Policing in 18th century England : the rise and fall of the thief-taker, 1680-1730.

Abstract

Examines why England and subsequently other English speaking countries were reluctant to adopt a governmental police force to reduce crime, hypothesizing that the establishment of Thief-takers as a governmentally backed institution set back the societal ideals of establishing a professional police force to curtail the severity and occurrence of crime. Results of a qualitative analysis reveal that the inception of the profession of Thief-takers as an attempt by the English government to balance the concerns of the public relating to its fear of a national police force against the public's desire to maintain the tradition of community volunteer constables and the growing threat of violent crime throughout the country was thwarted with the emergence of Jonathan Wild as the primary Thief-taker of the country. Wild's dominance of the profession and his spectacular fall set back the concept of establishing a national police force by a hundred years. The institution of the professional Thief-taker in its self did not set the back the government's goal of establishing a national police force to curtail crime but the emergence and fall of Jonathan Wild did. This finding supports the government's ideal of creating a more professional crime fighting unit would greatly improve the safety and lives of its countrymen. With the exception that pay based upon conviction of felons was contrary to achieving this goal because it created an opportunity for corruption in which a person such as Jonathan Wild could exploit. This exception was corrected with the establishment of the Bow Street Runners by Henry Fielding two decades later and later incorporated by Sir Robert Peel when he established salary base policing with the birth of Peelers in 1829. Additional research might examine the further development of organized policing in the United Kingdom with the emergence of the Bow Street Runners and the Bow Street Horse Patrol in the mid and late eighteenth-century.