The policing of petty crime in Victorian Cumbria

Abstract

This study presents an innovative analysis of the policing of petty offending and the work the police in Cumbria: it problematizes conceptions of policing and its history. This study uses the neglected minutiae of police and court records to deconstruct the role of the police, discretionary policing by men on the beat, public expectations of the police, and the growth of police bureaucracy, which then calls into question the idea of a ‘golden age’ of policing. These are the issues that dominate the contemporary discourses on policing, though this study makes clear that assumptions are made today that are not supported by the history. The themes of this study are as relevant today as they were 150 years ago, for this work is interdisciplinary, situated in the social sciences, particularly criminology and history.

This study examines the police’s role at a time of social, economic and bureaucratic change. It links the development of police expertise and professionalism with the process of state formation. The historiography and nature of Victorian policing are tested by this study of Cumbria, a remote and unique region which was culturally, economically and agriculturally quite atypical of Victorian England.