“In many a back street and slum he (the policeman) not only stands for law and order; he is the true handy-man of the streets, the best friend of a mass of people who have no other counsellor or protector” (The Times, 24 December 1908)[1]

The extract is from The Times on Christmas eve in 1908 and claims that the policeman is the “best friend” of the people of the slum. Upon reviewing this extract it is evident that the police developed a good relationship with the people of the slum. Similar to the extract, a painting titled A Study for Deserted (fig.1) shows some East End

‘down-and-outers’ being helped by the police.[2] However as David Churchill has argued, public-police relationships were complex and primarily depended on the first encounter between the slum dweller and policeman.[3]

 

As Robert Storch has argued, the police created these relationships in order to ‘maintain a constant unceasing pressure of surveillance upon all facets of life in working-class communities.’[4] The idea of the police creating relationships in order to keep the slum dwellers under surveillance will be the main focus as to why there were supposed good relationships with the people of the slum, whether it be the people living in the slum or people who had businesses in the slum.

There is evidence that the police developed close relationships with the slum dwellers naturally. “The London policeman…knows every nook and corner, every house, man, woman and child on his beat.”[5] The following quote, was from Max Schlesinger who was a foreign man who travelled through the slum areas of London detailing what he saw. This is furthered when reviewing a letter to The Times in 1857, where one policeman would stay in one spot and a slum dwellers would give the policeman “a handful of cake”.[6] Sarah Wise has argued, that some slum dwellers were friendly with the police as some East End slum police were humane, brave, effective and a friend to the slummers.[7] One example of the police being humane, brave, effective and a friend to the slummers was in 1893. William Rollin was approached by a police officer in Shoreditch, Rollin was very drunk but had a mysterious cut on his leg.[8] The Police officer went off his beat so that he could carry the man back to the Nichol slum and once there a doctor was summoned where in which Rollin was examined and it was said if it weren’t for the officer helping the man, his injuries would have been fatal.[9]

There is evidence for a change in relationships between the slum dwellers and police as there was a decline in assaults against policemen between the 1850 and the 1910s in the slum areas of England.[10] David Taylor has argued this decline in assaults was because as time went on crime was not going as unpunished leading to people starting to change their opinion on the police and the public opinion had started to be won over.[11] Heather Shore, furthers this be saying that slum dwellers became more willing to report petty crime.[12]

However, as Robert Storch has argued the relationships that naturally developed were only created because the police wanted to survey the people of the slums.[13] The reason police developed relationships with the people of the slum was because there was an obsession in which Clive Emsley has argued, the Middle Class were concerned about the poor and their ‘immoral’ leisure behaviour and believed that it was something that needed to be restricted.[14] One form of surveillance can be seen in what Edwin Chadwick a social reformer said in 1839. He believed that the criminals of the slum could be spotted as they possessed certain habits in which as he believed, were the worst habits of the class and thus these habits were the causes of crime.[15] It can be argued that this was why the police created relationships with slum dwellers because the police were trying to uncover who within the slum were portraying these criminal habits so they could pay an even closer attention to them.

The biggest form of leisure in which the middle class desired to restrict and also the one form of leisure in which the middle class deemed the most immoral was drinking, or more importantly the public house. The idea of police surveillance can be seen in the pubs of the slum in the agreements in which the police had with the landlords. After the 1830s, The Peel Commission favoured the ‘open bar’ approach over the ‘long bar’ as it encouraged publicans to have no small rooms or chairs in a slum pub.[16] The idea of an open bar can be seen to have its origins in Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, where in

which there is a round prison with a guard sat in the middle who had a view of the whole prison (fig.2).[17] Michael Foucault has argued that the effect of the Panopticon was so that the inmate were permanently visible.[18] Taking this into context, the police endorsed the open bar approach so that they could see who was too drunk and thus be able to arrest them.[19] This shows that not only did the police create close relationships with the working class of the slum but also the business owners of the slum. The idea that police officers would use the work of Edwin Chadwick to find out who displayed criminal tendencies and the endorsing of the open bar approach gives evidence to Storch’s argument of police surveillance.

It can be argued that there is evidence that the police were willing to help the people of the slum such as what can be found with the story of William Rollin. This is furthered when the attacks on policeman declined and is examined in line with the fact that the working class were more willing to report petty crime. However, as Robert Storch has argued these relationships were only created in order for the police to ultimately always have surveillance over the slum dwellers. Evidence such as more petty crimes being reported would only naturally happen as the people of the slum believed that the police were actually friends with the slummers. It was not only the people living in the slum that relationships were created for surveillance purposes, but also the owners of the businesses in the slum such as the public house. If the police had a good relationships with both the inhabitants and the publicans of the slum, this meant that they were at constant surveillance of the police.

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References

[1] Taylor, David. The New Police in Nineteenth-Century England: Crime, Conflict and Control. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997) p89

[2] Holl, Frank, A Study for Deserted – A Foundling, Oil on Canvas, 1874, Mercer At Gallery, Harrogate and Johnson, E.D.H., ‘Victorian Artists and the Urban Milieu,’ in Dyos, H.J. and Wolff, Michael. (eds.), The Victorian City Images and Realities Volume 2. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, 1973) p459

[3] Churchill, David. Crime Control & Everyday Life in the Victorian City The Police & The Public. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) P217

[4] Taylor. The New Police in Nineteenth-Century England: Crime, Conflict and Control. p90

[5] Schlesinger, Max, ‘Saunterings in and About London (1853)’, available online: http://www.victorianlondon.org/index-2012.htm date accessed: 1 October 2018

[6] Anon, From a letter to The Times, (16 July 1852), available online: http://www.victorianlondon.org/index-2012.htm Date accessed: 1 October 2018

[7] Wise, Sarah. The Blackest Streets The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum. (London: Vintage Books, 2009) p106

[8] Wise. The Blackest Streets The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum. p106

[9] Wise. The Blackest Streets The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum. p106

[10] Churchill. Crime Control & Everyday Life in the Victorian City The Police & The Public. P218

[11] Churchill. Crime Control & Everyday Life in the Victorian City The Police & The Public. P218

[12] Shore, Heather, ‘Crime, Policing and Punishment,’ in Williams, Chris. (eds.), A Companion to Nineteenth- Century Britain. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2004) p388

[13] Storch, D Robert. “The Problem of Working-Class leisure. Some Roots of Middle Class Moral Reform in the Industrial North:1825-1850”. In Donajgrodzski, A.P. (eds.), Social Control in Nineteenth Century Britain. (London: Croom Helm, 1977) p143

[14] Emsley, Clive. Crime and Society in England.(Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 1987) p57

[15] Emsley. Crime and Society in England. p65

[16] Kneale, James. “’A Problem of Supervision’: Moral Geographies of the Nineteenth-Century British Public House.” Journal of Historical Geography, 25:3, 1999, pp. 341-342

[17] Bentham, Jeremy. Panopticon Or the Inspection House, Volume 1. (London: T Payne, 1781) p32 and English School, The Panopticon, in 1854, engraving, 1851, private collection, available from Bridgeman Education

[18] Foucault, Michael. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. (France: Gallimard, 1975) p234

[19] Kneale. “’A Problem of Supervision’: Moral Geographies of the Nineteenth-Century British Public House.” pp. 342