The Metropolitan Police: an introduction to records of service 1829-1958

Okay. Thank you all for coming.

I’m Chris Heather and I work here at The National Archives in the Advice and Records Knowledge Department, and within that the Modern Domestic Team. And we tend to deal with records from the Home Office, Prison Commission, Ministry of Health; those sort of departments with government.

And today we are going to look at records of the Metropolitan Police; it’s not a heavy talk, it’s just a kind of introduction to the records of the Metropolitan Police, and a brief look at what was in place before they came into existence.

Today there are 39 English Police Forces in Britain. There are eight Scottish Police Forces and there are four Welsh ones. But at one point in this country there was only one Police Force which started on 29 September 1829.

But what would happen on 28 September 1829 if you had your handkerchief stolen or your sheep stolen, what would you do if there were no police and what would you do before 1829? Well, I just want to briefly look at what was in place before the Metropolitan Police started.

I expect you’ve all heard of the term ‘breach of the peace’. Well, in those days -and the same today if you commit a crime – you are breaking the Monarch’s peace, so the King’s or Queen’s peace. Your crime is actually committed against the Monarch’s law of the land. So it’s the Monarch really who should be judging you, weighing up the pros and cons and making you pay for your crime.

Now obviously the Queen or the King can’t attend every court case, so in the year 1327 an act was introduced that required good and lawful men to be appointed in every county in the land to guard the peace. And these were initially called ‘Knights of the peace’, appointed in each county by the Crown and the Monarch’s judgement was in practice delegated to them.

A bit later, in 1361, in the reign of Edward III, these men became known as Justices of the Peace or JPs. (I’ll call them JPs from now on because it’s quicker.) A JP could be a lay person, not necessarily trained in Law, but they had to be trustworthy and relied upon to make a fair decision in any particular case.

So before 1829, the law relied upon ordinary people to report crimes to these JPs, and it was through them that the law was administered. JPs didn’t go out on patrol like policemen and they weren’t involved in actually catching criminals as such. This job was carried out by constables – parish constables.

Each parish had at least one constable and they were the eyes and ears of the JP. They inquired into offences, served summonses, executed warrants, took charge of prisoners and prosecuted them and in general obeyed the orders of the JP.

JPs could recruit more constables if need be. He could just pick on reliable people that he knew, and swear them in as constables particularly during times of civil disturbances or riots. Or if he anticipated any need for extra support, he could swear them in.

So, constables weren’t paid and they were part-time and they were usually, sort of, well-established property owners from the local area, from that parish. And they would serve usually on a kind of rota system for a year or so, taking turns at being the constable. It was their role to provide regular reports to court on felons and nuisances.

Since they were property owners it was in their own interest to protect property from criminals. It was the constable that you would go to if you became a victim of crime.

Now, underneath them they had watchmen, not very flattering images of watchmen there [shows image]. [Laughter] But the watchmen were supervised by the constables. Watchmen were actually paid; the money coming from local rate payers, but despite this, watchmen were not very effective in fighting crime.

London itself was divided into 24 wards and each ward had six watchmen in it. They were also called Charlies because they were introduced during the reign of Charles II. Now, Charlies spent very little time actually patrolling, instead they would spend their time in little sentry boxes or watch boxes, sleeping, going to pubs and playing cards [laughter].

They just, sort of, sat there and waited for crimes to be reported to them. They had a very bad reputation amongst the general public and some of them took bribes or colluded with criminals.

So in practice it was the parish constables who were the main body responsible for catching criminals. [Shows image] There’s a cartoon here showing…the lack of respect shown to Charlies. This is from 1821 and here you can see some middle-class revellers teasing a Charlie: knocking over his watch box, which he’d probably be sleeping in and just generally mucking around. They didn’t really respect them at all.

And the next slide is a mock advertisement from the same year, 1821, pretending to, sort of, advertise for watchmen. I’ll just read through it. It says:

‘Wanted. A 100,000 men for London Watchmen. None need apply for this lucrative position without being the age of 60, 70, 80 or 90 years, blind with one eye and seeing very little with the other, crippled in one or both legs, deaf as a post with an asthmatical cough that tears them to pieces, whose speed will keep pace with a snail and the strength of whose arm would not be able to arrest an old washerwoman of four score returned from a hard day’s fag at the wash tub.’

So you can see the respect they got from the general public there.

Generally speaking, anyone who witnessed a crime could and should have reported it. It was a public responsibility and duty to report a crime. When financial rewards for information leading to the conviction of offenders were offered, people would try to find criminals and bring them in either to claim the reward or to strike a deal between the victim and the perpetrator.

And there were professional thief-takers, private individuals who operated like bounty hunters, working for rewards. Many however were in league with thieves themselves and probably the most famous one is Jonathan Wild who lived from 1683 to 1725.

He styled himself the ‘Thieftaker General of Great Britain and Ireland’. He was a criminal master mind overseeing gangs of men. He would steal valuables, which he would then recover for a fee or reward from the victim.

When one of his thieves outlived his usefulness, he would turn him in into the JPs in return for a reward. After sending 60 men to the gallows, Wild was unmasked and hanged at Tyburn in 1725.

[Shows image] This slide shows Jonathan Wild’s own personal emblem on the side, here. He is wearing a Judge’s cloth cap and holding a mace, a symbol of justice. He distributed copies of this portrait to Londoners as a public relations ploy, much in the same way that Al Capone did in America, currying favour with the people. Ironically, it was also reproduced on tickets to his execution in 1725.

In 1748 Henry Fielding became the Chief Magistrate of the Bow Street Court in London. This is the same Henry Fielding that wrote the novel, Tom Jones. The following year, in 1749, he appointed eight Bow Street runners to work from his Office. They were originally thief takers and they wore no uniforms, but they had a formal attachment to the Bow Street Magistrates’ Office and they were paid by the Magistrate with funds from Central Government.

They worked out of his Office at number 4 Bow Street. They served writs and they arrested offenders on the authority of the Magistrate, going nationwide sometimes to catch offenders.

Over time they were expanded and divided into the horse patrol, the dismounted patrol, a night foot patrol and a day foot patrol.

So John Fielding is the person who took over, that’s Henry’s brother or half-brother and he had been blind since he was 19 years old. He became a Chief Magistrate of Bow Street in 1754, remaining in the job for 26 years until 1780. He became known as the ‘blind beak of Bow Street’ and it’s said that he could recognise the voices of over 3,000 known criminals.

John Fielding refined the Bow Street runners into the first truly effective law enforcement body for London. He later added a group of mounted men on horseback known as Bow Street horse patrol, also called the ‘robin redbreasts’ because of their red waistcoats.

[Shows image] This next slide shows one of the documents that we hold here at The National Archives, a Treasury document. And it includes his signature at the bottom. You can see it’s a bit shaky there, that’s because obviously he was blind and he couldn’t really see what he was writing.

And in this… he is giving a report to the Treasury on what he’s spent his money on, that year, and hoping for the same amount next year.

During the early 1800s there was a call for a new police force from various quarters including the Duke of Wellington. The wars with France were over, leading to increased unemployment and the introduction of factories and new farming methods had led to an increase in riots, disturbances and crime.

In 1828 Robert Peel, Home Secretary, showed that although the population in London had increased by 19% since 1811, crime had risen by 55%. So, in April 1829 Peel submitted his Metropolis Police Improvement bill to Parliament and on 29 September 1829 the Metropolitan Police was formed.

The policemen were commonly known as Peelers or Bobbies after Robert Peel and the force was directly under his control as Home Secretary, which is why the surviving records are here at The National Archives amongst the Home Office papers.

Records of other police forces across the country are either with the force concerned or at the relevant county record office.

The first 1,000 of Peel’s policemen started to patrol the streets of London wearing a smart uniform, comprising blue tailcoats and top hats. The uniform was carefully chosen so as not to look like an army uniform. It wasn’t red like the army’s tunics and there were no helmets. The uniform intended to appear non-threatening to civilians.

The following year, their ranks tripled to 3,300 men and by 1849 there were 5,000. By 1899 there were 16,000 of these Peelers all issued with a pair of handcuffs, a wooden rattle like the old football rattles, although they were replaced in the 1880s by whistles.

They were also given a wooden truncheon which they carried in a special pocket in the tail of their coat. They were issued with a thick collar designed to protect them against garrotting. Cutlasses were available for emergencies or dangerous beats and inspectors and higher ranking officers were allowed to carry pistols as well.

Women were not recruited until 1919 and their records are not included amongst those we have here at The National Archives. Some early records for women are held by the Metropolitan Police Historical Museum at New Scotland Yard.

There were strict criteria for being a policeman; first recruits had to be aged between 20 and 27 and be at least five foot seven tall. After a few years the age limit went up to 35 and they had to be well built, fit and literate with a fair knowledge of spelling, generally intelligent and of good character.

They also had to be free of any bodily complaints including flat feet, stiff joints, narrow chest and facial deformities.

As a result of these strict criteria, most of the early recruits for the police were from outside London because poor urban conditions of the capital often meant that the physical and mental standards of London men were not considered good enough. Most early recruits were from the Home Counties, two and a half percent were Scottish and six and a half percent were Irish.

The main emphasis of their work was on the prevention of crime rather than investigating crimes that had already happened. Crime investigation was still carried out by the unpaid constables, reporting back to the JP.

The new police force was introduced across the whole of London except for the City of London, the part right in the middle known as the Square Mile.

Some of the Magistrates in the City of London suggested that they should have their own police force as well, which might have meant the end for the Charlies. And here we can see a cartoon showing the old Charlies carrying a watch box as if it were a coffin, showing the death of the Charlies. But in practice the Charlies carried on until around 1835.

So how were the police regarded? You might expect the general public to be pleased and grateful for the protection that the new force offered. But in fact the police were not popular at all. You might see that in the next few slides.

Firstly local government in London were expected to pay for the new police force out of the rates like they did for the old watchmen. But watchmen were controlled by the Local Authority, whereas the police commissioners reported to the Home Secretary. So people resented paying for something over which they had no control.

Secondly, people were afraid of them. They thought the police might be a new military force introduced to clamp down on things. They would rather have had the old easy going Charlies than what some considered a form of martial law.

Thirdly, the new police were recruited from the working class and were expected to show authority over mainly working class criminals. Consequently they were seen as class traitors by some, and meanwhile the middle class looked down on them and didn’t trust them to protect their property.

There were campaigns and petitions against the new police. [Shows image] Here you can see a poster against the new police. This is one from HO 61, Home Office Metropolitan Police correspondence, calling for the abolition of the new force. This dates from 1830, a year after the introduction of the Metropolitan police. One section of it asks:

‘Why is the sword of Justice placed in the hands of a military man? Unite in removing such a powerful force from the hands of Government and let us institute a police system in the hands of people under parochial appointment’.

They wanted a police force but they wanted it managed locally by local parish authority. The old watchmen were known for being drunk on duty and the new police suffered the same reputation. Drunkenness was very common in the police and here is a cartoon [shows image] from May 1830 [laughter] showing a policeman who is obviously drunk, saying to a woman: ‘Come, move on there, it’s time you was in bed young woman, anyone with half an eye could see you was in liquor’ – the police here being shown as hypocritical and no better than those they had authority over.

[Shows image] This cartoon shows the police as a brutal military force. This one is from 1832 and it shows the fears of the public that a French style political police force was being imposed upon them.

As I mentioned earlier, the Metropolitan police had jurisdiction over the whole of London except for the City of London. [Shows image] This map shows the area covered, which started out as an area of seven miles’ radius from Charing Cross in 1829. And ten years later it was extended to 15 miles’ radius from Charing Cross, including the whole of Middlesex and most parishes in Surrey, Hertfordshire, Essex and Kent that had parts not more than 15 miles from Charing Cross.

So the Metropolitan police were responsible for the whole of this area except for the little white bit in the middle which is the City of London. And even today the City of London has its own police force. All attempts to unite the two police forces have failed over the years.

The City of London Police Force was set up in 1839 and their staff records are held at the Corporation of London Records Office in the Guildhall in London. At the same time in 1839, the old constables were finally abolished. They were replaced in 1842 by plains clothes detectives within the police force and they eventually became the Criminal Investigation Department, the CID.

Sir Robert Peel set out the structure and salaries of the new force in a written memorandum dated 20 July 1829. He thought it should have eight superintendents paid at £200 a year, 20 inspectors paid at a £100 a year, 88 sergeants at three shillings and sixpence a day and 895 constables paid at three shillings a day.

By 1869 London was divided up into four districts, each of which had several divisions – for example, number 4 district included Lambeth, Southwark, Camberwell, Greenwich and Clapham. Each division had a Superintendent in charge and under him were four inspectors and 16 sergeants.

Later on, the Met Police became responsible for the Royal Dockyards Police, the military stations at Portsmouth, Chatham, Devon Port, Pembroke, Woolwich and Rosyth. And the Bow Street Horse patrol and the Thames River force were incorporated into the Met.

So now, I’m going to move onto the actual records that we hold here, for the police themselves. They are all records that are held here, I’m not going to talk about anything held elsewhere.

Now, it’s true to say that the Metropolitan police records have not survived in their entirety. There are gaps in some collections and other collections are incomplete in other ways. There is a particularly bad period from 1856 to 1868, when pretty much nothing survives.

But there is a good period between 1889 and 1909 for which there are several sets of records which survive and in which you should be able to find mention of your man.

The staff records are always arranged by one of three things: name, warrant number or date: that’s date of joining or of leaving. The policeman’s warrant number was issued to each man when he joined and it stayed with him throughout his service, unlike the Army where a man can have several numbers during his time.

So there are six main collections of staff records and all of them will give you four things, you’ll see four things on the screen. They will give you the name, the warrant number, the division, the dates of appointment or removal from the force. It doesn’t matter which set of records you look at, you should always get at least those four things.

So the first set of records are known as the numerical registers, they are held under reference MEPO, I call it MEPO, that’s what the Metropolitan records are put under – that’s the acronym.

MEPO 4, pieces 31 and 32 – there are only two of these volumes and the entries are arranged in warrant number order. They were simply completed as policemen signed up. And they give you the warrant number, the name, the date of the appointment, the division to which they were attached and their height.

There is also a column for how they were removed from the force, which is usually that they had either died or resigned or were dismissed. Now when you look down the list of men in this book, you can see that nearly all of them were dismissed for being drunk [laughter].

In fact, of the first 2,800 new policemen, only 600 managed to keep their jobs. Such a rapid turnover caused Mr Charles Hebbert, the first clothing contractor, to complain to the receiver about the extra cost involved in altering and re-issuing so many uniforms. So it wasn’t a very good start for the new police.

The next document is the alphabetical register in HO 65. It’s just one document, there’s only one of it. It’s piece number 26 and it’s in alphabetical order of surname and it gives you the date of appointment, the warrant number, name, rank, date of promotion or reduction, and former warrant number if he was re-appointed.

It also tells you why he was removed from the force at the end of his service, which again is usually death, dismissal or resignation. Most of them when you look down the list are dismissed.

[Shows image] The very first warrant number, number 1, was issued to a man named William Atkinson who was dismissed for being drunk on 29 September, the very first day of the new police force [laughter], after having been in the job for only four hours [laughter]. And you can see the ones underneath, basically all the same, ditto.

Thirdly, we have the registers of joiners. These are on microfilm and they are in MEPO 4 still [2015 – some records within this series are now online – see http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C10813]. They are easy to use, arranged in alphabetical order of name and they cover the period from 1830 to 1857. Then there is a gap and they start again in 1878 going right up to 1933. They should give you the name, rank, warrant number, division, and dates of appointment and removal from the force.

The earlier four volumes also give you the names and addresses of referees. So if you are working on a family tree, you might find the man’s father or brother listed as a referee.

Fourthly, we’ve got attestation registers or ledgers, again in MEPO 4. These are arranged in warrant number order and they record the men actually signing up to join the police; that’s mostly the signatures in there.

At the front of the volume, you get the oath that they would have sworn at the time of their signing. These ledgers also give you the division that they joined, by whom they were sworn and a signature of the witness which again could be another member of the family.

Fifthly, we have Certificates of service, still in MEPO 4 from piece 361 to 477. These include quite a lot of information on each person. They only survive for 21 years from 1889 to 1909, but they give you: a physical description; date of birth; the trade that they were employed in before they joined the police; their marital status; residence; number of children; last employer; surgeon’s certificate; posting to the division; promotion; demotion; and cause of removal from the force.

They are arranged by warrant number, so they were just completed as they were recruited. And they record the answers to the questions that the recruiting officer would have put to the recruits. They’ve got the questions down the left and the answers down the right.

The very last question is a strange one, it says: ‘Do you belong to an illegal, secret society?’ [Laughter] So whether they’re going to say: ‘Yes, I do’ or ‘I’m sorry, I can’t tell you’, I’m not sure; but this one says ‘No’.

Sixth, are Registers of leaving. There are 13 volumes of these and obviously they are arranged in date order, completed as and when people left the force. There are some name indexes at the front so you don’t have to wade through, but if you do know the date the person left then you can go straight to it.

They give you the division, the warrant number, the rank, the class, number of certificates granted if not dismissed. They would get certificates according to their character, number one would be ‘excellent’, number two would be ‘very good’ and so on.

And you’ll find abbreviations like ‘RP’ which is ‘Resignation Permitted’ and ‘RR’ which is ‘Required to Resign’; so kind of ‘dismissed’, really.

Now, there are name indexes which can kind of help you on your way through these records. There is an alphabetical index of Metropolitan Police Officers in seven volumes, in the Research Enquiries room located next to the MEPO series in the class list.

So if you find the MEPO section, next to it you’ll find this alphabetical list of names. And it was compiled by combing through the correspondence and papers for the Metropolitan Police in series MEPO 2; picking up names of individual men and their warrant numbers.

This information has been cross-referred to other sets of Met police records in MEPO 4, MEPO 7 and the HO 64 ledger. And it will confirm basic details about any particular man, it’s giving you the warrant number and it will sometimes give you the document reference where the entry was found.

There is also a separate name index which is just a single volume, again amongst the red set. It’s an index to police officers mentioned in the police orders from 1880 to 1889 held in MEPO 7 including all men that joined during this period. It’s called Index to Officers who joined 1880-1889.

Police orders were like office notices; announcements of people leaving or joining or being promoted and they can give you specific information on individual policemen.

They comprised general and confidential notices, instructions on personnel matters including recruitment, promotions, transfers, awards, retirements and dismissals and other instructions or notices to be brought to the attention of all ranks. That’s what you get in MEPO 7.

These records are not otherwise easy to use because there is no index to them apart from this binder. But if your man joined in the 1880s this binder should give you at least the warrant number and if you’ve got the name and the warrant number, those are the keys that open the door to all the other sets of documents.

So where should you start your search? [Shows image] This slide summarises your options as to where to start depending on whether you have the warrant number already or not. If you do not have the warrant number then you should start with the chronologically arranged documents listed on the left. If you do have the warrant number then you can start with the numerically arranged collections on the right.

Either way you should find enough information to find your man in all the available documents, provided they survive.

Now there was section on our website called ‘Your Archives’ and it’s a user compiled wiki, similar to Wikipedia, which is part… it’s part of a section on The National Archives website [it is now in the
web archive at http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100115151708/http://yourarchives.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php?title=Home_page]

And one volunteer has uploaded photographs of a lot of the documents that I’ve been speaking about. He’s also provided transcripts of indexes for them and he’s made it – sort of short cuts into these records [shows image]

That’s just the beginning of it, down below you get lists of the documents and you can click on them. Some of them have been photographed and others haven’t and some of them have been indexed and others haven’t. I think he’s still working on it. So you could do that [look at ‘Your Archives’] from home before you got here.

Pensions Up until 1890 pensions were discretionary and police officers had no legal right to them. After the police pensions act was passed, officers were entitled to claim a pension provided they had served 25 years and they could claim a modified pension or a gratuity if they were discharged medically unfit.

There are two main sources for pension records. The first is MEPO 5, general correspondence and papers of the Met Police Office of the receiver relating to financial matters, between pieces one and 90. And that covers from 1829 to 1907.

But it is one of those collections of correspondence where you might find something about your man; but it is not arranged by name or anything useful. So it’s something you wouldn’t really start with but it does include information on pensions.

Better to start with MEPO 21 which are records of police pensioners and they’ve been catalogued by name, at least for the first few years from 1852 to 1890, which means you can search The National Archives catalogue. Just type in the name of the person you are looking for and if they received a pension between 1852 and 1890, their name should come up with the appropriate MEPO 21 reference.

The records actually continue on until 1993, still in MEPO 21 but individual names are not added to the catalogue yet. So for records after 1890, you simply choose the document that covers the date of retirement and you can then use the register of leavers to find out when your man left the force and then go into MEPO 21 for that date.

The entries in the volume are arranged in order of pension number which generally corresponds to the date of resignation. Although in some instances this chronological order has not been strictly followed. The records themselves provide you with the date and place of birth, marital status, parents, next of kin, service details, and then from 1923 they include details of a spouse.

There are also documents containing widows’ pensions amongst MEPO 21 as well and they are quite clearly marked as ‘Widows Pension Papers’ in the catalogue. These papers are bound up in volumes and you get one page for each person.

[Shows image] This example is for a policeman named Christopher Hayes. He is over 60 years. It gives his name, rank, reason for discharge and rate of pension. The documents are arranged in order of pension number and this particular one shows that he received ‘severe bodily injuries, received in the execution of his duties’. He left the force on 22 June 1852 and his pension of £28 starts the following day, 23 June 1852.

On the back of each page, you get more information about the individual including things like hair colour and eye colour, his complexion and particulars of service. This example includes details of his reason for discharge. If I enlarge this section you can see that he was kicked by a prisoner causing injury to the spermatic cord (kicked in the groin).

And on the last line it tells you where he is intending to reside and draw his pension, which is Willy Lane.

Terms of Death So, if your man was actually killed while serving you can find the information on him in the ‘Returns of Death while serving’. This again is just one volume MEPO 4, piece number 2, and it’s arranged in date order from the introduction of the force to 1889.

As I said, it’s in date order, but if you don’t know when your man died, then you can use MEPO 4…488, not 448, that’s a mistake. Should be [MEPO 4] 488 which is an alphabetical index to the ‘Returns of death while serving’. And it also gives you the cause of death.

PC Joseph’s grandson became the first officer to be killed on duty at Summer’s Town, Euston in 1830 when he was kicked in the head attempting to arrest a drunken man at a disturbance, so he should be the first one listed in that book.

And finally, a brief word about the King’s Police medal. This award was introduced by King Edward VIII on 7 July 1909 for those who performed acts of exceptional courage and skill or who have exhibited conspicuous devotion to duty.

Files on awards for the King’s Police medal from its introduction in 1909 can be found in HO 45 under the heading ‘Honours’ and a list of awards from 1909 to 1912 is given in MEPO 2, piece 1300. A register of officers under consideration for the award of the King’s Police Medal from 1909 to 1951 is held under reference MEPO 22/2.

And notifications of awards of this medal were published in Police Orders, that is MEPO 7 again. And the London Gazette [https://www.thegazette.co.uk/], available online or in series ZJ 1, here…partly on microfilm, partly originals here. Okay?

Thank you for listening.

Transcribed by Jay Ramesh as part of a volunteer project, May 2015