Paternalism and patronage: a society of elites

All societies are, to some degree, stratified or divided into different social groups. These groups may be in competition with each other for social control or wealth. They may be functional, defined by their contribution to society as a whole. They may share common ‘values’, have a common ‘national identity’ or they may form part of a pluralistic society in which different ‘values’ coexist with varying degrees of consensus or conflict. They have different names like ‘castes’ or ‘ranks’ or ‘classes’. British society in the nineteenth and early-twentieth century has been called a ‘class society’ but there are some differences between historians about its precise meaning or whether it is meaningful at all.[1] Were there two classes or three or five or any classes at all? Were there any common values? They do, however, agree that society in 1914 was different from the society that existed in the 1830s. It is important to have some understanding of the ‘wholeness’ of society, whether nationally or within a given locality because it was the overall structure of society that people were reacting against or attempting to preserve.[2] Individuals must be understood, given meaning and significance, not in isolation but within their web of social relationships.  The underlying basis of the elitism of the aristocracy in the 1830s was one of mutual and reciprocal obligation within a hierarchical framework. Harold Perkin wrote that

The old society, then was a finely graded hierarchy of great subtlety and discrimination, in which men were acutely aware of their exact relation to those immediately above and below them, but only vaguely conscious except at the very top of their connections with those on their own level....There was one horizontal cleavage of great import, that between the ‘gentleman’ and the ‘common people’, but it could scarcely be defined in economic terms.[3]

This view of society had two important dimensions. First, it was paternalistic. What mattered here was not what was later parodied as ‘forelock tugging’ but sympathetic involvement by the elites in the lives of the rest of society. There was an expectation of reciprocity, a common outlook and identification of interests and, if necessary, sheer coercion to maintain the civil stability of a hierarchical social structure. A Christian faith and moral code was a common possession of all of society and rank, station, duty and decorum were central social values.

David Roberts provides a useful model of paternalism in early Victorian society.[4] A paternalist saw society in the following ways. First, it should be authoritarian, though tempered by adhesion to the common law and ancient ‘liberties’. Secondly, it should be hierarchical. Thirdly, it should be ‘organic’ with people knowing their appointed place. Finally, it should be ‘pluralistic’ consisting of different hierarchical ‘interests’ making up the organic whole. Within this structure paternalists had certain duties and held certain assumptions. First was the duty to rule, a direct result of wealth and power. Parallel to this was the obligation to help the poor, not merely passively but with active assistance. Paternalists also believed in the duty of ‘guidance’, a firm moral superintendence. Paternalism governed relationships at all levels of society and continued to play an important role even in innovative areas of the economy.[5] Apprenticeship, for example, was more than induction into craft particular skills; it was an immersion in the social experience or common wisdom of the community. Practices, norms and attitudes were, as a result, reproduced through successive generations within an accepted framework of traditional customs and rights grounded in the vaguely defined notion of ‘the moral economy’. [6]

Secondly, patronage was a key feature.[7] Patronage was central to the paternalist ethic and it retained its importance throughout the nineteenth century. It was characteristic of an unequal face-to-face society, crossing social barriers and bringing together potentially hostile groups. Patronage involved a ‘lopsided’ relationship between individuals, a patron and a client of unequal status, wealth and influence. It could be called a ‘package deal’ of reciprocal advantage to the individuals involved. It is true that by the 1830s much of the ‘politically useful’ forms of patronage such as jobs for electors and rewards for political supporters had declined but to assume that there was a general decline in patronage is to fundamentally misconceive the issue.[8] Patronage remained central to the Church of England with successive prime ministers exercising considerable influence over episcopal appointments[9] and in the Arts.[10] The nineteenth century is often seen as an age in which professionalism replaced patronage in British political and social life. The career was opened up to the talents as the upwardly-mobile middle-classes attacked and conquered the old preserves of the aristocracy and gentry; fewer and fewer places were marked ‘reserved’ just because they were within the gift and bequest of those with wealth and property. Elections and examinations made steady inroads into elitism; merit was substituted for manipulation and management.

Many of the political, social and economic changes of the first half of the nineteenth century, however, greatly increased the amount of patronage that was available. There was a dramatic increase in the number of ‘administratively necessary’ offices.[11] The prison, factory, health and schools Inspectorate were all staffed, at least initially, through patronage. This was paralleled in local government where ‘efficient’ patronage was used by rival elites within communities as an extension of party politics. Finally, offices may have been filled by personal nomination but individuals had to possess some basic competence. This notion of ‘merit’ received wider application after the Northcote-Trevelyan report of 1854, though patronage comfortably withstood much of the onslaught of merit until the 1870s.[12] Only the urban middle-classes of the north were indifferent to patronage though it was still evident in, for example, the promotion of science.[13] The bulk of the middle-classes were located in the genteel world of the professions and of propertyless independent incomes, far less entrepreneurial and competitive than their industrial equivalents. As long as a common area of shared values existed patronage continued to have broad application and utility.

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[1] On methodology see Burke, P., History and Social Theory, (Polity), 1992, Abrams, P., Historical Sociology, (Open Books), 1982 and two books by Lloyd, C., Explanation in Social History, (Basil Blackwell), 1986 and The Structures of History, (Basil Blackwell), 1993.

[2] What follows extends arguments developed initially in ibid, Brown, Richard, Change and Continuity in British Society 1800-1850, and ibid, Society and Economy in Modern Britain 1700-1850, (Routledge) 1991, especially pp. 342-367.

[3] Ibid, Perkin, H., The Origins of Modern English Society 1780-1880, p. 24.

[4] Roberts, David, Paternalism in Early Victorian England, (Croom Helm), 1979, pp. 2-10.

[5] Revill, George, ‘“Railway Derby”: occupational community, paternalism and corporate culture, 1850-90’, Urban History, Vol. 28, (2001), pp. 378-404 and ‘Liberalism and paternalism: politics and corporate culture in “Railway Derby”, 1865-75’. Social History, Vol. 24, (1999), pp. 196-214 provide a valuable case study.

[6] Thompson, E. P., ‘The Moral Economy of the Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present, Vol. 50, (1971), pp. 76-136, reprinted in his Customs in Common, (Merlin Press), 1991, pp. 185-259, with ‘The Moral Economy Reviewed’, pp. 259-351. There is now a considerable body of literature on the historical application of the model of moral economy including Charlesworth, Andrew and Randall, Adrian, (eds.), The Moral Economy and Popular Protest: Crowds, Conflict and Authority, (Croom Helm), 2000.

[7] Bourne, J.M., Patronage and Society in Nineteenth-Century England, (Edward Arnold), 1986 remains an essential study.

[8] Harling, Philip, The waning of ‘Old Corruption’: the politics of economical reform in Britain, 1779-1846, (Oxford University Press), 1996.

[9] See, for example, Gibson, William T., ‘“A Great Excitement”: Gladstone and church patronage, 1860-1894’, Anglican and Episcopal History, Vol. 68, (1999), pp. 372-396, Disraeli’s church patronage, 1868-1880’, Anglican and Episcopal History, Vol. 62, (1992), pp. 197-210 and ‘The Tories and church patronage: 1812-1830’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 41, (1990), pp. 266-274.

[10] See, Morrison, John, ‘Victorian municipal patronage: the foundation and management of Glasgow Corporation Galleries 1854-1888’, Journal of the History of Collections, Vol. 8, (1996), pp. 93-102 and Wolff, Janet and Arscott, Caroline, ‘“Cultivated Capital”: patronage and art in nineteenth-century Manchester and Leeds’, in ibid, Marsden, Gordon, (ed.), Victorian values: personalities and perspectives in nineteenth-century society, pp. 29-41.

[11] This is evident in Clifton, G.C., Professionalism, patronage and public service in Victorian London: the staff of the Metropolitan Board of Works, 1856-1889, 1992 and Porter, Dale H. and Clifton, G. C., ‘Patronage, professional values and Victorian public works: engineering and contracting the Thames embankment’, Victorian Studies, Vol. 31, (1988), pp. 319-349.

[12] This was particularly evident in the Indian Civil Service: Compton, J.M., ‘Open Competition and the Indian Civil Service, 1854-1876’, English Historical Review, Vol. 83, (1968), pp. 265-284 and Moore, R.J., ‘The abolition of patronage in the Indian Civil Service and the closure of Haileybury College’, Historical Journal, Vol. 7, (1964), pp. 246-257.

[13] Cardwell, D.S.L., ‘The patronage of science in nineteenth-century Manchester’, in Turner, Gerard L’Estrange, (ed.), The patronage of science in the nineteenth century, (Noordhoff), 1976, pp. 95-113.

The rise in Catholic clerical power in Lower Canada: before the rebellions

A product of the unique geography and history of the land and its peoples, Canadian religion today exhibits its own characteristic features at the same time as it shows many of the typical patterns associated with the religious activities of contemporary post-industrial societies. While sharing much in common with the religious life of its nearest neighbour, Canada boasts significant national and regional deviation from the American norm. More generally, the drama of Canadian religiosity is enacted against a familiar backdrop of disenchantment and secularisation.[1]

Before 1760s, the vast diocese of Quebec at its greatest extent reached the Gulf of Mexico, Hudson’s Bay and the Rockies. From the city of Quebec went out, if not the missionaries themselves, at least the commission to the priests to organise and administer the territories that would eventually become subdivided into the parishes, then the dioceses, and again eventually be reunited into the ecclesiastical province. Before any division into dioceses occurred, or could even be considered, however, there was a long period of adjustment by the French Catholic colony under the new British administration.

The conquest of Canada in 1760 threatened a complete reversal of the religious history of New France.[2] The Anglican Bishop indicated that one Bishop for the colony was enough, and that that should be the Anglican bishop. The Catholic Church, at that moment inconveniently without a Bishop as Bishop Pontbriand had died in 1760, could not agree on his successor. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 promised Canada ‘the enjoyment of the benefit of the laws of Our realm of England’; and the royal instructions to General Murray, the first civil governor of the province, required him to admit of no ‘Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction of the See of Rome.’ He was also required to give all possible encouragement to the erection of Protestant schools and churches, ‘to the end that the Church of England may be established both in principles and practice and that the said inhabitants may by degrees be induced to embrace the Protestant religion.’ Canada was to become a newer New England and Anglicanism could be imposed on the 60,000 French Canadians under current English law. However, under the influence of Murray and of his successor Sir Guy Carleton, this policy was never implemented. The administrators sensed parallels with Ireland and after long negotiations arrived at a pragmatic solution.

In 1766, permission was given for the consecration of Briand as bishop of Quebec in France with the title of ‘Superintendent of the Romish Church’, but to the Catholics he was the Bishop. He was empowered sacramentally to carry out the fullness of the priesthood and this was what mattered to the Catholic people of Canada. In 1774 the Quebec Act gave the Roman Catholic Church in Canada the right of collecting tithes by process of law making it, if not an established church, at any rate an endowed one.[3] At the same time, little was done to introduce Protestant clergymen into the colony. Two or three French-speaking Anglican clergymen were settled in Quebec, Trois Riviéres and Montreal but it was not until 1793 that an Anglican bishop of Quebec was appointed or any serious attempt was made to provide for the religious needs of the growing number of Protestants in the colony.

The Roman Catholic Church remained faithful to the British crown. In 1775, the rebellious American colonies launched an attack on Quebec but most French Canadians, guided by Bishop Briand, supported the British. The war of 1812 was another occasion for French Canadians to show their loyalty to the British crown. Joseph-Octave Plessis galvanised his priests and the entire apparatus of the Church to support the British cause. Plessis cleverly used his new found influence with the British by expanding the administration of the Catholic Church throughout Canada and in 1818 was made a member of the Legislative Council with the title of ‘Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church of Quebec’.[4]

The major problem facing the Roman Catholic Church in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century was the lack of parish priests.[5] After the Treaty of Paris in 1763, most of the members of the male religious orders had gone from the colony. The few left were aging. During the period of transition there were few young men being attracted to the priesthood. In 1790, there were 146 priests in Canada, for about 145,000 Catholics. There had been a ban on the entry of priests from France after 1760. After 1793 that ban was lifted. The French Revolution had sent about 8,000 priests to Great Britain as refugees. At the invitation of the Bishop of Quebec and with the permission of the British government, fifty-one of those French priests came to Canada and forty of them stayed, mainly as professors in the classical colleges and in the major and minor seminaries, and in a few parishes. Even with that addition, there were in 1808 only 166 priests for 200,000 people. While it appears that the number of priests was diminishing, the number of people was growing, as immigration added its masses to the naturally increasing populace.

Serge Gagnon and Louise Lebel-Gagnon show that in general the physical presence of the Roman Catholic Church was in decline before the rebellions of 1837-1838. From 750 Catholics per priest in 1780, there were 1,834 Lower Canadian Catholics per priest by 1830.[6] In Montreal during the 1830s, one third of adult burials were conducted without a religious ceremony. Young and Dickinson have shown that only 36% of the parishioners at Montreal’s parish church during this decade took Easter communion, the most important religious service of the year. It was only after 1840 that the organisation of the Roman Catholic Church expanded rapidly.[7]

The Catholic Church gave Quebec a uniform religious character. It was extremely traditional and French Canada remained the stronghold of clericalism. The clergy tended to subordinate the State to the Church. The parish priest not only became the undisputed head of his parish, but he also played a vital part in every aspect of community life. No transactions took place in the parish without consulting the priest. He drew up wills, drafted deeds of gifts, and looked after documents placed in his care. The parish priest was also the key stone of the educational system where French was the language of instruction. Much emphasis was placed on preparing pupils for their first Communion. One later objective was to make rural life attractive to forestall emigration to the cities. The clergy came to see urban life as the erosion of faith. Secondary education prepared for study for the liberal professions in colleges where French language and literature were emphasised. As a result, the educational system strengthened the francophone concept of a distinct society within Canada. It shaped the morals, religious convictions and the cultural outlook of a large part of Quebec’s population. The essence of Quebec’s heritage is consequently the Catholic faith, large families, the parish, the French language, rural living and historical development distinct from the rest of Canada.

An effective presence since the 1763 Treaty of Paris ceded most of the Franco-American empire to Britain, the Anglican Church (officially known as the Church of England in Canada until 1955) has decidedly establishment origins. Officially recognised as a legally established church by the Constitutional Act of 1791, the Anglican Church was viewed as a vital conservative bulwark against revolution and republicanism in British North America. Despite legal, social and economic advantages, Anglicanism never evolved into the naturally acknowledged Church of Canada envisioned by British elites in the wake of American independence. The powerful Roman Catholic presence in Lower Canada and a rapidly expanding Methodist movement in the newly settled lands of Upper Canada made such monopolistic designs untenable. Although Anglicanism retained a certain social status and elite influence, it acknowledged the denominational character of Canadian religious life long before its legal disestablishment by the Clergy Reserves Act of 1854.

Legally instated under the Crown by the Quebec Act of 1774 and the Constitutional Act of 1791, the Roman Catholic Church enjoyed a moral monopoly in Francophone Quebec until very recently. In unofficial concordat with local forces of reaction and expressing hostility to capitalism, industry, cities, liberalism, republicanism and other aspects of the Protestant-modernist axis, this conservative ultramontane church exercised an almost theocratic control over most aspects of Quebec’s rural and urban life until the mid-twentieth century. French ultramontanist Roman Catholicism adopted a fiercely defensive attitude towards the influences of Britishness and Protestantism after 1840 and gave Quebec a strong sense of mission and destiny. The Catholic hierarchy led the fight to safeguard Quebec’s national consciousness. Protestantism was seen, not only as a threat to the religious character of Quebec but also to its national identity. It has been said that to be French and Catholic is normal, to be English and Protestant is permissible, but to be French and a Protestant is heresy. In the words of one nineteenth century nationalist

Every nation must fulfil its own destiny, as set by Providence. It must understand its mission fully and strive constantly towards the goal...Divine Providence entrusted to French Canadians is basically religious in nature: it is, namely to convert the unfortunate infidel population to Catholicism, and to expand the Kingdom of God by developing a predominantly Catholic nationality.

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[1] Handy, Robert T., A History of the Churches in the United States and Canada, (Oxford University Press), 1976, pp.116-135, 228-261, 344-376 provides a succinct discussion of Canada and its major religious developments.

[2] Lemieux, Lucien, Histoire du catholicisme québécois, Les XVIII^e et XIX^e siècle, Vol. 1, Les années difficiles, (1760-1839), (Boreal), 1989 provides a discussion of Catholicism to the rebellions.

[3] Ibid, Lemieux, Lucien, L’Etablissement De La Premiere Province Ecclesiastique au Canada 1783-1844 consider the organisation issues relating to the bishopric of Montreal.

[4] ‘Joseph-Octave Plessis’, DCB, Vol. 6, pp. 586-599.

[5] On the life of priests and parochial organisation, ibid, Lemieux, Lucien, Histoire du catholicisme québécois, Les XVIII^e et XIX^e siècle, Vol. 1, Les années difficiles, (1760-1839), pp. 101-184.

[6] Gagnon, Serge and Lebel-Gagnon, Louis, ‘Le milieu d’origine du clergé québécois 1775-1840: mythes et réalités’, Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, Vol. 37, (1983), p. 377

[7] Dickinson, John A. and Young, Brian, A Short History of Quebec, 2^nd ed., (Copp Clark Pitman), 1993, p. 176; the growing conflict between the Church and the Parti Canadien has been traced by Richard Chabot in his Le curé de campagne et la contestation locale au Québec de 1791 aux troubles de 1837-38, (Hurtubise HMH), 1975.

Russia and the rebellions

The second Patriote rebellion occurred in November 1838 with the attack in Lower Canada that was defeated at Odelltown and the assault on Prescott in Upper Canada. At the same time, rumours of the Russian government’s involvement began to circulate. The Morning Herald of New York published an article on 12 November suggesting that the Russians were favourably disposed to the revolutionaries who were trying to overthrow the British Empire.[1] It also suggested that Russia wanted to create discord along the Canadian-American frontier sufficient to provoke was between the United States and Britain so upsetting its diplomatic involvement in Eastern Europe.[2] The rumours circulated widely in North American newspapers and President Martin Van Buren told Henry Fox, British minister in Washington that he had heard that Russia wanted to finance the rebellions.[3]

On 24 November 1838, the declaration of a prisoner John Bratish Eliovith[4], known as the Baron Fratellin fed the suspicions of the British government.[5] He claimed that an agent of the Russian consul in New York promised to provide him with 5,000 rifles and a sum of $5,000 increasing to $25,000 should the rebellions prove to be a success. Fratellin added that Mrs Kirchen, the wife of the consul from Boston, was living in Montreal and openly plotting with the Frères Chasseurs.[6] On 26 November, following these allegations, the Montreal police force searched her residence and found that the consul was with her in Montreal.[7] He was immediately placed under arrest and all his papers were seized.[8]

Following this Fox asked the journalist and lawyer Stewart (Stuart) Derbishire to carry out a rigorous examination of the issue. He submitted his report to the British minister on 20 July 1839 that concluded that, on the basis of the available evidence that the Russians were engaged in a criminal conspiracy against the British Crown and was seeking to create disaffection with Britain in Lower Canada. Derbishire reached his conclusions of the basis of the events in Canada and the somewhat tense relations between the British and Russians. According to his report, Von Schoultz and Charles Hindenlang[9], two of the main European rebels involved in events in November 1838 were actually Russian officers who organised the rebel troops in Canada while Russian agents in New York provided the necessary funds. [10] Derbishire also thought that Papineau’s exile in France provided him with the opportunity to approach the Russian government and that the arrest of the Russian consul from Boston was irrefutable proof of the Russian plot.[11]

Stavrianos argued that Von Schoultz, who had fled to the United States after the Polish revolution of 1831 and Hindenlang who sought refuge in New York by 1838 were, in fact, simply revolutionaries not Russia agents and that they simply wanted to help the Canadian people to break free from British domination.[12] He also suggested that if Russia had really controlled certain rebel activities that agents of Canada and the United States would have informed their superiors of this. As there is no known correspondence at this level, it is impossible to confirm the charges against the Russian government. President Van Buren’s hint to Fox, something that had some credence given the tense diplomatic relations between Russia and Britain may have been an attempt to divert the British government’s attention but it was entirely unfounded. If successful, it could have given the Chasseurs far greater freedom of action. [13]

However, Bodisco, the Russian minister in Washington, did meet Papineau, O’Callaghan and Nelson on 10 December 1837. Bodisco reported the meeting in a letter addressed to count Nesselrode. Papineau sought political support but it was clear that Russia did not wish to intervene in the conflict despite the sympathy of the Russian consul for the Canadian cause. [14] Nesselrode’s response to Bodisco made it very clear that under no circumstances should he become embroiled in the rebellions.[15]

The idea of an alliance between the Russian government and the Canadian rebels is difficult to maintain. In fact the Patriotes openly supported the independence of Poland from Russia and often drew parallels between the Russian system of government and the British colonial system when denouncing the abuses of the latter. Despite the arrest of the Russian consul in Montreal, no incriminating evidence was found. His wife’s visit to Montreal was to collect her children who attended school there. [16] It is understandable why the rumours of Russian involvement were taken seriously in Canada and in London especially after the Kirchen affair and Van Buren’s unfounded insinuations but it is clear that the rumours had not foundation in fact.

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[1] Stavrianos, L. S., ‘The rumour of Russian intrigue in the rebellion of 1837’, CHR, Vol. 18, (1937), p. 367.  See also, the contemporary comments giving credence to the rumour in Preston, T. R., Three Years’ Residence in Canada from 1837 to 1839, 2 Vols., (Richard Bentley), 1840, Vol. 1, pp. 229-241, that ‘in the minds of many intelligent persons there, that Russian as well as American agency was at work in fomenting the aggravating occurrences which have marred the peace and happiness of that country for so long a period.’

[2] Ibid, Stavrianos, L. S., ‘The rumour of Russian intrigue in the rebellion of 1837’, p. 367.

[3] Ibid, Stavrianos, L. S., ‘The rumour of Russian intrigue in the rebellion of 1837’, p. 368.

[4] Messier, p. 195. Fratellin was an adventurer who passed for a gentleman and a baron of Hungarian origin; arrested in November 1838, he was imprisoned in Montreal from November 1838 to March 1839.

[5] Archives nationales du Québec: E17, Ministère de la Justice, Evénements de 1837-1838. His first deposition (2958) dated 24 November 1838, printed in Aubin, Georges and Martin-Verenka, Nicole, (eds.) Insurrection: Examens volontaires, Vol 2: 1838-1839, (Lux), 2007, pp. 177-179; a second deposition (2961) dated 13 December 1838, printed pp. 179-180.

[6] Ibid, Stavrianos, L. S., ‘The rumour of Russian intrigue in the rebellion of 1837’, p. 371.

[7] Ibid, Stavrianos, L. S., ‘The rumour of Russian intrigue in the rebellion of 1837’, p. 368.

[8] Ibid, Stavrianos, L. S., ‘The rumour of Russian intrigue in the rebellion of 1837’, p. 371.

[9] Hindenlang wrote two letters to Fratellin just before his execution on 15 February 1839.

[10] Ibid, Stavrianos, L. S., ‘The rumour of Russian intrigue in the rebellion of 1837’, pp. 368-369.

[11] Ibid, Stavrianos, L. S., ‘The rumour of Russian intrigue in the rebellion of 1837’, p. 369.

[12] Ibid, Stavrianos, L. S., ‘The rumour of Russian intrigue in the rebellion of 1837’, p. 369.

[13] Ibid, Stavrianos, L. S., ‘The rumour of Russian intrigue in the rebellion of 1837’, p. 370.

[14] Leduc, T. H., ‘That Rumour of Russian Intrigue in 1837’, CHR, Vol. 23, (1942), pp. 399.

[15] Ibid, Leduc, T. H., ‘That Rumour of Russian Intrigue in 1837’, p. 400.

[16] Ibid, Stavrianos, L. S., ‘The rumour of Russian intrigue in the rebellion of 1837’, p. 371.

The instructions and pastoral letters of Lartigue

Jean-Jacques Lartigue[1] became bishop of Montreal in 1836 having been its auxiliary suffragan bishop responsible to the archbishop of Quebec since 1821 and sent the flock in his diocese two injunctions and three pastoral letters[2] concerning the rebellions of 1837-1838. From 1829, however, relations between the Patriote party and the bishops deteriorated rapidly.[3] Taking issue with the aims pursued by the leaders of the assembly, particularly in the Schools Act of 1829 and the 1831 bill on fabriques, in which could be sensed the influence of eighteenth century French deistic liberalism and a strong democratic tendency, Lartigue led a counter-offensive; it would defeat the liberals’ attempts to limit the influence of the church on the people and to define French Canadian society in terms other than its religious affiliation. Worried by the rise of an increasingly aggressive and demanding French Canadian nationalism and by the clearly revolutionary tone of the radical political leaders, who scarcely inspired confidence in him and in the end he utterly opposed them. He noticed with alarm that the movement to emancipate the Canadians was going ahead without the church, indeed was proceeding against it, and that the small degree of freedom the Canadian church had managed to obtain was threatened by both the British government and the Canadian politicians themselves.

Lartigue’s first injunction was dated 24 October 1837 at the time of the Assembly of the Six Comtés at Saint-Charles and two days after a demonstration by 1,200 Patriotes in front of the Cathedral of Saint-Jacques. They were protesting against the sermon given by Lartigue on 25 July at the ceremony when Ignace Bourget was consecrated as Lartigue’s coadjutor with the right of succession.[4] Lartigue had used this occasion to remind the clergy and the congregation of the Catholic Church’s attitude to rebellion against lawful authorities. On 27 July, La Minerve responded telling the clergy to ‘de se renfermer dans les bornes de leurs attributions et de ne pas se mêler de politique’ while the previous day, Ami du peuple headed its article on Lartigue ‘La Religion contre M. Papineau’.

The first pastoral letter restated the traditional doctrine of the Church to ‘the obedience due to authority’ thus condemning the actions of the Patriote leadership. At the same time, along with the moderate wing of the Patriote party he cast serious doubt on the wisdom and validity of the radicals’ policy, which he considered as imprudent as it was harmful. In support of his position, Lartigue cited the classical texts of St Paul and St Peter, the witnesses of the Fathers of the Church and also used passages from two more recent texts by Pope Gregory XVI: encyclical Mirari vos of 15 August 1832 that condemned the propositions, deemed revolutionary, that La Mennais, who had shifted from ultramontanism to liberalism, had developed in his Paris paper L’Avenir and the Bull to the bishops of Poland of July 1832. He rejected the argument, which he judged as fallacious, in favour of popular sovereignty evoking the ‘horreurs d’une guerre civile, les ruisseaux de sang inondant vos rues et vos campagnes’ and adding that ‘presque sans exception, toute Révolution populaire est une oeuvre sanguinaire comme le prouve l’expérience. Finally he turned to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ‘l’auteur du Contrat social, le grand fauteur de la souveraineté du peuple qui dit quelque part qu’une Révolution serait achetée trop cher, si elle coûtait une seule goutte de sang.’ However, he refrained from threatening ecclesiastical sanctions against those in his diocese who did not respect his instructions.

This letter was not well-received by Patriotes who saw it as had been the case in July of priests meddling in politics and in the Montreal area, several congregations left their churches when the letter was being read.[5] La Minerve on 30 October was particularly critical.

Comme gardien de la morale chrétienne sans invitation aucune de la part du pouvoir exécutif, sans l’espoir de récompense qu’il repousse, monseigneur se dit forcé de dire quelles sont les maximes de la morale chrétienne. Il cite nombre des textes bien connus et souvent répétés pour dire: qu’il faut être soumis aux puissances: au prince; et qu’il n’est pas permis de se révolter.

The paper acknowledged the principle put forward by the Church

Vous avez raison et nous sommes d’accord, mais malheureusement vous oubliez qui a commencé la rébellion! Vous ne vous rappelez pas que c’est cette puissance exécutive à laquelle vous prêchez obéissance et soumission? Vous êtes assez au fait des événements du jour pour savoir que c’est la puissance exécutive qui s’est rebellée contre la loi... 

La Minerve accepted that the mandement protected a certain view of Chistian morality but deplored the submission of the Church to the will of a colonial executive that, it believed, was responsible for the popular Patriote agitation. For La Minerve, Lartigue’s mandement de Lartigue defended the aggressor at the expense of the abused and advocated ‘Soumission et obéissance passive à la puissance, au prince, au gouvernement.’

Equally critical was Etienne Chartier, the curé of Saint-Benoît who challenged the justification on which the pastoral letter was based. According to Gilles Chaussé

...tout en se dissociant des propos du curé de Saint-Benoît, une part importante du clergé entretenait néanmoins des doutes sérieux sur l’à-propos du geste de son évêque et sur la doctrine du mandement concernant l’obéissance inconditionnelle due au souverain et à ses représentants. [6]

The Ami du peuple, by contrast, took the side of the constitutionalists in its editorial on 30 October 1837

Depuis longtemps nous attendions quelques démarches de la part des autorités ecclésiastiques, nous étions surpris que dans ces temps de trouble et de désordre l’église ne vint point interposer sa puissance bienfaisante et faire des efforts pour arrêter les malheurs qui menacent le peuple; nous avons eu satisfaction de voir que si noire attente a été un peu longue elle n’a pas été vaine et que le chef de l’église de Montréal vient de se prononcer d’une manière qui n’est nullement équivoque...

It was more favourably disposed to Lartigue’s intervention arguing that he had taken a moral not a political stance

Si la politique se bornait ici à des discussions parlementaires ou à des discussions de gazettes, si chacun selon son opinion s’efforçait de faire triompher son parti, sans porter atteinte à l’ordre public et à la morale, nous sommes assurés que notre clergé ne songerait nullement à intervenir...

Recent actions by the Patriotes especially the boycott of colonial goods to reduce duties paid to the colonial administration extended the agitation that began in the Assembly and the Ami du peuple, maintained that Lartigue was justified in registering his opposition to the challenge to the established order.

Ce n’est pas en effet sous le rapport politique que le clergé et l’évêque de Montréal envisagent la question des affaires du jour, c’est sous le rapport moral et religieux, et certes ils en ont le droit.

If the first pastoral letter has been seen by a religious historian as a document both ‘doctrinal and paternal’, the tone of the second pastoral letter was far more assertive. [7] Dated 8 January 1838, a little less than a month after the Patriote defeat, the document demanded expiatory actions:

...pour faire à Dieu réparation publique de tous les sacrilèges, meurtres, pillages, trahisons et autres crimes commis dans ce district, pendant la crise insurrectionnelle que nous avons éprouvée.

He called for the celebration of a solemn mass followed by different prayers and sermons. He also exhorted the congregations to fast, give alms and prays ‘apaiser la colère de Dieu’ and that priests should ‘exciter leurs peuples à la pénitence’. He attacked the Patriotes as brigands and rebels and accused them of having ‘égaré une partie de la population de son diocèse à force de sophismes et de mensonges’, but also of having spread disorder, arson and civil and religious disobedience. He reproached them for having made themselves rich from plunder and for demoralising the young and above all he accused them of killing people in cold-blood people who ‘n’avaient d’autres torts à leurs yeux, que celui de ne pas partager leurs opinions politiques’. Lartigue evidently did not consider this the right occasion to remind his congregations of his previous pastoral letter and finished with a revealing phrase:

Mais vous n’oublierez plus à l’avenir que, lorsqu’il s’agit d’éclairer votre conscience sur des questions difficiles, délicates, et qui regardent le salut de vos âmes, c’est à vos Pasteurs qu’il faut vous adresser...

Of the three circular letters send to the clergy of the diocese of Montreal about the rebellions, that of 26 December 1837 concerned an address signed by all the Protestant clergy indicating their loyalty and that of their congregations to the British Crown. The other two dealt with the celebrations of masses for actions of grace (6 February 1838) and for public order (20 November 1838) because of the ‘derniers troubles civils qui malheureusement ont éclaté dans notre Diocèse’.

Events vindicated Lartigue. After suffering defeat at Saint-Charles-sur-Richelieu and then at Saint-Eustache, the Patriotes lost faith in their leaders, particularly when they were abandoned by several. Despite the unfavourable reactions at first provoked by his intervention, even within a section of the clergy, Lartigue soon appeared as a true leader, independent, lucid, anxious to merit his compatriots’ confidence and capable of proposing to them a more realistic programme than that of the Patriote leaders. Two developments convinced the French Canadians of the selflessness of Lartigue and their other religious leaders, who had rallied around him.  On 9 November 1837, at the request of the parish priests from the Richelieu valley, he endorsed a petition for the rights of Canadians that all the priests in Lower Canada signed. As well, he and his coadjutor brought support to the unfortunate victims who were filling the prisons, particularly after the abortive uprising on the night of 3-4 November 1838. Meanwhile, late in January 1838 Lartigue had interceded with Lord Gosford to get the government in London to agree not to alter the constitution of Lower Canada or impose union of the two Canadas, as the faction supporting union from 1822 ardently desired. When in the spring of 1839 word came of the recommendations in the report by Lord Durham that were designed to ‘anglicise’ and ‘decatholicise’ the French Canadians by a legislative union and a system of non-denominational schools, Lartigue encouraged his clergy to sign a new petition to the queen, the House of Lords and the Commons in order to oppose the plan. At this decisive moment in the history of French Canada, when the French Canadians found themselves abandoned, even misled by their political leaders, the religious leaders had stepped in and put themselves at the service of the nation. The Catholic Church thereupon regained the authority it had exercised over French Canadian society before the introduction of parliamentary institutions and became a political force with which the new Canadian leaders, more moderate and more reasonable, would have to reckon.

Lartigue, who had been ill for a number of years, died on 19 April 1840. The press, Le Canadian in particular, unanimously stressed the greatness of his episcopate. More than 10,000 people attended his funeral in the church of Notre-Dame on 22 April. As many more were present the next day in the cathedral of Saint-Jacques to hear Bishop Bourget pay him a final tribute. With the death of the first bishop of Montreal the Catholic and ultramontane reaction, of which he had been the chief architect, was irretrievably under way. Bourget, his successor, who had spent sixteen years as a secretary and three years as a bishop with Lartigue, would continue his work.

Appendix: Mandement of October 1837

This extract from Lartigue’s first mandement is published in Mandements des évêques de Montréal, Vol. 1, pp. 14-21.

Depuis longtemps, Nos Très-Chers Frères, Nous n’entendons parler que d’agitation, de révolte même, dans un Pays toujours renommé jusqu’à présent par sa loyauté, son esprit de paix, et son amour pour la Religion de ses Pères. On voit partout les frères s’élever contre leurs frères, les amis contre leurs amis, les citoyens contre leurs concitoyens; et la discorde, d’un bout à l’autre de ce Diocèse, semble avoir brisé les liens de la charité qui unissaient entre eux les membres d’un même corps, les enfants d’une même Eglise, du Catholicisme qui est une Religion d’unité. Dans des conjonctures aussi graves, notre seul parti ne peut être sans doute que de nous en tenir, je ne dis pas à l’opinion que Nous, et nos fidèles Coopérateurs dans le Saint Ministère, aurions droit cependant d’émettre comme citoyens aussi bien que les autres, mais à l’obligation stricte que Nous impose l’Apôtre des Nations lorsqu’il disait: Malheur à moi si je ne prêche pas l’Evangile...

Nous ne saurions d’ailleurs vous être suspect sous aucun rapport: comme chez vous, le sang Canadien coule dans nos veines: Nous avons souvent donné des preuves de l’amour que Nous avons pour notre chère et commune patrie... vous savez enfin que Nous n’avons jamais rien reçu du Gouvernement Civil, comme nous n’en attendons rien, que la justice due à tous les Sujets Britanniques; et nous rendons témoignage à la vérité, quand nous attestons solennellement que Nous vous parlons ici de notre propre mouvement, sans aucune impulsion étrangère, mais seulement par un motif de conscience. 203

Encore une fois, Nos Très-Chers Frères, Nous ne vous donnerons pas notre sentiment, comme Citoyen, sur cette question purement politique, "qui a droit ou tort entre les diverses branches du Pouvoir souverain; (ce sont de ces choses que Dieu a laissées aux disputes des hommes,) mundum tradidit disputationi eorum" mais la question morale, savoir "quels sont les devoirs d’un Catholique à l’égard de la Puissance civile, établie et constituée dans chaque Etat", cette question religieuse, dis-je, étant de notre ressort et de notre compétence, c’est à votre Evêque à vous donner sans doute toute instruction nécessaire sur cette matière, et à vous de l’écouter...

[Après avoir cité un texte de saint Paul qui demande la soumission à l’autorité civile duement constituée et l’encyclique de Grégoire XVI, du 15 août 1832, sur la même soumission] Ne vous laissez donc pas séduire, si quelqu’un voulait vous engager à la rébellion contre le Gouvernement établi, sous prétexte que vous faites partie du Peuple Souverain: la trop fameuse convention nationale de France, quoique forcée d’admettre la souveraineté du Peuple puisqu’elle lui devait son existence, eut bien soin de condamner elle-même les insurrections populaires, en insérant dans la Déclaration des droits en tête de la Constitution de 1795, que la souveraineté réside, non dans une partie, ni même dans la majorité du Peuple, mais dans l’universalité des Citoyens; ajoutant que nul individu, nulle réunion partielle des Citoyens ne peut s’attribuer la Souveraineté. Or qui oserait dire que, dans ce pays, la totalité des Citoyens veut la destruction de son Gouvernement...

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[1] Chaussé, Gilles, Jean-Jacques Lartigue: Premier eveque De Montreal, (Fides), 1980 and Lemieux, Lucien, L’Etablissement De La Premiere Province Ecclesiastique au Canada 1783-1844, (Fides), 1968 provide contextual material.

[2] Pastoral letters are written by ecclesiastical authorities responsible for a diocese in which parishioners are given instructions or orders concerning the conduct to be followed in certain circumstances. They are addressed to all without social distinction and tend to be read during the mass. Circular letters are less elaborate and are addressed to the priest of each parish and deal with special ceremonies to celebrate the occasion of certain important events such as the procedure to be followed in precise cases like the signing of a petition.

[3] Another matter brought Lartigue into conflict with the leaders in the House of Assembly, in particular his cousin Louis-Joseph Papineau. When in 1791 parliamentary institutions had been put into place in Lower Canada, the new spokesmen for the Canadian community soon aroused the distrust of the ecclesiastical authorities. The latter did not easily accept being supplanted by leaders who, if not hostile to the church, were at least not much inclined to accept their instructions. Nevertheless, although their official policy was one of non-intervention, the representatives of the church unquestionably supported the Canadians’ cause. For his part Lartigue, who was deeply affected by the injustices inflicted upon his compatriots, always displayed a keen interest in the struggles of the political leaders and the aims they pursued. His correspondence with his cousin Denis-Benjamin Viger, Papineau’s right-hand man, furnishes eloquent proof of this interest, particularly in 1822, when a bill to unite the two Canadas was presented to the British parliament, and in 1828, at the time of a mission to London by Viger, Austin Cuvillier and John Neilson. In 1827 he justified the non-interventionist policy of the clergy that he had consistently advocated: ‘It is important for [the Canadians] that at this juncture we not pique the government, which in reacting might unwittingly do religion much harm . . . ; moreover, without our creating a disturbance the government in England will know of our true feelings and will discern what we are thinking despite our silence if it sees the masses, upon whom we have a great influence, as it knows, complaining with virtually one voice against the administration.’

[4] Ibid, Chaussé, Gilles, Jean-Jacques Lartigue: Premier eveque De Montreal, p. 199.

[5] Ouellet, F., ‘Le mandement de Monseigneur Lartigue de 1837 et la réaction libérale’, Bulletin des Recherches historiques, Vol. 68, (1952), pp. 97-104

[6] Ibid, Chaussé, Gilles, Jean-Jacques Lartigue: Premier eveque De Montreal, p. 211.

[7] Ibid, Chaussé, Gilles, Jean-Jacques Lartigue: Premier eveque De Montreal, p. 200.

Police, public spaces and the surveillance state

The strength and cost of the policing developed continuously throughout the nineteenth century. The extension of the function of the police to encompass broad areas of human activity and the growing surveillance of the working-classes in particular led to the pervasive presence of the ‘bobby’ across society and a growing belief that Britain had become a regulatory and policeman state. The police became a central element of state power and, for some historians, ‘domestic missionaries’ charged with bringing order and discipline to the disorderly and robust nature of working-class attitudes and culture. Different sections of the community were united in their initial opposition to the establishment of the Metropolitan Police. Some Whigs and aristocratic Tories saw the centralised police as an attack on the liberties of Englishmen. Radicals commonly regarded the police as a ruling-class instrument that could be used to combat calls by disenfranchised middle- and working-class groups for wider participation in the political system. Parish vestries and magistrates objected to the reduction of their power and influence and some ratepayers opposed the cost of the new force. Yet as the nineteenth century progressed, the work of the police was viewed more favourably by many sections of society.

The poor expected little sympathy from the police and had always been the targets of the law.[1] Several statutory weapons put poor people centre-stage on law enforcement. The Vagrancy Act 1824, the Metropolitan Police Act 1839, police acts and bye-laws, the Habitual Criminals legislation of 1869-1871 combined to give police immense discretionary powers of arrest on suspicion of intent to commit a felony. The police had equal discretionary powers of defining obstruction, breach of the peace, and drunkenness. They could decide whether or not to arrest, whether to bring charges and what charges. Against these powers the poorer people had little defence. Early police orders told constables not to interfere with ‘respectable’ working people. Stop-and-search powers resulted in the arrest of vagrants, suspicious people and, with luck, some actual criminals. This resulted in vulnerable and accessible people being driven into courts. Magistrates convicted or committed them for trial on very little evidence often, little more than police testimony as to character.

In the nineteenth century, many more people had a direct experience of the disciplinary and coercive effects of policing and the law than is widely believed. When arrests or summonses in any one-year are considered as well as convictions, the results are even more startling. In 1861, 1 in 29 of men and 1 in 120 of women were either arrested or summonsed. By 1901, the figures respectively were 1 in 24 and 1 in 123. Summary prosecutions rose by 73% between 1861 and 1901. The immediate threat that the police offered to the social life of the poor had greatly increased in those decades when the policeman state was making its major bureaucratic advances.[2] The Edwardian working-classes were in this sense more closely regulated and supervised than their parents and grandparents. There was inevitable resentment. Robert Roberts wrote of Salford in the first quarter of the twentieth century in these terms

Nobody in our Northern slums every spoke in fond regard of the policeman as ‘social worker’ and ‘handyman of the streets’. The poor in general looked upon him with fear and dislike...The ‘public’ (meaning the middle and upper classes)....held their ‘bobby’ in patronising affection and esteem, that he repaid with due respectfulness; but these sentiments were never shared by the undermass, nor in fact by the working class generally. [3]

In the second quarter of the nineteenth century, anti-police riots had expressed this frame of mind forcefully. These confrontations declined after 1850 but the significance of this can be misconstrued. It indicated less the growing acquiescence of an incorporated working-class than the isolation, marginalisation and defeat of its poorest and most turbulent sectors. The decline of their collective opposition to police reflected growing effectiveness of crowd control by the police and the obligation imposed on an increasingly marginalised residuum to come to terms with the permanence of the social order, even when they benefited little from it.

Many working-class communities were becoming more settled and the regularly employed working-class assimilated to bourgeois standards of order and indeed conceptions of criminality. Those in stable employment were distanced from the street economy of social crime and consciousness of the value of property acquired from the wage and from savings assimilated the working-classes to attitudes to crime shared with the middle-classes. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the modern ‘moral panic’ about crime and violence becomes a feature of urban life, especially in London during the garrotting panic of 1862 and the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888. The earlier middle-class panic about the lower orders in general was displaced by a fear, shared across the social classes, of the marginal criminal stranger and the middle-class fear of the ‘underclass’.

By 1914, the police had established their authority and presence in the working-class communities not just to deal with crime but for wider task of surveillance and disciplining of working-class daily life. They were part of what Robert Storch called ‘the bureaucracy of official morality’ keeping an eye on the streets, pubs, music halls, etc.

The imposition of the police brought the arm of municipal and state authority directly to bear upon key institutions of daily life in working class neighbourhoods, touching off a running battle with local custom and popular culture which lasted at least until the end of the century...the monitoring and control of the streets, pubs, racecourses, wakes, and popular fetes was a daily function of the ‘new police’...[and must be viewed as]...a direct complement to the attempts of urban middle class elites...to mould a labouring class amenable to new disciplines of both work and leisure.[4]

The police were resented by the poorer sections of the working-classes precisely because of their moralisation strategy.

The streets provided the largest and most accessible forum for the communal life of the poor. It was in the streets that members of the community came together to talk and play, to work and shop, and to observe (and sometimes resist) the incursions of intruders such as school board visitors, rent collectors and police officers... for most of the nineteenth century the poor were intensely hostile to the police, and...this hostility resulted in large measure from resentment at what was regarded as unwarranted, extraneous interference in the life of the community.[5]

Working class life had become regularised and disciplined. The police were an agent of the Victorian middle-classes and their fear of working class exuberance as examples of the behaviour of the ‘dangerous classes’ who needed to be habituated to an ordered and disciplined working life. They were part of mechanisms of social control and by 1914 this task was largely completed, at least for the better-off sections of the working classes.

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[1] Storch, R.D., ‘The policeman as domestic missionary: urban discipline and popular culture in northern England, 1850-80’, Journal of Social History, Vol. 9, (1976), pp. 481-509 and ‘The plague of the blue locusts: police reform and popular resistance in northern England, 1840-57’, International Review of Social History, Vol. 20, (1975), pp. 61-91 and Swift, R., ‘Urban policing in early Victorian England, 1835-86: a reappraisal’, History, Vol. 73, (1988), pp. 211-237.

[2] See, for example, Bramham, Peter, ‘Policing and the police in an industrial town: Keighley 1856-1870’, Local Historian, Vol. 36, (2006), pp. 175-184, and Sheldon, Nicola, ‘Policing Truancy: Town versus Countryside: Oxfordshire 1871-1903’, History of Education Researcher, Vol. 77, (2006), pp. 15-24.

[3] Roberts, R., The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century, (Manchester University Press), 1971, p. 77.

[4] Ibid, Storch, R., ‘The Policeman as Domestic Missionary; Urban Discipline and Popular Culture in Northern England 1850-1880’, p. 481.

[5] Benson, J., The Working Class in Britain 1850-1939, (Longmans), 1989, p. 132

Being a policeman

By 1900, working as a police constable meant a steady job with low income but attractive benefits. Employment was independent of the business cycle and pay was not linked to individual performance. Such work was in demand and only one-in-five applicants were accepted. In the Metropolitan Police during the nineteenth century, only about 10% of the force was born in London. This reflected the preference of senior officers for country men because they were regarded as healthier, tougher and more willing to take orders and they did not have the conflicting loyalties exhibited by some Londoners who policed their own neighbourhood. Initial recruits to the Metropolitan Police were between the ages of 18 and 35 years but as policing became more attractive recruitment was limited to those between 20 and 27. Most were still labourers though the number of recruits from non-manual backgrounds increased, a process aided by the increasing status of the job and with the provision of pensions from 1890, its job security.[1]

The early constables were usually recruited from the agricultural labour force or from the army, were paid low wages and were often quick to leave the force. Men who left on their own will tended to be from more skilled occupations, with a background of better work before joining the force. In the early twentieth century, though, economic pressures encouraged more of these men to join the force. Veterans tended to be men from unskilled or semi-skilled backgrounds, for whom the police service was an avenue of upward mobility. Although men from poorer backgrounds remained longest in the police, those from better-off backgrounds who did remain were most likely to rise through the system into the higher ranks. Others were dismissed for drunkenness. A parliamentary select committee in 1834 heard that 80% of dismissals were for drunkenness.

Initial formal training was about three to five weeks by 1900 and about half that in 1850. Until the early-twentieth century, most training was military drill for purposes of crowd control, with only brief training dedicated to behaviour on the beat and this was largely remembering laws and instructions.What counted was the informal training learned on the beat and the habits picked up from established officers. Isolated by uniform, discipline and function from the working-class communities and upholding ‘order‘ in the face of chronic hostility and abuse from their targets, career policemen developed a distinct occupational culture with its own values and standards that strengthened bonds between fellow officers. The police generated their own, often discretionary, operational standards on the streets, passed on via ‘apprenticeship’ from officer to officer, that were often less respectable and at odds with those of the rulebooks and the letter of the law.[2]

Some degree of tension between the command structure and the ordinary station-men was endemic in British policing. It stemmed from grievances about working conditions. In 1848 a number of constables petitioned their superiors that their pay was not sufficient to support a family. In 1872, when over 3,000 constables and sergeants turned up for a meeting to discuss demands for a pay rise. Senior officers at Scotland Yard were so concerned that a pay rise was quickly granted but later 109 men involved in the action were sacked. There were abortive Metropolitan Police strikes in 1879 and 1890. In 1890, there was n attempt to form the Metropolitan Police Union, but granting of pensions removed a major source of complaint. Since the police were used against industrial unrest the fact that officers were appropriating the language of trade unionism was viewed as a potential threat to discipline and in conflict with the demands of the job. A further attempt to unionise occurred in September 1913 with the resurrection of the Metropolitan Police Union that the following year changed its name to the National Union of Police & Prison Officers. A police order was issued in December 1913 threatening the dismissal of officers associated with the union.

Bridgnorth Borough Police Force c. 1880

In addition, there was the remoteness of commissioners and chief constables, often trained in the military or colonial services, from the lower-rank notions of ‘good policing’ that focused on detection rather than deterrence, action rather than service, physical engagement rather than administration.[3] There were sporadic campaigns against their corruption and malpractice. These surfaced during the trials of 1877 and of Inspector White in 1880 and during the public disquiet that resulted in the issuing of Judges’ Rules on interrogation and arrest procedures in 1912. The 1906-1908 Royal Commission was initiated over the alleged wrongful arrest of Mme D’Angely, a lady of dubious reputation but a lady nonetheless. In this case, the police made the mistake of doing tactless things to articulate people. [4]

A high number of complaints were brought against the Metropolitan Police in their early years. Between 1831 and 1840, the average number of complaints against the police was 411 per annum. The number of complaints was at its highest, at 511, in 1840. Of these, 273 were made against individual officers; the remainder concerned the small strength of the force and the frequency of robberies. The 1906-1908 Royal Commission upon the Duties of the Metropolitan Police found that only nineteen of the complaints it invited were worth examining and only a few proven satisfactorily. The impoverished public that did not matter but might have known better about police malpractice did not speak out; when it did, hostile questioning discredited it. What is clear from the evidence of the Royal Commission is the long-standing system of wheeling and dealing between police and underworld that had its own unwritten rules and at which command officers had no choice but to connive. Blind eyes were turned, favours exacted and reciprocated, informers employed, bribes exchanged and some brutality was standard practice. Relations between police and law-breakers were necessarily close and it would be surprising then as now, if they were not also contaminating. Witnesses before the 1878 confidential detective committee drew a thin veil over the implications of detectives ‘using’ a certain class of people among the criminal class from whom to get information by small payments or other means. Officials recurrently compromised in their efforts to police the streets.

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[1] Martin, John and Gail Wilson, Gail, The Police, A Study in Manpower: Evolution of the Service in England and Wales, 1829-1965, (Heinemann), 1969 and Shpayer-Makov, H., The Making of a Policeman: A Social History of a Labour Force in Metropolitan London, 1829-1914, (Ashgate), 2002.

[2] Taylor, David, ‘The standard of living of career policemen in Victorian England: the evidence of a provincial borough force’, Criminal Justice History, Vol. 12, (1991), pp. 108-131 and Lowe, W.J., ‘The Lancashire Constabulary, 1845-1870: the social and occupational function of a Victorian police force’, Criminal Justice History, Vol. 4, (1983), pp. 41-62.

[3] Wall, David, The Chief Constables of England and Wales: a socio-legal history of a criminal justice elite, (Ashgate), 1998, pp. 13-86.

[4] Clapson, Mark and Emsley, Clive, ‘Street, Beat, and Respectability: The Culture and Self-Image of the Late Victorian and Edwardian Urban Policeman’, Criminal Justice History, Vol. 16, (2002), pp. 107-131.

Extending the police force nationally 1835-1880

Suspicions that the new Metropolitan Police was a covert military force persisted across the political and social spectrum and the question of rising policing costs irritated parish authorities. Widespread complaints of inferior services delivered for higher charges were eventually met in 1833 by central government agreeing to fund a quarter of policing costs. The continuing political sensitivity of the new police led to persistent parliamentary scrutiny. Of particular importance was a Select Committee in 1834, consisting of many of the 1828 Select Committee and Peel, that concluded after looking at statistical evidence that the Metropolitan Police was achieving its objectives and that its

...influence in repressing crime, and the security it has given to person and property [makes it] one of the most valuable modern institutions. [1]

Parliament now turned its attention to policing beyond the metropolis.[2] The Metropolitan Police formed the model for the rest of England and Wales but, despite their early successes, the expansion of police forces to rural areas was gradual. Just as within London, provincial policing raised sensitive issues of local social influence and political power and the structural problems were the same. As a result of extensive local autonomy, there was an enormous variety of structures and degrees of sophistication in rural and urban policing, united principally by their common use of part-time constables and watchmen. The limitations of these diverse systems was highlighted by the agitation against the new Poor Law and the emergence of Chartism and soon the issue was not should a national reformed police system be adopted but what type of system.

As the idea of the new police spread to the provinces, they were often given very wide functions, understandable in terms of very general notions of regulation and inspection.[3] The Acts of 1839 and 1842 that enabled extension of police role and functions in the counties, included collection of rates, road surveying, weights and measures inspection and dealing with vagrants under the Poor Law legislation as legitimate police functions. Carolyn Steedman commented that by

...the 1860s and early 1870s witnessed something like an inspection fever...[with suggestions that] policemen be appointed as inspectors of taxes, of unemployed children not covered by the Factory Acts, of midwives and truants under the educational reforms of the 1870s. Carried away by the vision of a thoroughly policed and inspected society, some, including county chief constables, suggested that the homes of the poor should be inspected by the police for cleanliness and against overcrowding.[4]

Extensive growth in urban manufacturing centres had rendered local government structures generally inadequate.The 1835 Municipal Corporations Act helped older boroughs to sort out their administrative structures and allowed new towns to become incorporated. Towns that were incorporated were obliged to set up a Watch Committee responsible for appointing sufficient paid constables to keep the peace and prevent crime but few of them seemed eager to implement the law. Although, this was mandatory under the legislation, there was a complete lack of any regulations for government policing under the Act, a reflection of an absence of sufficient political support for further erosion of corporate autonomy. As a result, by 1837, only 93 of 171 boroughs had organised a police force; three years later, 108 of 171 boroughs had organised a police force but by 1848, 22 boroughs still had no police force. Municipal forces were about half the size of London, proportionate to population and remained grossly inadequate until after 1856.

Warrington policeman c1860

Rural policing was generally regarded as ineffective and parish constables, uneducated, ignorant of their duties, lazy and corrupt. Rural disturbances in the early 1830s underscored the limitations of rural policing. The Swing Riots in rural southern England, combined with those in urban areas centring on the Reform Bill crisis at the beginning of the 1830s, led the Whig government to prepare a bill setting up a national police system but declining disorder and more pressing legislative priorities killed off this initiative.[5] However, these events, along with rising rates of local vagrancy, coupled with falling levels of social deference, encouraged local reform initiatives. Two approaches were available: private subscription forces, usually established by the local landed interests and action under the Lighting and Watching Act 1833 that gave parish councils powers to levy a special rate to employ sufficient watchmen of day and night. These aimed gently to encourage greater levels of rural policing without challenging local autonomy but the extent to which permissive powers were adopted depended on levels of local anxiety about crime and disorder and a willingness to fund reform.

Local reforms did not satisfy the concerns of central government and in May 1836 Lord John Russell announced that a Rural Police Bill was in preparation. Rather than attempt to get contentious legislation through Parliament, Russell agreed with Chadwick’s call for a Royal Commission ‘to enquire into the Best Means of Establishing an effective [rural police]’. The 1839 Report proposed establishing a force of 8,000 national police under the control of the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police Commissioners. However, the establishment of a professional force in localities would be elective not prescriptive with each county’s Quarter Sessions making the decision. To encourage adoption, the cost was to be shared with the county rate providing three-quarters and central funds the remaining quarter. There was widespread hostility to the Report and this allowed Russell to introduce responsive legislation that rapidly passed through Parliament. [6]

The 1839 Rural Constabulary Act did not meet the Report’s demands for a national police force, with the Metropolitan Police as the controlling power. It permitted JPs to appoint Chief Constables for the direction of the police in their areas and allowed for one policeman per 1,000 of the population. Response was poor. By 1853, only 22 counties out of 52 had police forces. Yorkshire was the poorest served. One division of the East Riding had only 9 policemen. By about 1855, there were only 12,000 policemen in England and Wales. The provinces were slow to implement the 1839 Act for several reasons. Edwin Chadwick, one of the members of the Commission, saw the new police as a means of regulating the unpopular new Poor Law. There was opposition to the idea of police, as a challenge to the liberties of localities. The expense was deemed to be too great; there was considerable local government inertia and a lack of co-operation between the boroughs and the counties. Finally, no provision was made until 1856 for government inspection, audit or regulation.

One important factor in the transformation of the provincial police force after 1835 was the growing importance of ‘surveillance’ leading to changes in the conception of public space.[7] For example, the Portsmouth Borough police was significantly improved in the period before 1856 through a series of locally initiated reforms to control public space for which there was substantial local middle-class support. This reflected the growing powers of the state at all levels and especially the growing regulatory and administrative powers that they could deploy to deny open public spaces to the working-classes. Numerous sites within and on the edges of towns were eliminated by the pressures of urban growth but attempts to control or exclude working people from using these sites led to frequent and often violent resistance. Whether this was a consequence of the perceived ‘civilising mission’ of the police or the emergence of an aggressive middle-class civic culture or a combination of the two, the traditional freedoms of working-class culture were first controlled and then gradually curtailed.

The Municipal Corporation Act 1835 and the Rural Constabulary Act 1839, in theory, spread the new police into the provincial boroughs and enabled counties or parts of counties to establish police forces. Ostensibly these forces remained under local watch committee control. However, even in the nineteenth century the parochial principle was being rapidly eroded in the interests of systematisation, collaboration and greater neutrality. In some boroughs such as Liverpool, chief constables achieved a significant degree of autonomy from their watch committees as early as the 1850s and elsewhere they gained their de facto independence during the 1870s as central government increasingly dictated their duties.[8] Following the recommendations of the 1853 Select Committee on Police, the County and Borough Police Act 1856 made police forces mandatory in counties and boroughs, subjected them to central inspection and sanctioned Exchequer grants to forces certified as ‘efficient’.[9] From the 1870s onwards, Home Office rules helped to regulate pay, discipline and criteria for employment. The Police Act 1890 allowed mutual-aid agreement between forces to facilitate the borrowing of constables in times of severe, usually industrial unrest. [10]

Scotland Yard came to play an important role in the centralising process. The Home Office‘s direct control of metropolitan policing from 1829 onwards was turned to powerful effect. Most new police policies and practices were first developed in London and in this way Scotland Yard set the pace for an increasing specialisation and centralisation of police functions that Peel could never have foreseen. All provincial police forces were gradually affected by it. This can be seen in three respects. A plainclothes spy system was viewed with deepest suspicion in Peel‘s day.[11]

The Home Office, however, established a small detective force in 1842 and it remained secret until the 1870s when it went public following a major corruption scandal within the detective branch.[12] Madame de Goncourt, a rich Parisian became the victim of Harry Benson and William Kurr, two confidence tricksters who persuaded her to part with £30,000. Scotland Yard was called in and Superintendent Adolphus Williamson sent Chief Inspector Nathaniel Druscovich to bring Benson back from Amsterdam where he had been arrested. Druscovich seemed to find the job surprisingly difficult. A sergeant and two others were sent to catch Kurr but he moved just as they expected to arrest him. Eventually he was arrested in Edinburgh, stood trial and was convicted. This led to questions about why the arrests had proved so difficult and Benson and Kurr began to explain. Inspector John Meiklejohn had been in Kurr’s pay since 1873 accepting large sums of money to tip him off when his crimes were about to lead to his arrest. Meiklejohn had offered Druscovich the opportunity to borrow money from Kurr to repay his brother’s debts and as a result, Druscovich was also implicated as was Chief Inspector Palmer, who appears to have been duped into going along with his colleagues. The three were sentenced to two years in prison, and the scandal nearly wrecked Williamson’s career. Although his integrity was unquestioned, his supervision of subordinates seemed wanting, and following the Committee of Inquiry, the Home Office took the opportunity to overhaul the existing system and to establish the CID under Charles Vincent in 1878.

Blackburn borough police c1900

The number of arrests by metropolitan detectives rose from 13,000 to 18,000 in five years and this success ensured the continuance of the CID. The legitimacy of secret detection was seldom again to be challenged. In 1869, the Home Office and Scotland Yard instituted a criminal records system. Initially it was primitive and unwieldy but improved with an increasing use of photography and, after 1901, fingerprinting. The regular circulation of simple information sheets to provincial forces brought satisfying results. In 1883, the Special Irish Branch was established in response to Fenian bomb outrages. In these ways the state was learning to keep closer tabs on its unrespectable citizens and political dissidents.[13]

Peel‘s police had been concerned largely with enforcing the common law. Their late Victorian successors were able to act under statute or delegated legislation as Parliament and the Home Office extended police control over a wide array of social groups, from habitual criminals to abused children, from pornographer to drunks.[14] The state assumed an increasing direction of the penal system, notably in the Prison Act 1877, and of the ancient judicial discretion in sentencing with the establishment of the Court of Criminal Appeal in 1907. The police themselves after 1850 very gradually became the main agents of prosecution while Whitehall’s assumption of a central position in the process was symbolised by the creation of the office of Director of Public Prosecutions in 1879. The criminal department of the Home Office was set up in 1870 and by 1906 was dealing with a third of all Home Office business.

In respect of central control of the criminal justice system, as in other spheres of government activity, the forty years after 1870 saw important innovations. This was evident in the increase in both the number of police and the costs. In 1861, there was one policeman to every 937 people in England and Wales, by 1891, one for every 731 and by 1951, one for every 661. Costs rose from £1.5 million in 1861 to over £3.5 million in 1891 and £7.0 million in 1914. As a result, by 1914, what policemen, magistrates and even judges could do even in remote areas of the country was effectively being dictated from Westminster and Whitehall. However, the parochial principle still remained more than merely cosmetic.

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[1] Report of Select Committee on Police of the Metropolis, Parliamentary Papers, Vol. 16, 1834, p. 21.

[2] Philips, David and Storch, Robert D., Policing Provincial England 1829-1856: The Politics of Reform, (Leicester University Press), 1999.

[3] One of ther most effective local studies of policy is Taylor, David, Policing the Victorian Town: The Development of the Police in Middlesborough, c.1840-1914, (Palgrave), 2002.

[4] Ibid, Steedman, C., Policing the Victorian Community: The Formation of English Provincial Police Forces 1856-1880, p. 54.

[5] Philips, D. and Storch, R.D., ‘Whigs and Coppers: the Grey Ministry’s National Police Scheme, 1832’, Historical Research, Vol. 67, (1994), pp. 75-90.

[6] Brundage, Anthony, ‘Ministers, magistrates and reformers: the genesis of the Rural Constabulary Act of 1839’, Parliamentary History, Vol. 5, (1986), pp. 55-64. See, Emsley, Clive, ‘The Bedfordshire police 1840-1856: a case study in the working of the Rural Constabulary Act’, Midland History, Vol. 7, (1982), pp. 73-92.

[7] Ogburn, Miles, ‘Ordering the city: surveillance, public space and the reform of urban policing in England 1835-56’, Political Geography, Vol. 12, (1993), pp. 505-521.

[8] Hart, Jennifer, ‘Reform of the borough Police, 1835-56’, English Historical Review, Vol. 70, (1955), pp. 411-427, Philips, David, ‘A “Weak” State? The English State, the Magistracy and the Reform of Policing in the 1830s’, English Historical Review, Vol. 119, (2004), pp. 873-891 and Philips, David and Storch, Robert D., Policing provincial England, 1829-1856: the politics of reform, (Leicester University Press), 1999.

[9] Hart, Jennifer, ‘The County and Borough Police Act, 1856’, Public Administration, Vol. 34, (1956), pp. 405-417.

[10] Morgan, Jane, Conflict and Order: The Police and Labour Disputes in England and Wales, 1900-1939, (Oxford University Press, 1987); Weinberger, Barbara, Keeping the Peace?: Policing Strikes in Britain, 1906-1926, (Berg), 1991.

[11] One of the main reasons for this was the role played by spies and agents provocateur during the radical disturbances of the 1810s. See, Pike, Alan R., ‘A brief history of the Criminal Investigation Department of the London Metropolitan Police’, Police Studies, Vol. 1, (1978), pp. 22-30. See also, Petrow, S., ‘The rise of the Detective in London 1869-1914’, Criminal Justice History, Vol. 14, (1993), pp. 91-108.

[12] Stewart R.F., The Great Detective Case of 1877: A study in Victorian Police Corruption, (George A. Vanderburgh), 2000.

[13] Porter, Bernard, The origins of the vigilant state: the London Metropolitan Police Special Branch before the First World War, (Weidenfeld and Nicolson), 1987. See also, Allason, R. The Branch: A History of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, 1883-1983, (David & Charles), 1983.

[14] See, for example, Croll, Andy, ‘Street disorder, surveillance and shame: Regulating behaviour in the public spaces of the late Victorian British town’, Social History, Vol. 24, (3), (1999), pp. 250-268, Stevenson. S.J., ‘The Habitual Criminal in 19^th century England: some observations on the figures’, Urban History Yearbook, 1986, pp. 44-53.

Forming the Metropolitan Police

Between 1812 and 1822 six House of Commons’ Select Committees affirmed broad, if qualified, satisfaction with the civic jigsaw of parish-based watch systems. However, resistance to the notion of a police force lessened in the 1810s and early 1820s largely because of growing moral panic among the ruling class about working-class insurrection. In addition, while rising crime and disorder were still attributed by the urban middle-classes to the moral decay of the masses, there was an increasing willingness to critique the old criminal justice system as inefficient both in controlling crime control and providing public order and regulation.

Peel certainly argued in Parliament when introducing his Metropolitan Police Bill in 1828 that it would be more efficient than the existing uneven systems. However, he was not focussing simply on the safety of the streets or the protection of property and the main task of the new police was not crime detection. Peel’s reforms directly addressed the more general fear of the ‘dangerous classes’ and he saw crime as part of a more fundamental issue of public order. What was needed was moral discipline within the working-classes and this was going to be achieved by ‘crime prevention’. The police targeted alehouses and the streets where legislation such as the 1824 Vagrancy Act enabled constables to arrest individuals not for crime committed but for ‘loitering with intent’, putting the burden of proof on the defendant rather than the police. The police were concerned not simply with those who committed crimes but with the poor as a whole who were seen as a ‘criminal class’.

In starting from this broader conception of policing as general social control of the poor rather than simply crime control or even control of public disturbances, Peel was echoing an older tradition that had always seen policing as a wider function than crime control. Seeing the police as an essentially military force to secure the country against rebellion, rather than simply control crime and as a means of gathering intelligence was well established in Continental Europe. So those who saw the introduction of the police in the context of European developments had a point since Peel’s view of the police owed something to the Continental tradition. Peel recognised that establishing the Metropolitan Police as a military force similar to his reforms in Ireland would not be acceptable in England. He counted on the fears by the ruling class about revolution and of the middle-classes on the immorality of the working-classes to enable legislation to be successfully passed that combined the policing tasks of crime prevention, maintaining public order, moral regulation and instilling disciplined work and moral habits.

In 1828, a new Select Committee was appointed and, largely because it was composed of individuals sympathetic to his ideas, Peel secured a report broadly sympathetic to his aims. The Committee confirmed Peel’s earlier assessment of the system as intrinsically defective by virtue of its fragmented, non-uniform, and uncoordinated nature, something which would always defeat the best initiatives and efforts of individual parish forces. The proposed solution was predicable: a system of centrally directed and regulated police for the metropolis. The establishment of Peel‘s Metropolitan Police in 1829 embodied a conception of policing at odds with the discretionary and parochial procedures of eighteenth century law enforcement. However, he argued that a uniform system for the entire metropolis would mean that provision was not as dependent on the wealth of a parish. Full-time, professional, hierarchically organised, they were intended to be the impersonal agents of central policy.[1] The 1829 Metropolitan Police Act applied only to London. The jurisdiction of the legislation was limited to the Metropolitan London area, excluding the City of London and provinces.[2] This was an astute political decision on Peel’s part since the City was fiercely independent and had resisted other attempts to unify London’s police provision. Even today, the City of London had its own independent force, the result of a compromise in 1839. All London’s police were the responsibility of one authority, under the direction of the Home Secretary, with headquarters at Scotland Yard. 1,000 men were recruited to supplement the existing 400 police. Being a policeman became a full-time occupation with weekly pay of 16/- and a uniform. Recruits were carefully selected and trained by the Commissioners. Funds came from a new police rate levied on parishes by overseers of the poor and a receiver was appointed to take charge of financial matters. John Wray was appointed to the post and served until 1860.

Parliament authorised the formation of the Metropolitan Police in July 1829 but the first constables did not take to the streets until September 1830. ‘Bobbies’ or ‘Peelers’ were not immediately popular. [3] Some parishes, especially the wealthier ones, objected to losing control over the ways they were policed. Most citizens viewed constables as an infringement on English social and political life and people often jeered the police. There were suspicions that Lieutenant-Colonel Rowan, a veteran of Wellington’s army, sought to establish a military force. However, both Peel and the Commissioners made deliberate attempts to ensure that the police did not take on the appearance of the military. Blue was deliberately chosen as the colour for uniforms to differentiate it from the red worn by the British army. Until 1864, top hats were worn by officers to emphasise their civilian character and beat officers were armed only with a truncheon. The preventive tactics of the early Metropolitan police were successful and crime and disorder declined. Their pitched battles with the Chartists in Birmingham and London in 1839 and 1848 proved the ability of the police to deal with major disorders and street riots. By 1851, attitudes to the police, at least in parts of London appears to have mellowed

The police are beginning to take that in the affections of the people that the soldiers and sailors used to occupy. In these happier days of peace, the blue coats, the defenders of order, are becoming the national favourites.[4]

The Metropolitan Police Act established the principles that shaped modern English policing. First, the primary means of policing was conspicuous patrolling by uniformed police officers. Secondly, command and control were to be maintained through a centralised, pseudo-military organisational structure. The first Commissioners were Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Charles Rowan (commissioner 1829-1850) and Richard Mayne (commissioner 1829-1868), a lawyer and they insisted that the prevention of crime was the first object of the police force.[5] During the 1830s, the Metropolitan Police absorbed several existing forces: the Bow Street Horse Patrol in 1836 and the Marine Police and the Bow Street Runners two years later. Thirdly, police were to be patient, impersonal, and professional. Finally, the authority of the English constable derived from three official sources: the Crown, the law and the consent and co-operation of the citizenry.

‘Peelers’ c1850

It has been suggested that as London’s crime-rate fell, that of nearby areas increased. The number of offences did seem to increase in areas of London where the police were not allowed to go. For example, Wandsworth became known as ‘black’ Wandsworth because of the number of criminals who lived there. As Chadwick pointed out in 1853

...criminals migrate from town to town, and from the towns where they harbour, and where there are distinct houses maintained for their accommodation, they issue forth and commit depredations upon the surrounding rural districts; the metropolis being the chief centre from which they migrate.[6]

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[1] Most critical studies of policing stop around 1870-1880: Miller, W.R., Cops and Bobbies: Police Authority in New York and London 1830-1870, (Ohio State University Press), 1977, ibid, Emsley, Clive, Policing and its Context 1750-1870, Taylor, David, The new police: crime, conflict, and control in 19^th-century England, (Manchester University Press), 1997 and Steedman, C., Policing the Victorian Community: The Formation of English Provincial Police Forces 1856-1880, (Routledge), 1984. Later themes can be teased out of ibid, Critchley, T.A., A History of Police in England and Wales 900-1966, Emsley, C., The English Police, (Longman), 2^nd ed., 1996, Emsley, Clive, The Great British Bobby: A history of British policing from the 18^th century to the present, (Quercus), 2009 and ibid, Ascoli, D., The Queen’s Peace: The Metropolitan Police 1829-1979.

[2] Mason, Gary, The official history of the Metropolitan Police: 175 years of policing London, (Carlton), 2004, Shpayer-Makov, Haia, The making of a policeman: a social history of a labour force in metropolitan London, 1829-1914, (Ashgate), 2001, Petrow, Stefan, Policing morals: the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office, 1870-1914, (Oxford University Press), 1994 and Smith, P.T., Policing Victorian London: political policing, public order, and the London Metropolitan Police, (Greenwood Press), 1985.

[3] Campion, David A., ‘“Policing the Peelers”: Parliament, the public and the Metropolitan Police, 1829-33’, in Cragoe, Matthew and Taylor, Antony, (eds.), London politics, 1760-1914, (Palgrave), 2005, pp. 38-56.

[4] ‘The Police and the People’, Punch, Vol. 21, (1851), p. 1`73.

[5] The term ‘commissioner’ was given legislative legitimacy in the Metropolitan Police Act 1839. Before that, Rowan and Mayne were only Justices of the Peace.

[6] Second Report from the Select Committee on the Police with the Minutes and Appendix, Parliamentary Papers, Vol. 36, 1853, Appendix 5, pp. 170-171.