the reports in the Huddersfield Chronicle for 25 August & 3 September 1856.
Italics added. For details of the trial see Leeds Mercury, 18 October 1856.
Huddersfield Chronicle 14 & 28 April 1855.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 15 September 1855.
Too much should not be made of the fact that George Shepley of Scisset was involved in the Wibsey venture. This appears to be the only serious crime in which he was involved and the location of Scisset, less than ten miles to the south of Huddersfield and within the Upper Agbrigg petty sessional district, was hardly a barrier to co-operation.
Palmer (1990, chap. 12).
There was a similar reliance on superintending constables in the newly-founded North Yorkshire County Constabulary. Bramham (1987, p. 72) is wrong in stating that Cobbe refused to appoint previous superintending constables, though he is correct to note that many of the early inspectors in the force came from outside the county.
Woodford was Chief Constable of Lancashire from its inception in 1839 to 1856 when he became one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Constabulary.
50 percent of the 1,010 constables appointed to the WRCC between 1856 and 1859 resigned and a further 26 percent were dismissed. The average length of service for these men was just under six years but 41 percent left in the first year and a further 11 percent in the second. Bramham (1987)
See for example Huddersfield Chronicle 11 October 1851, 27 March 1852 & 9 April 1853.
Huddersfield Examiner, 7 & 14 March & 30 May 1857. Storch (1976, pp. 482 & 487) misleadingly refers to ‘unpoliced areas’ around Huddersfield in which illicit activities flourished until the advent of the West Riding County Constabulary.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 14 March, 5 September & 7 November 1857 & 23 October 1858.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 14 February & 14 March 1857 and Huddersfield Examiner, 7 March 1857.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 31 January & 11 April 1857.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 17 & 24 January 1857.
Storch (1975, p. 87).
Taylor (2014).
Leeds Mercury, 2 October 1872.
Huddersfield Chronicle, 14 February 1857.
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