Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800

Abstract

By the mid-eighteenth century, the movements for moral reform had lost impetus, but they were replaced by the activities of a range of institutional entrepreneurs who devised new mechanisms of protection against disorder, vice, and crime. Entrepreneurial magistrates, notably Thomas De Veil and the Fielding brothers, established Bow Street as the centre of a new governmental network directed towards both detection and prevention. Old anxieties about mobility, luxury, and licence were accompanied by a new emphasis on criminal gangs, and increasing attention was paid to devising a systemic solution to disorder, which, by the end of the century, was commonly being referred to as a system of ‘police’. Over the course of the century, these policing organisations saw innovation in terms of government funding, uniforms, co-ordination, superintendence, and patrol by large numbers of labouring men. All this took place in the context of cultural changes associated with the ‘civilising process’.