The Security Society: History, Patriarchy, Protection 1137433825, 9781137433824

Citation preview

CRIME PREVENTION AND SECURITY MANAGEMENT

The Security Society History, Patriarchy, Protection

Francis Dodsworth

Crime Prevention and Security Management

Series Editor Martin Gill Perpetuity Research Tunbridge Wells, Kent, UK

It is widely recognized that we live in an increasingly unsafe society, but the study of security and crime prevention has lagged behind in its importance on the political agenda and has not matched the level of public concern. This exciting new series aims to address these issues looking at topics such as crime control, policing, security, theft, workplace violence and crime, fear of crime, civil disorder, white collar crime and anti-social behaviour. International in perspective, providing critically and theoretically-­informed work, and edited by a leading scholar in the field, this series will advance new understandings of crime prevention and security management. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14928

Francis Dodsworth

The Security Society History, Patriarchy, Protection

Francis Dodsworth Faculty of Business & Social Sciences Kingston University London Kingston upon Thames, UK

Crime Prevention and Security Management ISBN 978-1-137-43382-4    ISBN 978-1-137-43383-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43383-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2019 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: The Author This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Limited The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom

Eglei

Series Editor’s Introduction

This book provides a fascinating insight into the history of security and the politics of protection. It takes us on a journey to better understand what the author calls the development of the ‘security society’. A striking observation running through the text is the discussion of how and why many modern concerns and debates are often repeats of similar ones that occurred in the past. The author starts by discussing the relationship between forms of crime control and the influence of ‘security’ discourses and practices. There is a particular focus on the influence of the civilising process (drawing on the work of Norbert Elias) highlighting how British society is secured from threats by the evolution of a range of experts and technologies (including private ones). Francis Dodsworth’s skilful work takes the reader through the cultural changes and what influenced them and the ways in which there has been a reframing of what it means to be vulnerable and the different responses that ensued. The links between disorder, politics, and monarchical allegiance are explored alongside the influence of religion, class, patriarchy, and feminism amongst others. In one of the many interesting points of historical analysis, Dodsworth explores how the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the expulsion of the Catholic James II in favour of his daughter and son-in-law

vii

viii 

Series Editor’s Introduction

(William III and Mary II), challenged conventional approaches to maintaining order (not least because it severed the principle of primogeniture). Alongside this were changes in the way protection was provided. Moving forward a century or so, the roles of Henry and John Feilding are explored, generating what for many may be a different understanding of their respective roles not only on state policing but the evolution of private security too. Roll on to the next century where the author traces the development of security expertise. We are guided through the emergence of a market in security technologies; these include locks (there was actually a celebrity lock picker Alfred C. Hobbs at The Great Exhibition in 1851) and electric alarms, alongside private security firms and private detection agencies (especially surveillance operations relating to divorces after the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857). Strikingly, private protection which was once the preserve of those who were privileged changed over time to become affordable by many less affluent. Dodsworth p ­ ostulates a view, albeit one of many on this issue, that this can be seen to represent the democratisation of security. Private security is not often seen in those terms. This book will be an essential read for historians of public protection generally as well a private security specifically. February 2019

Martin Gill

Preface

In the late 1970s, shortly after he had completed Surveiller et Punir (1975), published in English as Discipline and Punish (1977), Michel Foucault began to wonder whether he was not witnessing a significant change in what he called ‘the general economy of power in society’. Rather than living in the ‘disciplinary society’ he had identified in Discipline and Punish, in which individuals pass through a range of disciplinary institutions, designed to shape and guide their conduct according to a set of ideals, he wondered whether the changes he saw taking place in the criminal justice systems of the time meant that we were now living in a ‘society of security’ in which government was directed not so much at shaping the ideal behaviour of its targets, but which sought principally to work pragmatically with the realities of life as it was lived, and to manage and mitigate risks and threats to those patterns of life. These ideas were delivered at the start of his lecture series at the Collège de France in 1978 that went on to become his lectures on ‘governmentality’, a subject that was to have a profound influence on criminologists in the 1990s. The first decade of the present century saw the idea that we live in a ‘society of security’ attract considerable criminological attention. Most of this attention, however, was directed at the transformations of the recent past, particularly the period since the late 1970s, when the emergence of the ‘new right’ in Britain and the USA under Margaret Thatcher and ix

x Preface

Ronald Reagan, and the rise of ‘neo-liberalism’ (another component of Foucault’s lecture series), seemed to have precipitated a great transformation in approaches to government. This book takes seriously the idea that we live in a ‘security society’, that is, a society in which we are governed, and govern ourselves in relation to security; a society in which ‘security’ justifies the exercise of power over others; that defines the organisation and operation of our institutions; and even how we shape ourselves and our personal lives through practices like self-defence, or the routes we take home at night. It argues that our society has become ‘securitised’ in the sense that ‘security’ pervades almost every aspect of our lives, even, for many of us, our personal and occupational identities: our society is regulated by security organisations, peopled by security professionals and experts whose role in life is defined as conducting surveillance, managing risk, and protecting those identified as vulnerable from threats to their well-being and safety. However, this book does not locate the ‘securitisation’ of our society in the recent past; rather, it identifies the securitisation of society as the outcome of a long-term process of transformation in the provision of protection, a form of power that has a particular historical association with patriarchal masculinity. The security society, it is argued, is the outcome of a series of problematisations of governing masculinities, a development closely linked to the processes of civilisation analysed by Norbert Elias and to the genealogy of liberalism explored by Michel Foucault. Under the pressure of both social change and cultural critique, patriarchal claims to the power to protect were challenged and transformed, so that protection, and the subordination with which it was associated, was translated from something carried out by the heads of households over their dependents to something carried out by security specialists, experts in protection who established new forms of significance for themselves and others by creating new organisations, new roles, and new identities oriented around security. Over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these roles were expanded to new social groups beyond the propertied elite, so that security became, in Carole Pateman’s words, more a fraternal than a directly patriarchal form of power. By the twentieth century, even that fraternal power was under threat from a women’s movement that promised liberation from subordination and which configured patriarchy

 Preface 

xi

and fratriarchy as sources of oppression rather than protection. Not only, then, have protection and the provision of security been forms of power fundamentally concerned with practices of subordination, but they have also been vehicles for the empowerment of particular individuals and organisations, enabling them to assert themselves in the public domain. In making this argument, the book has a number of overlapping aims. First, and most straightforwardly, it seeks to make comprehensible to a criminological audience the large range of recent historical research related to the subject of security, the implications of which have yet to fully filter through into the criminological mainstream. Recent research in criminal justice history has radically transformed our understanding of the histories of crime and policing, the representation and prevention of crime, and the cultural history of violence. At the same time, there are fields of historical research that are of relevance to the idea of security which many criminologists could not be expected to be aware of. In drawing on this wide literature, I have inevitably had to treat some complex subjects in broad brush strokes and to minimise engagement with detailed historical debates about the interpretation of specific elements. However, at the very least, hopefully this book will provide a signpost for those who wish to explore particular aspects in further depth. The second aim of this book is to offer a new historical interpretation of the processes of securitisation, a central aspect of which is a distinctive account of the development of the institutions of public protection, what are now the police. In doing so the book engages with issues addressed in the developing literature on the ‘new police science’, particularly the work of Mark Neocleous and Markus Dubber. Both have provided considerable inspiration for this book, although its interpretation departs from theirs in some key ways. Neocleous’ history of security places the emphasis on class struggle and capitalism as the motors of historical change; my account places less emphasis on these elements, but for those interested in those aspects, I would advise reading Neocleous’ The Fabrication of Social Order (2000), Critique of Security (2008), and War Power, Police Power (2014), the last of which has an emphasis on the affinity between the police power and militarism that finds some echo here. Dubber’s emphasis on the patriarchal nature of the police power has also, and

xii Preface

very obviously, been very influential here. However, his account in The Police Power (2005) moves rather seamlessly from the Roman and medieval systems of patriarchy to patriarchal police in late eighteenthand early nineteenth-century America, without exploring the significant reconfigurations to patriarchy that took place in the early modern period. This book is in some senses an attempt to fill in that gap and to add dynamism to the idea of patriarchal police. However, it is also important to stress that there is more to security than police, and there is now a developing body of research on this aspect of history, most notably the work of David Churchill. There is also a range of historical work by people like Peter King, Robert Shoemaker and Tim Hitchcock, and Joanne Klein, which challenges top-down accounts of historical change and emphasises the roles played by middling people and the poor in the transformation of government in the long term. This book draws on this literature, but there is much more to this approach than I have been able to do justice to here. Likewise, I would encourage further exploration of the relationship between security, police, and technology, particularly through Chris Williams’ Police Control Systems (2014), the focus of which overlaps with this volume. The final aim of this book is to engage with the traditions of work provoked by the two great genealogists of the late twentieth century, Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault. There is now an enormous body of scholarship on governmentality, and a developing body of work on the civilising process, and this book seeks to both link and critique these bodies of literature through the concept of security and its link to the genealogy of patriarchy. This term had come to seem rather unfashionable in some quarters, so it was reassuring to see a special forum on early modern patriarchy appearing in the July 2018 edition of Gender and History, just as this book was nearing completion. Finally, I should add that the focus of this book is on the genealogy of security in modern Britain; indeed, the principal focus is not only on Britain, nor even on England, but on London, with occasional forays elsewhere. There is an element of necessity here, in terms of the direction of existing historical research, my knowledge of it, and what is possible to achieve in a book which already tries to compress more than 400 years of history into a few hundred pages. However, there is a virtue in this

 Preface 

xiii

necessity as well, because an important part of the story that is told here is a story about urbanisation and the impact of life lived in close proximity to large numbers of strangers. Although it is rather counterintuitive to a world more familiar with Macek’s Urban Nightmare, where the city is configured as the source of vice, crime, and disorder, in fact, the work of both Elias and Foucault, and much empirical historical research, would suggest that for most of modern history, the city was an engine of civilisation and pacification and a primary site for the contests over power, agency, and identity that Jef Huysmans and colleagues call the ‘politics of protection’. Kingston upon Thames, UK

Francis Dodsworth

Acknowledgements

Writing this book has been a journey back in time in more ways than one. Not only have I been on an intellectual voyage back to the sixteenth century, but in doing so, I have also been on a personal voyage back to south Manchester at the turn of the twenty-first century. I completed the writing of this manuscript almost exactly 20 years from the date I completed my MA and began work on my PhD, at what was then the ‘Victoria’ University of Manchester, on the genealogy of ‘police’ in London and Manchester. My understanding of the subject has evolved considerably since that time, as has the intellectual conversation to which it was a contribution. Nevertheless, given that some of the writing of this text has involved revisiting not only the themes, but also some of the notes from that thesis, I think it’s only fair to start my acknowledgements by recognising both those people who contributed to my thought processes when writing the PhD all those years ago and those who helped me with more practical matters, most notably by keeping me ‘in the game’, providing me with sufficient work as a graduate teaching assistant to keep the wolf from the door, at least during term time, and reducing my dependence on Rusholme Jobcentre Plus. As far as the latter is concerned, I owe a great debt to Peter Gatrell, Max Jones, Stuart Jones, and Bertrand Taithe, both for providing me with teaching and teaching me how to teach. In terms of the former, my ideas about the past were developed, challenged, and clarified through discussions with Kate Blair-Dixon, xv

xvi Acknowledgements

Harry Cocks, Tom Crook, Philippa Grand, Leif Jerram, Matthew McCormack, Chris Otter, Gavin Rand, Nathan Roberts, Rebeca Sanmartín Bastida, Mindy Silverboard (Gofton), Maiken Umbach, James Vernon, and Dan Vyleta. I’d also like to mention less subject-specific but no less important inspiration and support from Rick Gofton, Sharni Holdom, Catherine McGlynn, Rosie Paice, Tina Sessa, Gina Ward, and James Wise. Thanks also to Bertrand Taithe and Tom Osborne for a searching viva, which made passing really feel like an achievement, although I was too tired to really celebrate it. I should also thank the institutions that made the research possible: the National Archives, Manchester Central Library, and the Greater Manchester Police Museum, particularly Duncan Brodie. My greatest debt from this time, however, is of course to Patrick Joyce, whose work remains an inspiration to me now. That all of this was possible at all is thanks to the ESRC, who funded my doctoral research through Research Studentship R00429834383. The idea for this book came to me at some point in 2010, during my stint as a research fellow in the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-­ Cultural Change (CRESC), based at the Open University. This was a partnership with the University of Manchester, which meant that I was fortunate enough to be able to continue to work with Pat Joyce, as well as learn enormously from Tony Bennett, Sophie Watson, and Liz McFall, with whom I worked closely for a number of years. Thanks also to all those CRESC colleagues from the OU and Manchester, who taught me not only about sociology, history, and cultural studies, but also what it meant to be an academic: Michelle Bastian, Simon Carter, Niall Cunningham, Marie Gillespie, Penny Harvey, Andrew Hill, Hannah Knox, John Law, Andrew Miles, Niamh Moore, Evelyn Ruppert, Mike Savage, Farida Vis, Antonia Walford, Alban Webb, Karel Williams, and Kath Woodward. Thanks also to Josine Opmeer and Karen Ho for all the support. I’d also like to single out John Pickstone, whose unique presence is much missed. Huge thanks also to OU social science colleagues beyond CRESC, who shaped or facilitated my work in various ways: Elena Vacchelli, Jef Huysmans, Masaaki Morishita, Karim Murji, Peter Redman, Elizabeth Silva, Dave Studdert, Louise Westmarland, and David Wright. I also owe an enormous debt to discussion with the OU history department, with its fantastic roster of expertise on crime and policing,

 Acknowledgements 

xvii

­ articularly Dave Churchill, Ros Crone, Clive Emsley, Peter King, Paul p Lawrence, Chris Williams, and John Carter Wood. Honourable mention here too for Drew Gray, not only for all the trips from Northampton to Milton Keynes, but also for warming the Newmarket Road end at the Abbey. All of this work during my time in CRESC at the OU was supported by the ESRC under Research Centre awards RES-577-28-5001 and RES-577-­28-0001 and also facilitated by the award of an ESRC Seminar Series on Government and Freedom, RES-26-451-0390, on which I had the privilege of working alongside Tony Bennett, Patrick Joyce, and Nikolas Rose. The book was finally completed in the Department of Criminology and Sociology at Kingston, and huge thanks are due to all my colleagues there, past and present, not only for the camaraderie, but also for supporting the sabbatical which allowed me to complete the manuscript. I won’t embarrass anyone by singling them out, but I will embarrass you collectively by saying that I could not have wished for better colleagues, so thank you. I’d also like to say thanks to Colin Gordon and the rest of the Foucault, Political Life and History group, which has enabled me to extend my intellectual engagement with Pat Joyce into a 20th year. I’d also like to express my thanks to the team at Palgrave Macmillan/Springer for their patience. This book has taken so long to write that not only have I been through teams of editors and editorial assistants, but even the publisher itself has changed. Great thanks are therefore due to Josephine Taylor and Liam Inscoe-Jones, Stephanie Carey, Adam Cox, Jules Willan and Philippa Grand, and, of course, to Martin Gill. A journey that takes 20 years to complete incurs a lot of personal as well as intellectual debts. I can’t possibly acknowledge all of these, but in addition to the many friends and colleagues mentioned above, I’d particularly like to single out Richard Baker, Garth and Nadia Brameld, Mark Giles, Martin Kirkup, David Maitland, James Tildesley, Tim Wakefield, John and Jurate Wall, and Duncan Wisbey; some of you have put up with me for almost 30 years, since I arrived a bit late and looking a bit lost at Impington Village College, others for a mere 24 years since Lampeter. I’m not sure this book is much in the way of repayment, but it’s the best I can do for now. Hopefully it will also in some measure repay the support given to me by my family: Kay and Martin Dodsworth,

xviii Acknowledgements

Olwen and Philip Dodsworth, and David and Elizabeth Millington not only made it possible for me to survive university and postgraduate study, but much more importantly they taught me the value of history in the first place. It seems somehow fitting that this book was birthed at the end of the best summer since 1976. Finally, my greatest debt is, of course, to Eglė Rindzevičiūtė: without her patience, support, and encouragement, and her critical eye, I would never have completed this book, which is dedicated to her.

Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 Masterless Men: Patriarchy Challenged, c. 1570–1670  39 3 Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740  69 4 Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800129 5 Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900189 6 Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000247 7 Conclusion: Genealogies of Security299 Index331

xix

About the Author

Francis  Dodsworth is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Kingston University London. Before joining Kingston in 2014, he spent ten years as a research fellow in the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC), based at the Open University. His background is in history, historical sociology, and criminology, particularly the history of crime, policing, and social control, but he has also written about the history of architecture and the built environment, and religious cultures past and present. A unifying theme in this work is the relationship between government and self-government and particularly their intersection with questions of gender and identity.

xxi

1 Introduction

Security: A Sign of the Times? Were Baudelaire, Benjamin, or Simmel to stroll through the streets of a contemporary British city on a Friday or Saturday night, they could hardly fail to be struck by the extent to which contemporary urban life is ‘securitised’ through the ‘assemblage’ of a range of personnel, practices, and technologies concerned with preventing crime, ensuring public safety, and reducing harm and risk, in short, with ‘making the future secure and certain’ (Schuilenburg 2015: 1). The police remain perhaps the most obvious security presence in contemporary urban life, appearing in significant numbers at any location popular with large numbers of late-night revellers; increasingly that presence is magnified in the UK through high-visibility ‘Battenburg’ markings on police vehicles and uniforms, alongside the ubiquitous flashing lights. The very visibility of these officers is central both to their (apparently rather limited) ability to deter troublemakers, and their capacity to reassure the public that their safety is ensured. However, were our urban traveller to pay closer attention to the milieu, they would see that the police are only one of many security forces, their numbers now being supplemented by a much larger array of © The Author(s) 2019 F. Dodsworth, The Security Society, Crime Prevention and Security Management, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43383-1_1

1

2 

F. Dodsworth

private security personnel, from bouncers guarding the entrances to pubs and nightclubs through to security guards protecting and patrolling commercial premises and shopping centres, tasked with maintaining decorum and ejecting the undesirable or the disorderly (Button 2002; Minton 2012; Wakefield 2012). These professional security forces are also augmented by ‘bottom up’ volunteer bodies: street pastors, who attempt to look after the safety and well-being of those who have revelled too much, dealing with the lost and drunk at the end of a night out, or ‘street watch’ patrols who seek more generally to ensure the safety of their own localities (Middleton and Yarwood 2015; Swann et al. 2015; Williams 2005). Alongside the human agents involved in the securitisation of the city, the very urban fabric itself is mobilised as an agent in the discipline and exclusion of people configured as sources of threat or unease: benches, ledges, and concourses are specially designed with protrusions, obstacles, and uncongenial surfaces to deter tramps, skateboarders, graffiti artists, and other ‘undesirables’ from using or abusing them; this forms just part of the wider shaping of the material environment through the principles of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) and Design Against Crime (Atlas 2008; Crowe 2013; Ekblom 2005, 2010). These securitised urban spaces are watched over by an ever-present array of CCTV cameras, monitoring the comings and goings of all concerned; these, of course, represent only the most visible element of a ‘surveillant assemblage’ that is in principle able to monitor almost all aspects of electronic life, from patterns of telephone calls and internet usage through to the data mining of credit and debit card transactions or social media posts (Aas et  al. 2009; Ball et  al. 2012; Haggerty and Ericson 2000; Lyon 2007). Should our flâneur tire of constant observation, human or electronic, or be made wary by the warning signs that inform tourists of the presence of bag snatchers and mobile phone thieves, they might seek the relative sanctuary of the suburbs. However, undertaking the journey by public transport, whether by bus, train, tram, or underground, they would still be monitored all the way by CCTV, bombarded with security and safety information, and induced to report ‘suspicious packages’ or ‘suspicious behaviour’ to the relevant authorities. Even attempting to escape the public sphere by driving or cycling would not release the traveller entirely

 Introduction 

3

from the grasp of security: the journey would almost certainly be monitored by the extraordinary number of traffic surveillance cameras which routinely observe and record the actions of millions of road users every year (Travis 2010). Indeed, in order to begin the journey, our flâneur might first have to disarm the car alarm, release the steering lock, or unchain the bicycle in order to set themselves moving. Reaching the suburban streets might bring either reassurance or disappointment, for there is no release there from the grip of security: the presence of gated communities, the persistent blinking of car alarms and burglar alarms, signs drawing attention to neighbourhood watch associations, and the flash of security lighting on passing the entrance to properties—all are more or less familiar features of the contemporary urban environment. On arriving at their destination, our fictitious flâneur might yet have to grapple with locks, security codes, and perhaps disarm a burglar alarm to gain entry to their own home. Indeed, the entire neighbourhood, and even the very dwelling itself, may well have been ‘securitised’ in its construction through the principles of CPTED. In fact security does not stop at the front door, it extends deep into personal life, with an extensive array of security products for the home and the individual, ranging from personal CCTV systems through to rape alarms and self-defence training. Outside the UK, of course, the securitisation of personal life often extends to weapons, from the relatively crude and low-­impact, such as pepper spray, to the lethal, such as firearms (on which see Carlson 2012, 2014; Squires 2014). Security, then, has entered the home, the head, and the handbag, as surely as it has shaped our urban habitat. Indeed, so pervasive has ‘security’ become that Mark Neocleous (2008: 3) suggests that our society has become ‘saturated’ by security so that ‘the paradigm of (in)security has come to shape our imaginations and social being’. To paraphrase Robert van Krieken (2012: 8), security has become central to the organisation and operation of many of our social institutions, to the ways in which we interact with and govern other people, and even to the ways in which we govern and relate to ourselves: our behaviour, our lifestyles, and even our very sense of identity and selfhood are all related to the subject of security, for which reason scholars have begun to refer to our society as a ‘society of security’ or a ‘security society’ (Foucault 2009: 10–11; Gordon 1991: 20; Zedner 2000, 2009).

4 

F. Dodsworth

There are now a number of excellent criminological analyses of the contemporary ‘security’ field, from both a criminological perspective (Crawford and Hutchinson 2016; Loader and Walker 2007; Wood and Shearing 2007; Zedner 2009) and from the field of ‘critical security studies’ more generally (Collins 2016; Peoples and Vaughn-Williams 2014). The purpose of this book is not to add to or directly critique these fields (for which see Neocleous 2008; Neocleous and Rigakos 2011); rather, the purpose of this book is to reflect on how we arrived at the condition of living in a ‘security society’. The subject of security came to both public and academic attention towards the end of the twentieth century as a range of new security interventions, policies, technologies, and anxieties coincided with the proliferation of discourses and practices associated with personal security and crime prevention (Garland 2000, 2001; Gilling 1997; Zedner 2009). In the UK these discourses developed at the intersection of a series of closely related contexts: rapidly rising rates of recorded crime and victimisation between the 1960s and the 1990s and the creation of the phenomenon of public ‘fear of crime’ through the victimisation survey (Lee 2007; Lee and Farrall 2008; Farrall et al. 1997; Stanko 2000); a highly politicised debate about ‘mugging’, law and order, and moral decline driven by the ‘new right’, with its self-conscious invocation of Victorian liberalism and moral values (Downes and Morgan 1997; Garland 2001; Hall et al. 1978; Pearson 1983); and the importation into Britain of the political language and the cultural imagination of the ‘urban nightmare’ from US popular and political culture, manifest in anxieties about both violent crime and the urban riots that gripped the USA between 1964 and the early 1970s and which appeared to be repeated in Britain in the early 1980s (Hall et al. 1978; Kettle and Hodges 1982; Jefferson 2012; Macek 2006). The combination of ‘law and order’ politics, the neo-liberal critique of the state, and discourses of ‘responsibilisation’ provided an opportunity for organisational, technical, and commercial innovation in the fields of policing and crime prevention (Garland 1996, 2001; Gilling 1997). It is easy to see, then, why many criminologists and other social scientists have associated ‘securitisation’ (Buzan et  al. 1998; Schuilenburg 2015) with the rise of the ‘new right’ and its ‘neo-liberal’ programme of government, seeing it as either a cultural response to, or consequence of,

 Introduction 

5

the anxieties and real insecurities attendant on a political drive to roll back the state and ‘responsibilise’ individuals and local communities and a pronounced loss of confidence in the capacity of the state to have an impact on soaring crime rates (Ericson 2007; Garland 1996, 2001; Taylor 1999; Wacquant 2008, 2009; Young 1999, 2007). In much criminological work, the recent proliferation of discourses on, and practices of, security is taken as a sign of a radical transformation in our ‘governmentality’, that is, ‘way or system of thinking about the nature and practice of government (who can govern; what governing is; what or who is governed), capable of making some form of that activity thinkable and practicable both to its practitioners and to those upon whom it was practiced’ (Gordon 1991: 3). To put it in other terms, security has become the telos of our government, the ‘effect in the real’ of our ‘particular regimes of governmental and ethical practices and the prescriptions of programmes of conduct that invest and devolve from them’ (Dean 1996: 224–225). Scholars of policing in particular have seen the emergence of ‘security’ discourses, the proliferation of commercial security provision, practices of responsibilisation, the drive towards pluralism and partnerships in policing delivery, and the centrality of risk management, as harbingers of a new era in crime control, and some have resorted to the word ‘security’ as a term to refer to practices of policing that extend beyond ‘the’ police (Bayley and Shearing 1996; Ericson and Haggerty 1997; Garland 2001; Johnston and Shearing 2003; Wood and Shearing 2007). However, if the context in which ‘security’ became prominent in the later twentieth century had very particular contours, concerns with security per se are rather less novel, at the level of both discourse and practice. The word ‘security’ itself comes from the Latin securitas, to be free from care or anxiety, and has been central to European political thought since the seventeenth century, since when it has been variously defined as an individual good and the goal of states, as the foundation of freedom and the purpose of political community; and it is understood as ‘something in whose interests individuals are prepared to give up other goods’ (Rothschild 1995: 60–61). Those ‘other goods’ might range from money to mobility via liberty and privacy; they might be given up to states, organisations, or individuals, in return for the provision of that security.

6 

F. Dodsworth

Historical research demonstrates that the concepts of the prevention of harm and apparatus for reducing and managing risk are not particularly novel but have their origin at least as far back as the eighteenth century (Crook and Esbester 2016; Dodsworth 2016; Freedgood 2000). Likewise, whatever the particular distinctiveness of the current situation of the ‘precariat’ under ‘neo-liberalism’ (Standing 2011; Wacquant 2008, 2009), conditions of social insecurity or urban marginality are nothing new per se; indeed, the condensation and projection of social anxieties onto the urban poor is one of the great continuities of modern British history (Pearson 1983). The vagrant, the vagabond, the indigent, the pauper, the dangerous classes, the residuum, the degenerate, and the underclass have all been constructed as threats or problems to be addressed through an array of governmental interventions for centuries, not decades (Bailey 1981; Beier 1985, 2005; Griffiths 2008; Himmelfarb 1984; Jankiewicz 2012; Philips 2003; Slack 1999; Shore 2015; Stedman Jones 1971). Likewise there has been a market in security and policing since at least the eighteenth century (Beattie 2012; Churchill 2015; Landau 2002; McMullen 1996; Paley 1989; Wales 2000); the prevention of crime was central to the development of the police idea and policing practice and operated with both a concern for moral regulation and for the reduction of danger (Dodsworth 2007b, 2008; Zedner 2006); burglary insurance is more than a century old (Cockerell and Green 1976: 47–56; Moss 2011); organisational forms for managing the risk of crime are even older, in the form of prosecution associations (King 1989; Philips 1989; Schubert 1981); the buying and selling of self-defence has a very long history, and even Asian martial arts were already popular and culturally significant in the first decades of the twentieth century (Dodsworth 2015; Godfrey 2010, 2012; Wolf 2005); sensational, unrepresentative crime reporting has been a central part of journalism for as long as there have been newspapers (Deveraux 2007; King 1987, 2007, 2009; Shoemaker 2008, 2010; Snell 2007); moral panics were a feature of the seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century culture (Lemmings and Walker 2009; Rowbotham and Stevenson 2003, 2005); and there is a long history of attempts to shape social order through the built environment (Crowe 2013), whether that is through the civilising effect or forbidding aspect

 Introduction 

7

of disciplinary institutions themselves (Brodie et al. 2002; Evans 1982; Markus 1993), broader moves to shape a ‘polite’ urban environment (Dodsworth 2012b; Joyce 2003; Ogborn 1998), or slum clearance and penetration of the closed spaces of the ‘dangerous classes’ (Stedman Jones 1971). Even the idea that we have seen a radical shift from state monopolisation of crime control to a more ‘pluralist’ contemporary structure depends upon a series of assumptions about the structure of crime control in the past which may not stand up to detailed scrutiny (Churchill 2014, 2017). Clearly, then, the phenomenon of in/security is not a recent one.

Genealogies of Security Colin Gordon (1991: 20), building on the work of Michel Foucault (2009: 10–11), dates the emergence of a ‘society of security’ to the eighteenth century and relates it directly to Foucault’s (1991, 2009) genealogy of liberal government. From this perspective, the emergence of ‘security’ as a key governmental problematic is related to the separation of the practices of government from the processes being governed. Unlike early modern governmentalities, in which the practice of government was considered immanent to, and constitutive of, the body politic (Dean and Hindess 1998: 3–6), by the eighteenth century, under the influence of the physiocrats, people were coming to understand the processes of economic and demographic change as dynamics with their own ‘rules’ and ‘natural laws’, and saw the task of government as allowing these processes to operate as far as possible without interference. These processes were, then, to be ‘secured’, that is, they were to be protected from interference by outside influences and allowed to run according to their own logic, to the extent that leaving them free to run did not disrupt the process itself (Burchell 1991; Gordon 1991). In Foucault’s (2009) own terms, rather than seeking to shape the ideal social body through law or disciplinary techniques, security practices focus on working with reality and managing that reality according to the norms discernible within it. This approach has already had considerable influence on criminological work on ­security

8 

F. Dodsworth

and related terms (see such pioneering works as Garland (2001) or Johnston and Shearing (2003)), but the historical dimensions of this approach have been rather neglected in this criminological work. The work that has most clearly developed this literature from a historical perspective is that of Mark Neocleous (2000, 2006, 2008, 2011a, b), who develops Foucault’s approach and links it to a second genealogy: Norbert Elias’ (1996, 2000) account of the ‘civilising process’, with its analysis of the processes of pacification through the monopolisation of state power and a cultural dynamic of differentiation and imitation according to specific cultural values associated with ‘civility’ and refinement. The central claim in Elias’ (2000) account of the ‘civilising process’ is that European societies have undergone a long-term transformation in attitudes to the expression of affect and emotion, particularly, though not exclusively, in relation to aggression, violence, and disorder. In general, affect in these areas has become increasingly restrained and aggression increasingly repressed. Thresholds of repugnance towards violence have lowered, and shame and embarrassment are created when the boundaries of socially acceptable behaviour in this area are transgressed. This generates anxiety, both in response to shame and embarrassment and as a consequence of one’s own repression of aggression, which precludes a direct physical response to displays of superiority or aggression by others. Accordingly, not only are violence and aggression psychologically repressed, but they are also socially repressed and removed ‘behind the scenes’ of everyday life. These attitudes are produced through socialisation into dominant behavioural norms that Elias terms the ‘habitus’, that is, the set of emotional and behavioural dispositions broadly shared by a social group, in which not only is there an expectation that anger and aggression should be constrained, but in which there is increasing social advantage to be had by doing so. The idea of social competition is fundamental to this vision of social change: Elias sees competition for power and status as the fundamental driver of changes in the relationship between states, individuals, and social groups (Dunning and Hughes 2013; Fletcher 1997; Krieken 1998; Loyal and Quilley 2004). Elias locates the origins of this process in specific changes in the behaviour of the ‘secular upper classes’ at the end of the middle ages, as the warring societies of the feudal period developed into court societies. Where previously, in the context of warring kingdoms and an unstable

 Introduction 

9

political world, aggression and a capacity for the exercise of violence were essential for a knight to prosper, in the context of more stable courts, social advantage was conferred more by an ability to comport oneself appropriately. In other words, where social distinction was once conferred principally by the performance of martial prowess, it was increasingly conferred by manners and one’s ability to perform the role of the courtier. There is an obvious link here to the work of Greenblatt (1980), who draws attention to the particular importance that ‘self-fashioning’ came to play in Renaissance culture, and to Burke (1969) and Goffman’s (1959) work on the presentation of self as role performance (see also Stryker (2007) and Stryker and Burke (2000) on identity as the internalisation of roles). This practice of social differentiation took place both within courts, marking out the fine distinctions between places in the elaborate hierarchies emerging there and between the ‘court society’ conceived as a group and the ‘vulgar’ society beyond, whose lack of manners marked them out as ‘uncivilised’ and therefore subject to government by the civilised. However, if the cultivation of manners functioned as a means of distinguishing the great and good from the vulgar, there remained a need, and an advantage, for merchants, traders, and servants to interact with, and profit from, members of the court society. It was therefore useful for those people themselves to cultivate ‘good manners’ and ‘civility’ in order to appear acceptable in the environs of the court; those environs were increasingly urban, as the court, the aristocracy, and the gentry more generally centred their life increasingly in the city, which was developing into the centre of profitable economic activity (Shoemaker 2004: 10–12). The developing bourgeoisie therefore sought to emulate the manners, dress, and deportment of the elite, and the early modern period saw the publication of a range of books of manners targeted at those who sought to shape themselves in this way. Through this mechanism of emulation, the elite manners pioneered by members of the court spread downwards through the social body to the bourgeoisie, particularly the new urban bourgeoisie, who internalised those values and behaviours, and ultimately to the population at large, who imitated those manners in contexts where they needed to engage with the developing middling sort. However, this process of emulation also had consequences and drove particular social dynamics.

10 

F. Dodsworth

First, where previously the social order had been based on harsh systems of social control oriented around violent enforcement of social hierarchies, increasingly there was a drive towards self-constraint and a distaste for, and critique of, the violence used to establish those hierarchies. So just as there was a drive to pacify social life and eliminate violence from social interaction, there was also a drive to pacify the means of pacification themselves (Deveraux and Griffiths 2004; Spierenburg 1984, 2012). This coincided with a significant drive to reform male manners and public morals, initially oriented around the concept of ‘politeness’, later translated into the concept of ‘sensibility’, both of which, for their promoters, carried greater egalitarian and moral overtones than the earlier concept of courtesy (Barker-Benfield 1992; Carter 2001; Hunt 1999). Second, there was a dynamic of increasing restraint, which gives the process a sense of overall direction, because as the middling sort attempted to emulate court manners to engage in courtly life, the display of such manners increasingly failed to mark social distinction so effectively; accordingly, elite society responded by further cultivating their own manners as marks of greater distinction from the ‘newly mannered’, and the middle classes likewise sought to ape those new manners, both to gain or retain access to elite society and to further distinguish themselves from the increasingly well-mannered populace. Likewise, the imitation of elite manners was not absolute, there was also a process of self-definition amongst the emerging middling sort that acted in both directions, as a form of distinction from the ‘dissoluteness’ of both the aristocracy and the poor. It must be noted that Elias saw this not only as a transformation in patterns of behaviour, but also in the personality structure of individuals, so that people became increasingly self-controlled, habituated to exercising greater foresight, and more ashamed of outbursts of aggression and anger. Part of this transformation in manners involved the ability to defer immediate gratification and profit for greater future benefit, something made possible by the more stable and predictable nature of both immediate social encounters and social organisation more broadly. This is, then, a more future-orientated mode of being. The civilising process thus has a direction, but Elias is clear that this is neither teleological nor intentional: this is not a governmental programme, or the result of some intentional pattern of social change, it is

 Introduction 

11

the unintended outcome of human tendencies towards social integration and differentiation and a reaction to changing social processes that made such actions make sense. These processes are identified as social stabilisation and pacification through the monopolisation of power at the courts of a relatively small number of comparably powerful states and the increasing interdependence of people in the complex, densely populated urban societies which were made possible by such stability. In such societies, where one’s well-being depended upon interaction with large numbers of relative strangers, the deployment of a calm, unthreatening, and reliable persona was vital to commercial and social advancement (Dunning and Hughes 2013; Fletcher 1997; van Krieken 1998; Loyal and Quilley 2004). Central to Elias’ account of the ‘civilising process’, although expressed in rather different terms, is a sense of security produced through the pacification of social relations, which provides reasonable expectations of a safe and stable future and, perhaps more controversially, produces a society with particular characteristics of emotional restraint around violence which is inherently more ‘secure’ in its foundations (something we might tentatively link to Ainsworth and Bowlby’s attachment theory, on which see Holmes (2014)). Perhaps less controversially, and more importantly from our perspective here, it is through the ‘civilising process’, it is argued, that a conceptual and social gulf is established between ‘civil’ and ‘uncivil’ societies, through which the ‘uncivil’ are configured as a threat and the ‘civilised’, and sometimes the entire condition of civility is configured as vulnerable to that threat, justifying and driving the pacification of social space for the civilised through the exclusion and control of the ‘uncivilised’ (Elias 1996: 173–178; Neocleous 2011a). In Neocleous’ work this dynamic is also interwoven with an explicitly Marxist explanation of the processes of pacification and securitisation, which are dated back to the early modern period, specifically the Edicts of Pacification (1563, 1573) and Nantes (1598), which were intended to bring an end to the French Wars of Religion. Neocleous (2011a) notes the coincidence in time of the drive for pacification and the development of the capitalist state, with pacification in a domestic context being central to the capacity for states to prosecute and legitimise their developing imperial conquests. The drive for internal pacification is closely associated

12 

F. Dodsworth

with the emergence of a class of ‘masterless men’, wage labourers who stood outside the established mechanisms of protection (see also Bauman 1987: 38–50). For Neocleous (2000, 2006, 2008, 2011a), the history of security is the history of state power exercised over the class of poverty by various systems of ‘police’ with the aim of fabricating and controlling a body of wage labourers. This book builds on the insights provided in this work, but it takes it in a rather different direction. Like Neocleous (2011a), I draw on the inspiration of Elias (1996, 2000) to chart a long-term process of ‘securitisation’, developing from the early modern period, proceeding through practices of social differentiation and integration, and focusing on the pacification of social relations, beginning with the problem of ‘masterless men’ in the sixteenth century. However, in drawing on the inspiration of Elias, these ideas are not used uncritically. While using the concept of the ‘civilising process’ and long-term processes of securitisation to explain the emergence of the ‘security society’, the book can also be taken as a critical engagement with Elias’ approach. This is necessary because Elias’ work in this area, first published in 1939, has been subject to significant critique and revision (Bauman 1987; Collins 2008; Gillingham 2002; Krieken 1990, 1998: 114–128; Malešević 2013; Malešević and Ryan 2012; Muchembled 2012; Pepperell 2016; Redner 2015; Turner 2004). This book responds to these critiques in two ways. Firstly, it makes some methodological changes to the study of the civilising process, drawing on the inspiration of Jorge Arditi (1998) to merge the work of Elias with that of Michel Foucault in order to emphasise the ways in which processes of social differentiation and integration give shape to patterns of change over time. Arditi (1998) introduces the concept of ‘infrastructures of social relations’ to emphasise that changing manners of the kind highlighted by Elias are related to wider changes in patterns of association and differentiation between people, patterns which reflect changes in the centre of power in society. For Arditi the key shifts are from the church, to the monarchy, and later the aristocracy and beyond; as will become evident below, I will argue that the changing dynamics of religious affiliation and gender are just as central to these processes. These changing forms of relating to others, marking superiority and inferiority, and shifting positions in, and structures of, the social hierarchy, are driven by patterns of

 Introduction 

13

group formation that Arditi (1998) terms ‘collective self-fashioning’, involving processes of differentiation from other ‘out’ groups but also constructions of similarity amongst the ‘in’ group. Such processes of differentiation and integration, and more importantly their institutionalisation, will be seen to be central to the formation of particular security agencies. These processes of association and differentiation appear to have much in common with the ‘social identity approach’ in social psychology, which explores the ways in which practices of making distinctions between ‘them’ and ‘us’, practices of (self-)categorisation, change the ways in which people see themselves, with a strong bias towards maximising the distinctiveness of one’s own social group with reference to ‘prototypical’ group qualities and often responding negatively towards out-groups through processes of stereotyping that reinforce the sense of distinctiveness of the in-group and maximise the meaningfulness of that identity for the group members (Hornsey 2008). Making this connection also allows us to rework Elias’ reliance on neo-Freudian psychology, with its presumption of the ‘naturalness’ of violence and its restraint by civilisation, which is not only problematic in itself (Collins 2008; Malešević and Ryan 2012; Redner 2015), but which also tends towards an ‘ordinal’ account of increasing overall self-control in ‘civilised’ societies, which repeats Eurocentric stereotypes about the ‘simplicity’ of other cultures and causes fundamental problems for the theory, not only regarding the possibility of measuring such overall increases and ascribing an overall direction to a variety of changes which may involve increased control in one area but decreased control in another, but also because it encourages Elias to underestimate the contradictory or ambivalent outcomes of the processes of civilisation, which may produce greater violence as far as interstate competition and colonial exploitation are concerned, precisely through the ability to control and channel violence in a ‘domestic’ context (Burkitt 1996; Pepperell 2016; see also Collins 2008; Malešević and Ryan 2012). For the argument of this book to make sense, however, there is no need to argue for an ordinal increase in overall levels of self-control in Western societies over the modern period or the development of a stronger ‘super-­ ego’; there is no attempt here to present a general theory of pacification

14 

F. Dodsworth

and securitisation in all contexts or to chart a general transformation in the human psyche. The aim of this book is simply to explore the relationship between the internal pacification of the British state over the modern period and the ‘saturation’ of English and ultimately British culture by ‘security’ discourses and practices, producing an expectation that social life should be, and will be, free from violence and predation and that this freedom will be secured through the intervention of a range of experts in protection. It is quite sufficient for our purposes to treat the civilising process as a cultural transformation in attitudes and practices related to the specific fields of violence and aggression, which have produced a general cultural repugnance to, fear of, and distancing from their occurrence in public places, in part because of the shame associated with displays of aggression, and the anxiety consequent on demands of (self-)constraint in response to the aggression of others, but also because of the construction of a sense of vulnerability through particular sets of representations of ‘uncivil’ society and through specific interventions in the ‘milieu’ in which violent interactions are produced. These representations and interventions have often been, as we shall see, produced by those very same experts in protection, who we might term ‘institutional entrepreneurs’ (Hardy and Maguire 2017; Maguire et al. 2004; Sine and David 2010), who gave shape and energy to the process of securitisation and embedded practices and roles of protection in public life. Noting the contribution of the security entrepreneur directs our attention to a further development of Elias’ ideas. Building on a range of recent scholarship, this book develops a more systematic engagement with the idea of the ‘civilising offensive’ (Fletcher 1997; Krieken 1990; Neocleous 2011a, b, 2014) or, as I prefer, ‘civilising projects’ (Bauman 1987: 92–93; Krieken 1990), which recognises the extent to which practices of civilisation and securitisation emerge not only through the kind of spontaneous and unintentional practices of differentiation examined by Elias, and which he sees as the outcome of long-term process of social change, but also through more direct and deliberate programmes, or projects, which drive pacification. It is the argument of this book that the configuration and promotion of expertise in protection and the promise to provide security was just such a project, one enacted a number of times by different institutional entrepreneurs and which drove the processes of

 Introduction 

15

securitisation and ‘civilisation’. Here there are clear links between Elias’ genealogy of ‘civility’, the ‘disciplinary revolution’ (Foucault 1977; Gorski 2003; Oestreich 1982), Alan Hunt’s (1999) concept of moral regulation, and Michel Foucault’s genealogy of freedom and ‘biopower’ (Burchell et al. 1991; Barry et al. 1996; Rose 1999).

Patriarchy and the Poetics of Protection Understanding the ways in which deliberate practices of pacification and securitisation have operated demands a closer focus on the place of culture and its relation to social practice (Bonnell and Hunt 1999). Particular attention is paid to the ways in which attitudes to disorder, violence, and aggression were actively shaped through discourse, emphasising the genuinely ‘figural’ dimension of what is commonly termed ‘figurational sociology’ (Dunning and Hughes 2013; Fletcher 1997; Krieken 1998; Loyal and Quilley 2004). This book argues that the formation of meaning is one of the core processes driving change: rather than seeing changing cultural attitudes to violence and aggression simply as the outcome of social processes (Mennell 2007: 332n.4), changing discourses about, and representations of, disorder, violence, protection, and expertise are seen as potential motors of change comparable to any other aspect of human life. This has been the subject of considerable reflection in cultural history (Biernacki 1999, 2000; Hunt 1989; Joyce 1991, 1994; Sewell 1999). It has also, of course, been addressed in literary theory, particularly in the study of ‘poetics’, which focuses not so much on interpreting the meanings of texts, but on addressing the conditions under which the production of particular meanings become possible (Culler 2001; Greenblatt 1980; Montrose 1989). This is very much the approach taken by this book, which focuses on analysing the processes of securitisation by addressing the relationship between attempts to make protection and security meaningful, to shape roles and identities around them, and the wider processes of institutional, demographic, and cultural change which make such figurations possible. This methodological orientation necessarily takes me in a rather different direction to that provided by Marxist accounts, in large part because

16 

F. Dodsworth

cultural histories of the kind that have informed this study have raised serious questions about the historical role of class as a category of identity and political mobilisation and thus as a driver of change (Joyce 1991, 1994; Wahrman 1995; see also Castoriadis 1987). Rather than explaining the processes of securitisation through the history of class conflict, I place much more emphasis on the role played by gendered configurations of power in practices of subordination and domination, specifically the role played by a series of ‘problematisations’ (Foucault 1985: 9–12) and ‘translations’ (Latour 2005) of the ‘governing masculinities’ (Broomhall and Van Gent 2011) associated with patriarchy (Lerner 1986; Pateman 1989; Walby 1990). By ‘patriarchy’ I mean ‘the organization of the human community (from a family to a larger society) that gives a male ruler dominance over other men, and overall gives men control over women’ (Jensen 2017: 38). Patriarchy is the institutionalised dominance of male heads of households over subordinate women and junior, or socially ‘inferior’, men. This dominance was patriarchal because it was justified not simply on the basis of particular roles, competences, or achievements, but on the basis of qualities considered inherent in the masculinity of the protector. However, masculinity is a matter of gender, not sex, and as such it has a history (Clark 1995; Davidoff and Hall 1987; Hitchcock and Cohen 1999; McCormack 2005; Mangan and Walvin 1987; Scott 2018; Tosh 1999). That history has involved significant transformations in the values and attributes associated with ‘maleness’ under pressure from a range of directions, amongst which ‘politeness’, ‘sensibility’, and the ‘civilising process’ are only one aspect, albeit one of the more important, that has been brought to bear on male violence, aggressiveness, and morality (Barker-Benfield 1992; Carter 2001; Emsley 2005; Klein 2002; Wiener 2003; Wood 2004). Patriarchy is central to security because ultimately the history of security is a history of the changing ‘politics of protection’ (Huysmans 2006). The promise of protection in exchange for some other good is one of the most fundamental and ancient forms of social power, and central to the concept of security, and yet the term is strangely absent from the criminological literature, despite its currency elsewhere in security studies (Huysmans 2006). Of course, protection itself has a history and a sociology: Bigo (2006) suggests that in the modern era, protection has been

 Introduction 

17

articulated in three particular ways: in terms of a sacred space or sanctuary for individuals, in terms of the defence of the national territory against an aggressor, and in terms of the surveillance and monitoring of people for their own good or protection; the latter, he suggests, has become the predominant form of protection in contemporary societies, but I suggest that we shall find elements of all three throughout our history of protection here. What is most important for this book, however, is that protection is also a concept that, historically, has been highly gendered. The power to protect has, for most of history, been conceived of as a fundamentally masculine preserve and has been at the heart of the subordination of women in particular, who have historically been encouraged to exchange protection for ‘paternal domination’ (Lerner 1986: 217). The work of Markus Dubber (2005, 2006) suggests that patriarchy has also been central to the history of the ‘police power’ more broadly, as it extended to the government of both women and subordinate men, who were governed as if they were members of a household. Historical work on policing also stresses the importance of particular configurations of masculinity in shaping, promoting, and legitimising policing in the broadest sense (Barrie and Broomhall 2012; Dodsworth 2004, 2007a, 2012a; McCormack 2012). Protection, then, has been at the heart of justifications for the continuation of patriarchal power, even as that power has been changed and challenged over time. The power to protect is a key form of legitimisation for the power of certain men, through an appeal to a particular form of masculinity, and conversely, the performance of protection allows men to claim that status. Jef Huysmans (2006) notes the centrality of the politics of protection for articulating forms of situated agency. Security agencies, in the broadest sense of the term, have been central to claims to social legitimacy and power and important vehicles through which to make the self visible as a social actor. The politics of protection inevitably involves a series of relations of power between the subject seeking security, the agent promising to provide protection, and the ‘threat’ configured as the source of vulnerability. The promise of protection always involves a form of politics and an act of power in the sense that it necessarily involves the configuration of a vision of social order, and the constitution of a form of agency, which claims the transformative capacity to

18 

F. Dodsworth

provide or enforce that order; this commonly involves either enabling or preventing particular people from engaging in debates about that order or even preventing them from acting in public and political life more generally (Huysmans 2006). If we look at the people who are generally being prevented from acting in public life, the targets of securitising discourses and practices, some very clear patterns emerge. Whether these are contemporary concerns with gangs, knife crime, urban riots, anti-social behaviour, or young women’s drinking and violence, the targets of anxiety seem very clearly to follow the pattern identified by Geoffrey Pearson (1983), of concern with the behaviour of the young, and particularly those young people at the margins of society or on the verge of ‘respectability’, whether that is the working class, people of colour, or different ethnic backgrounds, who can be stigmatised as ‘other’ and who, from the perspective of the older, patrician men in positions of authority, ought to ‘know their place’ and act with due deference. For Pearson, the continuous concern with the (mis) behaviour of youth was a symptom of generational change; more recent research, however, suggests that there may be more to the phenomenon than this. Manuel Eisner’s (2003: 114, Fig. 10) work is only the most striking presentation of a marked criminological fact: the age pattern of violent offending, which appears remarkably consistent across cultures and over time. Young men are overwhelmingly responsible for crimes of violence, with offending rates rising rapidly during the teenage years, peaking between the ages of 20 and 29 and declining slightly more gradually through the 30s. Building on this insight, Robert Muchembled (2012) argues that the ‘civilising process’ identified by Norbert Elias (1996, 2000) was driven by increasing attempts to regulate the violence of young men by increasing the supervision of their pastimes, by challenging the code of honour that was at the root of most interpersonal disputes, and by a judicial revolution in which the criminal justice system increasingly criminalised young men’s violence, particularly in the context of the rapid urbanisation that threw together many strangers in a densely populated space. Much of the concern with security in this sense is a concern with maintaining the authority of older men over younger or subordinate men and women and enforcing a particular vision of (usually moral) order (Hunt 1999).

 Introduction 

19

The Structure of the Book In the early modern period, ‘security’ was provided by the capacity and duty of the heads of households to protect, and to control, their subordinates: women, children, apprentices, servants, and so on; indeed, the exchange of protection for obedience is one of the principal mechanisms for the production of subordination (see Lerner 1986: 217). Sylvia Walby (1990) would term this ‘private’ patriarchy, where the practice of government is very literally domestic in form, with the (male) householder responsible for, and holding power over, his dependents and able to exercise that power by virtue of his independence and consequent capacity for self-government (see also Broomhall and Van Gent 2011; McCormack 2005; Tadmor 1996). Chapter 2 of this book explores the ways in which this capacity and duty to protect dependents was challenged by the developing practical independence of many ‘subordinate’ people, with the consequence that institutional entrepreneurs (Hardy and Maguire 2017; Maguire et al. 2004; Sine and David 2010) were able to shape agency and authority for themselves by establishing themselves as experts in protection. In doing so, security was reconfigured so that it was no longer the preserve of the householder, but was delivered by paid specialists, who provided security by exchanging protection for other goods (Bauman 1987: 38–50; Rose and Miller 1992; Rothschild 1995: 60–61). These institutional entrepreneurs sought to establish their own claims to authority and expertise by constructing a ‘security problem’ that required their protection but also by problematising the existing forms of protection available in order to promote new forms of agency based around their own expertise as the best form of protection against these threats. This meant constructing of a credible threat and a concomitant vulnerability, alongside the configuration of a particular set of knowledges, practices, and agencies in response to these, usually in exchange for some form of capital, be it monetary, cultural, social, or symbolic. Chapter 3 takes the challenge to patriarchal government a stage further, with the direct challenge to the patriarchal political ideal posed in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century debates on the legitimacy of the ‘Glorious Revolution’ and by extension the British monarchy. These debates were theoretical but with a distinctly practical edge, because

20 

F. Dodsworth

they related directly to the authority of the courts and the legal system and as such to the whole structure of social authority. Defenders of the exiled monarch James II argued for his right to the English and Scottish crowns by virtue of his birth and the principle of primogeniture, which was traced back to the origins of human society in the story of Adam and Eve. Breaking this principle, they argued, broke all principles of authority and would lead to anarchy and chaos. Defenders of the ‘revolution settlement’ challenged that account by appealing to the principle of the rule of law as a phenomenon that did not emerge from the power of the monarch, but one which gave the monarch, and all other legal officers, their authority. It was not the patriarchal power of the monarch, but the rule of law, that provided the security for liberty, property, and order. Enforcing the rule of law over both ruler and ruled was, they argued, central to the maintenance of Britain as a free state; acting as a ‘peace officer’, enforcing the moral and legal order, was to play a central role in the narratives of liberation from monarchical tyranny and national reformation. If the claim was to have secured freedom through the practice of government, it was clear that this was a limited form of liberty, civil liberty, which depended upon considerable forms of both self- and social restraints. The gentleman was expected to have cultivated a persona capable of exercising self-restraint, but his subordinates were argued to lack the ability to exercise such restraint, and the maintenance of civil liberty depended on the ability of the gentleman to restrain the vices of wider, subordinate society, just as he should, in principle, restrain himself. As Carole Pateman (1989) has made clear in a different context, then, this intellectual and practical defeat of patriarchy in the absolute sense did not result in the end of patriarchy, but its translation into ‘fraternal’ form. The protection of society from licence and anarchy, or from tyranny, remained a fundamentally masculine preserve, and the presumption remained that women, younger men, apprentices, and servants would be subordinate to gentlemen and householders. In Chapter 4 the elision of security with the protective power of the householder was further challenged by a series of institutional entrepreneurs who sought social advancement by configuring themselves as experts in security. The development of the Bow Street magistrates office, first under Thomas De Veil, and then under the Fielding brothers, John

 Introduction 

21

and Henry, demonstrated the potential for entrepreneurial advancement and enrichment through the provision of protection to an extent far exceeding existing financial rewards from the trade in justice and thief-­ taking that was common at the time. The development of the ‘Bow Street Runners’, particularly by John Fielding, also marked an important and very prominent example of the systematisation of policing in Middlesex and Westminster, to some extent following the example of and to some extent surpassing existing practice in the City of London. By the end of the century, the idea that security depended on the abstract idea of a uniform organisation or system, necessary as a means to combat what were claimed to be systems of organised criminal activity, was not only becoming central to the politics of protection, but was also coming to be associated with the French term ‘police’ (Dodsworth 2008; Siskin 2016). The development of the police idea took place in practice as well as in theory, through a range of experiments in organisation, incentivisation, and supervision that led to the development of systems of surveillance that to some extent displaced the direct role of the gentleman and the parochial peace officers, who were generally rendered supervisors of the surveillers, rather than the agents of surveillance themselves, changing the power relationship between different levels of government in the city. These changes took place alongside long-term developments in attitudes to violence, order, and engagement which served to emphasise the distinction between ‘civil’ and ‘uncivil’ society, to link disorder and crime more closely with the lower classes, and changes in the significance and defence of honour. These developments, along with the practical improvement of policing, resulted in a very significant reduction in violence, but they also took place in the context of increased, and occasionally very serious, urban disorder, most notably the Gordon Riots of 1780, which led to significant changes to the systems of public protection in London, with the Middlesex Justices Act, or the ‘Police Act’ of 1792. Concern with disorder and rising property crime also lay at the heart of continuing efforts to reform the system of ‘police’ in the early nineteenth century, addressed in Chap. 5. The creation of the Metropolitan Police in London in 1829 and the improvement of policing in Manchester in the same period are explored as further developments in the unification, integration, and co-ordination of policing powers. These new

22 

F. Dodsworth

organisations for public protection allowed the co-ordination of much greater force than previous systems of police, despite the fact that, in London at least, there were actually fewer policing officers. The ability to mobilise, assemble, and co-ordinate dozens, sometimes hundreds, of officers led to the ability to enforce a vision of order and civility on the streets that had previously been only an ideal. The capacity to mobilise such a degree of force depended upon the creation of a disciplined body of men, and the police authorities drew on both military ideas and personnel in order to drill their officers, extending the link between the police and military power developed in Chapter 4 and in other recent work (Dodsworth 2007a; McCormack 2012; Neocleous 2014). The men involved in this new system of surveillance were largely working-class men, directed by gentlemen, often from a military background; these men were selected for a particular physical masculinity and were encouraged to identify with the cardinal virtues, particularly with courage and temperateness, and the police authorities expended considerable effort in trying to shape the new policemen to fit their masculine ideals. The officers themselves responded to this through practices of self-fashioning (Greenblatt 1980) that drew upon these ideals but also working-class culture and their developing institutional identity, to create public personas that made a particular claim to be able to protect the public and provide security through their physical masculinity, which enabled them to pass between the underworld and civilised society, keeping the two separate for the safety of the public. At the same time, however, that the new policemen were establishing their power to protect in terms of their physical masculinity, the idea that protection depended upon the embodied form of the police protector was being challenged by a range of new security technologies, which held out the potential for the buyer of such commodities to protect themselves through insurance, locks, and alarms. These technologies were sometimes mocked on their emergence but were to become increasingly important in the twentieth century and marked a further non-human extension in the security ‘assemblage’ (Schuilenburg 2015) or ‘apparatus’, that is, ‘a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions’ and the ‘system of relations that can be established between these elements’ (Foucault 1980b: 194–198, at 194).

 Introduction 

23

Chapter 6 explores the extension of this principle and a range of challenges to the elision between ‘patriarchy’ and ‘protection’ in the twentieth century. Central to the chapter is the feminist challenge to the patriarchal principles of policing and protection. These ranged from feminist drives to establish a role for women in policing, successfully achieved after the First World War and steadily developed through the middle third of the century, to the promotion of women’s self-defence, which was also strongly associated with the feminist movement and which promised to liberate women from dependence on male protection. The emergence of systems of self-defence, particularly in the first two thirds of the century oriented around the popularity of Asian martial arts, was part of the development of a wider commercial security sector that grew considerably throughout the century, initially targeted at the upper middle classes, but from the post-war period increasingly massified. The development of a mass security industry saw the emergence of a new range of claims to expertise in protection, and the establishment of potential new security roles and identities in the light of that. The chapter explores the configuration of those roles in self-defence and door work and looks at the ways in which such practices of self-fashioning both intersected with a changing social landscape sometimes associated with a pronounced ‘de-­civilising process’ (Macek 2006; Wacquant 2011; Wouters 1999) and the challenge some of these forms of self-fashioning provided to existing patriarchal assumptions about the nature of protection and the provision of security. It concludes by suggesting that in many aspects of the ‘self-protection’ literature popular in the 1980s and particularly the 1990s, patriarchal masculinity is configured as the threat to be protected from, rather than the foundation of the mechanisms of protection. Chapter 7 concludes the book relating the findings of the different chapters to the genealogical work of Michel Foucault and Norbert Elias, linking these approaches through the history of the problematisation of governing masculinities and developing a reflexive account of the kind of analysis mobilised throughout the book. It goes on to address the relationship between practices of securitisation, institutional entrepreneurialism (Hardy and Maguire 2017; Maguire et  al. 2004; Sine and David 2010), and the configuration of new social roles and identities (Stryker 2007; Stryker and Burke 2000), arguing that any critical engagement with security needs to address the fact that when we debate

24 

F. Dodsworth

security, we are talking not only about abstract discourses and practices of state power, but, directly or indirectly, figurations connected to, or constitutive of, people’s identities and sense of self. This is important because it affects the ways in which critiques of security are received, with a strong tendency for people to disengage with critiques that challenge aspects of their identities (Bracher 2009). Processes of securitisation have enabled the configuration of a range of new ‘possible selves’ (Markus and Nurius 1986), opened out by practices of individual and collective self-formation (Arditi 1998; Greenblatt 1980). These processes have been driven by people from all parts of society: by governing authorities, the aspirational ‘middling sort’, and by the actions, and later entrepreneurialism, of those from ‘lower’ social classes. In terms of the power relationships involved in securitisation, then, there is a sense in which securitisation has been a productive, as well as a repressive, form of power (Foucault 1979, 1980a), one driven by a variety of agencies beyond the state through configurations of their own expertise. This is not, however, done ‘innocently’ or outside wider discourses of power: such figurations always draw on available cultural resources in the ‘enfolding of authority’ into the self (Dean 1996; Greenblatt 1980). There is, then, a reciprocal relationship between the processes of securitisation and pacification and the social and conceptual resources that are available at any given moment and the shaping of new identities and agencies through these resources, which always constitutes form of politics because it acts to transform the resources and roles available for future engagement (Huysmans 2006).

References Aas, K. F., Oppen Gundhus, H., & Mork Lomell, H. (2009). Technologies of Insecurity: The Surveillance of Everyday Life. London: Routledge. Arditi, J. (1998). A Genealogy of Manners: Transformations of Social Relations in France and England from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries. London: Chicago University Press. Atlas, R.  I. (2008). 21st Century Security and CPTED: Designing for Critical Infrastructure Protection and Crime Prevention. Boca Raton, FL: Auerbach.

 Introduction 

25

Bailey, V. (1981). The Metropolitan Police, The Home Office and the Threat of Outcast London. In V. Bailey (Ed.), Policing and Prosecution in Nineteenth-­ Century Britain (pp. 94–125). London: Croom Helm. Ball, K., Haggerty, K. D., & Lyon, D. (Eds.). (2012). Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies. London: Routledge. Barker-Benfield, G.  J. (1992). The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century England. London: University of Chicago Press. Barrie, D.  G., & Broomhall, S. (Eds.). (2012). A History of Police and Masculinities, 1700–2010. London: Routledge. Barry, A., Osborne, T., & Rose, N. (Eds.). (1996). Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government. London: UCL Press. Bauman, Z. (1987). Legislators and Interpreters: On Modernity, Post-Modernity and Intellectuals. Cambridge: Polity. Bayley, D. H., & Shearing, C. (1996). The Future of Policing. Law and Society Review, 30(3), 585–606. Beattie, J. M. (2012). The First English Detectives: The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750–1840. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beier, A. L. (1985). Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560–1640. London: Methuen. Beier, A.  L. (2005). Identity, Language and Resistance in the Making of the Victorian ‘Criminal Class’: Mayhew’s Convict Revisited. Journal of British Studies, 54, 499–515. Biernacki, R. (1999). Method and Metaphor After the New Cultural History. In V. E. Bonnell & L. Hunt (Eds.), Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (pp.  62–92). London: University of California Press. Biernacki, R. (2000). Language and the Shift from Signs to Practices in Cultural Enquiry. History and Theory, 39, 289–310. Bigo, D. (2006). Protection: Security, Territory and Population. In J. Huysmans, A.  Dobson, & R.  Prokhovnik (Eds.), The Politics of Protection: Sites of Insecurity and Political Agency (pp. 84–100). London: Routledge. Bonnell, V. E., & Hunt, L. (1999). Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture. London: University of California Press. Bracher, M. (2009). The Social Symptoms of Identity Needs: Why We Have Failed to Solve Our Social Problems and What to Do About It. London: Karnac. Brodie, A., Croom, J., & Davies, J. O. (2002). English Prisons: An Architectural History. Swindon: English Heritage.

26 

F. Dodsworth

Broomhall, S., & Van Gent, J.  (2011). Governing Masculinities in the Early Modern Period: Regulating Selves and Others. Aldershot: Ashgate. Burchell, G. (1991). Peculiar Interests: Civil Society and Governing the ‘System of Natural Liberty’. In G.  Burchell, C.  Gordon, & P.  Miller (Eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (pp. 119–150). Hemel Hempstead: Harvester. Burchell, G., Gordon, C., & Miller, P. (Eds.). (1991). The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. With Two Lectures by and an Interview with Michel Foucault. London: Harvester. Burke, K. (1969). A Grammar of Motives (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Burkitt, I. (1996). Civilization and Ambivalence. The British Journal of Sociology, 47(1), 135–150. Button, M. (2002). Private Policing. Cullompton: Willan. Buzan, B., Wæver, O., & de Wilde, J. (1998). Security: A New Framework for Analysis. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Carlson, J.  D. (2012). ‘I Don’t Dial 911’: American Gun Politics and the Problem of Policing. British Journal of Criminology, 52(6), 1113–1132. Carlson, J.  D. (2014). States, Subjects and Sovereign Power: Lessons from Global Gun Cultures. Theoretical Criminology, 18(3), 335–353. Carter, P. (2001). Men and the Emergence of Polite Society: Britain, 1660–1800. London: Routledge. Castoriadis, C. (1987). The Imaginary Institution of Society (K. Blamey, Trans.). Cambridge: Polity. Churchill, D. (2014). Rethinking the State Monopolisation Thesis: The Historiography of Policing and Criminal Justice in Nineteenth-Century England. Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/Crime, History and Societies, 18(1), 131–152. Churchill, D. (2015). The Spectacle of Security: Lock-picking Competitions and the Security Industry in Mid-Victorian Britain. History Workshop Journal, 80(1), 52–74. Churchill, D. (2017). Crime Control and Everyday Life in the Victorian City: The Police and the Public. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clark, A. (1995). The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class. London: Rivers Owen. Cockerell, H.  A. L., & Green, E. (1976). The British Insurance Business, 1547–1970: An Introduction and Guide to Historical Records. London: Heinemann.

 Introduction 

27

Collins, R. (2008). Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory. Oxford: Princeton University Press. Collins, A. (2016). Contemporary Security Studies (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crawford, A., & Hutchinson, S. (2016). The Future(s) of Security Studies. British Journal of Criminology, 56, 1049–1067. Crook, T., & Esbester, M. (Eds.). (2016). Governing Risks in Modern Britain: Danger, Safety and Accidents, c. 1800–2000. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Crowe, T. D. (2013). Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (3rd ed., Revised by L. J. Fennelly). Kidlington: Elsevier. Culler, J. (2001). The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. With a New Preface by the Author. London: Routledge. Davidoff, L., & Hall, C. (1987). Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850. London: Routledge. Dean, M. (1996). Foucault, Government and the Enfolding of Authority. In A.  Barry, T.  Osborne, & N.  Rose (Eds.), Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government (pp.  209–229). London: UCL Press. Dean, M., & Hindess, B. (1998). Governing Australia: Studies in Contemporary Rationalities of Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Deveraux, S. (2007). From Sessions to Newspaper? Criminal Trial Reporting, the Nature of Crime and the London Press, 1770–1800. London Journal, 32, 1–27. Deveraux, S., & Griffiths, P. (Eds.). (2004). Penal Practice and Culture, 1500–1900: Punishing the English. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Dodsworth, F. (2004). ‘Civic’ Police and the Condition of Liberty: The Rationality of Governance in Eighteenth Century England. Social History, 29(2), 199–216. Dodsworth, F. (2007a). Masculinity as Governance: Police, Public Service and the Embodiment of Authority, c. 1700–1850. In M. L. McCormack (Ed.), Public Men: Masculinity and Politics in Modern Britain (pp.  33–53). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Dodsworth, F. (2007b). Police and the Prevention of Crime: Commerce, Temptation and the Corruption of the Body Politic, from Fielding to Colquhoun. British Journal of Criminology, 47(3), 439–454. Dodsworth, F. (2008). The Idea of Police in Eighteenth-Century England: Discipline, Reformation, Superintendence, c. 1780–1800. Journal of the History of Ideas, 69(4), 583–604.

28 

F. Dodsworth

Dodsworth, F. (2012a). Men on a Mission: Masculinity, Violence and the Self-­ Presentation of Policemen in England, c. 1870–1914. In D.  G. Barrie & S.  Broomall (Eds.), A History of Police and Masculinities, 1700–2010 (pp. 123–140). London: Routledge. Dodsworth, F. (2012b). Shaping the City, Shaping the Subject: Honour, Affect and Agency in John Gwynn’s London and Westminster Improved (1766). In G. O’Brien & F. O’Kane (Eds.), Portraits of the City: Dublin and the Wider World (pp. 76–90). Dublin: Four Courts. Dodsworth, F. (2015). Epochalism and the Society of Security: Continuity and Change in Self-Defence Culture. In M. Lytje, T. K. Nielsen, & M. Ottovay Jorgensen (Eds.), Challenging Ideas? Theory and Empirical Research in the Social Sciences (pp. 88–107). Cambridge: Scholar Press. Dodsworth, F. (2016). Risk, Prevention and Policing, c. 1750–1850. In T. Crook & M. Esbester (Eds.), Governing Risks in Modern Britain: Danger, Safety and Accidents, c. 1800–2000 (pp. 29–53). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Dubber, M.  D. (2005). The Police Power: Patriarchy and the Foundations of American Government. New York: Columbia University Press. Dubber, M. D. (2006). The New Police Science and the Police Power Model of the Criminal Process. In M.  D. Dubber & M.  Valverde (Eds.), The New Police Science: The Police Power in Domestic and International Governance (pp. 107–144). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Dunning, E., & Hughes, J.  (2013). Norbert Elias and Modern Sociology: Knowledge, Interdependence, Power, Process. London: Bloomsbury. Eisner, M. (2003). Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime. Crime and Justice, 30, 83–142. Ekblom, P. (2005). Designing Products Against Crime. In N.  Tilley (Ed.), Handbook of Crime Prevention and Community Safety (pp. 203–244). London: Routledge. Ekblom, P. (2010). Crime Prevention, Security and Community Safety Using the 5Is Framework. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Elias, N. (1996). The Germans: Power Struggles and the Development of Habitus in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (E. Dunning & S. Mennell, Trans., M. Schröter, Ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press. Elias, N. (2000). The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Explorations (Rev. ed., E. Jephcott, Trans.). Oxford: Blackwell. Emsley, C. (2005). Hard Men: The English and Violence since 1750. London: Hambledon. Ericson, R. V. (2007). Crime in an Insecure World. Cambridge: Polity.

 Introduction 

29

Ericson, R.  V., & Haggerty, K.  D. (1997). Policing the Risk Society. Oxford: Clarendon. Evans, R. (1982). The Fabrication of Virtue: English Prison Architecture, 1750–1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Farrall, S., Bannister, J., Ditton, J., & Gilchrist, E. (1997). Questioning the Measurement of the ‘Fear of Crime’: Findings from a Major Methodological Study. British Journal of Criminology, 37(4), 658–679. Fletcher, J.  (1997). Violence and Civilization: An Introduction to the Work of Norbert Elias. Cambridge: Polity. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1979). The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (R. Hurley, Trans.). London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1980a). Truth and Power. In C. Gordon (Ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and other Writings 1972–1977 (pp.  109–133). New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1980b). The Confessions of the Flesh. In C. Gordon (Ed.), Power/ Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (pp. 194–228). New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1985). The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality, vol. 2 (R. Hurley, Trans.). London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1991). Governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (pp. 87–104). Hemel Hempstead: Harvester. Foucault, M. (2009). Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977–1978 (M.  Senellart, Ed., G.  Burchell, Trans.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Freedgood, E. (2000). Victorian Writing About Risk: Imagining a Safe England in a Dangerous World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Garland, D. (1996). The Limits of the Sovereign State: Strategies of Crime Control in Contemporary Society. British Journal of Criminology, 36(4), 445–471. Garland, D. (2000). Ideas, Institutions and Situational Crime Prevention. In A. von Hirsch, D. Garland, & A. Wakefield (Eds.), Ethical and Social Perspectives on Situational Crime Prevention (pp. 1–16). Oxford: Hart. Garland, D. (2001). The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. London: University of Chicago Press. Gilling, D. (1997). Crime Prevention: Theory, Policy and Practice. London: UCL Press.

30 

F. Dodsworth

Gillingham, J. (2002). From Civilitas to Civility: Codes of Manners in Medieval and Early Modern England. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 12, 267–289. Godfrey, E. (2010). Masculinity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature: Duelling with Danger. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Godfrey, E. (2012). Femininity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature and Society: From Dagger Fans to Suffragettes. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin. Gordon, C. (1991). Governmental Rationality: An Introduction. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (pp. 1–52). Hemel Hempstead: Harvester. Gorski, P. S. (2003). The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe. London: University of Chicago Press. Greenblatt, S. (1980). Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From Moore to Shakespeare. London: University of Chicago Press. Griffiths, P. (2008). Lost Londons: Change, Crime and Control in the Capital City, 1550–1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haggerty, K. D., & Ericson, R. V. (2000). The Surveillant Assemblage. British Journal of Sociology, 51(4), 605–622. Hall, S., Critcher, C., Clarke, J., & Roberts, B. (1978). Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order. London: Macmillan. Hardy, C., & Maguire, S. (2017). Institutional Entrepreneurship and Change in Fields. In R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, T. B. Lawrence, & R. E. Meyer (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism (pp.  261–280). London: Sage Publications. Himmelfarb, G. (1984). The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age. New York: Knopf. Hitchcock, T., & Cohen, M. (Eds.). (1999). English Masculinities, 1660–1800. London: Longman. Holmes, J.  (2014). John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Hornsey, M. J. (2008). Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorisation Theory: A Historical Review. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(1), 204–222. Hunt, L. (Ed.). (1989). The New Cultural History. London: University of California Press. Hunt, A. (1999). Governing Morals: A Social History of Moral Regulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 Introduction 

31

Huysmans, J. (2006). Agency and the Politics of Protection: Implications for Security Studies. In J. Huysmans, A. Dobson, & R. Prokhovnik (Eds.), The Politics of Protection: Sites of Insecurity and Political Agency (pp.  1–18). London: Routledge. Jankiewicz, S. (2012). A Dangerous Class: The Street Sellers of Nineteenth-­ Century London. Journal of Social History, 46, 391–415. Jefferson, T. (2012). Policing the Riots: From Bristol and Brixton to Tottenham via Toxteth, Handsworth etc.: Tony Jefferson Tells the Angry, Ongoing Story of Rioting over the Past 30 Years. Criminal Justice Matters, 87(1), 8–9. Jensen, R. (2017). The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men. Melbourne: Spinifex. Johnston, L., & Shearing, C. (2003). Governing Security: Explorations of Policing and Justice. London: Routledge. Joyce, P. (1991). Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1848–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Joyce, P. (1994). Democratic Subjects: The Self and the Social in Nineteenth-­ Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Joyce, P. (2003). The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City. London: Verso. Kettle, M., & Hodges, L. (1982). Uprising! The Police, The People and the Riots in Britain’s Cities. London: Macmillan. King, P. (1987). Newspaper Reporting, Prosecution Practice and Perceptions of Urban Crime: The Colchester Crime Wave of 1765. Continuity and Change, 2(3), 423–454. King, P. (1989). Prosecution Associations and Their Impact in Eighteenth-­ Century Essex. In D.  Hay & F.  Snyder (Eds.), Policing and Prosecution in Britain, 1750–1850 (pp. 171–210). Oxford: Clarendon. King, P. (2007). Newspaper Reporting and Attitudes to Crime and Justice in Late-Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth-Century London. Continuity and Change, 22, 73–112. King, P. (2009). Making Crime News: Newspapers, Violent Crime and the Reporting of Old Bailey Trials in the Late Eighteenth Century. Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/Crime, History & Societies, 13, 91–116. Klein, L. E. (2002). Politeness and the Interpretation of the British Eighteenth Century. Historical Journal, 45, 869–898. van Krieken, R. (1990). The Organisation of the Soul: Elias and Foucault on Discipline and the Self. European Journal of Sociology, 31(2), 353–371. van Krieken, R. (1998). Norbert Elias. London: Routledge.

32 

F. Dodsworth

van Krieken, R. (2012). Celebrity Society. London: Routledge. Landau, N. (2002). The Trading Justice’s Trade. In N. Landau (Ed.), Law, Crime and English Society, 1660–1830 (pp.  46–70). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-­ Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lee, M. (2007). Inventing Fear of Crime: Criminology and the Politics of Anxiety. Cullompton: Willan. Lee, M., & Farrall, S. (Eds.). (2008). Fear of Crime: Critical Voices in an Age of Anxiety. London: Routledge. Lemmings, D., & Walker, C. (Eds.). (2009). Moral Panics, the Media and the Law in Early Modern England. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Lerner, G. (1986). The Creation of Patriarchy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Loader, I., & Walker, N. (2007). Civilizing Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Loyal, S., & Quilley, S. (2004). The Sociology of Norbert Elias. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lyon, D. (2007). Surveillance Studies: An Overview. Cambridge: Polity. Macek, S. (2006). Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right, and the Moral Panic over the City. London: University of Minnesota Press. Maguire, S., Hardy, C., & Lawrence, T. B. (2004). Institutional Entrepreneurship in Emerging Fields: HIV/AIDS Treatment Advocacy in Canada. Academy of Management Journal, 47(5), 657–679. Malešević, S. (2013). Forms of Brutality: Towards an Historical Sociology of Violence. European Journal of Social Theory, 16(3), 273–291. Malešević, S., & Ryan, K. (2012). The Disfigured Ontology of Figurational Sociology: Norbert Elias and the Question of Violence. Critical Sociology, 39(2), 165–181. Mangan, J.  A., & Walvin, J.  (1987). Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800–1950. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Markus, T. (1993). Buildings and Power: Freedom and Control in the Origin of Modern Building Types. London: Routledge. Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible Selves. American Psychologist, 41(9), 954–969. McCormack, M. (2005). The Independent Man: Citizenship and Gender Politics in Georgian England. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

 Introduction 

33

McCormack, M. (2012). ‘A Species of Civil Soldier’: Masculinity, Policing and the Military in 1780s England. In D.  G. Barrie & S.  Broomall (Eds.), A History of Police and Masculinities, 1700–2010 (pp.  55–71). London: Routledge. Mennell, S. (2007). The American Civilizing Process. Cambridge: Polity. Middleton, J., & Yarwood, R. (2015). ‘Christians, Out Here?’ Encountering Street-Pastors in the Post-Secular Spaces of the UK’s Night Time Economy. Urban Studies, 52(3), 501–516. Minton, A. (2012). Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the Twenty-First Century City (2nd ed.). London: Penguin. Montrose, L. A. (1989). Professing the Renaissance: The Politics and Poetics of Culture. In H. A. Veeser (Ed.), The New Historicism (pp. 15–36). London: Routledge. Moss, E. (2011). Burglary Insurance and the Culture of Fear in Britain, c. 1889–1939. Historical Journal, 54, 1039–1064. Muchembled, R. (2012). A History of Violence: From the End of the Middle Ages to the Present (J. Birrell, Trans.). Cambridge: Polity. Neocleous, M. (2000). The Fabrication of Social Order: A Critical Theory of Police Power. London: Pluto. Neocleous, M. (2006). Theoretical Foundations of the ‘New Police Science’. In M. D. Dubber & M. Valverde (Eds.), The New Police Science: The Police Power in Domestic and International Governance (pp.  17–41). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Neocleous, M. (2008). Critique of Security. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Neocleous, M. (2011a). Security as Pacification. In M. Neocleous & G. Rigakos (Eds.), Anti-Security (pp. 23–56). Ottawa: Red Quill. Neocleous, M. (2011b). The Police of Civilization: The War on Terror as Civilizing Offensive. International Political Sociology, 5(2), 144–159. Neocleous, M. (2014). War Power, Police Power. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Neocleous, M., & Rigakos, G. (Eds.). (2011). Anti-Security. Ottawa: Red Quill. Oestreich, G. (1982). Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (D. McLintock, Trans., B. Oestreich & H. G. Koenigsberger, Eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ogborn, M. (1998). Spaces of Modernity: London’s Geographies, 1680–1780. London: Guilford Press.

34 

F. Dodsworth

Paley, R. (1989). Thief-Takers in London in the Age of the McDaniel Gang. In D. Hay & F. Snyder (Eds.), Policing and Prosecution in Britain, 1750–1850. Oxford: Clarendon. Pateman, C. (1989). The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory. Cambridge: Polity. Pearson, G. (1983). Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears. London: Macmillan. Peoples, C., & Vaughn-Williams, N. (2014). Critical Security Studies: An Introduction (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Pepperell, N. (2016). The Unease with Civilization: Norbert Elias and the Violence of the Civilizing Process. Thesis Eleven, 137(1), 3–21. Philips, D. (1989). Good Men to Associate and Bad Men to Conspire: Associations for the Prosecution of Felons in England, 1760–1860. In D. Hay & F. Snyder (Eds.), Policing and Prosecution in Britain, 1750–1850. Oxford: Clarendon. Philips, D. (2003). Three ‘Moral Entrepreneurs’ and the Creation of a ‘Criminal Class’ in England, c. 1790s–1840s. Crime, Historire & Societes/Crime, History & Societies, 7, 1–24. Redner, H. (2015). The Civilizing Process – According to Mennell, Elias and Freud. Thesis Eleven, 127(1), 95–111. Rose, N. (1999). Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rose, N., & Miller, P. (1992). Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government. British Journal of Sociology, 42, 172–205. Rothschild, E. (1995). What Is Security? Daedalus, 124(3), 53–98. Rowbotham, J., & Stevenson, K. (Eds.). (2003). Behaving Badly: Visible Crime, Social Panics and Legal Responses. Aldershot: Ashgate. Rowbotham, J., & Stevenson, K. (Eds.). (2005). Criminal Conversations: Victorian Crimes, Social Panic and Moral Outrage. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. Schubert, A. (1981). Private Initiative in Law Enforcement: Associations for the Prosecution of Felons, 1744–1856. In V. Bailey (Ed.), Policing and Prosecution in Nineteenth-Century Britain (pp. 25–41). London: Croom Helm. Schuilenburg, M. (2015). The Securitization of Society: Crime, Risk and Social Order (G.  Hall, Trans., introduced by D.  Garland). London: New  York University Press. Scott, J. W. (2018). Gender and the Politics of History. 30th Anniversary Edition. Chichester: Columbia University Press.

 Introduction 

35

Sewell, W. H. (1999). The Concept(s) of Culture. In V. E. Bonnell & L. Hunt (Eds.), Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (pp. 35–61). London: University of California Press. Shoemaker, R. B. (2004). The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth-­ Century England. London: Hambledon. Shoemaker, R. B. (2008). The Old Bailey Proceedings and the Representation of Crime and Criminal Justice in Eighteenth-Century London. Journal of British Studies, 47, 559–580. Shoemaker, R.  B. (2010). Print and the Female Voice: Representations of Women’s Crime in London, 1690–1735. Gender & History, 22, 75–91. Shore, H. (2015). London’s Criminal Underworlds, c. 1720–c.1930: A Social and Cultural History. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Sine, W. D., & David, R. J. (Eds.). (2010). Institutions and Entrepreneurship. Bingley: Emerald. Siskin, C. (2016). System: The Shaping of Modern Knowledge. London: MIT Press. Slack, P. (1999). From Reformation to Improvement: Public Welfare in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Snell, E. (2007). Discourses of Criminality in the Eighteenth-Century Press. Continuity and Change, 22, 13–47. Spierenburg, P. (1984). The Spectacle of Suffering: Executions and the Evolution of Repression: From a Preindustrial Metropolis to the European Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spierenburg, P. (2012). Violence and Punishment: Civilizing the Body Through Time. Cambridge: Polity. Squires, P. (2014). Gun Crime in Global Context. London: Routledge. Standing, G. (2011). The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury. Stanko, E. (2000). Victims ‘R’ Us: The Life History of ‘Fear of Crime’ and the Politicisation of Violence. In T. Hope & R. Sparks (Eds.), Crime, Risk and Insecurity: Law and Order in Everyday Life and Political Discourse (pp. 13–30). London: Routledge. Stedman Jones, G. (1971). Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society. Oxford: Clarendon. Stryker, S. (2007). Identity Theory and Personality Theory: Mutual Relevance. Journal of Personality, 75(6), 1083–1102. Stryker, S., & Burke, P. J. (2000). The Past, Present and Future of an Identity Theory. Social Psychology Quarterly, 63(4), 284–297.

36 

F. Dodsworth

Swann, R., Sloan, L., Green, A., & Johns, N. (2015). Street Pastors as Substitutes for Trust in the Context of Plural Policing. Safer Communities, 14(4), 168–182. Tadmor, N. (1996). The Concept of the Household-Family in Eighteenth-­ Century England. Past and Present, 151, 111–140. Taylor, I. (1999). Crime in Context: A Critical Criminology of Market Societies. Cambridge: Polity. Tosh, J.  (1999). A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England. London: Yale University Press. Travis, A. (2010, July 4). ‘Big brother’ Traffic Cameras Must Be Regulated, Orders Home Secretary. The Guardian. Retrieved February 14, 2012, from http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/jul/04/anpr-surveillance-numberplate-recognition. Turner, B.  S. (2004). Weber and Elias on Religion and Violence: Warrior Charisma and the Civilizing Process. In S. Loyal & S. Quigley (Eds.), The Sociology of Norbert Elias (pp.  245–264). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wacquant, L. (2008). Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. Cambridge: Polity. Wacquant, L. (2009). Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. London: Duke University Press. Wacquant, L. (2011). Decivilizing and Demonizing: The Remaking of the Black American Ghetto. In C. Buschendorf, A. Franke, & J. Voelz (Eds.), Civilizing and Decivilizing Processes: Figurational Approaches to American Culture (pp. 149–173). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press. Wahrman, D. (1995). Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, 1780–1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wakefield, A. (2012). Selling Security: The Private Policing of Public Space (2nd ed.). London: Taylor & Francis. Walby, S. (1990). Theorizing Patriarchy. Oxford: Blackwell. Wales, T. (2000). Thief-Takers and Their Clients. In P.  Griffiths & M.  S. R.  Jenner (Eds.), Londonopolis: Essays in the Cultural and Social History of Early Modern London (pp. 67–85). Manchester: Manchester University Press. Wiener, M. J. (2003). Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness and Criminal Justice in Nineteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, K. (2005). Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Police Experiences with the Legitimacy of Street Watch Partnerships. Howard Journal, 44(5), 527–537.

 Introduction 

37

Wolf, T. (Ed.). (2005). The Bartitsu Compendium: Volume 1: History and Canonical Syllabus. Raleigh, NC: Lulu Books. Wood, J.  C. (2004). Violence and Crime in Nineteenth-Century England: The Shadow of Our Refinement. London: Routledge. Wood, J., & Shearing, C. (2007). Imagining Security. Cullompton: Willan. Wouters, C. (1999). Changing Patterns of Social Controls and Self-Controls: On the Rise of Crime since the 1950s and the Sociogenesis of a ‘Third Nature’. British Journal of Criminology, 39(3), 416–432. Young, J. (1999). The Exclusive Society: Social Exclusion, Crime and Difference in Late Modernity. London: Sage. Young, J. (2007). The Vertigo of Late Modernity. London: Sage. Zedner, L. (2000). The Pursuit of Security. In T.  Hope & R.  Sparks (Eds.), Crime, Risk and Insecurity: Law and Order in Everyday Life and Political Discourse (pp. 200–214). London: Routledge. Zedner, L. (2006). Policing Before and After the Police: The Historical Antecedents of Contemporary Crime Control. British Journal of Criminology, 46, 78–96. Zedner, L. (2009). Security. London: Routledge.

2 Masterless Men: Patriarchy Challenged, c. 1570–1670

In The Sense of an Ending, Frank Kermode (2000) suggests that the early modern period saw the emergence of a distinctively modern sense of ontological crisis characterised by a sense of being caught at a transitional moment in history. The medieval sense of anticipation of the imminent millennium was displaced through an elision of the apocalyptic and the tragic (25–28), so that the fictions and figurations which give our lives meaning and direction no longer configure life as preparation for imminent apocalypse and judgement, but instead condense this sense of anticipation into the world of human affairs, with resonance for both the finite individual lifespan and its own imminent ending, and the relation of that life to the wider social order. The life of the individual and the life of the society are invested with significance through continual reproduction of the idea of the period of transition, a concept first developed by Joachim of Flora and extended into a sense of the present time as kairos, the moment of crisis or ‘season’, filled with meaning through its relation to the end. The configuration of society as being in a condition of decadence and the hope of renovation is characteristic of this ‘epochal’ thinking (Kermode 2000: 12–14, 47). This concept is central to the idea of a ‘sign of the times’, in which events not only stand as exemplars for the © The Author(s) 2019 F. Dodsworth, The Security Society, Crime Prevention and Security Management, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43383-1_2

39

40 

F. Dodsworth

moment in question but which also act as fulfilments of the figures of the past, linking the beginning and the end into a meaningful and directional whole (Kermode 2000: 48; White 1999: 87–100). Far from the ‘age of anxiety’ being a distinctive feature of the late modern period, then, it is only in the specific imagery of past, present, and future that each society makes its own crisis distinctive, not the sense of crisis itself (Kermode 2000: 95–96; Wilkinson 1999, 2001). The extraordinary religious, political, and social turmoil that accompanied the Reformation intensified this tendency and gave the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries their very characteristic sense of a period of revolution, with political, religious, and social hierarchy subject to constant challenge, and frequently debated in gendered terms (Kent 1999: 3; Kermode 2000: 27). This chapter explores one very distinctive sense of crisis as it emerged in the early modern period: the breakdown of patriarchal systems of social ordering under the pressure of the social and economic changes that saw the end of feudalism. This crisis was characterised by the emergence of large numbers of ‘masterless men’ and women (Beier 1985), a phenomenon which I think has rightly been characterised as central to the securitisation of society more broadly (Neocleous 2011). The presence of large numbers of people free from direct supervision by a master represented a challenge to the established mechanisms of social control and the idea of an ordered world secured by a hierarchical system of authority.

 asterless Men and the Breakdown of Feudal M Patriarchy I begin this account of the securitisation of society in the early modern period not because I imagine that medieval people were not worried about crime or disorder (on the contrary, they certainly worried about these things: see Gauvard 1999). Rather, I focus on the modern period partly because this marks the boundary of my historical knowledge and competence, beyond which I will simply pass the reader on to the work of Caroline Dunn (2013), Barbara Hanawalt, David Wallace and colleagues (Hanawalt 1998; Hanawalt and Wallace 1999), and Robert Muchembled (2012); but more importantly, because my argument here,

  Masterless Men: Patriarchy Challenged, c. 1570–1670 

41

drawing on the work of Zygmunt Bauman (1987), is that there is a direct genealogical relationship between the concerns of our early modern ancestors and the securitisation of contemporary society. The long-term processes that saw the development of dedicated security specialists had their origins in the breakdown of the medieval system of feudal control. Social control in medieval England was mediated through hierarchical, communal, and often personal relationships. There were impersonal, formal elements—the guilds and the church courts being the most obvious—but in many instances, direct relationships of personal or communal surveillance were central to the maintenance of order. In principle society was hierarchically organised, with relationships of fealty and obligation between the nobility and the gentry, who largely owned and controlled the land, and their tenants and vassals. Fealty involved a commitment to mutual protection as part of the ‘bargain’ in which service of, and allegiance to, the lord was exchanged for the right to exploit their property (be that real property in land or commercial or tax farming rights or other forms of income generation). The commitment to mutual protection involved the obligation of the vassal to provide military service for the lord but also the obligation on the lord to protect his vassals from external threats and to mediate their relationships and disputes. Relationships of fealty pervaded society, between the monarch and the rest of the nobility, and between the lord of the manor (a kind of landholder, not necessarily a member of the nobility) and his vassals and tenants. The origin of the ‘manor’ as the organ of government is unclear and may simply refer to the manor house of the lord but may also have stemmed from an old French term meaning to guide or govern (Fischer 1794: 3–4), although Roberts (1793: 13) argues that there was no mention of the term ‘manor’ before the Normans and that it came as a part of ‘feudal subordination’. One way or another, it is clear by the late middle ages that subordination was at its heart. Originally manors were the lands given to the great barons ‘But they were afterwards granted out to inferior persons, who still retained the title of Lords’, indeed they could also be held by corporate bodies, or even, by 1794, women (Fischer 1794: 44). Thornhagh Gurdon’s History of the High Court of Parliament argued that the court leet was originally the most powerful court in the land, and that it was not until the advent of a

42 

F. Dodsworth

national monarchy that the national law and superior courts attained pre-eminence (Gurdon 1731: vol. 2, Preface). Breach of the oaths of loyalty, of fealty, was a felonia, a felony, the most serious offence and root of all other disorder, and a term which ultimately came to stand for all serious offences (Dubber 2005: 19). At the manorial level, the obligations of the free tenants to the lord of the manor, and disputes between tenants, were dealt with at the court baron, one of the principal forms of manorial government. Criminal matters were dealt with at the court leet, which by the late middle ages had taken over from the hundred and tithing courts in the administration of criminal matters within the tithings that fell within the lord’s manor and which was presided over by the steward of the manor (Fischer 1794: 59). Most authorities emphasise that the leet was a court held for the public good or common weal, not the Lord’s personal interest, and it was directed towards the maintenance of the peace and good order (Scroggs 1728: 2–3, 7, 10; Ritson 1809: 1 n*; Roberts 1793: 16); it was also a court of record and thereby the King’s court, with the lord of the manor as the monarch’s officer, unlike the court baron, which was the lord’s court (Ritson 1809: 4; Roberts 1793: 15). One of the central functions of the leet, as we shall see below, was the appointment or election of the constables, who were responsible for much of the day-to-day government of the locality. In terms of the localities themselves, English counties were sub-divided into geographical units based around the concept of the ‘hide’. A hide was, in theory, the amount of land required to sustain a household; above the hide was the tithing, which was ten hides, or in principle a unit of ten households; and above the tithing was the hundred, which was ten tithings or, as the name suggests, one hundred hides (Roberts 1793: 10). The tithing, or tything, was central to the ‘frankpledge’, the system of mutual obligation and surety that governed the maintenance of order. The principle of the frankpledge was one of common responsibility for all those within a tithing: each year the ten ‘families’ of the tithing should elect one head to preside over them all and to enforce their collective responsibility (Roberts 1793: 9). Upon the commission of an offence, the head of the tithing was responsible for ensuring that the offender appeared to answer for their crimes; failure to do so could render the whole tithing financially liable (see also Dubber 2005: 9–10). This provided a powerful incentive

  Masterless Men: Patriarchy Challenged, c. 1570–1670 

43

for the tithing in general, and the head of the tithing in particular, to police their members and ensure adherence to the law. So important was this system of mutual obligation that Roberts (1793: 9–10) suggests that membership of a tithing was compulsory and anyone who was not attached to a tithing was outlawed. Thus everyone was ‘linked together by one great chain that pervaded all parts of the kingdom; every individual inhabitant, and every combination of inhabitants, being under penal obligations to stand pledges of the personal security and property of their fellow citizens and countrymen’ (Roberts 1793: 10). The invocation of the ‘great chain of being’ here, linking the hierarchical system of government to the idea of a natural hierarchical order, is no doubt deliberate; we must also, of course, recognise that this account was produced in the eighteenth century with a distinct contextual purpose (one we shall encounter in Chap. 5). Nevertheless, this captures the sense of a system of mutual surveillance amongst families. Indeed, Bauman (1987: 39–40) sees this as just one aspect of a system of close communal observation in which order and security were maintained through a dense network of social surveillance. Although Bauman perhaps underplays the hierarchical nature of the system, we know that in London as many as one in ten householders held local office at any one point in time ‘spreading common identities through a stake in the parish, ward, and city’ and people fulfilled a number of different governmental roles over the years (Griffiths 2008: 29, 293). In fact, the system of frankpledge was just one element in a widespread, explicitly hierarchical system of obligation and (often mutual) surveillance which subordinated wives, children, servants, and apprentices to their masters, just as their masters were subordinate to their lords. The communal structure of society, with the sub-division of houses into separate, private rooms becoming popular only in the early modern period itself, meant that daily life was often lived under the almost constant gaze of others; the quest for privacy was a constant battle, albeit one that was gradually abetted in this period through the growing material separation of different areas in the houses of the wealthy, with stairs dedicated to domestic servants and separate sleeping quarters for servants supplanting the practice of sleeping in the principal rooms or even at the foot of the master’s bed (Vickery 2008: 150). In fact, the records of medieval and early modern prosecutions for

44 

F. Dodsworth

bastardy, fornication, and adultery demonstrate that people found an enormous variety of creative ways through which to, at least temporarily, escape that surveillance (see Dabhoiwala 2012 and Ingram 1987 throughout). Nevertheless, this was a mode of governmentality that sought to fix location and identity, with sumptuary laws requiring the wearing of particular dress appropriate to one’s calling, station, or allegiance and passports required for travel between one master and place of work and another (Beier 1985: 9; Dodsworth 2007; Hunt 1996). I do not think it would be misleading to follow Markus Dubber (2005) in terming this system of ‘policing’, in the broadest sense, a mode of governmentality that was fundamentally patriarchal in nature. This was a governmentality with its roots in Roman law, where the paterfamilias exercised an enormous degree of power over the familia, with the duty to maintain the mund, that is, to maintain the peace but also thereby to provide security (Dubber 2005: xiii). The ‘family’ in this sense was much more than the nuclear family (which tended to be the standard unit amongst the poor); for middling and wealthier families, it included the entire household, including live-in servants and associated workers or resident apprentices, and the master and mistress of the house were not only supposed to act in loco parentis but they were also defined as part of the ‘family’ in law (Ingram 1987: 126–127; Tadmor 1996). In the patriarchal family, the male head of the household ‘held property not only in his land and his animals, but in his wife and his children as well’; although women were not legally defined as ‘chattels’, the legal restrictions they faced ‘rendered them, for all intents and purposes, the property of their husbands’ and under the law of couverture married women had no separate legal existence (although in practice this was somewhat qualified) (Kent 1999: 6, 7–9). Throughout the early medieval period, expansionist monarchs increasingly sought to extend the concept of the household over the entire realm, claiming the status of head of the national family and grounding their authority in their ability to maintain the mund, or the King’s peace (Dubber 2005: xiii, 5, 15–16). This concept is in fact the foundation of the notion of the national economy: as Dubber (2005: xiii, 9) reminds us, the Aristotelian division (with which every educated person in the early modern period would have been familiar) was between politics,

  Masterless Men: Patriarchy Challenged, c. 1570–1670 

45

self-­government by equals, and economics, i.e. government of the household by an authority figure; economy meant, in origin, the government of the household. The power enjoyed by the householder was considerable and certainly allowed the corporeal disciplining of the subordinate members of the household, provided it was done for the general welfare, but it also involved a duty to protect the household from external threats and to govern it for the common good. For Norbert Elias (2000), the monarchical monopolisation of legitimate force was one of the central drivers of the civilising process, and it might be possible to identify that process in action here. Dubber (2005: 36–46), without reference to Elias, explores the impact that the absorption of the ‘micro’ households of lords and masters into the ‘macro’ household of the monarch might have had in terms of limitations on the disciplinary authority, and perhaps disciplinary excess, of the micro householders (42–43  in particular). However, the monopolisation of power by the monarchy was certainly an ambivalent process in Burkitt’s (1996) terms, because not only did it concentrate power in the hands of particular individuals and enable them to mobilise large forces against other consolidated monarchies, perhaps creating more destructive inter-­ territorial wars, but it was also a process that was accompanied by fierce military contest within territories and emergent states, with all the social dislocation and strife associated with that. These conflicts initially took place as contests for control over particular territories, essentially being contests for power within them, between kings and nobles and between rival monarchs. In England in particular this led to a significant number of civil wars and rebellions, the most enduring being those between Stephen and Matilda (1135–1154) and the Wars of the Roses (1455–1485). Ultimately, however, there were also conflicts over how to rule these territories, with disputes over rights and powers, and by the sixteenth-century confessional alignment, which were perhaps more deadly and disruptive than earlier battles over succession. In the case of England, these two elements were combined in the disastrous conflicts of the seventeenth century: fears of Charles I’s tendencies towards absolutism were mixed with anxieties about his sympathy for Catholicism, the two being commonly caricatured in England as natural bedfellows. These concerns were a direct source of the Civil Wars of 1641–1651 and the

46 

F. Dodsworth

wider War of the Three Kingdoms (1639–1651). The rise of absolutism at European courts, which Elias sees as central to the monopolisation of force and successful pacification of European societies, was in the English case instrumental in the violence and social chaos of the 1630s and 1640s, which so haunted successive generations. In this sense, it was, I will argue, central to the civilising process, but as a destabilising force that caused a reaction to the disorder created, and ultimately as the source of the location of power in the Crown as state rather than monarch. We shall return to this below. What is important at this juncture, however, is that as well as coming under political and later military assault at the level of the monarchy, the patriarchal principle of government was already coming under stress from below as the feudal system itself became subject to a range of radical challenges that undermined the whole patriarchal principle of ordering. Demographic and economic transformation, particularly population growth, changes to the agricultural economy and land use, led to the breakdown of the direct supervisory relationships of patriarchal government and the emergence of a class of ‘masterless men’, who were not tied to any master through service, apprenticeship, or locality and were thereby outside the established system of social discipline altogether: ‘If the ideal was the patriarchal household, they had no part in it, and for that reason they were considered pariahs’ (Bauman 1987: 38–50; Beier 1985: 51). These ‘vagrants’ and ‘vagabonds’, literally in medieval law those in breach of their manorial ties, were a source of great public anxiety and surrounded by a sense of threat to the wider social order (Beier 1985: 3). Vagrancy legislation first emerged in 1383 following the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, and subsequent legislation was closely associated with rebellions and conspiracies, so there was a strong and immediate link between the threat of vagrancy and an existential threat to the political order, with an emerging sense that vagrants and vagabonds formed a particular social grouping, a class to themselves ‘who are all of a kin, and yet know no kindred, no house or home, no law but their sensual lust’ (Beier 1985: 7, 12–13, quotation at 51). Rapidly increasing numbers of vagrants and vagabonds in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries led to the development of a range of governmental solutions that were to have long-term importance for the government of security and

  Masterless Men: Patriarchy Challenged, c. 1570–1670 

47

state power (Beier 1985: 12, 146–170). The security of the entire social order, as well as the safety of particular individuals, seemed to depend on controlling this problem. The whole problem of vagrancy was ‘the policing of persons without settled ties’, which meant that the existing mechanisms of control, which were based on discipline and surveillance by one’s master, were by definition inoperable in this case; even locating vagrants in their home parish, the ultimate source of responsibility for them, could be problematic (Beier 1985: 146). However, this was ultimately the best that could be achieved and took place alongside a wider shift in the nature of the tithing, from a unit of land based around ten households to a straightforward unit of land as part of a civil parish (sometimes still governed by the manorial courts). By the early modern period, then, the unit of communal responsibility had become the parish, and the ‘tythingman’, sometimes known as the ‘headborough’, who was the responsible head of the tithing as a unit of territory, had become generally known as the ‘parish’ or ‘petty’ constable. The term ‘constable’ itself was adapted from the role of high constable, the officer responsible for governing the hundred (an area of ten tithings), which antiquarians traced to the comes stabuli of the eastern Roman Empire (Rawlings 2002: 34–35; Ritson 1791: xv). There was no historic connection between these offices, but the term ‘constable’ seems to have become synonymous with the maintenance of order in the community and so this term was deployed for roles which were seen to have comparable purposes. It was on such officers that the responsibility for the control of vagrancy, and thus the security of the social order, frequently fell. Parish constables could come to office by a variety of means. Gardiner’s handbook for constables, The Compleat Constable, repeatedly reworked over the eighteenth century, noted that ‘High Constables are by Appointment of the Justices, and Petty Constables elected by the People’, usually at the court leet, or sometimes the office was simply rotated amongst eligible householders of the area, who usually held office for one year; this, however, could cause problems, because if the office was rotated amongst the principal properties of the area ‘so it may fall upon a Woman (which is not sufferable)’ (Gardiner 1710: 7–8). Constabulary service, then, was a specifically male office: ‘The party chosen, as hee must bee a

48 

F. Dodsworth

lay person, so hee must bee a lay man, not a Lay-woman, & therefore a widowe or maid, albeit she keep house of her selfe, and dwell in a house whose owner hath been used to serve in this office, is not to be chosen to this Office’ (Sheppard 1651: sig A3). Nor, in this patriarchal system, should it be just any man, but a man of property and significance, free from the ties of work and necessity or obligation to others. As early as 1610, Francis Bacon had argued that petty constables ought to come from ‘the better sort’ of residents of the town, while the high constable ought to be from ‘the ablest of freeholders, and the most substantial sort of yeomen’ (cited in Dodsworth 2004: 210). In 1630 the King stipulated that constables were to be ‘fit men’, or idoneus homo, that is to say that the constable was to be compos mentis, of sound mind, sound body, of mature age but not senile, he must understand the nature of his office, and he ‘must bee fit for his honestie, that he may be likely to execute his office truely without ill affection or partiality, and therefore it seemes a scandalous liver, a malicious and contentious man cannot bee a fit man’ (cited in Dodsworth 2007: 39). Women, children, idiots, and old men were grouped together as specifically excluded in their unfitness, as was anyone ‘in any man’s livery’ (Dodsworth 2007: 38–39). In general, anything that connoted dependency on others was suspect, because it rendered the constable liable to partiality or manipulation in the conduct of his office: as William Sheppard put it in his handbooks for constables written in the 1640s and 1650s ‘Hee must bee fit for his abilitie of Body and Estate. And therefore an old, weake, sick, or otherwise, impotent man; or a poore needy man that lives only by his labour, cannot bee a fit man’, for the poor, as Gardiner put it, were not only ‘less able to attend this Office, their Necessity requiring them to maintain their own Trade and Employment’, but also they were either ‘ignorant what they may and should do, or are over-awed by their richer Neighbours, so as for fear to balk their Duties’ (cited in Dodsworth 2007: 40). It is notable that in Gardiner’s later text The Compleat Constable, a distinction was made between those who were simply too busy to undertake the office because of their profession, such as doctors and lawyers, who are ‘to be otherwise so much imployed, as not to be at leisure to attend upon this Office’, and those disqualified by their ‘necessity’ itself, which constitutes a distinct condition (Gardiner 1710: 7). Only the propertied gentleman was

  Masterless Men: Patriarchy Challenged, c. 1570–1670 

49

configured as being independent enough to serve the common good without partiality or obligation to his neighbours or superiors. In practice Griffiths (2008: 293, 296–297) found that most constables serving in early modern London were in the top third of the income bracket and that service in the offices of local government was a significant way for ‘middling men’ to gain social advancement. There was no payment for service in the office (although other officers, such as beadles and marshals, were paid), and I have argued that serving as a constable was configured as a public duty in a neo-classical sense, and to some extent its performance could thereby be a mark of social status (Dodsworth 2004, 2007). It was the propertied independence of the constable that gave him the time to devote his energies to what was an unpaid role; his physical proximity but emotional and financial independence from the social inferiors he was policing was supposed to give him enough knowledge to effectively govern the territory, but enough authority and courage to govern people he would be used to dealing with as master or patron and from whom he might expect a degree of respect and obedience, due to their dependence on him. All this, it was argued, enabled the propertied man to serve the common good with impartiality: William Sheppard defined the duty as service to the commonwealth, a term that not only implied service to the new political regime of the 1650s but more generally signified service in the name of the common good, configured in terms of neo-classical conceptions of public service (Dodsworth 2004, 2007: 37). As the late eighteenth-century antiquarian Joseph Ritson (1791: 3–4) put it in his handbook for constables ‘the commonwealth consists in the well-ordering of particular towns, and order will not be well observed in them but where the officers are idonei’, that is, ‘fit men’ for the execution of that duty. Security and good order, then, were fundamentally linked to particular masculine qualities presumed to be inherent in the propertied men of society. The constable was generally responsible for ensuring good order and keeping the King’s peace, which included the relatively infrequent responsibility to raise a hue and cry in the case of any felonious crime and to pursue any such offenders but also to maintain the nightly watch and to establish good order in the community, dealing with the very common issues of offences against the public peace as they related to morality and

50 

F. Dodsworth

good order. Griffiths (2008: 365–367) suggests that minor offences, largely against the common peace, formed more than 90% of offending in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Such offences often had no particular victim but were offences that were perceived to threaten or disrupt the security of the community in a variety of ways. Equally important was the practical security of the community, which was to be assured by complete knowledge of all its inhabitants and movement within it. The instruction books for constables and other parochial officers, which instructed temporary office holders how to discharge their duties, told officers to record the names, habitations, and trade of all newcomers to the area, to watch out for and investigate immoral behaviour and drunkenness, and to be particularly cautious around the presence of strangers in the streets at night (Dodsworth 2007). This, it appears, was an instruction that was actually carried out, with regular counts of ‘strangers’ being conducted in early modern London by constables and other officers (Griffiths 2008: 406–408). As Griffiths (2008: 332–342) reminds us, the night was regarded as a time of innate risk and threat, one governed by a curfew. ‘Nightwalking’ was a specific offence: the curfew bells rang in London at nine o’clock in the evening, and persons out after that time without a plausible and reasonable explanation for their presence, such as work, or some kind of urgent need, might find themselves liable to being taken up by the watch. It does seem, however, that this was applied more stringently to the lower classes rather than the better-off residents (335–336). If control of illicit movement at night focused on the nature of the activity as much as the person committing it, control of illicit movement during the day focused very much on the person, with the regulation of vagrancy a central part of this work. The sixth edition of Gardiner’s The Compleat Constable informed its readers that any man or woman over the age of seven years, whether married or unmarried ‘that wander from their usual place of Abode, every where begging, or if they do not beg, if they wander and loiter abroad, without a lawful Passport, and give no good Account of their Travel’ could be detained under the vagrancy laws. Particular attention was to be directed to ‘All Jugglers (or slight of Hand Artists, pretending to do Wonders, by Vertue of Hocus Pocus, or the like) Tinkers, Pedlers, Petty Chapmen, Glass-men, especially if they be not

  Masterless Men: Patriarchy Challenged, c. 1570–1670 

51

well known, or have not a sufficient Testimonial’ or ‘All Labourers which wander abroad out of their respective Parishes, and refuse to work for Wages reasonably taxed, having no Livelihood otherwise to maintain themselves, and such as go with general Passports not directed from Parish to Parish’ (Gardiner 1724: 28). Vagrancy was a threat precisely because it undermined the ways in which security was established: through complete knowledge and regulation of the nature and activity of all people in the area. This was a mode of governmentality in which the security of the body politic was understood to depend upon the capacity to fix location, identity, and behaviour according to principles established by those in positions of social authority, with the presumption that order and security depended upon this fixity. Indeed, Griffiths (2008: 402) records that in 1540 the City of London authorities were still optimistic that they could record the names of every vagrant in London in one book, an optimism that dissipated as the problem increased in succeeding years. Mitchell Dean (1999: 93–94), referring to the later concept of ‘police’, terms such approaches to government ‘dispositional’, meaning that ‘the art of government concerns the proper distribution of all its objects (households, persons, things) and the fostering of circulation between them … In this map of the governed field there is a tension between stasis and movement, between ensuring proper relations and conduct of the various ranks of persons, and facilitating and regulating the various flows of money and of communication between them’. This was a vision of government in which the practice of government was immanent to, and constitutive of, the body politic itself (Dean and Hindess 1998: 3–6). The constitution of that body politic, or of the ‘community’, in contemporary terms the communitas, a term implying a sense of ‘oneness’, was by nature an exclusionary process, one that was active in the constitution of that sense of identity and in the establishment of the authority of the officers who were active in its creation (Hindle 1996). Of course, contemporaries did not term this system of government ‘police’, but the relationship between the idea of ‘police’ and the practice of policing through the parochial authorities in early modern England is more than an analogy, a degree of continuity being secured by the ­continuing use of the office of constable as the connecting principle and

52 

F. Dodsworth

role. This connection was retrospectively configured (White 1999: 87–100) when later reformers began using the term ‘police’ to recommend changes to the government of order in late eighteenth-century London and Westminster by drawing inspiration from the more unified French model. They freely used the French term ‘police’ not only for the new systematised form that they were proposing but also as a description of the existing system of civil government, including the justices of the peace, constables, beadles, watchmen, churchwardens, and all aspects of the administration of order (Dodsworth 2008: 588–594; Chap. 4). That this was undoubtedly a rhetorical move to make the proposed reforms appear more acceptable and appear to be an adjustment in a system that already existed, rather than an innovation, does not make the link between the idea of ‘police’ and the practice of civil government in early modern England illegitimate. Of course, the distinction between the ‘old police’ and the ‘new police’ of the industrial age was also one of structure, with a direct, participatory mode of government being replaced by a more distanced form of surveillance delivered by specialists in the area (Bauman 1987: 38–50). However, as recent historical research makes clear, the emergence of the specialist in order and protection did not emerge all of a sudden in 1829 with the birth of the Metropolitan Police as a force to govern the industrial proletariat; as we shall see, it was a long and gradual process that developed in fits and starts between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries (Beattie 2001, 2012; Griffiths 2008; Paley 1989; Reynolds 1998). In fact, it was the emergence of the problem of vagrancy that was one crucial element in driving the emergence of these specialists in security. We have not yet, then, quite encountered the full mode of ‘police’ government that we shall see emerging in Chaps. 4 and 5, because its concerns with the social aggregates that would later become understood as ‘population’ are still in the process of development, and there remains more concern with maintaining fixity than fostering and managing free flows. In many respects this mode of patriarchal government through the vestry and officers of the civil parish embodied the ‘pastoral’ principle of government identified by Michel Foucault (1988: 57–85) in which it was the duty of the lord or master as shepherd to ensure all his dependents were well organised for their own benefit. This was direct control over the

  Masterless Men: Patriarchy Challenged, c. 1570–1670 

53

‘flock’, knowing the soul and needs of each member: ‘the tie with the shepherd is an individual one. It is a personal submission to him. His will is done, not because it is consistent with the law … but, principally, because it is his will’ (Foucault 1988: 69). In the English context, this would perhaps be something of an exaggeration, because, as we have seen, the legitimacy of rule through the manor in the case of the court leet was framed explicitly in terms of the common good, not the will of the master. Nevertheless, the hierarchical principle of submission to the wisdom and authority of the head of the household was significant, and in many respects this concept grew in importance as pastoral control over the flock was extended beyond the households of the master or gentleman to the grand ‘national’ household of the monarchy controlling the entire political edifice. This was a condition of the emergence of the modern police power, which combined this individualising and totalising government of flock and territory and became the central modern technique of government of the territory and the subjects within it (Foucault 1988, 1991). The role of the state, where it existed, was a grand extension of this dependence-forming patronage: the system of government was not conceived of as one split between a ‘centre’ and the ‘localities’, a concept that is largely of nineteenth-century construction but was one in which there was a continuous linkage between the monarch and his (or occasionally her) officers in the counties, the lord lieutenants and sheriffs, the justices of the peace, judges and other legal officers (Clark 2000: 164–200; Innes 2002). At this stage, however, when the problem of masterless men was just emerging, responsibility fell into the hands of local authority, which was largely a personification of the master–subject system: the officers of the ‘old police’ or local authority in all its forms— constable, justice of the peace (JP), headborough, churchwarden, and so forth—were local notables and landowners, employers, and patrons, acting upon the distribution and generation of wealth, the administration of justice (including the discretional power over life and death), and the health and well-being of the population. They were administering areas in which they owned property and the fortunes of those whose lives and livelihood were often literally dependent upon their magnanimity and patronage. A surge in the number of masterless men was not, then, just an unsightly social problem, a threat to specific individuals who might be

54 

F. Dodsworth

subject to their depredations, or a sign that the system was not serving the common good as it claimed, it was a challenge to the principles of hierarchy, subordination, and authority themselves. In essence it was a challenge to a particular form of patriarchy. Of course, vagrancy was not a problem that simply imposed itself on society. Vagrancy was certainly a real and material phenomenon, and there is little doubt that contemporaries could not have failed to notice the large numbers of new and unattached arrivals in their towns and cities as numbers swelled in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Nevertheless, the fact of being unattached to a master only constitutes a problem in a society in which lack of attachment is already defined as illicit. Ultimately, in order to be established as a governmental problem, and for a solution to be found, it needed to be named, configured, and problematised, which is exactly what a range of social commentators did: the playwright Thomas Dekker sought to name the different ‘criminal tribes’ and to teach his readers to ‘Read and learn, read and loathe’ them (Griffiths 2008: 4). We can see here a pattern of differentiation, a division being established between what we would later come to call ‘civil’ and ‘uncivil’ society (Loader and Walker 2007), a phenomenon central to the distancing of the propertied from the common people that drove the reform of popular culture, a culture in which the propertied had previously been enthusiastic participants (Burke 2009). Such practices of conceptual differentiation were no doubt central to the ‘collective self-fashioning’ involved in the formation of group identities for those coming to define themselves as ‘civilised’ or, in the language of the later seventeenth century, ‘polite’ (Arditi 1998; Carter 2001). Changing ways of marking superiority and inferiority are associated by Arditi with changes in the ‘infrastructure of social relations’, perhaps in this case with an understanding that identities and social roles were becoming less fixed and that it was thereby important to fix one’s own (superior) place as clearly as possible. As part of this process, a large ‘rogue literature’ emerged that sought to give the reader insight into the secret language or ‘cant’ used by vagrants and rogues, while others drew attention to the specific practices of tricksters, sharpers, robbers, and so on and the places they liked to carry out their depredations. In this sense an image of a ‘criminal underworld’ was produced. Beier’s (1985: 123–145) research

  Masterless Men: Patriarchy Challenged, c. 1570–1670 

55

suggests that much of this appears to have been an exaggeration, but what is important is the extent to which it shaped public perceptions and created a ‘discursive regularity’ (Foucault 1972) that functioned to justify controlling interventions. Drawing on the work of Susan Walby (1990), we might identify in this a shift from private to public patriarchy, that is, a shift from direct government through personal relationships within the household to a form of patriarchy that is asserted through discourses which, in the absence of direct means of control, act to clarify the subordinate status of the dominated party (in Walby’s work, women, but here both women and subordinate men) and to legitimise particular governmental responses to them. This pronounced and deliberate social differentiation and distancing, which appears to have increased around 1600 (Griffiths 2008: 32), was fundamental to the effort to construct and stigmatise a distinct social group as a threat, an internal enemy that it was not only just but necessary to control, because of the threat they posed to the wider social order. It was accompanied by the construction of nostalgia for an imagined stable past in which change was unusual, with the era before the upheavals of the Reformation imagined as centuries of stability (Griffiths 2008: 2–5).

Creative Responses: Security Specialists Attempts to combat the threat posed by masterlessness were various, ranging from the passage of new laws to attempts to invigorate and extend the mechanisms of supervision, to new institutional solutions. It is worth noting that much of the apparatus of corporeal punishment that we associate with medieval England and ‘traditions’ of ancient, barbaric practice were actually innovations in the early modern period, either introduced or extended precisely in order to combat the problems of vagrancy and vagabondage. The stocks, for example, were not new, but in 1351 they were ordered to be built in every town to hold runaway servants and labourers; whipping was introduced as a punishment for vagrancy in 1531; ear boring with a hot iron and branding appear to have come into practice in 1571 and 1604, respectively (Beier 1985: 159–160). It is also worth noting that such punishments tended to be inflicted on people in

56 

F. Dodsworth

the lowest positions in society, not on householders (Dubber 2005: 38). What we tend to imagine as ‘medieval’ punishment was, then, extended in this period of crisis rather than diminished. There were also a range of what Beier (1985: 152) calls ‘inventions of absolutism’: the use of provost marshals, originally introduced to discipline the military, as a form of discipline for civilians, and ultimately, against vagrants. As late as 1616 the City of London and six surrounding counties were ordered by proclamation to appoint provost marshals to round up masterless men, and they were clearly still in use in the counties in the 1630s (Beier 1985: 152–153). This is interesting in two senses: first, because it gives some support to the Eliasian idea of a link between the development of absolutism and civilising processes and, second, because it offers some support to Mark Neocleous’ (2014) argument that the police power is fundamentally entwined with the development of military power. The use of corporeal punishments like those noted above was legitimised by the introduction of a wide range of Acts of Parliament to deal with vagrancy, which gave magistrates (the justices of the peace) great powers to dispense summary justice and which introduced or extended a wide range of controls on movement with the purpose of ensuring the security of society from the masterless and rootless threat posed by the vagrant. Summary punishment for vagrants was introduced in 1495 under Henry VII (again, a link to absolutism), and this was extended in 1572 and reaffirmed in 1597 and 1610 (Beier 1985: 156). The passport was introduced by a statue of 1388 as a means of regulating labour movement in the wake of the Black Death, which had done so much to break down the stranglehold of the feudal system on labour and wages; Acts of 1531, 1563, and 1572 extended their use (Beier 1985: 154). The principles of testimonial and the holding of paperwork were further embedded by the Poor Law of 1536, which required servants to carry testimonials stating the date of their departure from service, and the Statute of Artificers of 1563, which rendered those travelling without passports liable to prosecution for vagrancy; convicted vagrants had, under a statute of 1597, to carry papers certifying their place of birth or last residence and their destination (Beier 1985: 154). Vagrants were also forced to wear badges denoting whether they were an authorised or convicted vagrant beggar. All of this was consolidated in the Poor Law of 1601.

  Masterless Men: Patriarchy Challenged, c. 1570–1670 

57

Further methods of vagrant control included the instigation of nationwide searches for vagrants, to be conducted by all constables. Such searches were commissioned by the Vagrancy Act of 1495, by proclamations in 1511 and 1530, by the Poor Law of 1536, and a new act in 1610, which established twice-yearly searches, the results of which were to be reported at the petty sessions of the justices of the peace; there were also major national searches for vagrants in 1569–1572 and 1631–1639 during times of intense political crisis (Beier 1985: 155–156). The control of vagrancy was also central to the long history of confinement, which historians now confidently place in a much longer trajectory than that proposed by Michel Foucault (1977) in Discipline and Punish (see Deveraux and Griffiths 2004; Gorski 2003; Spierenburg 1984, 2012). Beier (1985: 161) notes that the vagrancy laws of 1383 and 1388 saw the use of gaol as a sentence, as did the Acts of 1576 and 1597, which we have encountered above; loss of freedom in this context could also involve compulsory labour or impressment into military service. Most important in this regard, however, was the creation of Bridewell, the former royal palace-turned-hospital-turned-prison that primarily dealt with the discipline and reformation of vagrants and the immoral. Bridewell, the first ‘house of correction’, was to provide reformatory discipline to the idle, the dissolute, the vicious, or the masterless; vagrants, prostitutes, and moral offenders were its principal occupants. Its combination of character-forming punishment and work-driven discipline made it a kind of institutional substitute for the absent master. Bridewell was one of five ‘hospitals’ in the old sense that focused on the rescue and succour of the poor and needy: ‘Orphans and urchins were sheltered and schooled in Christ’s; Bethlem took the insane; St Thomas’s and St Bartholomew’s cared for the sick; while Bridewell’s particular province was to curb vagrancy and vice’ (Griffiths 2008: 12). Bridewell was important, as Beier (1985: 165–169) points out, because it sought to reform the character of the vagrant or the dissolute by putting them to work; in this sense it might be seen as representing the birth of the modern disciplinary institution in the sense intended by Foucault (1977), but much earlier than he imagined, with its focus on the precise regulation of the soul through discipline. It is worth noting, however, that if the ­institution was novel (and it is easy to forget that Discipline and Punish

58 

F. Dodsworth

was essentially a story about the technology of disciplinary institutions, not discipline in general), the principle was not: the church courts were not built on the model of punishment but were themselves designed ‘to reform the culprit, and [prosecutions] were ostensibly undertaken “for the soul’s health” (pro salute animae)’ (Ingram 1987: 3). Nevertheless, Bridewell certainly constituted a distinctive reformatory technology, rather different from the communal discipline and shaming rituals of the church courts, with their emphasis on being cast out of the community. This new model was so successful that it was copied throughout England and, indeed, on the Continent, in the form the Tuchthuis or Rasp House in Amsterdam (Gorski 2003: 63–64; Innes 1987). Bridewell was chartered in 1553, and its role and powers, specified in 1555–1556, made clear that it was established ‘to get rid of “the great number” of vagrants and “valiant beggars”’ (Griffiths 2008: 16). What is significant about Bridewell, however, is not only its form, with its emphasis on moral reformation, but its relationship to the wider concept of Reformation, in which it was to play a key role. Philip Gorski (2003) has emphasised the extent to which the ‘disciplinary revolution’ emerged out of the ‘confessionalisation’ of Europe during the reformation and in particular out of the influence of Calvinism, with its emphasis on self-­ discipline, but more importantly its emphasis on disciplina, on the conformity of the entire body of the church and society with Christian law. The aim was ‘not so much to punish individual sinners as to expunge sin from the Christian community’, which would then stand as witness to God’s will and majesty; the role of the ‘godly magistrate’ was ‘to protect the true religion and impose Christian discipline on the community as a whole’ (Gorski 2003: 20–21, quotations at 21). Gerhard Oestreich (1982: 6), in contrast, argues that the concept of disciplina became current in northern Europe with the recovery of Roman political and moral values through the spread of humanism and particularly the adoption of Rome as an analogical model for the larger states of the early modern period. In fact, we do not really need to choose between these explanations: Foucault’s own work on the development of ‘modern governmentality’ recognised the extent to which the government ‘of all and of each’ melded classical and Christian elements, and Gorski recognises that the Calvinist emphasis on social discipling involved the implementation and

  Masterless Men: Patriarchy Challenged, c. 1570–1670 

59

extension of social reform programmes developed by Renaissance humanists (Foucault 1988; Gorski 2003: 22). Gorski (2003: 24–25) argues that it was precisely during the Reformation that these two governmental tendencies intersected in the marriage of princely and pastoral power in the formation of the modern state, a subject he suggests that Foucault shied away from addressing because it undermined his earlier assertion that disciplinary power emerged during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. In fact, however, more recent publications have demonstrated that Foucault did explore this subject in his lectures, but not in published work (Foucault 2009: 227–253). Jonathan Scott (2004: x) is perhaps clearest in his argument that when humanism came to England, it did so as a ‘moral philosophy applied in the practical context of an attempted radical reformation of manners’ (Scott 2004: x). Whether or not one accepts the novelty of this principle, or the argument that discipline was intensified during the ‘disciplinary revolution’, rather than simply taking a new form through technologies of distanced surveillance and reformation (there were, after all, powerful mechanisms of surveillance and discipline in operation in the medieval world), we can nevertheless agree with Gorski that the Reformation had a decisive impact on the forms that social disciplining took in the early modern period. Gorksi is clearly correct to identify the emergence of new ‘material and technological’ mechanisms for the reproduction of social and political order, and these were being increasingly incorporated into the arsenal of the state and used for the mobilisation of political power and domination that was predicated on the creation of a more disciplined polity; it is also clear that, as Gorski notes, the key drivers in these reforms were ‘Protestant clerics and reformist magistrates’ (Gorski 2003: xvi). This certainly seems to have been the case with Bridewell, which Griffiths (2008: 13) describes as being pushed by ‘“hot” protestants and humanists’ under the principal influence of the soon-to-be-martyred Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London. Griffiths (2008: 14) aligns the development of Bridewell with the ‘heroic’ phase of Protestantism and notes that its creation was ‘soaked with religious rhetoric and reasoning’, with the institution praised as being ‘holy’ and a ‘blessed work of God’. This tradition continued for more than a century, with Bridewell featuring in Burnet’s History of the Reformation (itself a highly political work and rebuttal of a Catholic polemic against

60 

F. Dodsworth

the Anglican church), with Burnet describing the institution as one of the noblest acts in Europe since Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses (Griffiths 2008: 15). Finally, Bridewell was also important in that its role rather usurped that of the church courts, which had been criticised by reformist Puritans as ‘relics of the popish past, palpable signs of a church “but halfly reformed”’ and inadequate as mechanisms of moral reformation, something we will see to be significant in the following chapter (Griffiths 2008: 13–14; Ingram 1987: 4). The church courts were abolished during the Commonwealth period, and although they were reinstated at the Restoration in 1660, they never regained their former authority, in part, Dabhoiwala suggests, because the principle of the Toleration Act of 1689 and the acceptance of religious diversity ‘destroyed the theoretical foundations of sexual discipline. Sexual toleration grew out of religious toleration’ and the increasing treatment of morality as a private rather than a public matter (Dabhoiwala 2012: 80–140, quotation at 80). This is not to say that there was no continuing concern with the policing of sexual morality: the church courts continued to exercise this function in rural areas well into the eighteenth century, but in the cities it increasingly took a distinct form, secular in structure if not in impetus, located principally in the parish, and driven as much by voluntary energies as institutional structures, as we shall see in Chap. 3 (Dabhoiwala 2012: 40; Ingram 1987: 372–373). All of these measures represented very significant transformations in the mechanisms of social control, but from the perspective of the genealogy of security perhaps the most significant were the developments in policing that were focused on the problem of vagrancy and coping with ‘masterless men’, without ties to patriarchal discipline. It is clear from the work of Griffiths (2008: 294–295) that the practice of constables paying deputies to serve in their stead was already widespread in late sixteenth-­ century London. Griffiths (2008: 295, 297–298) believes that there were almost certainly groups of artisans who made a living as stand-in constables, serving year upon year in the stead of those who could afford the fines to avoid the duty, and there were certainly officers who served in various policing roles, such as beadle, for more than a decade, sometimes as long as two. The City of London was split into 242 precincts, each

  Masterless Men: Patriarchy Challenged, c. 1570–1670 

61

with its own constable, and each ward had a beadle, and by 1643 there were on top of that more than 500 watchmen, so that London was policed by almost 800 men (Griffiths 2008: 303–304). For the policing of the daytime, there were a significant number of ‘warders’ who guarded each ward, and their numbers were increased in order to deal with vagrants: in the turbulent 1640s, there are between 20 and 80 warders recorded for each ward (Griffiths 2008: 314). In addition to the established peace officers, there were also special officers appointed at various times to assist in the capture of vagrants, and payment of informers and rewards for information were already in use in the early seventeenth century (Griffiths 2008: 308–311). Constables were responsible for checking the watch, ensuring they were doing their duty and keeping records of the encounters with suspicious individuals; they also directed the ‘searches’ into vice and vagrancy, picking up people not in service or trade (Griffiths 2008: 308). There was increasing organisation to this system, with a surveyor working with the constables to co-ordinate policing in the wards, which were generally overseen by the marshals, who crossed the city supervising the other officers. A wide range of orders were passed relating to policing, with information compiled and circulated about measures to deal with the disorderly poor and for ‘abolishing of rogues and masterless men’; and printers printed large numbers of passes for sending vagrants back to their parish of origin (Griffiths 2008: 305–306, 15–16). It is the growth of information and paperwork that is probably the most significant development in the policing of early modern London. Long before the Metropolitan Police were established in 1829, bringing a similar level of organisation to Middlesex and Westminster (see Chap. 5), and even before the great innovations produced by the Bow Street Runners under John and Henry Fielding in the second half of the eighteenth century (see Chap. 4), an enormous range of records was being kept relating to all aspects of social life in the City of London. These records were compiled by officers conducting house-to-house enquiries as well as through the records of courts and institutions; they were also circulated between parishes, wards, and institutions, and between London and Westminster. Such records were increasingly often indexed and

62 

F. Dodsworth

ordered in ways that fitted them for daily use. Searches were conducted regularly (sometimes monthly) and information gathering became a settled feature of governmental life, generating a ‘paper state’ that recorded everything from the numbers of alehouses and fencing schools to the names of all householders and numbers of the poor, with particular concern with new arrivals and strangers to London. Long before Patrick Colquhoun made it central to his notion of a ‘preventive police’ (see Chap. 4), the City were also keeping records of pawnbrokers and requiring them to keep paper records of all their transactions in order to put a stop to the receiving of stolen goods. Parishes also used the archives of government and both purchased copies of statutes or copied them in order to ensure the efficient and accurate conduct of policy in their day-­ to-­day business (Griffiths 2008: 400–432).

The Transformation of Poverty If the emergence of large numbers of ‘masterless men’ represented a challenge to the model of governmentality dominated by the idea of the patriarchal household and ushered in new conceptions of poverty as a social problem rather than an opportunity for the performance of Christian charity, the new measures introduced to deal with this condition led to yet another transformation of poverty from threat to resource. The general dislocation of the existing system of government during the civil wars was a central element in this process. Not only did the civil wars see the literal destruction of the patriarchal system of the early Stuart era and the decisive rejection of the principle of monarchical-patriarchal absolutism with the civil wars of the 1640s and the republic of the 1650s, but they also saw the abolition of the church courts, which were responsible for the government of public morality. At the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, there was a partial restoration of the old governmental order, but the conditions of the Restoration period were different, with a notably reduced population due to the war, which cost 200,000 lives in England alone in a state with a population of only some 5 million, and significant economic and social change, with economic growth

  Masterless Men: Patriarchy Challenged, c. 1570–1670 

63

replacing the turbulence of the previous decades and higher wages and rising living standards. At the same time, there was a developing recognition of the economic opportunities associated with labour mobility. Indeed, the economic potential of that mobility was combing to be seen as vital to economic growth in an economy that was to some extent throwing off the shackles of direct and detailed regulation of prices, movement, and trades (Hoppit 2000: 338–339). By the late seventeenth century, then, the mobility of poverty was being institutionalised and exploited. There was also a period of slower population growth, economic improvement, and more disposable income for the poor, and improved employment prospects also seem to have meant a pattern of migration over rather shorter distances (Beier 1985: 172). Perhaps most important, however, was a redefinition and formalisation of the idea of ‘settlement’ in new Acts of Parliament in 1662, 1692, and 1697 (Beier 1985: 173–174; Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2012: 43–44, 46). These Acts did not change the idea that each person had a ‘settlement’, that is, a place in a community which was bound to support them in times of need and to which they ought only to appeal, but they did specify the circumstances under which ‘settlement’ could be established, the legal forms required for claiming settlement, and shifted responsibility for decisions and appeals about settlement away from parish officers and onto justices of the peace and the quarter sessions. This often meant parishes being required to take on those that they might previously have disciplined as vagrants, giving them much less need to move around. The 1697 Act also standardised the long-established practice of badging the legitimate poor, marking a clear distinction between the ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ poor in the eyes of the public (Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2012: 46, 49–50). This had two effects: first, it ‘worked to bring the vast majority of both the settled and the migratory poor, including able-bodied adults, more firmly within the system of parish relief ’; second, ‘the charitable and sympathetic could rely on a parish badge to make the distinction between impotent and poor beggars and their “disorderly” brethren’, which perhaps established a new distinction between persons but also probably meant that anxieties about the

64 

F. Dodsworth

masterless and disorderly were focused on a smaller, more easily identifiable group, rather than the poor as a whole (Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2012: 51–52). The final dimension of poor law reform was the revival of the idea of the ‘house of correction’ and its insertion into a new dynamic: a renewed drive for moral reform. The pioneer here was the London Workhouse, instituted in 1698. By the early eighteenth century, the disciplinary institution was so common, being extended throughout the parishes as well as boroughs and larger urban areas, that ‘by the 1720s [houses of correction] rapidly became the second most common form of public building in London, outdone only by parish churches’ (Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2012: 121). The first parish workhouse was established in Enfield in 1719, following which at least 38 further parish workhouses were built, housing some 5000 people; there were 5 in Westminster, at least 20 in Middlesex, and 13 in the City (Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2012: 122). What is important to recognise here, however, is that the explosion of interest in houses of correction was seen very much by contemporaries as one of the principal agents in a renewed drive for moral reformation, the subject that will dominate our next chapter (Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2012: 52). This is not to say that concerns with the mobility of the poor ceased; as we shall see from the following chapters, this remained a concern well into the next century. However, the level of anxiety diminished, and there was an acceptance of the reality of the independence of the poor. The focus thereby shifted away from attempting to fix residence and identity and towards constructing a system of moral and social discipline that accepted and worked with the mobility, liberty, and independence of the governed. The key challenge in this context was how to (re)create ‘civilised’ behaviour in a context in which direct supervision of all and of each was not possible, nor even, perhaps, desirable, and in which there were specific aims to shape social norms according to particular moral principles. In this context the key dynamic was the attempt to square claims to accepting and extending the liberty of the people with a drive to secure that liberty from corruption into licence. The great threat of the eighteenth century, then, was not so much liberty as licence, and security was interlinked with the government of morality.

  Masterless Men: Patriarchy Challenged, c. 1570–1670 

65

References Arditi, J. (1998). A Genealogy of Manners: Transformations of Social Relations in France and England from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries. London: Chicago University Press. Bauman, Z. (1987). Legislators and Interpreters: On Modernity, Post-Modernity and Intellectuals. Cambridge: Polity. Beattie, J. M. (2001). Policing and Punishment in London, 1660–1750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beattie, J. M. (2012). The First English Detectives: The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750–1840. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beier, A. L. (1985). Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560–1640. London: Methuen. Burke, P. (2009). Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (3rd ed.). Farnham: Ashgate. Burkitt, I. (1996). Civilization and Ambivalence. The British Journal of Sociology, 47(1), 135–150. Carter, P. (2001). Men and the Emergence of Polite Society: Britain, 1660–1800. London: Routledge. Clark, J. C. D. (2000). English Society, 1660–1832: Religion, Ideology and Politics During the Ancien Regime. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dabhoiwala, F. (2012). The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution. London: Allen Lane. Dean, M. (1999). Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. London: Sage. Dean, M., & Hindess, B. (1998). Governing Australia: Studies in Contemporary Rationalities of Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Deveraux, S., & Griffiths, P. (Eds.). (2004). Penal Practice and Culture, 1500–1900: Punishing the English. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Dodsworth, F. (2004). ‘Civic’ Police and the Condition of Liberty: The Rationality of Governance in Eighteenth Century England. Social History, 29(2), 199–216. Dodsworth, F. (2007). Masculinity as Governance: Police, Public Service and the Embodiment of Authority, c. 1700–1850. In M. L. McCormack (Ed.), Public Men: Masculinity and Politics in Modern Britain (pp.  33–53). Basingstoke: Palgrave.

66 

F. Dodsworth

Dodsworth, F. (2008). The Idea of Police in Eighteenth-Century England: Discipline, Reformation, Superintendence, c. 1780–1800. Journal of the History of Ideas, 69(4), 583–604. Dubber, M. D. (2005). The Police Power: Patriarchy and the Foundations of American Government. New York: Columbia University Press. Dunn, C. (2013). Stolen Women in Medieval England: Rape, Adduction and Adultery, 1100–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elias, N. (2000). The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Explorations (Revised ed., E. Jephcott, Trans.). Oxford: Blackwell. Fischer, R. B. (1794). A Practical Treatise on Copyhold Tenure, with the Methods of Holding Courts Leet, Courts Baron and Other Courts. London: Butterworth. Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge (A.  Sheridan, Trans.). London: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1988). Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977–1984 (L. D. Kritzman, Ed., A. Sheridan and Others, Trans.). London: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1991). Governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (pp. 87–104). Hemel Hempstead: Harvester. Foucault, M. (2009). Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977–1978 (M.  Senellart, Ed., G.  Burchell, Trans.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gardiner, R. (1710). The Compleat Constable (4th ed.). London: Nutt and Gsoling. Gardiner, R. (1724). The Compleat Constable (6th ed.). London: Nutt and Gsoling. Gauvard, R. (1999). Fear of Crime in Late Medieval France. In B. A. Hanawalt & D.  Wallace (Eds.), Medieval Crime and Social Control (pp.  1–48). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Gorski, P. S. (2003). The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe. London: University of Chicago Press. Griffiths, P. (2008). Lost Londons: Change, Crime and Control in the Capital City, 1550–1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gurdon, T. (1731). The History of the High Court of Parliament, Its Antiquity, Preheminence and Authority; And the History of the Court Baron and Court Leet … (2 vols.). London.

  Masterless Men: Patriarchy Challenged, c. 1570–1670 

67

Hanawalt, B. A. (1998). ‘Of Good and Ill Repute’: Gender and Social Control in Medieval England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hanawalt, B.  A., & Wallace, D. (Eds.). (1999). Medieval Crime and Social Control. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Hindle, S. (1996). Exclusion Crises: Poverty, Migration and Parochial Responsibility in English Rural Communities, c. 1560–1660. Rural History, 7(2), 125–149. Hitchcock, T., & Shoemaker, R. (2012). London Lives: Poverty, Crime and the Making of a Modern City, 1690–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hoppit, J.  (2000). A Land of Liberty? England, 1689–1727. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hunt, A. (1996). Governing the City: Liberalism and Early Modern Modes of Governance. In A. Barry, T. Osborne, & N. Rose (Eds.), Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government. London: UCL Press. Ingram, M. (1987). Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570–1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Innes, J.  (1987). Prisons for the Poor: English Bridewells, 1555–1800. In F. Snyder & D. Hay (Eds.), Labour, Law and Crime: An Historical Perspective (pp. 42–122). London: Routledge. Innes, J. (2002). Changing Perceptions of the State in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries. Journal of Historical Sociology, 15(1), 107–113. Kent, S.  K. (1999). Gender and Power in Britain, 1640–1990. London: Routledge. Kermode, F. (2000). The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction with a New Epilogue. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Loader, I., & Walker, N. (2007). Civilizing Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Muchembled, R. (2012). A History of Violence: From the End of the Middle Ages to the Present (J. Birrell, Trans.). Cambridge: Polity. Neocleous, M. (2011). Security as Pacification. In M. Neocleous & G. Rigakos (Eds.), Anti-Security (pp. 23–56). Ottawa: Red Quill. Neocleous, M. (2014). War Power, Police Power. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Oestreich, G. (1982). Neostoicism and the Modern State (B. Oestreich & H. G. Koenigsberger, Ed., D.  McKlintock, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

68 

F. Dodsworth

Paley, R. (1989). ‘Imperfect, Inadequate and Wretched’? Policing London Before Peel. Criminal Justice History, 29, 95–130. Rawlings, P. (2002). Policing: A Short History. Cullompton: Willan. Reynolds, E. (1998). Before the Bobbies: The Night Watch and Police Reform in Metropolitan London, 1720–1830. London: Macmillan. Ritson, J. (1791). The Office of Constable: Being an Entirely New Compendium of the Law Concerning that Ancient Minister for the Conservation of the Peace. London. Ritson, J. (1809). The Jurisdiction of the Court Leet … (2nd ed.). London. Roberts, W. (1793). A Charge to the Grand Jury of the Court Leet for the Manor of Manchester … (2nd ed.). London and Manchester: Whieldon and Butterworth. Scott, J.  (2004). Commonwealth Principles: Republican Writing of the English Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scroggs, W. (1728). Courts-Leet and Courts-Baron … (4th ed.). London. Spierenburg, P. (1984). The Spectacle of Suffering: Executions and the Evolution of Repression: From a Preindustrial Metropolis to the European Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spierenburg, P. (2012). Violence and Punishment: Civilizing the Body Through Time. Cambridge: Polity. Tadmor, N. (1996). The Concept of the Household-Family in Eighteenth-­ Century England. Past and Present, 151, 111–140. Vickery, A. (2008). An Englishman’s Home Is His Castle? Thresholds, Boundaries and Privacies in the Eighteenth-Century London House. Past and Present, 199, 147–173. Walby, S. (1990). Theorizing Patriarchy. Oxford: Blackwell. White, H. (1999). Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect. London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Wilkinson, I. (1999). Where Is the Novelty in Our Current ‘Age of Anxiety’? European Journal of Social Theory, 2, 445–467. Wilkinson, I. (2001). Anxiety in a Risk Society. London: Routledge.

3 Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740

In the previous chapter, we saw that the patriarchal structure of government based around surveillance and discipline by the householder, which had been inherited from the feudal period, was challenged by the emergence of large numbers of ‘masterless men’ (and women) who were not subject to either a master in trade or to the discipline of a householder. Accordingly, new mechanisms of discipline, policing, and surveillance were developed, and old mechanisms extended, as ways of securing the social order through less direct control. The new mechanisms of discipline were exemplified by the house of correction, introduced at Bridewell and rapidly disseminated throughout the country and, indeed, across Europe (Gorski 2003; Innes 1987). We also saw the gradual emergence and improvement of specialists in urban surveillance, whose position and power were justified on the basis of the threat to the wider body politic posed by vagrancy in general and the imagined ‘society of vagrants’ in particular. This improved system of ‘policing’ focused not so much on attempting to control behaviour through fixed relationships of dependence and obligation, and associated rights and obligations to discipline dependents, but on engaging with the reality of the requirement to govern a community of increasingly independent people without a fixed © The Author(s) 2019 F. Dodsworth, The Security Society, Crime Prevention and Security Management, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43383-1_3

69

70 

F. Dodsworth

r­elationship to any master. Almost all of these developments were pioneered in the City of London and occasionally, although often only gradually, exported to provincial towns and much more gradually rural areas. In the late seventeenth century, this challenge to patriarchal government was restated in a more radical and explicit way, as the political upheavals of the Exclusion Crisis and the ‘Glorious Revolution’ saw the emergence of a political contest oriented around the right and authority to govern, defined and debated in gendered terms and with explicit relation to the concept of patriarchy (Dickinson 1977; Kenyon 1977; Knights 1994). Resistance to the prospect of a Roman Catholic monarch in the person of James II, and concerns about his developing autocracy and connections to France, led to attempts first to bar James from the throne and then ultimately to his removal in the ‘Glorious Revolution’, which replaced James with his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange. This created a situation of divided loyalties, constitutional crisis, and question marks over the nature and legitimacy of authority in general and created a rival monarch seeking to recover his throne with military assistance from Catholic, absolutist France. This situation called into question not only the legitimacy, but the very existence and security of the state. Defenders of James mobilised the concept of patriarchalism to justify his claim to the throne; defenders of the new constitutional regime attacked this concept, arguing in favour of a limited monarchy in a mixed form of government, blending the best elements of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy; their military and political victory saw patriarchalism attacked in print, in court, and from pulpits across the land. At the same time, however, many of those who backed the expulsion of James and installation of William and Mary as joint monarchs also sought to instigate a moral revolution in a nation they characterised as corrupted by vice. They made clear that the liberty they had won for the state was to be a limited liberty, which must not be allowed to decay into its corrupt opposite, licentiousness, or liberty taken to excess. This they associated with Catholicism and arbitrary power, and they sought to promote a thorough reformation of manners as a way of ensuring the security of the state and the new protestant regime. To do this they drew upon neo-­ classical and Christian discursive traditions that aligned the freedom and independence of states with their moral condition. The question of ­public

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

71

(dis)order was thus actively being linked with the security of the state and the maintenance of particular forms of religious and civil liberty. Liberty, morality, and order were to be secured by the rule of law, which would not only establish the moral order on which the security of the nation depended, but would also establish the political freedom of the community. The law was reified as the source of authority, the power through which the monarch and other officers acted, rather than emanating from their commands. It acted as a restraint on the tendency for each element of government to drift towards its corrupt opposite: for monarchy towards tyranny, for aristocracy towards oligarchy, and for democracy towards anarchy. The law, then, acted as a means of restraint on both ruler and ruled and in doing so preserved the freedom and security of the state. More than that, however, proclaiming the importance of the rule of law and acting in its administration could also provide people with a sense of agency and a role in the grand dramas of Revolution and Reformation that were being played out: the magistrate, the parish officer, and the moral reformer were, through these discourses, encouraged to view themselves as protectors of English liberties against the threats of anarchy and tyranny, which were threatened by subjection to an arbitrary monarch, a foreign power, or popular licentiousness. The great threat to security in this context was not only revolution from within, the great fear prompted by the ‘masterless men’, although that remained much in evidence at some moments, but also of corruption from within by vice and luxury and consequent weakening of the body politic, leading to conquest from without by a dynastic and religious rival, the ‘king over the water’, with the aid of French military might. These concerns with public morality prompted the further development and extension of the mechanisms of surveillance and control, in many respects developing a new set of mechanisms for the government of aspects of life that were previously the domain of the church courts, which were themselves largely undermined during the civil wars. The legitimisation of these mechanisms and the effort to distance them from and to discredit patriarchalism constitute a sustained form of ‘critical reflection on governmental practice’ characteristic of the emergence of new forms of political and governmental reason (Foucault, cited in Collier 2011: 18–19). The outcome of this was a system for the

72 

F. Dodsworth

­ aintenance of security that was not generally so directly patriarchal as it m had been in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; rather, it was more commonly a ‘public’ or ‘fraternal’ form of patriarchy in which the subordination of those who were not male householders was justified and realised through a range of discursive legitimations and institutional innovations (Pateman 1989; Walby 1990). I have argued elsewhere that the particular form that this fraternal government took configured governors as patricians in the Roman sense (Dodsworth 2004, 2007). The creation of these new mechanisms of surveillance and detection of a mobile, independent population, in place of a direct system of household supervision, was a vital step in the construction of a ‘security society’ in Foucault’s (2009) terms, that is to say, as a prospective orientation towards generic threats in the milieu, rather than individual instances of identifiable and contextually specific dangerousness. There is also an obvious intersection here with Elias’ (1996, 2000) account of the civilising process and the associated concept of a ‘civilising project’ driven by reformers seeking to produce a ‘civilised’ society, free from tumult, disorder, and risk (Bauman 1987: 92–93; Krieken 1990).

The Revolutionary Context The restoration of the monarchy in 1660, following the failure of the republican experiment, saw a concerted attempt to reconstruct the pre-­ war order. However, Charles II’s reign was controversial, with continuing suspicion that Charles was himself either a secret Roman Catholic or a Catholic sympathiser; there was likewise concern over the acknowledged Catholicism of his brother James, who, without legitimate heir for Charles, was next in line to the throne, and condemnation of the perceived vice of Charles’ court, which was seen by puritans to be symptomatic of the corruption of the regime. Between 1679 and 1681, three Bills were put before Parliament proposing to exclude James from the succession because of his Catholicism. Charles was only able to defeat these Bills by dissolving Parliament, and the political debate and divisions over the issue of exclusion were to have lasting effects, contributing to the long process of the emergence of identifiable ‘parties’ in English politics, with

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

73

the Whigs being those supporting the exclusion of non-Protestants from the throne and the Tories supporting the hereditary succession regardless of faith. In many respects these were extensions of positions that had developed since the 1620s (see Kenyon 1977; Knights 1994). Charles’ death in 1685 caused further anxiety, as James’ policies of religious toleration for Catholics and his promotion of Catholics to senior offices, accompanied by his autocratic style and centralisation of power, were immediately controversial and fuelled fears of an attempt to establish England as a Catholic state. These fears could be moderated with the thought that James’ children, Mary and Anne, were both raised as Protestants thanks to the perspicuity of Charles II; however, the birth of a son, James, in the summer of 1688, changed the dynamic, because this male heir, likely to be raised a Catholic by James’ second wife Mary of Modena, would automatically precede his sisters in line to the throne, opening out the prospect of a Catholic line of succession. With this prospect in mind, a number of English politicians rapidly began to conspire with William of Orange, the Dutch stadtholder (who was both the husband of James’ eldest daughter Mary and, in the great tradition of the European aristocracy, also James’ nephew and himself third in line to the throne), with the idea of replacing James and his Catholic son with his eldest daughter, thus preserving the Protestant succession. William himself was motivated in pressing his claim to the English throne not only by personal ambition, but also by the prospect of an Anglo-French military alliance, which James appeared to be cultivating and which directly threatened the United Provinces (Hoppit 2000: 16). Following negotiations with a range of English parliamentarians, William assembled a force of over 20,000 men on more than 460 ships and landed at Torbay on 5 November 1688 according to the Julian calendar; this event was already celebrated with bonfires as a dual commemoration of the defeat of the Armada and the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, both celebrated as deliveries from the threat of Catholicism; only the latter now seems to be remembered in contemporary celebrations (Colley 1992: 19–20; Hoppit 2000: 15). There was little effective opposition in England, rather a widespread failure to speak up for or support James, who ultimately fled to France and was declared to have abandoned

74 

F. Dodsworth

the crown, opening the way for his daughter and her husband to succeed him. Ireland once again suffered invasion as James sought to mobilise the predominantly Catholic Irish population as a first step towards reclaiming the throne. William’s invasion and defeat of James’ forces continues to have consequences for the islands of both Britain and Ireland to this day (Hoppit 2000: 15–20, 93–97). The extent to which the events that were (much later) termed the Glorious Revolution constituted an invasion or opportunistic support for a domestic revolution remains debated and to some extent is a question of definition; what is no longer in question, however, is the dramatic and destabilising impact these events had on the polity (Colley 1992; Hoppit 2000; O’Gorman 2006). The expulsion of James II created a rival dynastic claim to the English, and soon the British throne, and one supported by the powerful Catholic French monarchy. This displaced branch of the Stuart family also continued to attract widespread support and loyalty among the British population. Their supporters, or ‘Jacobite’ loyalists, so termed for their adherence to the rights of the deposed monarch, were a source of continuing disquiet throughout the first half of the eighteenth century. If anything, this was exacerbated with death of James’ second daughter Anne in 1714, who like William and Mary died without surviving children, meaning that the exclusion of Roman Catholics from the throne under the Act of Settlement was once again brought into focus when the crown passed to George, the prince-elector of Hanover, despite the fact that there were more than 50 closer blood relatives in the Catholic line of succession (Colley 1992: 46). George was more than 50 years old when he came to live in Britain as monarch, and his command of English was poor; it was easy (although unfair) to characterise him as a German interloper largely focused on the affairs of Hanover. More importantly, however, for Jacobites and some Tories, if it had been possible to reconcile oneself, at least temporarily, to the replacement of James II by his daughters Mary and Anne, the accession of George to the throne marked the definitive end to the Stuart dynasty by Parliamentary decree. Perhaps unsurprisingly George’s accession was accompanied by widespread rioting, probably with Tory and Jacobite agitation, and rapidly followed by a French-sponsored Jacobite invasion. The Riot Act, which remains a central piece of the legislation for the enforcement of order in the UK, was

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

75

introduced in 1715 in response to these events (O’Gorman 2006). The problem was exacerbated by George’s favouring of the Whigs and their subsequent domination of public office at both the national and local levels, which saw Tories driven out of judicial and administrative positions. This provided many individuals with a specific complaint against the new government alongside a general sense of unease at the nature of the constitutional settlement (Landau 1984: 46–65; Mischler 2001). The Jacobites were, as the name suggests, those who continued to be loyal to James II (known after his expulsion/flight as ‘the Pretender’ to the throne) and his direct descendants, James Francis Edward Stuart (‘the Old Pretender’) and Charles Edward Stuart (‘the Young Pretender’, more commonly known as ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’). As Colley (1992: 24) and O’Gorman (2006) note, there was good reason for anxiety about the persistence of Jacobitism. Jacobites (and, indeed, many non-Jacobites) refused to take the oaths recognising the supremacy of the ruling monarchs and were debarred from holding public office (along with all Roman Catholics), creating a significant, disenfranchised, and alienated section of the population, not only containing a number of influential figures (the most prominent being the nonjurors, members of the Church of England who refused to take the oaths of allegiance to the monarch, whose number included several bishops), but also publicly steadfast enough in their adherence to the previous regime as to undergo significant hardship. But perhaps more importantly, Jacobites were constantly suspected, often with some justification, of fomenting opposition to the existing regime, and this opposition was not only political: there were full-scale invasions in 1708, 1715, and 1745 and smaller-scale invasion scares in 1717, 1719, 1720–1721, 1743–1744, and 1759 and significant plots in 1722 and 1733 (Colley 1992: 23–24; O’Gorman 2006). The major invasions were backed with French money and resources and constituted a real and significant danger to the existence of the British state. The 1745 ‘rebellion’, for example, reached as far south as Derby, and its failure is often put upon the loss of confidence of Charles Edward Stuart as much as it is on the successful defence mounted by the British state. Furthermore, these events were frequently accompanied by rioting, assisted by Jacobite (and often Tory) agitators, directly linking the state of public order with the security of the regime (Monod 1988; Rogers 1982).

76 

F. Dodsworth

As Colley (1992: 24) reminds us, although we now tend to treat these events as romantic but doomed rebellions, contemporaries, who did not know that they would not succeed, saw them, quite rightly, as existential threats backed by Europe’s most powerful, and hostile, military force. But the problem of disorder ran much deeper than direct rioting and agitation. Beyond the reality of serous disorder, there were also persistent ideological arguments against the legitimacy of the monarchy. Jacobite and High Tory propagandists sought to justify the position of the house of Stuart and contest the rights of their usurpers by reviving the arguments in favour of passive obedience and patriarchalism put forward during the constitutional crises of the seventeenth century, particularly the Civil Wars and the Exclusion Crisis. This not only questioned the legitimacy of the Whig constitutional settlement created in 1688–1707, but it did so in language that recalled the Civil Wars and the terrible social dislocation that went along with them, which still cast a long shadow over British political life. These discourses provided an intellectual challenge as dangerous as the social and political threat of disorder, remaining the chief target of Whig argument well into mid-century (Gunn 1983: 120–193; Monod 1988: 15–44). From our perspective, however, what is most important here, and rather underappreciated in the historiography, is that this challenge was not only abstract, it also related directly to the authority of government itself. Local government in England essentially consisted of the activities of the courts of assizes, which were presided over by judges and dealt with serious breaches of the criminal law; the quarter sessions, which were chaired by the justices of the peace (also termed magistrates) and which administered most county business; and the petty sessions, held by justices of the peace themselves, which dealt with most day-to-day questions of order and local administration. There were also, of course, a range of borough and manorial courts, which often held sway in urban jurisdictions and a range of peace officers attached to the manor and the parish. This is important because it was not only the status of the monarchy itself that was called into question by the Revolution: many important local officials such as the lord lieutenant, the sheriff, the justice of the peace, and the judiciary were crown appointments and thus received their legal authority through the monarch. The courts of assize and quarter sessions, and the justice of the peace in their

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

77

petty sessions, all drew their authority from the monarch, and therefore if the legitimacy of the monarchy was uncertain, so was that of the entire system of government. As the Wiltshire magistrate James Montagu put it, there was a ‘heedless and contemptible Regard of the Subordinate Magistrates Authority’ … ‘Which is everywhere so obvious, not only amongst the common People, but even amongst some of the Better Sort, that one would almost imagine, they are taught to believe that our King is not the Lawful and rightful Governour; and, of course, those acting under him, have no legal Authority’ (excerpted in Lamoine 1992: 152). Accordingly, considerable effort was undertaken to justify the practice of government at all levels.

The Patriarchal Challenge The attempt to legitimise the new government was, however, beset with a major intellectual challenge, as well as practical opposition. The struggle that concerns us here was not only a dynastic one, over the right to govern the state, but also one concerned with the nature of that state itself. However, the existential nature of that struggle is rarely appreciated outside the specialist field of eighteenth-century history. There is a tendency within contemporary British culture to treat ‘Britain’ as a natural and immemorial political and cultural entity, a product of the geographical fact that England and Scotland share an island, which is evidenced by the extraordinary failure to organise any significant commemoration of the 300th anniversary of the state in 2007, despite contemporary concerns with the articulation of ‘Britishness’ as a cultural value and identity. And yet the formation of ‘Great Britain’ was highly contingent and by no means guaranteed of success (Colley 1992), being a direct outcome of the highly contested ‘Glorious’ Revolution of 1688 in England, the subsequent Declaration of Right of 1689, and the Acts of Settlement (1701) and Union (1707), which established England as a constitutional monarchy and bound it to Scotland, forming a state that Pincus (2009) argues was devoted explicitly to a particular form of modernisation. These events not only continue to define the constitution and boundaries of what is now the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but,

78 

F. Dodsworth

with regard to the latter, do so in a way that continues to separate five of the counties of Ulster from Eire and internally divides those counties along the so-called ‘sectarian’ lines, defined precisely in relation to William III’s conquest of Ireland and defeat of James II’s armies in 1689–1691. A central part of the successful construction of the new British state was the legitimisation of the new regime and attempts to establish loyalty to, or at least acceptance of, the ‘Revolution Settlement’ and its initial domination by the Whig political faction. This was not, however, an easy task, because opposition propagandists sought just as actively to characterise the Revolution as a usurpation that violated the law and the principles of the constitution, which clearly established the principle of primogeniture and the absolute authority of the monarch under divine dispensation (see Browning 1982; Dickinson 1977; Gunn 1983; Kenyon 1977; Monod 1988). Most important from our perspective was an attack on the idea that the power of the monarchy should be in some way limited and that the best form of government was a mixed form, uniting the positive elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, which would avoid descent into any of their negative opposites: tyranny, oligarchy, or anarchy. Such arguments were generally made with support from classical examples, particularly Aristotle and Polybius, but also with a range of evidence from the history of European monarchies and republics (Pocock 1987; Scott 2004). Much use was also made of the arguments generated around this subject during the civil wars and the intense constitutional debates of the first half of the century. In fact, many, if not most, propagandists for the Crown during the civil wars had sought to take a moderate route and to define themselves as the true defenders of a moderate, mixed government, characterising their opponents as advocates of straightforward democracy, which, like all singular modes of government, was bound to decay into its negative opposite anarchy. However, a small number had taken a more radical absolutist position and argued that any limitation on monarchical power was unconstitutional and liable to undermine the authority of government in general, leading inevitably to popular licentiousness and anarchy. The power of monarchs, it was argued, was a natural extension of their place in the social hierarchy. This was an explicitly patriarchal position in which the monarch was configured as the head of the national family in the same way that the father was head of the household.

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

79

This argument was most powerfully made in the work of the Royalist propagandist Sir Robert Filmer, whose most famous work, Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of Kings, was probably written during the 1620s or 1630s but was not published until 1680 during the Exclusion Crisis in support of James II’s cause (Filmer 1991). Filmer’s other publications had appeared during and after the civil wars and included a range of pro-­ monarchical, anti-humanist, and anti-Calvinist texts, including The Anarchy of a Mixed or Limited Monarchy, originally published in 1648, and his Observations on Aristotle’s Politiques of 1652, which sought to demonstrate, rather counterintuitively, that Aristotle, generally taken as one of the models for the mixed government he opposed, had, in fact, favoured absolute monarchy. The latter work was important because it had appended to it another work, Directions for Obedience to Government, which dealt with the question of whether or not a usurping government should be obeyed (see Sommerville’s introduction to Filmer 1991: xiii). All of these texts were republished in 1679 and remained the locus of debate after 1688, when the issue of whether or not a usurping government should be obeyed became urgent. At this point several of the texts that make up what has become known as the ‘Whig canon’ legitimising the revolution settlement were published, most notably John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (published in 1689) and Algernon Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government (published in 1698), both of which were completed during the Exclusion Crisis as direct refutations of Filmer (Locke 1988; Sidney 1996). Filmer’s argument is perhaps at its clearest in the straightforwardly titled The Anarchy of a Mixed, or Limited Monarchy, where he begins by quoting Lucan on the title page: ‘the liberty of a people which is subject to royal government is lost if they gain too great liberty’ (Filmer 1991: 131). This text was written as a refutation of Philip Hunton’s Treatise of Monarchie (1643), in which Hunton outlines a system of mixed government in accordance with the parliamentarian principles he supported during the civil war. However, Filmer countered, ‘instead of a treatise of monarchy he hath brought forth a treatise of anarchy’ (Filmer 1991: 150). Filmer’s argument for this ran as follows: ‘There is scarce the meanest man of the multitude but can now in these days tell us that the government of the kingdom of England is a limited and mixed monarchy, and it is no marvel, since all the disputes and arguments of these distracted

80 

F. Dodsworth

times both from the pulpit and the press do tend and end in this conclusion’ (Filmer 1991: 131). However, Filmer argued that the very idea of a mixed or limited monarchy was illogical and against historical precedent. Neither idea, he pointed out, occurred in the writings of Aristotle or Machiavelli, the favourite authors for the thesis of limited or mixed monarchy (Filmer 1991: 134, 157). More importantly, however, the very idea of a limited monarchy or a mixture of authorities undermines the principles of authority and obedience in general. Here he brings up the problem that the subject is not bound to obey the monarch where his commands extend beyond the law. But who is to judge in these situations? As Filmer puts it, ‘if the king be judge, then he is no limited monarch; if the people be judge, then he is no monarch at all. So farewell limited monarchy. Nay, farewell all government if there be no judge’ (Filmer 1991: 151). In saying so, he conflates the idea of limited monarchy with anarchy, the corrupt opposite of democracy in the classical tradition. He goes on to make the same case for mixed monarchy, which ‘like the limited, ends in the destruction of all government’. Indeed, he argues that Hunton admits that the weakness of all mixed governments is a lack of machinery to judge disputes between the three estates of king, lords, and commons: ‘The wit of man cannot say more for anarchy’, writes Filmer (1991: 157). Filmer’s argument was not only republished in 1679 at the height of the Exclusion Crisis, but, equally importantly from our perspective, it was also reiterated by Jacobite propagandists writing after the 1688 Revolution in defence of the rights of the deposed monarch James II and his heirs. The most notorious and vocal of the Jacobite polemicists was Charles Leslie, a ‘nonjuror’, that is, an Anglican clergyman who had refused to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary. His case was most prominently presented in a publication entitled the Rehearsals, a periodical publication republished as A View of the Times (Leslie 1708–1709). In The Finishing Stroke (1711), Leslie also engaged in direct debate with Benjamin Hoadly, the unorthodox Bishop of Bangor, and later Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester, whose continuous promotion was more closely associated with his political than religious principles: Queen Caroline reputedly said that there was only one objection to his becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, which was that he ‘was not a

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

81

Christian’ (cited in Treasure 1992/2002: 24). Sources are divided over whether or not Hoadly visited his diocese in Bangor once, or not at all, and he seems never to have visited Hereford (Hoppit 2000: 211; Treasure 1992/2002: 24); instead, he spent his energy in politics and highly effective Whig propaganda in defence of the Revolution and in opposition to Leslie, particularly in The Original and Institution of Civil Government (1710) which countered Leslie’s arguments by drawing on Hooker and Locke. Addressing the fundamental question raised by the Revolution of how it was possible to judge what constitutes tyranny and when it was legitimate to rebel, Leslie argued that ‘you have left every Man to Judge of that as he Pleases. And is this not a total Dissolution of all Government? And Releasing Men from all Obligation (at least in Conscience) to any King or Government whatsoever?’ (Leslie 1711: 115). According to Leslie’s argument, the whole notion of government was impossible if it implied consent rather than an obligation to obedience; the Revolution had, therefore, not only broken the divinely ordained succession, but it had also undermined the foundations of all authority by calling into question the duty of anyone to obey government in general. Equally, if the people were to choose their rulers, as the Whig notion of consent to government implied, and the 1701 Act of Settlement made reality, passing over the direct heirs of James II in favour of the closest Protestant, this would lead naturally to disorder and bloodshed ‘For what other Issue can there be, between several contending Parties, where there is no Umpire, or Judge over them? It is All Mob and Confusion!’ (Leslie 1708–1709: no. 30). This was a potent statement in a period when, if individual memories of the civil war were gradually receding, most adults would still have known parents and relatives with direct experience of the conflict, in addition to their own experience of the atmosphere of the Exclusion Crisis when many feared a second civil war, and the Revolution itself. It was also a potent statement in a period when there appears to have been a noticeable increase in popular protest and disorder, much of it political in nature (Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2012: 71–77, 90–121; Shoemaker 2004). Far from the Revolution being a triumph of liberty through the establishment of the ideal mixed government, rather, Leslie argued, it had actually introduced democracy, or mob rule, destroying social subordination as well as the

82 

F. Dodsworth

hierarchy required for the exercise of authority: ‘I see what that Liberty of the People is that the Observator Pleads for’, it is ‘to put themselves on the Level with the Greatest Man in England’ (Leslie 1708–1709: no. 198). Freedom, he argued, did not depend on the form of government one lived under, as Whigs and ‘commonwealthmen’ contended; the extent of freedom simply depended upon how far that freedom was practically restricted. All forms of government restricted freedom more or less, so to argue for greater liberty was by nature to argue for a reduction in government: ‘Reigning is Restraining, and so is all Government and Laws, it is Restraining of Liberty’. When one spoke about liberty in relation to government, then, this really implied ‘being Free from all Government or Laws, but our own Will’ and ‘The End of it is to have no Government at all’ (Leslie 1708–1709: no. 76). One again, this was a direct engagement with Filmer, who actively sought to undermine the arguments of those advocating mixed government by using their favourite sources against them, particularly Aristotle, Cicero, and Livy (Filmer 1991: 267). Cicero and Livy are referred to in relation to the history of the expulsion of the Tarquins and the establishment of the power of the Roman consuls, which was frequently used as the example justifying the idea that what mattered was the constitutional form of government, rather than the amount of power possessed by the governor. Filmer counters this directly, arguing that liberty was essentially a negative condition, as the Romans had understood: ‘For every law or command is in itself an innovation, and a diminution of some part of popular liberty—for it is no law except it restrain liberty’. He continues, ‘to say the people are free, and not to be governed but by their own consent, and yet to allow a major part to rule the whole, is a plain contradiction, or a destruction of natural freedom’ (Filmer 1991: 268). The argument that freedom consisted simply of freedom of action, or ‘natural’ liberty, rather than being a political condition depending on a particular form of government is an innovation usually associated with Thomas Hobbes, who himself used it as a way of arguing against humanist conceptions of ‘true’ liberty (Skinner 2008); however, this idea also occurs in Filmer, and it was Filmer’s Observations on Aristotle’s Politiques that Locke referred to when refuting this argument (Locke 1988: 58, 67–79, 283–284). It is worth noting that Filmer had read Leviathan

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

83

before writing the Observations and refers to Hobbes and his text three times here (Filmer 1991: 237, 280, 281). The form of government one lived under, according to this argument, was irrelevant. What mattered was the degree to which people forfeited their freedom to behave or move as they chose, which was defined by the extent and exercise of the laws. This argument was coupled with a second: that the liberty that exists is not threatened by absolute monarchy, raised above the laws, but that the liberty of the people actually extends from the monarch through the laws they make and whose power gives them force. Filmer (1991: 4) puts it thus: ‘The greatest liberty in the world (if it be duly considered) is for people to live under a monarch. It is the Magna Carta of this kingdom. All other shows or pretexts of liberty are but several degrees of slavery, and a liberty only to destroy liberty’. Ultimately, alternative constitutional forms which make claims to greater liberty than that of monarchy are being condemned as systems of licence. Filmer goes on to trace the history of the establishment of the particular liberties of England, which he defines as ‘liberties of grace from the king, and not the liberties of nature to the people’. Magna Carta itself took the form of a letter-patent or grant under the great seal and as such constituted ‘the sole act and bounty of the king’ (Filmer 1991: 55, 57). English liberty, then, was not natural, nor was civil liberty established by groups of men associating together to protect their common interests. Rather, the liberty of the English people was created by the actions and orders of the monarch and sustained by the laws, which were themselves guaranteed by monarchical authority. Much political argument in the seventeenth century revolved around testing and researching these claims, contributing not only to a particular political idiom, which we now tend to term ‘ancient constitutionalism’, but also to the development of a historical consciousness and an associated set of research practices in support of it (Pocock 1987).

The Rule of Law The task that Whig and moderate Tory supporters of the Revolution settlement faced was to refute these patriarchal arguments, and the principal mechanism they used to do this was the idea of the ‘rule of law’. Historians

84 

F. Dodsworth

have long identified discourses on the rule of law as fundamental to the ideology of the period: ‘Augustan’ England has been described as a society ‘pledged to “the rule of law”’ (Brewer and Styles 1980: 12); Douglas Hay (1975: 58–59) identified this as the period in which ‘the rule of law’ displaced religion and divine right monarchy as the principal legitimating ideology of the English governing elite; for E.P. Thompson (1978: 144), this was the age that saw the law elevated to ‘a role more prominent than at any other period of our history’. However, the idea that the rule of law was principally configured as a form of restraint is highly contested. For many social historians, writing ‘history from below’ the elevation of the rule of law to hegemonic status was a manifestation of class power. Douglas Hay represents the dominance of the ‘rule of law’ paradigm as part of the developing hegemony of the propertied classes over eighteenth-­ century government. In this sense we should see the rule of law as ideology in the Marxist sense: ‘a specific set of ideas designed to vindicate or disguise class interest’ (Hay 1975: 26n2). Reification of the idea of equality before the law is seen to be a means of justifying the rule of the rich over the poor, masking the hierarchical reality of both the criminal justice system and the wider property-based social order. This was made particularly obvious by the fact that the ideological work of legitimising class authority was principally carried out through discourses delivered on the great legal occasions of the assizes and quarter sessions, which represented an important part of the pageant that was so fundamental to the mystification, and thus the authoritativeness, of the rule of law in practice in the courts (Hay 1975: 28). Hay is clearly correct to highlight the symbolic significance of the law in maintaining social hierarchy and authority, but I find the emphasis on mystification less convincing. Certainly there is an emphasis on vindicating ‘class’ interest, but this is far from being hidden or mystified, it is often discoursed on quite explicitly: in his ‘Charge to the Grand Jury of the Court Leet’ of the manor of Manchester in 1788, William Roberts told the jury that ‘I am sure … it would be insulting your understanding to take up your time in enlarging upon the advantages of subordination in civil society. It is sufficient to say that it is the sine qua non of its existence— it is the soul, source and support of it’ (Earwacker 1889: 251). Likewise, if the emphasis lies on the equal applicability of the law to all (only

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

85

one claim in a wide-ranging mode of discourse), E.P. Thompson (1975) is surely correct to argue that not only were there aspects of the law that escaped ideology, but that in many senses, if the law was to function for the ruling classes, it needed to be taken seriously, which meant that it had to be seen to be just, not a straightforward tool of the elite. In this sense the ruling class were to some extent prisoners of their own rhetoric and often found the law used against them, as well as in their favour. Law, then, both enabled and restricted power, and disputes were often not between the propertied users of law against the unpropertied, but were disputes about property carried out through the law. Ultimately, Thompson is keen to emphasise the point that the reification of the rule of law was still a significant step, because ultimately, however open to manipulation for class ends the law may have appeared, this is still radically distinct from the exercise of arbitrary power by the ruling elite (Thompson 1975: 259–266). Subsequent research has supported this, demonstrating that the law was usually used by those who were relatively low down the social hierarchy to prosecute their immediate inferiors (King 2000). Nevertheless, we must recognise that a very significant part of the use of the law was the control of servants, who were also by far the most prosecuted occupational group in the records of the Old Bailey, London’s principal criminal court (Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2012: 6). Indeed, if we go on to consider the enforcement of the law in terms of moral policing and minor offences against public order, then we find the mechanisms of social control deployed overwhelmingly, although by no means exclusively, against the relatively poor. Given that such offences make up the vast majority of prosecutions in the early eighteenth century, perhaps Hay’s argument needs to be given renewed consideration (Shoemaker 1991). Equally, however, we also need to recognise that although there was enormous opposition to aspects of law enforcement, and particularly moral reform, from amongst the general populace, which Hitchcock and Shoemaker (2012) explore thoroughly, there was also much opposition from within the ranks of the governing classes and the ‘middling sort’ themselves, with many magistrates and parish officers as vociferously and practically obstructive to reformers’ aims as their plebeian counterparts (Dabhoiwala 2007: 308–314; Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2012: 37–42, 57–60, 107–121; Shoemaker 1991: 252–272). This was

86 

F. Dodsworth

not, then, an inter-class dispute, concerned straightforwardly with convincing the lower orders to respect the authorities. Rather, this was primarily an intra- or cross-class dispute, concerned with theological-political issues of allegiance, constitutional form, and the legitimacy of enforcing a particular vision of morality through the law. It appears, then, that religious and political conviction and affiliation is more significant than social class as a driver of reforming engagement here, both in terms of discursive legitimation and in terms of the shaping of particular communities of interest, oriented around the issue of a general reformation of manners. Randall McGowen’s (1987–1988) work on the assize sermon to some extent supports this contention. McGowen (1987–1988) recognises the validity of many of Hay’s contentions about the importance of the ritual of justice, but he rejects Hay’s claims about the cynicism of legal ideology, arguing that it was religion rather than class which remained at the centre of eighteenth-century concepts of law. For McGowen, magistrates and judges were sincere in the extent to which theology drove their beliefs about the necessity of government. Focusing on the assize sermon, McGowen sees legal ideology as fundamentally conciliatory and centrist in its appeal to the governing classes: as he puts it, ‘The sermons did not seek to jar; they aimed to reassure their listeners’ (McGowen 1987–1988: 194). To this end, he argues, they were largely devoid of explicit constitutional theory, with little mention of the consent of the governed or the status of the king. Instead, preachers concentrated on defining the necessity of magistracy in terms of the duty of obedience and the importance of restraining man’s destructive vices (McGowen 1987–1988: 195–197). The emphasis on self-restraint and its relation to religion will be important to us below, and certainly in the elevation of the rule of law to a status above the world of politics, the intent was to reassure, but it is difficult to agree with the contention that there was little explicitly political or constitutional in such discourses, which were replete with references to the ancient constitution, limited and mixed government, and specific references which were both explicitly and implicitly political. Indeed, religious affiliation was in and of itself political, being the principal source of the religious wars that had rocked Europe in general, and England in particular, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and there was considerable politics to

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

87

the relationship between the Established Church and protestant dissent, particularly in the moral reform movements of the early century (Clark 2000; Isaacs 1982). At times the politics is not always obvious. For example, when James Montagu delivered his charge to the grand jury at Devizes in 1720, he made approving reference to Charles I and declared that the laws were framed ‘to support the Dignity, Authority, and Grandeur of our Sovereigns’ (excerpted in Lamoine 1992: 141–142). However, he also argued that the law ‘at first received its Energy and Force indisputably from common Consent’. He goes on to argue that the lynchpin of this legally bounded liberty was trial by jury, a distinctively English tradition of immemorial origin, and that even where particular liberties such as Magna Carta and the like were established by statute, they were ‘but Recapitulations of the antient [sic] Liberties of the subject; and indeed, generally speaking, the whole Body of our Statute Laws, together with the Petitions of Right, are but Declarations and Confirmations of the Common Laws of the Kingdom’ (excerpted in Lamoine 1992: 142–143). Identifying the source of law in the immemorial common law tradition, rather than as an extension of the commands of the monarch, was a direct rejection of a particular kind of patriarchalism associated with Jacobitism, which claimed that the laws and liberties of the English emerged as specific concessions from the King’s prerogative (Pocock 1987). Montagu continued to eulogise the rule of law in the following terms, suggesting its abolition would lead to ‘Anarchy and Confusion’. The ­reason was simple: ‘FOR as by Law the Prerogative of the Prince, and the People’s Liberty, are a Support and Security to each other, when moving in the proper and stated Spheres’, so, if this link were broken, ‘all things (without Omnipotent Interposition) would be huddled and hurried into a Chaos’ (excerpted in Lamoine 1992: 140–141). This argument, which appears Hobbesian in nature and might be seen to be supportive of monarchical rights and power, turns out to be an unacknowledged paraphrase of John Pym’s speech at the trial of Stafford, Charles I’s chief minister, who was accused of treason for subverting the laws of the kingdom and plotting to use the army to overthrow Parliamentary authority, one of the critical events in the lead-up to the civil war (see Reid 2004: 19; Montagu probably sourced this from

88 

F. Dodsworth

Rushworth (1659–1701, vol. ii: 661–663)). Such statements, while ostensibly relatively neutral (Charles I had claimed, and moderate Tories did claim to accept the principle of mixed government), were nevertheless clearly articulated as direct refutations of Jacobite statements in favour of absolute, patriarchal authority. It is perhaps no coincidence that Montagu’s charge was in part published in response to the refusal of the corporation Marlborough to allow the quarter sessions to be held in their town, as they favoured the Jacobite cause (see Lamoine 1992: 153–154, especially n 2). It is also the case that some forms of discourse are more often politically explicit than others; although I find political commentary commonplace in assize sermons, it is almost universal in charges to grand juries delivered before 1745. Indeed, Norma Landau sees discourses on the rule of law principally as a means for advancing partisan political argument, to the extent that ‘So intent were the elite upon using the court to dramatize political philosophy that almost every part of the court ritual which allowed for speech was used to convey a political message’ (Landau 1984: 46–51, quotation at 64). By the early Hanoverian period, the election of the chairman of the quarter sessions had become a matter of party political contest, in part because it granted the right to deliver the charge to the grand jury, a key opportunity for political discourse (Landau 1984: 49). This was particularly important in London, where there were no assizes due to the presence of the courts of Common Pleas and the King’s Bench and therefore no assize sermons to perform a similar ideological function. Few were perhaps as explicitly partisan as Maurice Shelton in his charge to the grand jury of Bury St Edmunds, delivered in 1729–1730, where he pointedly remarked that it was well received because there were no Tories on the bench when it was read. In what is a Whig text in both content and explicit alignment, he continued to criticise the period of Tory rule and remarked that only one Tory had ever delivered a charge to the grand jury in his time, Tories preferring generally to read a few heads of charges from a book, which he describes as an ‘imperfect careless manner’ (Shelton 1730: p. iv n.a, p. v n.c, p. 2 n.2). Nevertheless, the political implications of particular statements about the constitution, or denunciations of authors from rival traditions, are very clear. Leslie (or Lesley as he is cited), Filmer, Brady, Lestrange, and Hickes were specifically singled

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

89

out as the advocates of arbitrary power in John Gonson’s third charge to the grand jury of the City and Liberty of Westminster, 9 October 1728 (excerpted in Lamoine 1992: 257). Gerd Mischler (2001) takes up this perspective, building on the work of J.C.D. Clark (2000: 83–123, particularly 87) to argue that discourses on the law, specifically assize sermons, were important vehicles for dissemination of what he calls the ‘ideology of order’, a process by which the Whig party sought to modify its ideology once it came to power in order to incorporate elements of the old Tory concept of the divine right of governors. I certainly see strong evidence of political argument in both assize sermons and charges to grand jury charges, and there is a definite articulation of an ideology of order and restraint, but this ideology is quite distinct from, and specifically articulated against, the kind of high Tory and Jacobite arguments for divine right explored above. Rather than defining the freedom of the people as a limited and conditional concession from the governor, Whig advocates of the rule of law sought to define that freedom differently, not as a ‘natural’ condition in which all that mattered was the extent of one’s freedom of action, but as a political or ‘civil’ condition, dependent upon particular moral characteristics and standards of behaviour. In so doing, by making claims for the importance of order and restraint, both self-restraint and restraint by law, the authors of rule of law discourses sought to address and work with the freedom of the governed, linking the practice of freedom to the practice of civility and morality in a sense very characteristic of the period, most famously embodied in (the prominent Whig) Shaftesbury’s elision of the moral and the aesthetic in the concept of ‘politeness’ (Klein 1994, 2002). Those who could govern themselves according to the required standard would be free from governmental intervention; those who failed, or refused to restrain themselves, would find their behaviour restrained by those who could. Indeed, the notion of restraint was, for John Phillip Reid (2004), the fundamental element of the rule of law. From the early modern perspective, the rule of law sustained liberty by acting as a restraint on sovereign power of any kind, be that the arbitrary power of a sovereign or the legislative power of parliaments. For Reid, the importance of the rule of law was the implication that the law was not itself a tool of power or authority;

90 

F. Dodsworth

rather, it was the law that established the power and authority of its agents. The authority of the law itself derived from custom and declaration, not deliberation and command. This was not absolute: Michael Lobban (2005) points to numerous attempts to reconcile common law, natural law, and positivist law in the eighteenth century, noting the publication of several treatises on continental law, which worked alongside an indigenous tradition in which many jurists had already gone beyond Coke’s common law principles. Both Hale and Selden accepted that much law emerged as the command of a superior and that much of the common law probably originated in forgotten statues. Of course, the debate between these positions was central to the political argument of the period (Pocock 1987). Ultimately, regardless of its historical accuracy, the vision of the law as the source of power and authority in the sense defined by Reid is clear in the rhetoric of the period and will be central to our argument below. This emphasis on the fundamental role of law in the legitimation and establishment of order is central to Martin Loughlin’s (2000: 65–75) account of the rule of law. Like Hay and McGowen, Loughlin also sees the rule of law as a value shared amongst the ruling classes, but he sees these values in terms of their relationship to the conceptual categories through which those governing classes saw the world. The emphasis here is on the Aristotelian and Platonic elements of the rule of law, marking its distinction from later modern or ‘liberal’ versions of the subject. From this perspective the function of the rule of law is to maintain order, an order that is coextensive with the ordered whole of the cosmos. James Montagu once again seems to provide some support for this: ‘LAWS, says a Learned Gentleman … put a difference between Good and Evil, Just and Unjust: If Laws were abolished, all things would fall back into Confusion; which, considering the depraved Condition of Human Nature, would produce the greatest Enormities: Lust, would become a Law; Envy, Avarice, and Ambition would become Laws … if the Force and Authority of Laws, to prevent, to restrain, and to repair Evils, were lost, all kind of Disquietude, Rapine, and Mischief would break in upon the State’ (cited in Lamoine 1992: 140; the ‘learned gentleman’ is once again Pym: see Reid 2004: 18–19; Rushworth 1659–1701, vol. iv: 40). Writing about the rule of law in this way offered an alternative to the ‘great chain of being’ conceived in patriarchal terms.

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

91

This approach to the rule of law also justified a particular form of authority. For Loughlin (2000) the rule of law is concerned with the exercise of reason, which is the only means properly to perceive that order; only those possessing virtue and able to master their desires were capable of such actions. It is in this way that the rule of law is a political and practical ideal, because its exercise depends on a certain kind of training and the cultivation a particular persona, one associated with elite men. Those who were dependent on them (women, servants, apprentices, the young) were by definition not their own masters and were often argued to be incapable of self-mastery. I will argue that the cultivation of such a self-governing persona, embodying both self-restraint and the drive to impose restraint on others, was central to the power of rule of law discourse in this period, powerfully identifying its advocates with the Revolution principles which for many active Whigs not only involved a particular constitutional vision, but also a commitment to a programme of moral reform (Burtt 1992: 39–63; Claydon 1996; Scott 2004). We might see this as a form of ‘public patriarchy’ (Walby 1990) in a context in which private and explicit patriarchy was being challenged. If obedience for the sake of obedience was politically problematic, it was nevertheless necessary to legitimise government according to some principle in order to offset the accusation that the Revolution would introduce anarchy. The argument here, then, is that the rule of law was so central to this period because it provided a way of pacifying a fractured polity threatening to tear itself apart in response to dynastic rivalry and religious and political division that was manifest in significant social unrest and the constant threat of conflict. The law was reified as a neutral source of authority beyond political faction around which the nation could coalesce: mobilising the classical concept of the rule of law was a way of claiming governmental authority for its advocates and conferring ­authority on both the court processes themselves and its legal officers, despite the fractured nature of the polity, by appealing to a source of authority that could be configured as both timeless and above factional politics or the person of the monarch. It also, of course, legitimised the existing system of government in practice, which was run largely through the courts and the legal process, and its role in regulating public order and particularly popular morality. In order to understand why this was so

92 

F. Dodsworth

vital, however, first we need to understand the practical and political challenges that administration of government through the law faced. Whigs tended to stress the significance of both legal and personal restraint not only to dismiss the arguments of Filmer and his followers, but also because they sought to legitimise not only the overthrow of James II and his replacement by William and Mary, with the establishment of a protestant succession, but also the moral reform that many Whigs saw as fundamental to a more general national reformation. Indeed, the trope of reformation was fundamental to the legitimation of the new regime. Tony Claydon (1996: 32) argues that the great success of Gilbert Burnet, William III’s friend and chief propagandist, was in managing to move beyond a rather generic invocation of Providential blessing on the obviously successful invasion and ‘liberation’ of England from Catholicism and absolutism to successfully locating the Revolution within a specifically English historical tradition of writing about the importance of reformation in both the general and the specific senses. Burnet tapped into a pattern of discourse which operated with three principle elements: the first was ‘an apocalyptic battle between two mystical churches; the second was the ideal of the godly prince; and the third was a peculiar understanding of the importance of moral reform’ (Claydon 1996: 33). The emphasis on reform probably had several sources. Amongst these, Claydon suggests, were the Protestant abolition of the penitential system, which had previously helped calm anxieties about vice and its consequences; it was also associated with the idea of the godly prince as moral crusader; but it was particularly supported by the idea, propagated by Tudor reformers, that the ‘false church’, against which ‘true’ Christianity was struggling, sought to bring down its enemy through tempting faithful Christians into vice and sin, corrupting the church from within: ‘Tempting Christ’s followers with all manner of luxury and voluptuousness, it had attempted to debauch people from the gospel by offering them greater sensual delights’ (Claydon 1996: 38–39, quotation at 38). This argument remained current as late as 1745, when we find the London justice of the peace Sir Clifford Philips arguing that vice, luxury, and disorder were ‘the usual and most effectual Means to introduce Slavery and Arbitrary Power’ (Philips 1745b: 4, see also 1745a: 1). The

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

93

argument was frequently illustrated with examples drawn from history, and there is an interesting parallel, which Claydon does not draw out here, with the ways in which corruption by luxury figured in more classically inspired discourses on the decline and fall of states (Pocock 1975; Sekora 1977). In fact, I think that Scott (2004) is correct to see the two modes of argument, classical and Christian, as frequently and freely intermixed, as we shall see below (see also Burtt 1992). What is important here, however, is not the general fact of commitment to moral reform, something which was a common feature of sixteenth- and seventeenth-­century moral discourse, but that the rationale for moral reform was increasingly being articulated in secular terms (Burtt 1992: 44–48). In a distinctive break with earlier Protestant traditions, the problem of vice was cast as a problem of law and order, associated with a loss of social discipline; reformation was construed as ‘a reaffirmation of authority’ and essential to the restoration of social stability (Burtt 1992: 46–47). For Burtt (1992: 48) the important thing here is that personal morality was made a political virtue and thus the foundation of a stable state. Burtt’s argument stresses the intellectual dimension of the reformulation of the rationale for moral reformation; however, there is also a structural element at play here: in earlier periods, a religious justification made sense when discipline was being meted out by the church courts (Ingram 1987); however, by the 1690s, not only was the rhetoric of reformation being secularised, but so was its policing and prosecution. In a context where reformers were seeking to mobilise the secular law into action, a secular justification perhaps simply made more sense, or was perceived to be necessary, or at least more effective. This also goes to underline the fact that this was not merely rhetoric: William III sought to embody the godly prince both symbolically and in practice. Claydon (1996: 55) suggests that William’s entry into Exeter on a white horse may have been an intentional reference to the Book of Revelation in which God’s righteous champion was pictured riding a white steed. Likewise, in the second year of his reign, William gave public support to a campaign for moral reform in a printed letter to Henry Compton, Bishop of London, who was one of the notables responsible for inviting William to England at the outset of the Revolution and who had crowned him alongside his wife at Westminster

94 

F. Dodsworth

Abbey. William’s letter to Compton stated that ‘We most earnestly Desire, and shall Endeavour, a General Reformation of the Lives and Manners of all our Subjects, as being that which must Establish Our Throne, and Secure to Our People their Religion, Happiness, and Peace, all which seem to be in great Danger at this time, by reason of that overflowing of Vice, which is too Notorious in this, as well as other Neighbouring Nations’, with specific instructions to preach against blasphemy, swearing and cursing, perjury, drunkenness, and profanation of the Lord’s Day; churchwardens were also specifically directed to punish adultery and fornication (William III 1689: 4). The printed text was appended with the various acts for the suppression of the relevant vices and sins. Here, then, we find specific reference to the idea that vice and sin within the nation were a direct danger and threat to the security of both the monarchs in their possession of the crown and the people in their freedom and religion. It did not need to be stated that the common threat to both was the Catholic Pretender to the throne, James II. It was also a common complaint that the courts of both Charles II and James II, both notorious womanisers and fathers of perhaps 20 illegitimate children between them, had increased tolerance of vice and licence in the country. By way of example, the prominent moral reformer John Disney specifically drew together the moral state of the nation with the ongoing constitutional struggle, criticising both the tendency to break down ‘the Fences of Modesty, Reason, and good Nature … levelling all Distinctions, Sacred or Civil’, detailing a range of moral offences and abuses of liberty, from excessive drinking ‘to the most brutish Degrees of Sensuality’ through to the more general climate of ‘Licentiousness of Vice and Idleness’ and ‘Popish Superstition’ which threatened to introduce slavery and arbitrary power, a reference to the threat posed by the Jacobites and exiled Stuart monarchy (Disney 1727: 12–13, 15–16, 18, 21). We might speculate that there was a direct reaction here to what Faramerz Dabhoiwala (2012) has called the first sexual revolution, occasioned by the declining influence of the church courts and the less censorious attitudes of the Restoration governments. The claim that the protection of the ‘true church’, the religion and liberties of the people, and a Protestant monarchy were dependent on the moral condition of the population suggested that not only were the

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

95

reformers of 1688 seeking to govern, they were seeking to govern certain aspects of life more intensively than their immediate predecessors (although not necessarily more intensively than their earlier forebears: see Dabhoiwala 2012; Ingram 1987). Once again, this was borne out in practice, as well as in theory, so that the discursive refutation of the Jacobite and high Tory position was more than academic; it was the legitimising discourse of a moral reform movement that had a real and significant impact on the lives of thousands of Londoners and, indeed, across the country. The movement took several forms. The first was straightforward exhortation through sermons on major public occasions, particularly those connected to major political events, such as the inauguration of the Lord Mayor, the opening of Parliament, national festivities, or court sessions. The second involved more direct action: in 1690 the first of a series of what we now know as the Societies for the Reformation of Manners emerged in Tower Hamlets. The societies sermonised and encouraged parochial officers and magistrates to put into action the laws against vice, but they also circulated warrants for the arrest of offenders and paid their own officers and a range of informers to prosecute offenders, thus forming a kind of entrepreneurial police force, complementing the established parochial authorities and contributing to the professionalisation of policing (Burtt 1992: 39–63; Dabhoiwala 2007; Hurl-Eamon 2004; Shore 2009; Warner and Ivis 2001). In Alan Hunt’s (1999: 30) words, these organisations sought to ‘responsibilise’ the laity. The societies were relatively spontaneous civil society organisations, drawing their membership principally from the middling sort and from energetic parish officers and also including in their ranks significant numbers of protestant dissenters, which caused some tension with the Established Church (Isaacs 1982). Hunt (1999: 29, 56) sees these organisations both as the first modern social movement and as harbingers of ‘the social’ in the sense that they were created to act on ‘the social’ before such a concept existed. Just as importantly, however, they were responsible for the prosecution of perhaps 100,000 moral offences in the 40 years of their operation, from 1690 to 1738, when they finally seem to have disappeared from sight (Hunt 1999: 28; Isaacs 1982: 404). Finally, there was also concerted activity by a range of magistrates who either supported the efforts of the movements for the reformation of manners—John

96 

F. Dodsworth

Gonson and Daniel Dolins are specifically mentioned in dedications to sermons delivered to the Societies (Denham 1724: 1; Smyth 1727)—or who simply set out to promote a programme of moral reform. Their activities involved prominent campaigns against gin drinking, gambling, and brothels (Clark 1988; Dabhoiwala 2007; Hurl-Eamon 2004; Shore 2009). Once again, these activities, coupled with the efforts these magistrates took to improve and energise the watch and other parochial officers, including efforts to bring the Westminster watch under the direct control of the justices of the peace rather than the Court of Burgesses, were significant in the organisational development of London’s policing (Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2012: 113). In seeking to legitimise these activities, reformers also had to face a further set of critical arguments in addition to the patriarchalist positions of Leslie and Filmer. This argument was essentially that governments and magistrates had no business interfering in the private acts and beliefs of their subjects, an argument that came from both ends of the political spectrum. The high Tory Dr Henry Sacheverell set out this position in his 1709 assize sermon The Communication of Sin, arguing that interference in public manners by magistrates and reformers was ‘Incroaching, Impertinent, and Medling Curiosity … the base product of Ill-Nature’ and that they ‘arrogantly intrench upon Other’s [sic] Christian Liberty’ and ‘our Neighbour’s Proceedings that don’t belong to us’ (quoted in Burtt 1992: 58–63, quotation at 58). This sermon not only attacked the reformation of manners movement, but also the Whig government and dissenting Protestantism, which he perceived to be of a piece, and as such the political and moral argument were conjoined. The radical form of this argument, in contrast, was particularly associated with Bernard Mandeville, whose The Fable of the Bees was published in 1714 and had its major public impact in 1723 and who also published A Modest Defence of Publick Stews in 1724, which targeted directly the movement for the reformation of manners (Burtt 1992: 61, 128–149; Goldsmith 1985). Such arguments were frequently direct targets of attack from sermonisers on liberty and morality, often alongside Filmerian patriarchalism. Sermons were a central part of most major public occasions in the early eighteenth century, from the swearing in of a new Lord Mayor to the opening of the assizes, or commemoration of the great national anniversaries.

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

97

On these occasions the audience included local notables, those tasked with the execution of government in practice and often the general public more broadly. Accordingly, contemporaries frequently took the opportunity for propaganda and the dissemination of ideology that these occasions provided. The influence of sermons was further extended by frequent publication: sermons were, by volume of title, the most popular form of printed literature in the eighteenth century, with three being published per week, equating to 15,000 over the whole century, compared to 9000 political pamphlets (Caudle 2000; Ihalainen 2005: 27). Of these sermons, those delivered at the assize sessions were particularly important. The assizes were the principal court of the counties of England, dealing with more serious offences than the quarter sessions and in particular with capital offences. Sermons of this kind tended to focus on defining liberty in ways that distinguished it from licence, a term that has almost disappeared from contemporary use but which was used as a poetic device to enable authors to advocate freedom while simultaneously applying limits to that freedom. In sermons these limitations tended to take the form of self-limitation, through injunctions not to abuse liberty to the extent of licentiousness. Those who lived in freedom should use it moderately and not abuse it. It was common to preach on verses such as John VIII.32 ‘ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free’; Galatians V.1 ‘Stand fast therefore in the Liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage’; Galatians V.13 ‘use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another’; or 1 Peter II.16 ‘not using you liberty for a cloak of maliciousness; but as the servants of God’. Through these verses, they encouraged their listeners to govern their conduct and shape their own character in terms of this limited, restrained liberty and sought to encourage their fellow governors to ensure that they carried out their ­administrative and governmental duties with this in mind. The aim of both government and self-government was to imbue the Christian and Stoic virtues in both the self and others, principally through the means of habituating oneself in good conduct and restraint and by constantly schooling one’s own actions towards moderation and control of the passions but also by ensuring those who let their passions run loose were regularly and suitably admonished.

98 

F. Dodsworth

For example, Benjamin Hoadly’s The Measures of Submission to the Civil Magistrate, a discourse which developed from a sermon delivered before the Lord Mayor of London in 1705, argued that ‘many take delight to misrepresent the Cause of Liberty, and to make the World believe that nothing is aim’d at by the Advocates for it, but a Licentious State of Anarchy and Lawless Confusion’. In fact those who genuinely wished anarchy would, he argued, represent the advocates of civil liberty themselves as tyrannical ‘because they are in earnest for the restraint of Laws and good Government’ (Hoadly 1718: 198). Those who countered this with the argument of Hobbes and Filmer that ‘civil liberty’ was just a pretence to liberty ‘because every Man in this State cannot do just what He always could wish to do; but is in many Actions restrained and curbed’ had missed the point that this was not natural liberty but freedom in society, a condition which required restraints to prevent confusion and equality, which would be a state of misery (Hoadly 1718: 198). This sermon was preached on Romans XIII, a verse more usually used by patriarchalists to advocate absolute monarchy; Hoadly was therefore meeting them on their own ground, seeking to reconcile freedom and government through the notion of civil liberty as a governed condition. This allowed him to maintain that people were born naturally free and only became subject to government through their tacit consent while at the same time defining civil liberty as a limited condition established through restraint (Hoadly 1718: 197–198, 200). Appended to The Measures of Submission was a sermon delivered at the Hertford Assizes in January 1707/8, in which Hoadly argued that ‘when we speak of Liberty in a govern’d Society, this we must understand to be something as really different from that Licentiousness which supposeth no Government, as from that Slavery which supposeth Tyranny; and consequently to be a State between Servitude on the one hand, and Lawlessness on the other…’. Slavery here is defined as ‘absolute Subjection to the Will of another not bounded by any wholesome and good Laws’ and licentiousness as confusion, a state without law or government, concluding that ‘Between the two Extremes stands that Liberty, which alone ought to be valued; a Freedom, restrained by beneficial Laws, and living and dying together with public Happiness’ (Hoadly 1708: 11–12). For Hoadly, then, freedom stood at the golden mean between the two extremes of anarchy

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

99

and tyranny, where licentiousness and arbitrary power were restrained by law. The argument is not simply that it is sometimes necessary to interfere in or restrict the freedom of some individuals in the name of the common good but that the very freedom of the community itself, and by extension the individuals who compose it, is a product of government. When he appended this sermon to the 1718 edition of The Measures of Submission, Hoadly referred to it as a condition of ‘civil liberty’ (Hoadly 1718: 200). This was by far the most common term used to describe this constellation of ideas, but the terms ‘true liberty’ and ‘Christian liberty’ were also regularly used to characterise this limited form of freedom where licentiousness and arbitrary power were subject to legitimate restraint. Similarly, in a sermon preached to the House of Commons on 5 November 1722, the anniversary of the arrival of William III in England at the start of the Glorious Revolution, William Burscough preached to the popular verse 1 Peter ii, verse 16, As free, and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness. He addressed the problem of governing freedom through what we might now call responsibilisation (Rose 1999), directing his audience to limit the use of their liberty within the bounds of morality; to do otherwise was to allow liberty to degenerate into licence. He sought to correct the misapprehension and misbehaviour of those who saw liberty only as a negative term, greater or lesser in extent depending on the level of restriction in place: ‘some wilfully mistaking the Notion of Christian Liberty, took the Liberty to discharge Men from all Obligation to the Moral Law; and so Liberty was abused to Licentiousness. Others, stretching their Liberty to the utmost Bounds, and exercising it in all cases without any regard to the infirmities of their Brethren, broke through all the Laws of Christian Charity; and so Liberty was abused to Scandal. A third Sort being told that they were free, that they were Servants of God, that they must call no man master upon earth, and the like, ­discharged themselves from all Obligations to Government, and disclaimed all Subjection to the Higher Powers; and so Liberty was abused to Rebellion’ (Burscough 1722: 6–7). That this was a qualified version of liberty was plainly acknowledged, but it remained liberty nonetheless: ‘Liberty then in its fullest Sense, is a Power of acting as we please; but Liberty in the present enquiry being supposed a Blessing, it can not consist in that which would in reality

100 

F. Dodsworth

prove the greatest Curse. Whosoever therefore sets up his own Will, Pleasure, and Inclination for the Rule of his Actions, abuses Liberty, and sets up for Licentiousness’ (Burscough 1722: 8). Living according to one’s unregulated will, rather than according to the regulations of the law, was not freedom in society, but its opposite. Such definitions might be considered freedom in a state of nature, ‘And indeed, if Men lived wild and out of Society, I see not what other Rule they could go by, but everyone would be at liberty to act, as in his own Judgement He thought best. But being join’d in Society, and obliged to act in consent with Others, Mens Judgements are apt to differ. So that to leave every Man to act according to his private Judgement, is to dissolve Society and abuse Liberty’ (Burscough 1722: 9). Freedom in society, then, was distinct from ‘natural’ liberty; completely unfettered liberty would destroy society and thereby the civil liberty it protected. What maintained that civil liberty, by maintaining society itself, and allowing a reasonable degree of freedom to all its members, was a combination of the rule of law and personal restraint: ‘those alone deserve the Character of a Free People, who placing the strictest Guard on their own irregular Wills and Passions, avoid all appearance of Licentiousness; who distinguishing between Natural and Civil Liberty, submit to the Laws of their Country’ (Burscough 1722: 11). Far from the veneration of civil liberty requiring a reduction in government and tending towards anarchy, ‘There cannot therefore be a greater Abuse of Liberty, than to be remiss and negligent in the Punishment of those who violate [the laws]’ (Burscough 1722: 9). Likewise, Dr Robert Burrow delivered two sermons, both directed at Bernard Mandeville’s assertion that private vice had public benefits, discoursing at length on the necessity of self-government according to Stoic and Christian values if one were to enjoy liberty (Burrow 1729a: 12 n*, 1729b: 9 n*). Burrow wrote in his first sermon, delivered on the occasion of the election of the Lord Mayor of London, that ‘Man is a creature naturally inclin’d to, and desirous of, SOCIETY with others of his Species. His Wants, his Fears, his Hopes direct and urge him to the SOCIAL and CIVIL LIFE’ (Burrow 1729a: 1). Like many others he proceeded upon the Aristotelian assumption that sociality, civility, and political organisation are natural to human beings. Government itself was as reasonable as this combination into societies. Burrow explicitly links the words city,

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

101

meaning here ‘a lesser Community, or Society of Men more closely united in their particular Interests and Polity’, and its government, with the terms Civilité, Civitas and ‘civil’ (Burrow 1729a: 1–2 n*, 25). Immediately government and citizenship are aligned with civility and good conduct. Civility itself was the product of society, he argued, and society itself could not exist without laws and the presence of reward and sanction they implied (Burrow 1729a: 3). The regulation of punishment and reward formed society which generated civility, which is clearly aligned with restraint. Whether or not we can follow Elias (2000) in accepting that people actually internalised such discourses on self-restraint, it is clear that there was a developed idiom on the subject which encouraged people to practise self-restraint in the name of civility and civil liberty, and which was backed up by a renewed array of governmental mechanisms prosecuting failures of restraint. We shall see at the end of Chap. 4 that there is indeed some evidence that greater restraint was cultivated, although the role of such sermons in this is unclear. For Burrow, then, the principle end of government, for which laws were made and magistrates appointed, was ‘that Men who will not be persuaded, or are not of themselves dispos’d to regulate their Passions by Reason, shall be hinder’d by Terror and Force, from satisfying their extravagant Passions’ (Burrow 1729a: 4). Essentially, those who refuse or fail to govern their own passions will be governed by others. At the same time, no society could be called civilised which only defended its members from violence, without also acting on their manners and dispositions (Burrow 1729a: 6). It was strange, argued Burrow, that the ‘civil polity’ should take great concern over the body yet ignore the soul. It was impossible, he argued, to separate virtue from its good influences upon men in society and vice from hurtful effects ‘and therefore the encouraging the one, and discouraging the other, by all proper Methods that shall occur, by the Hopes of Rewards, and by Restraint and the Fear of Punishment, this is a very reasonable Aim and Expectation of Civil Society, and one very important Part of the Civil Magistrate’s Care and Business’ (Burrow 1729a: 7). This clearly implied the prescription and proscription of particular values and qualities by magistrates and others in authority and the establishment of a certain kind of character appropriate to live in a free, civilised state.

102 

F. Dodsworth

The magistrate’s authority, then, was the ‘Cement of Society’ and, people therefore had a duty to submit to his authority for the good of the community ‘and thereby preserve their Liberties and Properties’ (Burrow 1729a: 27–28). But it was not simply the actions of others that required government. It was the duty of the wise man and good Christian to watch over his own thoughts and ‘the most secret Motions of his Heart’. Some thoughts were so hurtful to society that to express them was unnatural. ‘Natural’, for Burrow, meant not the gratifying of every appetite and inclination, as for Hobbes, but precisely the opposite as ‘the philosophers’ had argued it meant ‘not to indulge their Appetites, but to put on them those Restraints, which, because they found that Reason dictated, they rightly esteemed natural’. Anyone who took the contrary method and discoursed on his worst thoughts would have the effect of ‘fixing a vicious Habit of Mind and Thought’ (Burrow 1729a: 22–23). Governing the self according to the norms of civility and politeness, with restraint of the vicious passions, was the root of sociability and the civil liberty that depended upon a functioning society. It is here that Foucault’s genealogy of freedom intersects with Elias’ genealogy of civility (see Rose 1999: 69–74 for a discussion of this relationship in a later period). Burrow expanded on this argument, and particularly the relationship between freedom and government, in a sermon delivered at the York assizes in 1729. The form of liberty he eulogised was a constitutional monarchy, as lauded by mainstream Whigs and moderate Tories, which provided a governed freedom with the rule of law applying to all: ‘NEVER is there a Polity so complete and happy; never is there a more duly bounded or a more grateful LIBERTY than under the Government of a KING guiding Himself as well as governing his Subjects by STATED LAWS’. However, despite arguing that royal authority actuated the law and established the authority of the courts, he expressly argued that he did not intend anything that he said to be taken to imply that the king was above the law or could make laws by himself or rule without them (Burrow 1729b: 15–16 n*). As such he was specifically rejecting patriarchalism; he was not, however, suggesting that people should be completely free to govern themselves. This was explicitly a mixed form of government, where the people had a say in rule, but without ‘the Confusions, the unrestrain’d, excessive, tumultuous Liberties or rather Licentiousness, and

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

103

other Evils and great Inconveniences of Democracy’. Liberty, then, was not the same as unrestrained licence. Mixed government also gave power to the great but managed to avoid the factions and rivalries of aristocracy, while the constitutional nature of the monarchy rendered them safe from ‘the Iron Sceptre and arbitrary Rule’ of tyranny. Worse than all these, however, was the condition of anarchy, where every man acted according to his own wishes, acting as his own judge in every case. Indeed, Burrow argues that anarchy and tyranny were in many senses similar, for living under laws that changed according to the caprice of the ruler was not really living under law at all. Likewise, it was necessary that the law that existed be fairly executed by those dispensing justice: ‘We should be the most inexcusable of all Men, if we should exercise Tyranny over our Brethren’ (Burrow 1729b: 17). This kind of argument was taken up widely in eighteenth-century sermons delivered in the context of the exercise of authority. In his assize sermon, John Disney stressed in classic Whig fashion the emergence of freedom through the ancient constitution and the limited nature of the British monarchy. Both monarch and people were subject to the rule of law, which could only be altered with the consent of Parliament and the virtual consent of the populace. These liberties are explicitly defined by Disney as being settled at the Glorious Revolution (Disney 1727: 7–8, 11). However, despite these overtly Whig constitutional positions, he is also keen to stress that ‘As our Monarchy is a limited Monarchy, so our Freedom is a limited Freedom’ (Disney 1727: 13). Benjamin Carter agreed: ‘By Liberty I hope none will think I mean an Immunity from Government or Law; that were a savage Liberty indeed, fit only to reign in Forests and Desarts [sic] and among Beasts of Prey’ (Carter 1717: 13). Once again, the limits of liberty were the laws and virtues, the alternative to which was anarchy: ‘a Liberty without the Bounds of Virtue and Law, is but a Privilege to put the World in Confusion, and a License for a Man to destroy himself ’ (Carter 1717: 15–16). The liberty possessed by Christian men was ‘not a Freedom from all Bonds or Restraints whatsoever, but a Freedom from servile Bonds, and harsh Restraints’, ‘A Freedom in all Things of a middle and indifferent Nature’ (Carter 1717: 2, 5). Such arguments were by no means novel: in articulating them, these authors were translating well-established patterns of discourse from

104 

F. Dodsworth

authoritative sources in the classics. In the Politics Aristotle had argued that ‘liberty is assumed to consist in “doing what one likes”. The result of such views is that, in these extreme democracies, each individual lives as he likes—or, as Euripides says, “For any end he chances to desire”. This is a mean conception [of liberty]. To live by the rule of the constitution ought not to be regarded as slavery, but rather as salvation’ (Aristotle 1995: 208–209). Polybius also signalled the danger of popular licence, highlighting the most essential elements for a healthy state as the condition of the manners and the laws, which should be ‘those which form the lives of individuals to sanctity and moderation, and the general temper of the whole community to mildness and to justice’. Otherwise, when the public were ‘inflamed with rage, and following only the dictates of their passions, they no longer will submit to any controul … but will draw to themselves the entire sovereignty, and supreme direction of all affairs. When this is done, the government will assume indeed the fairest of all names, that of a free and popular state; but will in truth be the greatest of all evils, a government administered by a blind and unskilful multitude’ (Hampton 1764: 25, 37). Beyond these classical models of argument, there was also precedent in the Whig canon for this position, the distinction between natural and civil liberty being central to Locke’s and Sidney’s attempts to refute Filmer and Hobbes. Algernon Sidney, for example, was very clear that he was dealing with the liberty of man in society, not natural liberty (Sidney 1996: 30–31, 191–195). Locke also sought to distinguish between the state of nature and the freedom of man in society, which ‘is to be under no other Legislative Power, but that established, by consent, in the Common-wealth, nor under the Dominion of any Will, or Restraint of any Law, but what the Legislative shall enact’ (Locke 1988: 283). Freedom, Locke argued ‘is not … A Liberty for everyone to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not be tyed by any Laws: But Freedom of Men under Government, is, to have a standing Rule to live by, common to every one of that Society, and made by the Legislative Power erected in it; A Liberty to follow my own Will in all things, where the Rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, Arbitrary Will of another Man’ (Locke 1988: 284, 350–351). Like Sidney’s Discourses, this argument was specifically targeted against the work of Robert Filmer, here his Observations on Aristotle’s Politiques. This

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

105

governed condition required that the law be used to direct the actions of the individual towards not only the public good, but towards freedom itself. As Locke put it: ‘where there is no Law, there is no Freedom’; ‘For Law, in its true Notion, is not so much the Limitation as the direction of a free and intelligent Agent to his proper Interest’ (Locke 1988: 305–306).

Moralising Magistrates It is clear, then, that sermonisers on the rule of law sought to define civil, Christian, or simply ‘true’ liberty as a restrained condition in opposition to licentiousness, by invoking the authority of both the classical and Whig political traditions, perceived to be powerful tools for refuting patriarchalism. The sermons cited above were generally delivered either in direct relation to the law in practice, at the assizes, or in relation to the practice of government more broadly (at the opening of Parliament or the inauguration of a new Lord Mayor). In most of these discourses, the injunction towards restraint is often quite general or is directed at the audience themselves and their own behaviour, as befits the genre of a sermon. However, we also find such discourses occurring in the less elevated sphere of the quarter sessions, in charges to grand juries directed at the officers of local government concerned with the administration of common life and public morality. Like sermons, such charges were frequently published, particularly London charges, where they seem to have substituted in function for the assize sermon, there being no assizes in London, where the courts of Common Pleas and King’s Bench supplied this function. This process began immediately following the Revolution in charges published by the Earl of Stamford and the Earl of Warrington, the potential reach of which was significant because they received ­widespread circulation through inclusion in the State Tracts of 1692 and 1705–1707, volumes of texts which set out to defend the Revolution settlement (State Tracts 1705–1707, vol. ii: 195–208, 342–348). These early charges defined many of the concerns which were to echo throughout charges later in the century. Snyder (1994) identifies several hundred such charges in circulation across the Anglophone world. I have identified 36 separate charges in circulation in England between 1690 and

106 

F. Dodsworth

1745 that were specifically cited as having been delivered in England, many of which ran to several editions and in various formats. For example, Sir John Gonson published five charges to grand juries in 1728 and 1729, and there were at least 14 editions of these charges in print between 1728 and 1740.1 They also received some note in the press, as did those of Daniel Dolins.2 Interestingly it is clear from Daniel Dolins’ (1726a: 36) second charge to the grand jury of the Middlesex quarter sessions at Westminster Hall that the jurors sworn in were to be given a copy of his first charge to the grand jury to assist them in court, so such texts clearly had a practical as well as political function; this is also the case in a charge from Clifford Philips (1745b: 14). The court of quarter sessions, at which almost all published charges to grand juries were delivered, has been described by Norma Landau as ‘the supreme institution of local government’ and was the principal administrative body for most English counties (Landau 1984: 240). Accordingly, the quarter sessions were important occasions, and the opportunity to address the sessions as its chairman was a politically prized and contested honour (Landau 1984: 46–51, 64). Assembled at the quarter sessions would be a large number of local notables and particularly those legal officers charged with the administration of local government: other justices of the peace, constables and other minor peace officers, and the grand and petty jurors who were to deliberate on proceedings. In the provinces the jurors who were the target of the charge were generally  Gonson’s various charges were first published individually, in several editions, and then collected together and republished. Cross-referencing the English Short Title Catalogue with the editions available via the invaluable Eighteenth Century Collection Online suggests there were 14 versions of his charges available between 1728 and 1740. His first ‘Charge to the Grand Jury of the City and Liberty of Westminster’ went through three editions in 1728. His second charge was published twice, once along with his charge to the Royalty of the Tower of London, itself originally published separately. There was a collected edition of these three charges, and a second edition of the collection, before the publication of a fourth charge to the grand jury (confusingly, the third to City and Liberty of Westminster) in 1728 and then a fifth in 1729, upon which all five charges were published together, running to three editions in 1730; the fourth appeared in 1740 as Sir John Gonson’s Five Charges to Several Grand Juries (Gonson 1740). 2  Daniel Dolins’ charges were advertised in the Evening Post, issue 2542, 6 Nov. 1725 and issue 2625, 19 May 1726; Daily Post, issue 1910, 8 Nov. 1725 and issue 1912, 10 Nov. 1725 (here Daniel Dolins is mistakenly named Samuel); London Journal, issue 383, 3 Dec. 1726. Gonson’s charges were mentioned in the London Evening Post, issue 131, 8 Oct. 1728; Read’s Weekly Journal Or British Gazetteer, issue 433, 7 July 1733 and issue 788, 13 Oct. 1739. 1

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

107

r­elatively substantial men of the community, often yeomen, tradesmen, or craftsmen, and grand juries often appear to have been made up of the high constables of the hundreds. In London the social status of jurors was not so marked, with jury service being rotated between the wards of the city to lessen the burden, but generally those serving either had previous experience of service or were otherwise involved in local government. In terms of the size of the audience, it is also worth noting that even for those charges delivered only in verbal form, the reach of charges to grand juries was considerable: Beattie records that in the 1690s, 40 or 50 men would have been called for service on each occasion, with 17 usually selected for the grand jury, and that over a year in London, approximately 1000 men were summoned for service, with 800 appearing and 320 actually being sworn in (Beattie 1986: 316–323, 327–333, 1988). Like the authors of assize sermons and other discourses on the rule of law, justices of the peace delivering charges to grand juries sought to eulogise the rule of law and its basis in the ancient constitution and the English common law tradition. They did so in the presence of the officers of local government who were called upon to police society, and they often made clear their desire to intensify the moral ordering of the body politic. A good example of this is provided by Sir John Gonson (d. 1765), a justice of the peace infamous for his role in the long-running moral campaigns against gin and prostitution. Gonson was immortalised for posterity by Hogarth in plate three of the A Harlot’s Progress, poised uncertainly in the act of arresting Moll Hackabout, and he is alluded to in plate 4, where the initials SJG accompany an image of a hanged man (Hallett and Riding 2006: 82–83). As noted above, he was evidently an associate of the movements for the reformation of manners, because their propagandists referred favourably to him (Denham 1724: 1). This is significant, because his charges to grand juries were delivered at a point when the reformation of manners campaign was in decline and coming under severe stress and the delivery and publication of his charges seem to have been part of a drive to revive the campaign: it is surely no coincidence that Gonson’s charges were delivered in 1728–1729, published extensively in 1728–1730, and that he set about prominent campaigns against gin and prostitution in 1728–1729 and 1730–1731 (Clark 1988; Shore 2009).

108 

F. Dodsworth

In his first charge to the grand jury of Westminster, delivered at Westminster Hall in 1728, Gonson explicitly defined Britain as a mixed and limited monarchy in which the monarch ruled through the laws of the land according to the principle of Magna Carta (excerpted in Lamoine 1992: 212–214, 218). He repeated this engagement with Magna Carta in his third charge, in which he seemed to directly engage with Robert Filmer’s patriarchalism. As we saw above, Filmer had argued that Magna Carta was a grant of the King under the great seal; Gonson seems to be countering this directly, arguing that although Magna Carta expressed these principles and liberties ‘more distinctly’, they were already established in the laws of Edward the Confessor as the birthright of every Englishman, which itself was only a revision, repetition, and confirmation of the laws of King Edward the Saxon, and ultimately these were ‘but Recognitions of what we had reserved unto our selves in the original Institution of our Government, and of what had always belonged to us by common Law, and most ancient Custom’ (cited in Lamoine 1992: 257–258). This phrase was a direct quotation from either a Whig pamphlet entitled The Judgement of Whole Kingdoms and Nations, published in 1710, itself an extension of two other pamphlets Vox Populi, Vox Dei, published in 1709, and the ‘Political Aphorisms’ (Ashcraft and Goldsmith 1983: 792), or Robert Ferguson’s A Brief Justification of the Prince of Orange’s Descent into England, which was itself excerpted in the State Tracts (1705–1707).3 One central element of this system of common law and immemorial custom was, of course, trial by jury, the ‘Great Jewel of  It is demonstrated in Ashcraft and Goldsmith (1983) that the Political Aphorisms and The Judgement reproduce large sections of Locke’s Two Treatises, along with Robert Ferguson’s A Brief Justification of the Prince of Orange’s Descent into England; Gilbert Burnet’s An Enquiry into the Measures of Submission to the Supreme Authority and The Revolution Vindicated; Vindicae Contra Tyrannos; Clarendon’s History of the Great Rebellion; Whitlock’s Memorials; and Rushworth’s Historical Collections. These were all important sources for charge authors. The Political Aphorisms, The Revolution Vindicated, and A Brief Justification were also in A Collection of State Tracts. A major component of The Judgement which is not noted by Ashcraft and Goldsmith is Sidney’s Discourses, which is quoted from verbatim in several places, and the language and argument of the whole piece seems to owe as much to this as Locke. Indeed, it is worth pointing out that the very title of the second edition Vox Populi, Vox Dei appears in Sidney (1996: 69), although it appears that in The Judgement, 54–55, 147, this was taken from the declaration in favour of the Prince of Orange at Nottingham: see ‘The Declaration of the Nobility, Gentry and Commonalty at the Rendezvous at Nottingham, Nov. 22, 1688’, in State Tracts (1692: 436). One of the people present at this event was the Earl of Warrington, Lord Delamere, whose charges are mentioned here (Kenyon 1977: 6). 3

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

109

Liberty’ and a fundamental part of the Great Charter itself (Gonson, excerpted in Lamoine 1992: 213–214). Here Gonson appears to be quoting Care (1703: 4), a text that was originally published in 1680 as part of the Exclusion Crisis; the term ‘precious jewel liberty’ also occurs in the work of Walter Moyle (1727: 161), which it is clear Gonson had read. The idea that English liberty was secured by trial by jury also occurs in other charges (see charges by Gonson and Montagu excerpted in Lamoine 1992: 142, 231–232; Astry 1703: 4). Ultimately the jury trial and the ancient constitution of which it was a part, which formed this mixed, limited system of government, meant that ‘There is that due Balance in Property, Power and Dominion in our Constitution, that like the ancient Government of Sparta, it may be call’d an Empire of Laws, and not of Men’ (Gonson, excerpted in Lamoine 1992: 230–231). This Harringtonian language is, in fact, a close but unacknowledged paraphrase of an avowedly Whig source: Moyle and Trenchard, An argument showing that a standing army is inconsistent with a free government (1698), available in Moyle’s recently published Works (Moyle 1727: 160–161). Gonson also appears to be voicing Moyle (1727: 50, 160–165) when he argues that the beauty of a mixed government is that it ‘consists in that due Poize, or Balance between Rule and Subjection’ with the advantages of aristocracy and democracy but without the disadvantages of those systems (cited in Lamoine 1992: 257; for similar arguments, see also Astry 1703: 32–33; Dolins 1726a: 18–19; and Shelton 1726: 14–15). It was this that allowed the constitution to take ‘an excellent Medium’ between the excesses of licence and tyranny (Gonson, excerpted in Lamoine 1992: 267). This argument was a direct rebuttal of the arguments of Filmer and his eighteenth-­century interlocutors who argued that a mixed or limited monarchy constituted a state of anarchy, and the only way to ensure peace and order was to provide the prince with absolute or arbitrary power. In addition to these silent voicings of Whig authorities, Gonson explicitly refers, either in the text or notes, to Petyt, Tyrrell, Rymer, Bracton, Fortescue, Glanville, Coke, Hooker, Hale (via Burnet’s Life), Briton (Bishop of Hereford), Gilbert de Thornton, William Wake (Archbishop of Canterbury), Hollingshead, Baker, Spelman, Horne, Nathaniel Bacon, Buck, Lord Herbert’s histories, Burnet’s History of the Reformation, Welwood’s Memoirs, Aristotle, Cicero, Caesar, Tacitus, and

110 

F. Dodsworth

Machiavelli’s Discourses. He also refers explicitly to Algernon Sidney as ‘a great Man’ (although the attribution is missing from Lamoine 1992: 242 where it reads [B 2–11] which appears to be a typographical error: compare Gonson 1740: 40), and the trials of Sidney, Russell, and Cornish are described as ‘hard and irregular’ (in Lamoine 1992: 261). Throughout his text, then, Gonson was giving voice to the words of Whig authorities, polemical pamphlets, and some classical authorities. In doing so he clearly sought to offset the Jacobite argument that mixed government and a limited monarchy would lead to anarchy; but he also sought to justify, and to promote, a new intensity of government in the name of freedom. Just as the courts maintained the freedom of the subject against the threat of monarchical tyranny, they also maintained the order and virtue necessary to maintain liberty against the threat of licence. There was no contradiction here for Gonson as by liberty, it is clear he did not mean freedom from interference: again, directly countering Filmer and Leslie, there is no sense in which being free meant simply acting entirely as one wished. Gonson defined freedom thus: ‘By Liberty is not meant Licentiousness, or for Men to act without Controul, but under the restraint of good Laws; so far free and at Liberty as reasonable Creatures would wish to be, and so far only restrain’d, as is necessary for the Peace and Good of Society’ (excerpted in Lamoine 1992: 255). Once again, this turns out to be a direct but unacknowledged quotation of Moyle’s (1727: 50) ‘Essay on the Lacedœmonian Government’, recently published for the first time in Moyle’s complete works, mixed with a definition of liberty in opposition to licentiousness which might be drawn from Locke but which also occurs in earlier assize sermons and charges (Astry 1703: 35; Dolins 1726b: 19–20). To be free was not to be without government, but to be made free from domination by others through the law. As Gonson put it, paraphrasing Care, ‘This original happy Frame of Government is truly and properly called an English man’s Birthright, a Privilege not to be exempt from Law, but to be freed in Person and Estate, from arbitrary Violence and Oppression’, which could, of course, come either from the monarch or the people (in Lamoine 1992: 267; Care 1703: 4). Quoting Aristotle and Cicero, Gonson refers to the art of government as ‘good Management’ and defines its purpose as ‘preserving the publick Peace, and restraining the Lusts, unruly Passions, Frauds, and

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

111

Violences of Men’ (excerpted in Lamoine 1992: 240–243). The solution to the threat of anarchy was ‘wise and wholesome Laws, agreed upon by the Society; and the Care of both is, by common Consent, committed to the Civil Magistrate’ (cited in Lamoine 1992: 212). He was defining his own role, then, and that of the other peace officers in the court, the justices of the peace, parochial officers, churchwardens, constables, and so on, as agents in the grand and ancient struggle to maintain English liberty, defining their duties on that very occasion as the bulwark against both anarchy and tyranny. This was important, because when the justices of the peace presiding over the quarter sessions sought to define English liberty under the rule of law as dependent on restraint of both the monarch and the people, they did so in the context of the rule of law in practice, declaring these principles in courts charged with the administration of local government, which had the power to prosecute a huge variety of criminal, public order, and nuisance offences with wide-ranging potential for moral and social regulation. The assembled audience of the charge included the grand jury itself, the justices of the peace, constables, streetkeepers, churchwardens, and other local officers whose responsibilities encompassed such matters as regulation of the streets and highways; prosecution of general nuisances; regulation of alehouses; moral offences such as bastardy, swearing, and sexual misconduct; religious offences like Sabbath-breaking and recusancy; the apprentice laws and vagrancy and poverty, including the operation of the settlement acts; matters concerning trade like forestalling and engrossing or false weights and measures; and petty crime and disorder. These officers had the power to prosecute moral transgressions, dictate wages and prices, apportion people to particular work, and control the movement of paupers and labourers, and they acted to ­marginalise and criminalise vagrants. The quarter session courts themselves were not always responsible for, or the occasion for, the actual prosecution of such offences, but even where they were not, they were the place that the officers of local government responsible for those offences were held to account for their conduct. Some of these powers and practices (such as settlement assessment and the conveying of paupers) were frequently used, but others were more irregularly enforced: for example, the prosecution of Catholic recusants was largely ignored except during periods of

112 

F. Dodsworth

great anti-Popery sentiment following Jacobite scares (Haydon 1993: 14, 33, 47–49, 52, 66–69, 86–90, 120–121, 131–133). But one element that is central to almost all of the charges surveyed here is an attempt to encourage greater attention to the aspects of these powers and duties concerned with regulation of vice and immorality, which they felt were being ignored by too many constables and magistrates. In his charges Gonson argued that ‘All the famed Legislators of the World, MOSES, LYCURGUS, SOLON and NUMA founded their Laws, their Governments, and political Institutions upon Religion and Virtue’ (cited in Lamoine 1992: 268).4 These legislators were, of course, the founders of what were argued to be the best ancient commonwealths, Israel, Sparta, Athens, and Rome, whose histories and fates were seen to be exemplary for the modern world. The most famous writers of politics from Plato to Machiavelli, Gonson argued, ‘shew, that Vice is always attended by Corruption, and is the Pest and Bane of every free Community’. In an argument surely aimed directly at Robert Filmer, he claims that it was the expulsion of the Tarquins that established Roman liberty. However, this overthrow of tyranny was achieved because the Romans ‘were at that Time a most religious and virtuous People’. It was the religious impulse which drove men to create the good, free society. At the same time, they could not recover their liberty after the Caesars because ‘they were then a more profligate, vicious, and luxurious People, than ever the World has known’ (Gonson, excerpted in Lamoine 1992: 268; compare Filmer 1991: 267–268). He went on to quote Cicero as saying that without religion, you took away ‘mutual faith’ and the most excellent of virtues, justice. Machiavelli, he argued, ‘ascribed the Prosperity of Rome to their Care of Religion, and the Strictness of their Morals’, adding that ‘there is not a greater Sign of imminent Ruin, than when GOD and his Worship are despised’ (excerpted in Lamoine 1992: 259; see Machiavelli 1996: 49–52). Gonson continued, arguing that ‘A general Dissolution of Manners in any Community certainly tends to its Destruction’: drawing on Proverbs XIV.34 ‘That righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people’, he argued that ‘As the Virtue  This seems to be from Machiavelli’s Discourses (1996: 30), where the first three of these are listed in this order and this context, with Numa figuring centrally in the next chapter. 4

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

113

of a Kingdom encreaseth or diminisheth, so doth its Strength at home, and Credit abroad; and the Experience of all Ages and Nations teacheth us this great Truth, that no Government can long flourish, which doth not discourage and punish Vice and Profaneness’ (excerpted in Lamoine 1992: 259). Such arguments were not unique to Gonson, they had a long heritage in charges to grand juries. Gonson seems to have drawn particularly upon the earlier charges of Whitlock Bulstrode and Montagu in his framing of these concerns, although the general concerns about vice corrupting the body politic and the fear that vice would draw down divine judgement on the nation were common to many charges (see Lamoine 1992: 97, 109–125, 146 and compare to 233–234). Much of this language, and the specific targets of concern, were, of course, already outlined in the royal proclamations on vice which were periodically issued and which were frequently referred to in the charges. Queen Anne’s proclamation against vice was, for example, appended to Astry’s (1703) published charge, and they were widely publicised through the literature disseminated by the movements for the reformation of manners, which aimed to provide models for the formation of societies for moral reform, abstracts of moral offences, and examples of appropriate warrants for arrest, as ways of promoting moral regulation (Help National Reformation 1706). Gonson’s argument here closely echoes that of Montagu, who had become concerned by ‘heedless regard’ for the ‘subordinate magistrate’ (the justice of the peace) and the prevalence of insulting behaviour towards the king. These he considered ‘Epidemical Maladies in the State: and as Medicines, when timely and properly applied, are Helps and Supports to the Body Natural, so (to prevent the Body Politick from falling into Ruin and Decay) it is necessary, that the Laws be forthwith vigorously put into execution’. Indeed, he carries the metaphor of the legal remedying of the body politic so far as to term the members of the grand jury ‘the Physicians of the State’ (excerpted in Lamoine 1992: 144). No man, Montagu argued, could be a good subject, unless he was a good Christian, and that the laws of God were ‘the Fountain and Sources from whence Obedience to the Magistrate is derived’ and that anyone who is guilty of excessive drinking, blasphemy, profane cursing and swearing, lewdness, or profanation of the Sabbath cannot be considered to have any religion at all,

114 

F. Dodsworth

‘but on the other hand are professed Enemys [sic] to our King and Constitution’ (in Lamoine 1992: 145). He proceeds to quote the Royal proclamation on vice, which not only states that vice must be suppressed as a duty to God, but that ‘as these Vices have a fatal tendency to corrupt those Persons otherwise religiously disposed, they may, if not timely remedied, draw down Vengeance on his Majesty and his Kingdoms’ (in Lamoine 1992: 145). Such arguments were frequent in charges to grand juries. As noted above, the alignment of the success of Rome with a period of virtue and its decline through vice was also made in Philips (1745b: 4–7), while the general claim that the health of the body politic depended upon moral virtue in the people and that the growth of vice therefore threatened the corruption of the state was also common in grand jury charges (see charges by Cocks, Fielding, and various unidentified Guilford magistrates in Lamoine 1992: 181–182, 284, 332, 343; see also Dolins 1726a: 3, 13, 41, 1726b: 43; Philips 1745a: dedication; the Earl of Warrington in State Tracts 1705–1707, vol. ii: 201, 345, 347). Many of the same authors also invoked the idea that descent into vice would draw down divine vengeance upon the nation (see charges by Bulstrode and the anonymous Norfolk manuscripts in Lamoine 1992: 74–75, 113, 116, 118, 162; Philips 1745a: 4; The Earl of Warrington in State Tracts 1705–1707, vol. ii: 345). The discursive devices Gonson deployed in his five charges to mobilise the law in pursuit of his agenda of reformation were of fundamental importance to the Augustan criminal justice system, because in this period the officers of the law were not paid for the performance of their duties, nor were the fines for negligence sufficient to deter many from neglect of duty or to discourage widespread use of substitutes (see Beattie 2001; Shoemaker 1991). Accordingly, the energy and attention the ­officers of the law devoted to their duties depended to a large extent on their sense of duty or personal commitment to the legal process. The charge to the grand jury was, along with the assize sermon, one of the most important opportunities the Augustan legal system provided for cultivation of this sense of duty. The fact that these texts are addressed directly to the grand jury, and indirectly to the peace officers assembled in court, suggests a fear that the negligence these officers were so often accused of stemmed, at least in part, from an unwillingness to act on a

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

115

legal authority that was itself somewhat suspect. The task of the magistrate delivering his charge to the grand jury was to articulate a rationale for action in terms that the audience would find convincing. In this sense they give us an insight not so much into the beliefs of the author, but rather into what kind of interpretive community (Fish 1980) the magistrate in question assumed he was part of. The delivery and publication of these charges might be seen as an additional device, supplementing the networks of informers, supportive constables, and general warrants, which formed part of a general drive to promote moral reform and to energise the law in Augustan London. The nature of the audiences to which these charges are directed is clear from the charges themselves. Gonson’s first charge to the grand jury states that it was published at the behest of the justices of the peace and the grand jury ‘for the better Information of the Inhabitants, and publick Officers of this City and Liberty, in the Performance of the respective Duties’ (in Lamoine 1992: 211). Daniel Dolins’ second charge to the grand jury was published ‘for the better Instruction of Grand-Jury-Men, High-­ Constables, Petty-Constables, and other [sic] His Majesty’s Subjects’, to assist them ‘in promoting Love and Obedience to His Majesty King GEORGE and his Government, and for the better Discharge of their Duties in putting the Laws in Force against Profaneness and Immorality’ (Dolins 1726b: A2 and preceding). Not only, then, was the charge to the grand jury directed at the jury itself, but more generally at those whose powers encompassed regulation of public behaviour in this period. The charges functioned as a device for mobilising the energy of the law, it is argued, by making the potentially onerous and unpopular legal duties of the audience meaningful and significant, locating the legal roles and the grand jurymen and constables, who composed both the immediate and target audience, within the grand romance of the ancient constitution and the triumph of English liberty at the Glorious Revolution, coupled with the deployment of the idea that the state was in a condition of perpetual struggle against vice and moral corruption which threatened it with decline. These literary devices were intended to make these roles appear significant and honourable, but moreover possible and consequential, necessarily involving an articulation of the possibility of meaningful action. As

116 

F. Dodsworth

James Vernon has put it in relation to a later version of the constitutional narrative, by locating the duties of peace officers in relation to these constitutional narratives, ‘they not only became meaningful, but enabled subjects to imagine themselves as actors within these dramas’ (Vernon 1996: 13–14). Patrick Joyce likewise argues that it is through such constitutional narratives that individuals find themselves ascribed a certain kind of agency, understanding themselves as subjects with a capacity for action in relation to the processes being narrated (Joyce 1996: 180). If this sounds like the ascription of popular cultural theory onto the texts of the past, I would simply direct the reader’s attention to the words of the Earl of Stamford in his address to the grand jury at Leicester in 1690, a text which formed part of the State Tracts and was also available individually and which Gonson had almost certainly read. Stamford’s stated intention was ‘to acquaint you with the nature of Governments in general, as well as the Rightfulness and Lawfulness of This, before I came to tell you the parts you are to act, and the business you are to do to support it and yourselves’ (excerpted in Lamoine 1992: 39, emphasis in the original). Approaching this from an identity theory perspective, we might say that these discourses outlined a role for the listener, explaining the place of that role within a particular socio-political context and historical narrative, that is to say, that they sought to attach a set of behavioural expectations to a particular position in an organised social relationship, presumably with the intention that the audience would internalise those roles in the form of an identity, emphasising the salience of that identity role in this particular context, not only in terms of the general performance of their duties, but in the very context of the court session itself (Stryker 2007: 1083–1084, n.1 and 2 and 1091). Existing work in identity and personality theory suggests that role choices are a function of identities and that people tend to validate or reinforce those identities by taking up opportunities to enact or behave in accordance with the principles of their most highly salient identities, seeking confirmation of their identity by finding or creating circumstances in which their identities can be performed and seeing situations in ways which make their identity relevant. The more this role is connected to others within an apparently related group, the greater people’s commitment to those roles appears and the more likely the participants are to mutually validate one another’s

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

117

identities. The link between identity and behaviour is produced through the meanings linking the two. This drives behaviour as the person in question seeks to act on the world, to shape their situation so that it matches the self-relevant meanings they have developed (Stryker and Burke 2000: 286–290). In this context, the performance of moral reform demonstrates commitment to the principles of revolution and reformation and confirms their significance. The political elements of these discourses, then, operated as a means of inspiration and reassurance, not so much to the general public, but to the officers who were called to serve the courts and act under their authority that they did so legally. The almost compulsive return to the uncertain and contested status of the monarchy in these discourses, following the ejection or supposed abdication of James II, marks this event out as traumatic in the psychoanalytic sense, undermining the foundational assumptions and significations of English society, and it is thus subject to constant repetition, despite all claims to its normality. These discourses offer a way of working through this trauma. The strange and unsettling events of the Glorious Revolution are sometimes rendered historically recognisable and acceptable by comparing them to the variety of other moments in English history which had seen changes in the monarchy but through which the English constitution had persisted relatively unaltered. And at the same time, by locating legal authority and the stability and legitimacy of this society in the persistence of immemorial law and custom, rather than in the office of the monarchy itself, the problem of legitimacy is sidestepped. If the law makes the king, rather than the king making the law, as almost all of these charges asserted, then the authority of the law persists, despite the change in the monarchy.

Embodying Revolution and Reformation In the aftermath of the Revolution of 1688, Whig supporters of the Revolution Settlement sought to undermine the political patriarchalism that was used to justify the continuing claim of James II to the throne and to promote the idea that they had secured English liberty against the threat of arbitrary power and Catholicism. In the process, the freedom of the

118 

F. Dodsworth

people was loudly proclaimed, but it was also immediately qualified. Civil liberty, it was argued, was not licence, or action without moral restraint, but was a governed condition, regulated by law. Failure to regulate the freedom of the governed according to the principles of Protestant morality would lead to licentiousness, anarchy, and ultimately tyranny, just as surely as would the arbitrary power of the monarch. The moral state of the population was defined as central to the health of the body politic, and, as such, to the wider security of the state itself. Vice and crime were threats not simply because they were inherently wrong, but because they threatened the corruption and enervation of the vital powers of the populace in the struggle against both internal and external enemies. The combination of a Machiavellian-Polybian argument that the fate of nations depended on the virtue of their citizens, with Calvin’s argument that divine judgement would be exercised on entire Christian communities, rather than the sinfulness or otherwise of their individual members, provided a powerful justification for governmental intervention in moral and behavioural matters on the grounds of ‘security’. In this sense the moral and the dangerous or risky were intertwined. This regulation of morality involved patterns of social and spatial differentiation around behavioural values and practices, producing new patterns of relation, classification, and government and ultimately new social groupings, organisations, identities, and patterns of interaction that came to transform the ‘infrastructures of social relations’ with lasting effects. To put it in Arditi’s (1998) terms, as a practice of ‘collective self-fashioning’, we can perceive a gradual transition from an infrastructure of social relations in which distance to and favouritism from the monarch are central to one’s social positioning, to one in which this is at the least complemented by one’s positioning in relation to party and confession, which is itself accompanied by particular sets of cultural values and vocabularies. The cultivation of ‘politeness’, for example, could be seen as constituting a political act, inserting a revived religious morality into social interaction, replacing formal manners with considerateness, and forming part of the wider drive for a reformation of manners (Carter 2001). The performance of political affiliation, then, was a process of differentiation and integration, marking out one’s membership of a particular political group by distancing oneself from rivals while integrating

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

119

oneself into the in-­group. The social identity perspective suggests that the more one is able to embody the ‘prototypical’ values and attitudes of the in-group, the greater one’s power and influence within it is likely to be (Hornsey 2008: 211). Fashioning a self so as to embody those values inevitably involves the incorporation of particular forms of authority into oneself and one’s performance, drawing on the range of culturally available meanings and articulating them in a particular range of discursive and non-discursive practices as a way of claiming one form of authority, often to contest another or to position oneself in a socially advantageous way (Biernacki 1999, 2000; Dean 1996; Foucault 1972; Greenblatt 1980). I have argued here that for many moral reformers, mostly Whigs and sometimes dissenting protestants, the articulation of discourses on the rule of law, the claim to be enforcing its principles, backed up by demonstrable action in doing so in the field of moral reform, was a way for many lower and middling men, local office holders and magistrates, to embody the Revolution principles and thereby stake a claim to a social position and role in the grand narratives of national liberation and Reformation. A wide range of discourses on the rule of law, often delivered on the occasions and at the locations of its exercise, encouraged office holders to take up such identities, grounding them in well-known classical and Christian discursive traditions that were existing repositories of intellectual and moral authority. The reification of the rule of law, then, took place as a way of reconciling the events of 1688—the forcible overthrow of one monarch and their replacement by another—with the desire to claim continuity in social authority and the wider mechanisms for governing communal life through the law, which were directly threatened by those events. The ‘rule of law’ was the principal security against both the arbitrary will of the monarch and the licentiousness of the people, and those who enforced the rule of law were thereby protecting not just individuals against harm, but they were protecting the free state itself against corruption and decay. Through these discourses, Whig advocates for the new regime sought to configure their revolutionary and governmental activities as true to the ‘ancient constitution’ of the nation and the principles of the common law, which they identified as the source of authority and legitimacy for the monarch and all other office holders. In order to do so,

120 

F. Dodsworth

it was necessary for them to offset accusations that they had undermined all order and authority by their disloyalty to, and betrayal of, the principle of hereditary succession of the Crown and to demonstrate that far from this leading to a condition of anarchy, something that still resonated with popular memories of the Civil War, it would, in fact, lead to the fulfilment of the promise of moral reformation that had been central to the failed republican experiment during the Commonwealth and to Christian humanism more broadly since Calvin’s Second Reformation. The construction of their role as actors in a national drama in which virtue and vice struggled for the soul of the nation was necessary not only as a way of establishing their own right to exercise legal authority, which was fundamentally called into question by the events of the Revolution itself and the contested status of the monarchy, but also as a way of encouraging the activity of the many officers of local government, whose own confidence to act would no doubt have been as fragile as the political settlement itself. Discourses on the rule of law provided them with a sense of the legitimacy of their own role as protectors of English liberty, locating them in a particular place and role in the national narrative. Role, identity, and agency were thus interlinked in a distinctive politics of protection (Huysmans 2006).

References Arditi, J. (1998). A Genealogy of Manners: Transformations of Social Relations in France and England from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries. London: Chicago University Press. Aristotle. (1995). Politics (E.  Barker & R.  F. Stalley, Trans.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ashcraft, R., & Goldsmith, M. M. (1983). Locke, Revolution Principles, and the Formation of Whig Ideology. Historical Journal, 26, 773–800. Astry, S. J. (1703). A General Charge to All Grand Juries. London. Bauman, Z. (1987). Legislators and Interpreters: On Modernity, Post-Modernity and Intellectuals. Cambridge: Polity. Beattie, J. M. (1986). Crime and the Courts in England, 1660–1800. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

121

Beattie, J. M. (1988). London Juries in the 1690s. In J. S. Cockburn & T. A. Green (Eds.), Twelve Good Men and True: The Criminal Trial Jury in England, 1200–1800 (pp. 214–253). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Beattie, J. M. (2001). Policing and Punishment in London, 1660–1750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Biernacki, R. (1999). Method and Metaphor After the New Cultural History. In V. E. Bonnell & L. Hunt (Eds.), Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (pp.  62–92). London: University of California Press. Biernacki, R. (2000). Language and the Shift from Signs to Practices in Cultural Enquiry. History and Theory, 39, 289–310. Brewer, J., & Styles, J. (1980). An Ungovernable People: The English and Their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. London: Hutchinson. Browning, R. (1982). Political and Constitutional Ideas of the Court Whigs. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Burrow, R. (1729a). Civil Society and Government Vindicated from the Charge of being Founded on, and Preserved by, DISHONEST ARTS: In a Sermon Preached Before the Right Honourable The Lord Mayor; the Worshipful the Aldermen; and the Citizens of London; at the Guild-Hall Chapel, on September 28, 1723 Being the Day of Election of a LORD-MAYOR for the Year Ensuing. London. Burrow, R. (1729b). A Sermon Preach’d in the Metropolitical Church of St Peter in York, on Sunday, July 20, 1729. At the Assizes Held at York… London. Burscough, W. (1722). The Abuse of Liberty: A Sermon Preach’d Before the Honourable House of Commons, On the 5th of November, 1722. London. Burtt, S. (1992). Virtue Transformed: Political Argument in England, 1688–1740. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Care, H. (1703). English Liberties: Or, the Free-Born Subject’s Inheritance. Being a Help to Justices as Well as a Guide to Constables. London. Carter, B. (1717). The Use and Abuse of Christian Liberty: A Sermon Preach’d at the Assizes Held at Chelmsford, for the County of Essex. On Thursday, August the First, 1717. London. Carter, P. (2001). Men and the Emergence of Polite Society: Britain, 1660–1800. London: Routledge. Caudle, J. (2000). Preaching in Parliament: Patronage, Publicity and Politics in Britain, 1701–1760. In L. A. Ferrell & P. McCullough (Eds.), The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History, 1600–1750 (pp. 235–263). Manchester: Manchester University Press. Clark, P. (1988). The ‘Mother Gin’ Controversy in the Early Eighteenth Century. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 38, 63–84.

122 

F. Dodsworth

Clark, J. C. D. (2000). English Society 1660–1832: Religion, Ideology and Politics During the Ancien Regime (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Claydon, T. (1996). William III and the Godly Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Colley, L. (1992). Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837. London: Yale University Press. Collier, S. J. (2011). Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics. Oxford: Princeton University Press. Dabhoiwala, F. (2007). Sex and Societies for Moral Reform. Journal of British Studies, 66, 290–319. Dabhoiwala, F. (2012). The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution. London: Allen Lane. Dean, M. (1996). Foucault, Government and the Enfolding of Authority. In A.  Barry, T.  Osborne, & N.  Rose (Eds.), Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government (pp.  209–229). London: UCL Press. Denham, J.  (1724). A Sermon Preach’d to the Societies for the Reformation of Manners, at Salter’s-Hall, on Monday June 29 1724 (2nd ed.). London. Dickinson, H. T. (1977). Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-­ Century Britain. London: Methuen. Disney, J.  (1727). Liberty, and the Abuse of Liberty: Considered in a Sermon Preached at the Assizes at Nottingham, August 4 1727. London. Dodsworth, F. (2004). ‘Civic’ Police and the Condition of Liberty: The Rationality of Governance in Eighteenth Century England. Social History, 29(2), 199–216. Dodsworth, F. (2007). Masculinity as Governance: Police, Public Service and the Embodiment of Authority, c. 1700–1850. In M. L. McCormack (Ed.), Public Men: Masculinity and Politics in Modern Britain (pp.  33–53). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Dolins, D. (1726a). The Second Charge of Sr. Daniel Dolins, Kt, to the Grand-­ Jury, And Other Juries of the County of Middlesex; At the General Quarter-­ Sessions of the Peace Held the Eighteenth Day of April, 1726, at Westminster-Hall. London. Dolins, D. (1726b). The Third Charge of Sr. Daniel Dolins, Kt. To the Grand Jury, And Other Juries of the County of Middlesex; At the General Quarter-Sessions of the Peace Held the Sixth Day of October, 1726 at Westminster-Hall. London. Earwacker, J. P. (Ed.). (1889). The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester (from the Year 1552 to the Year 1686, and from the Year 1731 to the Year 1846) (vol. IX, 1787–1805). Manchester: Blacklock and Co.

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

123

Elias, N. (1996). The Germans: Power Struggles and the Development of Habitus in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (E. Dunning & S. Mennell, Trans., M. Schröter, Ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press. Elias, N. (2000). The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Explorations (Rev. ed., E. Jephcott Trans.). Oxford: Blackwell. Filmer, R. (1991). Patriarcha and Other Writings (J.  P. Sommerville, Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fish, S. (1980). Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. London: Harvard University Press. Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge (A.  Sheridan, Trans.). London: Routledge. Foucault, M. (2009). Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977–1978 (M.  Senellart, Ed., G.  Burchell, Trans.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Goldsmith, M.  M. (1985). Private Vices, Public Benefits: Bernard Mandeville’s Social and Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gonson, J. (1740). Sir John Gonson’s Five Charges to Several Grand Juries … (4th ed.). London: W. Meadows and C. Ackers. Gorski, P. S. (2003). The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe. London: University of Chicago Press. Greenblatt, S. (1980). Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From Moore to Shakespeare. London: University of Chicago Press. Gunn, J. A. W. (1983). Beyond Liberty and Property: The Process of Self-Recognition in Eighteenth-Century Political Thought. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press. Hallett, M., & Riding, C. (2006). Hogarth. London: Tate. Hampton, J. (1764). Two Extracts from the Sixth Book of the General History of Polybius … London. Hay, D. (1975). Property, Authority and the Criminal Law. In D.  Hay, P. Linebaugh, J. Rule, E. P. Thompson, & C. Winslow (Eds.), Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (pp.  17–63). London: Pantheon. Haydon, C. (1993). Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, c. 1714–1780: A Political and Social Study. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Help National Reformation. (1706). A Help to a National Reformation. Containing an Abstract of the Penal Laws Against Profaneness and Vice (5th ed.). London: Joseph Downing.

124 

F. Dodsworth

Hitchcock, T., & Shoemaker, R. (2012). London Lives: Poverty, Crime and the Making of a Modern City, 1690–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hoadly, B. (1708). The Happiness of the Present Establishment, and the Unhappiness of Absolute Monarchy. A Sermon Preach’d at the Assizes at Hartford, March 22nd. 1707/8. London. Hoadly, B. (1718). The Measures of Submission to the Civil Magistrate Considered. In a Defence of the Doctrine Delivered in a Sermon … September 29 1705. London. Hoppit, J.  (2000). A Land of Liberty? England, 1689–1727. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hornsey, M. J. (2008). Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorisation Theory: A Historical Review. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(1), 204–222. Hunt, A. (1999). Governing Morals: A Social History of Moral Regulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hurl-Eamon, J.  (2004). Policing Male Heterosexuality: The Reformation of Manners Societies’ Campaign Against the Brothels in Westminster, 1690–1720. Journal of Social History, 37, 1017–1035. Huysmans, J. (2006). Agency and the Politics of Protection: Implications for Security Studies. In J. Huysmans, A. Dobson, & R. Prokhovnik (Eds.), The Politics of Protection: Sites of Insecurity and Political Agency (pp.  1–18). London: Routledge. Ihalainen, P. (2005). Protestant Nations Redefined: Changing Perceptions of National Identity in the Rhetoric of the English, Dutch and Swedish Public Churches, 1685–1772. Leiden: Brill. Ingram, M. (1987). Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570–1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Innes, J.  (1987). Prisons for the Poor: English Bridewells, 1555–1800. In F. Snyder & D. Hay (Eds.), Labour, Law and Crime: An Historical Perspective (pp. 42–122). London: Routledge. Isaacs, T. (1982). The Anglican Hierarchy and the Reformation of Manners, 1688–1738. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 33, 391–411. Joyce, P. (1996). The Constitution and the Narrative Structure of Victorian Politics. In J. Vernon (Ed.), Re-reading the Constitution: New Narratives in the Political History of England’s Long Nineteenth Century (pp.  179–203). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kenyon, P. (1977). Revolution Principles: The Politics of Party, 1689–1720. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

125

King, P. (2000). Crime, Justice, and Discretion in England, 1740–1820. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Klein, L. E. (1994). Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Klein, L. E. (2002). Politeness and the Interpretation of the British Eighteenth Century. Historical Journal, 45, 869–898. Knights, M. (1994). Politics and Opinion in Crisis, 1678–1681. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. van Krieken, R. (1990). The Organisation of the Soul: Elias and Foucault on Discipline and the Self. European Journal of Sociology, 31(2), 353–371. Lamoine, G. (Ed.). (1992). Charges to the Grand Jury, 1689–1803. London: Royal Historical Society. Landau, N. (1984). The Justices of the Peace. London: University of California Press. Leslie, C. (1708–1709). A View of the Times, Their Principles and Practices: In the First Volume of The Rehearsals. By Philalethes (4 vols.). London. Leslie, C. (1711). The Finishing Stroke. Being a Vindication of the Patriarchal Scheme of Government, in Defence of the Rehearsals, Best Answer and Best of All. Wherein Mr. Hoadly’s Examination of this Scheme in His Late Book of the Original and Institution of Civil Government Is Fully Considered … London. Lobban, M. (2005). Custom, Nature, and Authority: The Roots of English Legal Positivism. In D. Lemmings (Ed.), The British and their Laws in the Eighteenth Century (pp. 27–58). Woodbridge: Boydell. Locke, J.  (1988). Two Treatises of Government (4th ed., P.  Laslett, Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Loughlin, M. (2000). Sword and Scales: An Examination of the Relationship Between Law and Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Machiavelli, N. (1996). Discourses on Livy (H.  C. Mansfield & N.  Tarcov, Trans.). London: University of Chicago Press. McGowen, R. (1987–1988). ‘He Beareth Not the Sword in Vain’: Religion and the Criminal Law in Eighteenth-Century England. Eighteenth-Century Studies, 21, 192–211. Mischler, G. (2001). English Political Sermons 1714–1742: A Case Study in the Theory of the ‘Divine Right of Governors’ and the Ideology of Order. British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 24, 33–61. Monod, P. (1988). Jacobitism and the English People, 1688–1788. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

126 

F. Dodsworth

Moyle, W. (1727). The Whole Works of Walter Moyle, Esq; that Were Published by Himself. To Which Is Prefixed Some Account of His Life and Writings, by Anthony Hammond. London. O’Gorman, F. (2006). Ordering the Political World: The Pattern of Politics in Eighteenth-Century Britain (1660–1832). In D.  Donald & F.  O’Gorman (Eds.), Ordering the World in the Eighteenth Century (pp.  83–111). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Pateman, C. (1989). The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory. Cambridge: Polity. Philips, C. (1745a). The Charge of Sir Clifford Wm. Philips, Knt. To the Grand Jury of the Royalty of the Tower of London … on Tuesday the Sixteenth Day of October, 1744. London. Philips, C. (1745b). The Second Charge of Sir Clifford Wm. Philips, Knt. To the Grand Jury of the Royalty of the Tower of London … on Saturday the Twelfth Day of October, 1745 (2nd ed.). London. Pincus, S. (2009). 1688: The First Modern Revolution. London: Yale University Press. Pocock, J. G. A. (1975). The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Chichester: Princeton University Press. Pocock, J. G. A. (1987). The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century. A Reissue with a Retrospect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reid, J. P. (2004). Rule of Law: The Jurisprudence of Liberty in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press. Rogers, N. (1982). Riot and Popular Jacobitism in Early Hanoverian England. In E.  Cruickshanks (Ed.), Ideology and Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism, 1689–1759 (pp. 70–88). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Rose, N. (1999). Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rushworth, J. (1659–1701). Historical Collections of Private Passages of State (8 vols.). London. Scott, J. (2004). Commonwealth Principles: Republican Writing of the English Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sekora, J.  (1977). Luxury: The Concept in Western Thought, Eden to Smollett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Shelton, M. (1726). A Charge Give to the Grand-Jury, at the General QuarterSessions of the Peace, Holden at St Edmunds-Bury for the Liberty Thereof; in the County of Suffolk: On the 11th of October, An. Dom. 1725. London: D. Browne.

  Patricians and the Rule of Law, c. 1670–1740 

127

Shelton, M. (1730). A Charge Given to the Grand-Jury, at the General Quarter-­ Sessions of the Peace, Holden at St Edmund’s-Bury for the Liberty Thereof; in the County of Suffolk: On the 9th of January 1729/30. London. Shoemaker, R. B. (1991). Prosecution and Punishment: Petty Crime and the Law in London and Rural Middlesex, c. 1660–1725. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shoemaker, R. B. (2004). The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth-­ Century England. London: Hambledon. Shore, H. (2009). ‘The Reckoning’: Disorderly Women, Informing Constables and the Westminster Justices, 1722–1733. Social History, 34, 409–427. Sidney, A. (1996). Discourses Concerning Government (Rev. ed., T. G. West, Ed.). Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Skinner, Q. (2008). Hobbes and Republican Liberty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smyth, G. (1727). A Sermon to the Societies for the Reformation of Manners Preach’d at Salter’s-Hall, on Monday, 26th June, 1727. London. Snyder, H. L. (1994). Charges to Grand Juries: The Evidence of the Eighteenth-­ Century Short Title Catalogue. Historical Research, 67, 286–300. State Tracts. (1692). State Tracts: Being a Farther Collection of Several Choice Treatices [sic] Relating to the Government. From the Year 1660. To the Year 1689. London. State Tracts. (1705–1707). A Collection of State Tracts, Publish’d on Occasion of the Late Revolution in 1688. And During the Reign of King William III … (3 vols.). London. Stryker, S. (2007). Identity Theory and Personality Theory: Mutual Relevance. Journal of Personality, 75(6), 1083–1102. Stryker, S., & Burke, P. J. (2000). The Past, Present and Future of an Identity Theory. Social Psychology Quarterly, 63(4), 284–297. Thompson, E. P. (1975). Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act. London: Allen Lane. Thompson, E.  P. (1978). Class Struggle Without Class? Social History, 3, 133–165. Treasure, G. (1992/2002). Who’s Who in British History: Early Hanoverian Britain, 1714–1789. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books. Vernon, J. (1996). Notes Towards an Introduction. In J. Vernon (Ed.), Re-reading the Constitution: New Narratives in the Political History of England’s Long Nineteenth Century (pp. 1–21). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walby, S. (1990). Theorizing Patriarchy. Oxford: Blackwell.

128 

F. Dodsworth

Warner, J., & Ivis, F. (2001). Informers and Their Social Networks in Eighteenth-­ Century London: A Comparison of Two Communities. Social Science History, 25, 563–587. William III. (1689). His Majesties Letter to the Lord Bishop of London, to be Communicated to the Two Provinces of Canterbury and York. London: Charles Bill and Thomas Newcomb.

4 Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800

In the previous chapter, we saw that the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 had particular significance for the concept of security and the idea of patriarchal protection. The expulsion of the Roman Catholic monarch, James II, and his replacement by his daughter and son-in-law William III and Mary II, broke the principle of primogeniture and called into question the legitimacy of the entire system of government, including the mechanisms for securing order, which were all legitimised through their hierarchical relationship to the monarch’s authority. At stake was not only the fate of the monarch’s person but also the security of the state as an entity, with James and his supporters being backed by French money and military expertise, presenting a realistic threat to the material existence of the polity in a period of considerable social upheaval and disorder. Defenders of the expelled monarch James II, the Jacobites, sought to challenge the Revolution Settlement by reaffirming the essence of the patriarchal principle in the most radical fashion. They argued that all authority was patriarchal in nature and all government followed the principle of the government of the household, stemming from the original authority of Adam over Eve and their children. Those seeking to defend the rights of William and Mary and the exclusion of Catholics from the © The Author(s) 2019 F. Dodsworth, The Security Society, Crime Prevention and Security Management, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43383-1_4

129

130 

F. Dodsworth

throne directly challenged the patriarchal idea and instead grounded social authority and security in the rule of law. Political authority and security for liberty lay not in the person of the monarch, they argued, but in their office, the authority of which derived from the law, rather than vice versa. The immemorial principles of the common law were beyond the individual authority or wisdom of any man and acted as a restraint on the excesses of both the monarch and the people. They argued that freedom and order both depended upon morality, and that the rule of law depended on the administration of public virtue in the sense of morality as much as it depended on political activity and the prevention of corruption. In making this argument a range of ‘moral entrepreneurs’, ranging from reform societies to moralising magistrates, sought to promote the idea that English, and later British, liberty was a median condition between the two extremes of tyranny and anarchy. Protecting the free, Protestant state meant protecting society against the threat of tyranny through the rule of law; but the rule of law also protected against the equal threats of licence and anarchy, justifying significant restraints on behaviour and morality in the name of freedom and national reformation. The redefinition of the source of security and protection, from overt patriarchalism to the more disembodied rule of law, was accompanied by continuing changes in the agents of protection. The movement for moral reformation was promoted by sermonisers, magistrates, parish officers, and newly established voluntary organisations dedicated to reforming public behaviour (Burtt 1992: 39–63; Hunt 1999). These activities contributed to the increasing prominence of a range of specialists in social ordering and surveillance, with the Societies for the Reformation of Manners paying informers and even employing their own surveillance officers; a range of entrepreneurial individuals made the shift from working with those societies as moral reformers to making a living as thief-­ takers, essentially early private detectives, pursuing offenders for the rewards that new government schemes made available for their capture (Dabhoiwala 2007; Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2015: 40–41, 62, 86–89). By the 1730s, however, the movements for moral reformation were in decline: sustained opposition, particularly to the Gin Act of 1736, and perhaps changing social attitudes, meant that the focus of our case study, the Westminster magistrate Sir John Gonson’s campaigns against gin and

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

131

brothels, were a sign of the death-throes of that movement, rather than its revitalisation as he undoubtedly hoped (Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2015: 138, 168–180). Nonetheless, this did not mean that policing in the broadest sense ceased to be concerned with morality, nor did it mean that policing developments slowed down. On the contrary, with the decline of the Societies for the Reformation of Manners, new experiments in policing, the cultivation of expertise in surveillance and protection, accelerated considerably in the second half of the eighteenth century, and these projects were still being articulated in relation to moral discourses about the state of the nation. Once again, reformers directed the focus towards developing ways of controlling independent, mobile men and women, in this context people of increasing wealth and self-confidence, who were not content to follow traditional social hierarchies. The classical trope of ‘luxury’ was mobilised as a way of configuring the common people as driven lazy and insolent by wealth and independence, free from the necessity that made them subordinate and industrious; these changes were located in the commercial transformation of society itself and in the rapid demographic and material change of the metropolis (Dodsworth 2007b, 2008). The solutions touted to this problem owed much to those pioneered in the City of London in the seventeenth century, which were extended and developed in London and also in Westminster over the course of the eighteenth century in ways that formed an increasingly connected whole (Beattie 2001; Harris 2004; Paley 1989; Reynolds 1998). With the emphasis firmly on the generalised threat of disorder and vice attendant on a growing population increasingly confident of its own independence and rights, and disdainful of, or actively resistant to the traditional figures of authority, the problem was defined in terms of what we would now call ‘social processes’ and their impact at the level of the populace. What was distinctive about these discourses, however, was that rather than seeking to invigorate the existing mechanisms of authority, reformers increasingly sought to augment or replace them, in the process ‘problematising’ (Foucault 1985: 9–12) the institutions for social ordering themselves and thereby justifying their own schemes as a security solution. These schemes did not depend on the patriarchal supervision of the direct subordinates of particular heads of households, but they did depend on the activity of

132 

F. Dodsworth

energetic people and that activity was clearly gendered. Although the provision of security was no longer directly patriarchal, as new protective capacities were created, these were shaped in ways that made them open only to men (Walby 1990: 176–184), so that security remained a masculine preserve in ‘fraternal’ form (Pateman 1989: ch. 2). Nevertheless, the fraternal government of order was complemented by another, more abstract idea, one which served in the immediate term to institutionalise the new forms of governmental masculinity but which may also have undermined it to some extent. Rather than security lying in the correct execution of the laws and the energy and virtue of the people and their magistrates, the security of the state, and the individual, was increasingly being configured as residing in the schemes of particular security entrepreneurs. This entrepreneurialism is embodied in a range of individuals, most famously Thomas De Veil and the Fielding brothers John and Henry, all magistrates at Bow Street, but also in the figure of Patrick Colquhoun and a number of others. These professionals in protection sought to establish their own credibility and expertise not through their social position or the constitutional status of their office, but through their experience in the management of the problems of crime and disorder and the logic and comprehensiveness of their programmes for social regulation. These broader solutions would draw together and unite the energy of all the different organisations, people, and practices devoted to social ordering. By the end of the eighteenth century, then, security was coming to be configured as a complex social problem that, like many other fields, was coming to be understood as requiring a systemic solution (Siskin 2016). Reformers promoting their schemes for the improvement of public morality and discipline through dedicated systems of public protection were increasingly often emphasising this systematicity by using a French term that had come to embody the idea of a system of surveillance: ‘police’ (Dodsworth 2008).

Bow Street and the Trade in Justice In the previous chapter we encountered the Westminster justice of the peace Sir John Gonson, one of a number of engaged magistrates who led a series of campaigns against vice and disorder in the capital. The actions of such active justices were central to the administration of the law in

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

133

early eighteenth-century London and as such to driving the particular direction of law enforcement. One of the most striking features of the eighteenth century was the increasing prominence and importance of the justice of the peace as the preeminent officer in the administration of local justice, with the role of the JP superseding that of the parishes and their officers in a range of areas, particularly those relating to the administration of poverty and minor offences against the peace (Landau 1984). In some respects this was something of a sign of the reassertion of monarchical authority, as the justices of the peace were not manorial officers but, in principle, monarchical appointments; at the same time, it was also a function of the extent to which the appointment and dismissal of magistrates took on a political colour in the early eighteenth century until the accession of George II. What is of particular significance for us, however, is that the increasing importance of the justice of the peace meant that administrative power was becoming concentrated in the hands of long-­ serving individuals and that in many respects the dispensation of justice was increasingly becoming a viable trade (Landau 2002). The emergence of the ‘trading justice’, a magistrate who made a living from the conduct of legal business and the fees, rewards, and perquisites attendant on it, was a distinct, and much-criticised, phenomenon of the eighteenth century (Landau 2002). However, the development of the professional justice of the peace was an important phenomenon because it meant that there were significant numbers of legal officers who served for long periods of time in a position which depended on their professional expertise in social ordering. Just as a number of men had managed to make something of a career for themselves as professional deputies for constables in the City of London in the seventeenth century, so some eighteenth-century magistrates did the same in London, Middlesex, and Westminster. As with substitute constables, the driver of the emergence of professionals in the field was practical negligence by those who ought to have been performing their civic duty, a phenomenon which increased over the course of the eighteenth and into the nineteenth centuries (Beattie 2001: 140–148, 173–197; King 2000: 66–67). The difference with the magistrates, however, was that their role held out the potential for the exercise of greater power, and in the second half of the century some entrepreneurial justices recognised this and sought to use and develop their role as a way of achieving much greater social influence.

134 

F. Dodsworth

The professionalisation of the magistracy took place alongside significant changes in the government of the parishes and the nightly watch. Traditionally, the government of the civil parish was conducted through the vestry, a forum that all ratepayers were entitled to attend, and which could raise rates on the population of the parish for commission of particular governmental activities, including the provision of a nightly watch and other security measures; however, some vestries were closed, or ‘select’, with only particular members selected to attend. This practice had become increasingly common in the seventeenth century as some parishes in London and Westminster grew so large (with populations numbering in the thousands and even tens of thousands) that universal attendance was impractical. The 1720s and 1730s saw the trend for select vestries continue, prompting opposition from those ratepayers not represented in the vestry, and thereby taxed without representation. It also marked another stage in an ongoing battle for influence over the policing of Westminster. Nominally this was the responsibility of the Court of Burgesses, the manorial authority for the government of Westminster; however, the practical power of the Court was subject to significant competition from the parishes and the justices of the peace (Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2015: 148–149). The Court of Burgesses itself was created in 1585 as a way of addressing the kinds of social problems already being managed by the much more established mechanisms of the City. Westminster only received its commission of the peace, allowing it to hold its own sessions separate to those of the wider county of Middlesex, in 1618. However, the patchwork of jurisdictions and responsibilities in Middlesex and Westminster, divided between the two sessions of the peace for the areas, the Court of Burgesses, and the various parishes, meant that there was not the same unity of organisation as there had been for the City in earlier years; the fact that the three metropolitan areas of the City of London, Westminster, and urban Middlesex were by now contiguous meant that the government of the metropolitan area was seriously disjointed. Nevertheless, there was continued and significant improvement of the watch over the course of the century. In 1735 the Westminster parishes of St James Piccadilly and St George Hanover Square managed to secure Acts of Parliament allowing them to raise a watch rate and to appoint and manage their own watchmen; other

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

135

­ arishes rapidly followed this example, taking control of their own watch p systems, and thereby distancing the policing of the streets from the control of the Court of Burgesses (Reynolds 1998). In many respects the transformation of parochial policing was simply a case of the parishes of Middlesex and Westminster catching up with the historically much more populous City of London, although the City also secured its own watch act in 1737 following the success of the Westminster parishes, increasing the total number of watchmen in the City by about 80, up to 632 (Beattie 2001: 175, 192–197). Improvements to the watch system included the introduction of supervision with hierarchical organisation, rewards and punishments for meritorious or improper conduct, a wage and a stipend for the senior officers, varied beats and patrols to complement the usually stationary watch boxes, and even specific qualifications for particular officers of the watch (Reynolds 1998: 62–65). Reynolds (1998: 65) notes that ‘As parishes demanded impartiality and accountability they also demanded higher quality men. From the late 1770s watch committees set specific qualifications for watchmen, especially for sergeants and inspectors. They established minimal requirements with regard to age, physical stature, and education. St Marylebone set some of the highest standards. After the annual inspection in 1787, the watch committee required all watchmen to be at least 5ft 6in tall. After January 1795, no one was allowed to be over the age of 50’.

The parishes also began to keep records of the conduct of their men, which necessitated literacy amongst the higher ranks, and they began to require character references. In Holborn the sergeant of the watch was required to record all indiscipline and neglect ‘and all occurrences happening within his District with which Book he is to attend the Board of Governors and Directors every Wednesday Evening’ (Reynolds 1998: 65). There was, then, a direct system of recorded, hierarchical surveillance operating in each area. The new hierarchical structures were formalised with the introduction of precise rules and regulations for each officer of the police, from the Constables downwards and the wearing of uniforms which identified the men as members of a body and made them accountable (Reynolds 1998: 67). The sophistication of the wealthier parishes even extended to sick funds for injured police officers and

136 

F. Dodsworth

pensions for those giving long service and rendered incapable by the duty (Reynolds 1998: 68). If the government of the streets was disjointed, then, it was not necessarily being entirely neglected, and many of the principles that historians once thought marked out Peel’s ‘new police’ of 1829 as significant were already in existence within the eighteenth-­century watch. Interestingly, not only was there some relationship between patterns of urbanisation and the increasing bureaucratisation of government, with the rapid expansion of Westminster and urban Middlesex prompting governmental solutions comparable to those of the much more established City of London, but there was also some complementarity in terms of the concerns that drove these changes. As we saw in Chap. 2, much of the early bureaucratisation of the City of London in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was driven by concerns about vagrancy and the emergence of a class of ‘masterless men’ outside the control of traditional patriarchal structures. Hitchcock and Shoemaker (2015: 149–152) argue that comparable concerns were also at the heart of the transformation of Westminster’s government: the reform of the nightly watch in the 1730s was not, as has generally been supposed (compare Reynolds 1998), a response to the problem of violent crime but was instead driven by concerns about vagrancy, alongside the problem of funding and controlling the watch. The reforms that were introduced as a consequence not only transferred power from the Court of Burgesses to the parishes, particularly those that were becoming increasingly dominated by select vestries, but at the same time, they also encouraged greater co-operation between the vestries and the justices of the peace. Justices were increasingly being co-opted into the vestries and the vestries sometimes functioning as ‘petty sessions’, a form of miniature court at which two or more justices of the peace working together dealt with a wide range of minor administrative matters relating to poverty and petty crime. This bureaucratisation of crime was fundamental to the long-term process of separation from a participatory to a formalised, professionalised system of government, which David Lemmings (2011) sees as the central element in the transformation of criminal justice in eighteenth-century England. It also encouraged those outside the select vestries to focus their reforming efforts in philanthropic associations, which came to play a significant role

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

137

in the development of the idea of public protection mechanisms in the later part of the century (Andrew 1989; Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2015: 162; Dodsworth 2008). One of the justices of the peace who regularly visited the select vestries was Thomas De Veil (1684–1746), the magistrate responsible for the creation of Bow Street Magistrates’ Court, which was such a central feature of policing and criminal justice reform throughout the second half of the eighteenth century. Although the creation of an easily available magistrates court was, like most other aspects of policing, pioneered in the City of London, where there was a continually sitting court presence in the Guildhall from 1737 onwards (in addition to the office of the Lord Mayor), the ‘rotation office’ established by De Veil in Bow Street was to play a fundamental and highly public role in policing reform in Middlesex and Westminster over the second half of the eighteenth century. De Veil was appointed to the commissions of the peace for Middlesex and Westminster in 1729, just as Sir John Gonson was asserting his reforming zeal, and he was instrumental in efforts to enforce the 1736 Gin Act (Sugden 2004). Within a decade, he had set up an office at his house in Bow Street, at which he was constantly available to the public, and he was treated as the ‘court justice’, the conduit between the government and the Middlesex justices of the peace. De Veil managed to make his house central to the system of security in the 1730s and 1740s by mobilising a network of informers and thief-takers and establishing his premises as a place where the public knew they could obtain the service of a magistrate almost immediately. Albeit this was focused more on retrospective justice than prospective security, his importance lies in the role that the Bow Street Magistrates’ Office would later play under the Fielding brothers, Henry and John (see below), and on his status as an entrepreneur in the criminal justice field who was not only able to make a (relatively) ­respectable living from the trade in justice but also able to gain some considerable social prominence in doing so. This prominence was secured not only through his frequent appearance in the press but also through the posthumous publication of a set of ‘memoirs’ attributed to him— essentially a biography compiled by an anonymous author—and a second work attributed to him defining the role of the justice of the peace.

138 

F. Dodsworth

What is important about these texts is not their veracity, or utility as a source of evidence for De Veil’s affairs (both financial and amorous), but the way they present his career as a magistrate and public servant. Both De Veil’s Observations on the Practice of a Justice of the Peace and the Memoirs of the Life and Times of Sir Thomas Deveil, published posthumously in 1747 and 1748 respectively, are relatively slight and insignificant texts in and of themselves, and their authorship and the purpose of their publication is rather unclear. The Observations in particular is little more than some suggestions of good practice for justices of the peace, largely focused on warnings for avoiding legal problems and suits for wrongful conduct. The Memoirs also places significant emphasis on the importance of correct procedure, noting De Veil’s ‘great caution’ in his transactions and the methodical nature of his conduct, which distinguished him from his contemporaries (Anonymous 1748: 17). What is much more important in this text, however, is its relationship to De Veil’s relative celebrity in the culture of the time. This is not to say that De Veil’s status was straightforwardly constructed through this text, but it was certainly one component in that construction, alongside his public performance of his role and his appearance in the press of the day (appearances he seems to have had a hand in producing). The Memoirs begins by way of justification by noting the fashion for memoirs in general ‘or accounts of persons who have distinguished themselves in the world’, amongst whose number, we are led to assume, De Veil rests (Anonymous 1748: 1). Tellingly, the author notes that one reason for this fashion is that anyone who explores the life of such ‘distinguished’ persons discovers that ‘however people may differ in their public stations; in their private characters, in their virtues and vices, inclinations and aversions, they stand much upon the same foot, and it gives the ordinary rank of man-kind, no small pleasure to find, that so it is’ (Anonymous 1748: 1–2). On the one hand, then, De Veil is being established as a distinguished figure, but on the other, he is identified as thoroughly humane and comparable to any other person. Great emphasis was placed on the fact that De Veil ‘raised himself by his personal merit … to make a very considerable figure in the world’ (Anonymous 1748: 2–3). In Burke’s (1984) terms, this is a comic ‘frame of acceptance’ of the reality of social life in which De Veil’s personal failings and idiosyncrasies (his

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

139

parsimony and perhaps predatory sexual indulgence) explicitly mark him out as an everyman figure that anyone could in principle emulate; the drama is human in scale and encourages identification. There is an unspoken presumption of the possibility of social mobility, although care is taken to stress that De Veil was not ‘meanly descended’, even if he were apprenticed and served as a private in the army (Anonymous 1748: 5). The Memoirs claims distinction by being the first text to address the ‘particular talents’ or qualities which enabled a man to shine as a magistrate (Anonymous 1748: 2). Those qualities ranged from ‘industry’, ‘activity and dexterity in employments’ to ‘courage, indefatigable diligence, and a certain boldness in address’ (Anonymous 1748: 3). Ultimately, ‘if a man is not wanting to himself, no rubs that lie in his way, can hinder him from rising’, whatever the presence of some small personal faults (Anonymous 1748: 4). The message, then, was that self-­ improvement and entrepreneurialism, dedication to one’s employment and energy in effecting it, would bring rewards. The qualities that enabled him to achieve them are, however, highly gendered in the language of the time: boldness, industry, activity, and courage were not only attributable to men but were nevertheless considered masculine qualities. The nature of the rewards that could be achieved was also clear from the text, and again, was directly related to the performance of masculinity which, we are reminded, was increasingly being defined in relation to sexuality (Carter 2001: 7). The Memoirs, then, doubly underscores De Veil’s masculinity in its treatment of both his virtues and vices, the author noting that ‘His greatest foible was a most irregular passion for the fair Sex, which as he freely indulged, he made it often the subject of his discourse’; he would often speak of ‘a certain gentleman of his own age and calling’ who kept a ‘private closet’ in his house in which he would ‘examine’ ‘such of the fair Sex as were endowed with qualities capable of exciting a certain sort of attention and regard’ and who his ‘sagacity in distinguishing ladies of a certain character’ enabled him to entice into his private quarters (Anonymous 1748: 72–73). Despite being enthusiastic in the field of matrimony, marrying four times, he found it ‘one of the greatest inconveniences in matrimony, that these private examinations would now and then give uneasiness to a wife, and perhaps prove the subject of certain conversation, that were not altogether so pleasant’

140 

F. Dodsworth

(Anonymous 1748: 73). The account presented in the Memoirs seems to present these encounters as consenting—depending upon De Veil’s ability to identify ‘ladies of a certain character’ as likely candidates for ‘examination’—but it also notes the uncertainty of many women in those circumstances, and it is quite possible that such manoeuvres constitute the exploitation of suspected prostitutes in return for their release. De Veil’s second principal reward was financial, which gratified two of his other principal characteristics, which were ‘a love for company, and a taste for pleasure’: as well as a sound instinct for business he ‘shewed a strong appetite for money, in excuse of which, it may be truly replied, that he had many demands for it’ (Anonymous 1748: 13, 14). Although the anonymous author of the Memoirs claimed that he was ‘far enough from covetous, if we restrain that vice to the mere gathering and keeping of money, yet he had a strong passion for acquiring it, that he might live in his own way, which was magnificent enough, and gratify his propensity to pleasures, which were very expensive’ (Anonymous 1748: 22). Henry Fielding was later to note that De Veil boasted of earning £1000 a year from his justicing work (Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2015: 179). Whilst there is some critique of the role of the ‘trading justice’ in this text, there is nevertheless a recognition that the rewards that De Veil was able to accrue for himself were justified due to his ‘activity, vigilance, and great attention, to whatever came before him’, as well as his ability to profit from the work without generating scandal, and to rectify the errors of others or their pursuit of personal interest, which set him apart from some of his contemporaries and brought him the attention of ‘several persons of rank and figure’ (Anonymous 1748: 16–19). Attracting this attention seems to have been a strategic goal. The author suggests that De Veil was very aware that ‘great men value little ones in proportion, to the use they could make of them … he thought it not allowable only but laudable to make them useful in their turns’, that is, he sought to make himself appear useful in order to profit from those who sought to exploit his usefulness to them, which, given that he was ‘of an aspiring temper’ and ‘knew how to bustle through the world and valued himself not a little on his dexterity in this respect’, meant that he was able to build up influence amongst the elite of the city and the nation (Anonymous 1748: 72). This was particularly important, it is stressed, at a juncture ‘when a

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

141

great spirit of corruption reigned, and bad people were become so insolent, that it required great courage and presence of mind, in such as were called by their stations to put into execution the laws provided by the legislature’ (Anonymous 1748: 21). De Veil’s search for personal preferment and enrichment is thereby configured as serving the public as well as the man himself. Finally, this relationship to great men was central to the third reward De Veil was able to accrue: ministerial preferment. The author of the Memoirs emphasised that progress in the world depended upon the single-­minded pursuit of a particular goal, which in De Veil’s case was ‘the confidence of the court and ministry in his office as justice of the peace’ (Anonymous 1748: 21–22). The reasons for this were not only financial but also that De Veil was ambitious and ‘loved to be about great men, and have an interest in them’, as well as ‘credit and power, for which he also had a very strong appetite, and was never happier than when surrounded by a number of people whom he could influence by his nod’ (Anonymous 1748: 22). Ultimately it was the fact that he was able to instal himself as the ‘court justice’, the contact point between the government and the Middlesex and Westminster magistracy that guaranteed his social position. The fact that the author of the Memoirs felt it necessary to defend the status of ‘court justice’ over several pages, dating it back at least to the reign of Elizabeth I, suggests that this was a relatively controversial fact (Anonymous 1748: 22–34). Ultimately, however, the author felt able to recommend De Veil as ‘a vigilant and active magistrate; and notwithstanding any private views he might have, or pleasures he might indulge, he was undoubtedly very serviceable to the community; kept bad people much in awe, and was able at any time to defeat or disperse any of their gangs how formidable soever’ (Anonymous 1748: 65). He was ‘so truly dreadfull in this respect’ that as far as the public were concerned his reputation was ‘a great security to their property, and more effectual for intimidating rogues than a double watch’ (Anonymous 1748: 65, 66–67). Sir Thomas De Veil, then, became well-known and wealthy by establishing himself as the ‘court justice’ and making his house at Bow Street the centre for the administration of criminal justice in London outside the City itself. More than anything else, it was his personal success that

142 

F. Dodsworth

makes De Veil a central figure in the history of the securitisation process, because his example paved the way for a wave of entrepreneurialism in public protection in the second half of the century. The Memoirs framed De Veil’s success very squarely in terms of the importance of his personal qualities and methodical, independent conduct in a context of corruption, organised crime, and limited judicial competence. In terms of the ‘grammar of motives’ (Burke 1969) through which the author seeks to make De Veil’s life and actions comprehensible, concerns about the commercialisation and sale of justice, and De Veil’s personal morality and character, are offset by the depiction of a scene dominated by criminal gangs and incompetent, violent, or mercenary justices, necessitating the intervention of a person of precisely De Veil’s character and aptitude or at least permitting such a person to flourish in the circumstances. The scene is characterised by violence, with not only violent gangs but disgruntled fellow justices physically threatening his person, rendering his military experience and the martial masculinity with which it was associated more relevant than might initially appear (see e.g. Anonymous 1748: 20–21, 59–61). Further emphasis on the military nature of his masculinity and the methodicalness and courage associated with this persona is provided by the fact that, following his commission as a lieutenant colonel in the militia, he was generally known, and is identified throughout most of the Memoirs, as ‘Colonel De Veil’, and his role in responding to the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 is noted (Anonymous 1748: 36, 64). What enables his success is clearly marked as his methodical, careful acts and an attitude of fairness and independence from interest, which enabled him to effectively enact the purpose of protecting the public. Large parts of the text are devoted to the illustration of those qualities, with the emphasis on act and attitude as the central determinants of success. De Veil’s acts and his attitude are appropriate in the context of the particular scene and even able to dominate it; emphasising these elements distinguishes De Veil’s orderly, courageous, and methodical military masculinity from the mercenary, ‘low’, and ‘little’ trading justices, whose acts were ‘frequently oppressive and injurious’ and who made numerous procedural errors through carelessness or ignorance (Anonymous 1748: 17–19). De Veil’s importance in the history of security, then, is not only the institutional innovation of the Bow Street Magistrates’ Court (central

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

143

though that would later become: see Beattie 2012) but also the extent to which it gave him a public profile and government influence. Equally important was the attempt by his apologist to translate the classically influenced civic virtues of independence, temperateness, courage, and service, traditionally associated with the possession of landed property and financial disinterest (Dodsworth 2004, 2007a), into a form in which they could be realised in pursuit of commercial and personal gain. De Veil’s example suggested that acting in the role of public protector, and doing so in the appropriate way, could enable the accumulation of significant material and symbolic capital and that this was beneficial in a rather Mandevillian way to both the public and the individual in question. There can be little doubt that when Henry Fielding (1707–1754) succeeded Thomas De Veil as ‘court justice’ in 1748, being installed in De Veil’s old house in Bow Street and continuing to operate it as a magistrate’s court, he also hoped to profit, both financially and in terms of influence. In fact, Henry Fielding, despite being blessed with some of De Veil’s love of pleasure and extravagance, was perhaps not equally blessed with the same business acumen or care with money, and he was never to enjoy the level of success and influence that De Veil’s example might have led him to hope (Beattie 2012: 14). However, he was a much more significant ‘institutional entrepreneur’ (Hardy and Maguire 2017; Maguire et al. 2004; Sine and David 2010), imagining and establishing innovations in security that remain significant in the present day. Henry Fielding’s significance lies in two elements: his creation of the ‘Bow Street Runners’, which effectively became London’s first modern detective force (Beattie 2012), and his Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers, published in 1751, which was not the first text to allude to the idea of the prevention of crime but was one of the first, and certainly the most prominent, to explore the subject in depth and propose a systematic solution based on regulation of the milieu, rather than the deterrent spectacle of punishment (Dodsworth 2007b, 2008, 2013: 89–93). Fielding then was central to both the preventive and detective ideas. The Enquiry had considerable impact, with two printings within weeks of its publication amounting to 3500 copies, and it has been asserted that it was the most cited social pamphlet of the 1750s (Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2015: 209). Almost half a century later, the magistrate

144 

F. Dodsworth

and police reformer Patrick Colquhoun was still commending Fielding’s ‘excellent ideas and accurate and extensive knowledge upon every subject connected with the police of the metropolis’ (cited in Dodsworth 2007b: 441). Other would-be police reformers, Jonas Hanway and William Blizard, also noted Fielding’s importance, the latter specifically referring to the Enquiry (excerpted in Dodsworth 2014: 59, 135). The fundamental argument of the Enquiry was that the transformation in the condition of the poor had broken a system of government that was based on their necessity and dependence. Continuing the theme begun in Chap. 2, there is an anxiety here about the emancipation of the ‘lower orders’, or as he terms them the ‘commonalty’, from the direct supervision of their superiors. The fundamental problem here was not poverty per se but the increased wealth of the ‘commonalty’, which had released them from dependence on their masters and enabled them to engage in the consumption of luxuries that wasted both their time and money, leading to both moral and financial destitution. Fielding offers a potted history of the transformation of the ‘commonality’ from their ‘slavish Tenure’ in the middle ages, until they gradually ‘shook off their Vassalage and became more and more independent of their Superiors’ so that their ‘Subjection’ had been changed into ‘Equality’ (Dodsworth 2007b: 445). What had driven this transformation was trade and the acquisition of wealth and money by the poor, and money was ‘rebellious in nature’ and ‘Self-opinion, Arrogance, Insolence, and Impatience of Rule, are its almost inseparable Companions’ (Dodsworth 2007b: 445). The growing wealth of the populace, then, was alleged to have produced the ‘ungovernable people’ that social historians of crime (re)discovered in the 1970s (Brewer and Styles 1980). Fielding related the emergence of popular independence to the ongoing critique of ‘luxury’, a longstanding discursive commonplace which was particularly prominent in the eighteenth century. Fielding was one of a number of authors who drew on both classical and Christian sources to produce a moral critique of the wealth derived from new commodities available from the impact of early imperialism and economic transformation and more particularly the social transformations occasioned by them (Sekora 1977). It was a well-established trope in this literature to identify the state in question, in this case Britain, in a condition of imperial decadence,

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

145

on the verge of a decline comparable to that of Rome. Fielding himself made this link directly, specifically associating the mid-century crime wave with Roman discourses about crime and luxury by quoting Juvenal and Cicero: ‘Luxury, more deadly than any foe had laid his hand upon us …. Since the day Roman poverty perished, no deed of crime or lust has been wanting to us’; ‘For the lusts of these men are no longer moderate, and their wantonness is inhuman and unbearable, they think of nothing but murder, arson and rape’ (cited in Dodsworth 2007b: 442, 443). Above I have termed this a moral critique, and the luxury debates would certainly seem to fit the pattern of Alan Hunt’s (1999) analysis of moral regulation, but Fielding (1762: 540) seeks to distinguish luxury as a moral problem, which is how it appears amongst the rich, from luxury as a political problem, which is how it manifests amongst the poor, because it affects the constitutional balance of the nation. Fielding needed to make this distinction in order to justify the interposition of the civil law in this area and, as his critics noted, to avoid making the same interpositions in the lives of the rich (see the Observations on Mr Fielding’s Enquiry, ostensibly by ‘Beck and Sedgley’, but actually by Richard Rolt, excerpted in Dodsworth 2014). Following the example of the moral reform movements we studied in Chap. 3, the personal vices of individuals and moral misconduct were being configured by Fielding as security issues in the sense that they threatened the wider well-being of the nation through the idea that moral corruption could spread and enervate the state. In an analysis that prefigures Norbert Elias’ (2000) account of the civilising process, Fielding argues that the source of this political problem is the imitation of the vices of the rich by the poor: ‘Thus while the nobleman will emulate the grandeur of a prince; and the gentleman will aspire to the proper state of the nobleman, the tradesman steps from behind his counter into the vacant place of the gentleman’ (Fielding 1762: 540). The problem, ­however, came when those at the lower end of the spectrum sought to emulate their superiors but did not have the material means to do so, leading them to crime in order to support this lifestyle. Just as there is a strong prefiguration of Elias in Fielding’s account of the imitative principle comparable to the ‘civilising process’, so there is a strong prefiguration of my own argument here in his account of the developing

146 

F. Dodsworth

independence of the lower classes, and there is also a clear prefiguration of Merton’s (1938) strain theory, even to the extent of a discourse on the shame of the lower ranks in an inability to pay their way as a source of crime (Fielding 1762: 540–541). Continuing the synchronicity with Elias (2000), the problem of disorder is focused on loss of restraint and the rejection of control and authority, and, like the Societies for the Reformation of Manners and moralising magistrates like John Gonson a few years previously, Fielding was explicitly aligning the danger facing the state with the decline and fall of states through their moral corruption; indeed, specific reference is made to Cicero’s complaint about a ‘temple to License’ (cited in Dodsworth 2007b: 445; compare with Chap. 3). Eighteenth-century England, mired in luxury, was in danger of following Rome in its path ‘from virtuous Industry to Wealth; from Wealth to Luxury; from Luxury to an Impatience of Discipline and Corruption of Morals; till by a total Degeneracy and loss of Virtue, being grown ripe for Destruction, it falls a Prey at last to some hardy Oppressor, and, with the loss of Liberty … sinks gradually again into its original Barbarism’ (cited in Dodsworth 2007b: 443). This was very much a recognition of the ‘ambivalence’ of civilisation, rather comparable to Burkitt’s (1996), with acknowledgement that the further civilisation progressed, the more it threatened the condition of its own existence. At the same time, by invoking Cicero, Fielding was not only defining the body politic, and particularly the common people, in a state of illness and corruption in need of emergency treatment to save the wider body, but he was doing so with reference to the necessity to use extraordinary government measures to do so, and thus justifying the innovations in magisterial authority he proposed (Dodsworth 2007b: 443). Fielding claimed practicality by stating he made no pretence about the capacity of government to eradicate vice from the body politic; rather his aim was to palliate the malady by preventing its worst elements, something he sought to do through the removal of temptations to vice, particularly voluptuousness, or the love of pleasure, which he felt was the chief vice of the poor (Fielding 1762: 541). The greatest temptations, he thought, came from places ‘where every sense and appetite of which it is compounded are fed and delighted; where the eyes are feasted with show,

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

147

and the ears with music, and where gluttony and drunkenness are allured by every kind of dainty; nay, where the finest women are exposed to view, and where the meanest person who can dress himself clean, may in some degree mix with his betters, and thus perhaps satisfy his vanity, as well as his love of pleasure’ (Fielding 1762: 541). Ultimately the concern was with any ‘diversions’ that were more than a ‘necessary relaxation from labour’ (Fielding 1762: 542). Once again, the emphasis is on the ways in which the lower orders are able to partake of the same kinds of entertainment as their social superiors; in contrast to the Societies for the Reformation of Manners, the concern here is clearly about the conduct and control of lower-class men, rather than women, who exist in this discourse simply as part of the temptations ‘exposed to view’ to entrap and impoverish the unwary. There is obvious anxiety here about the fact that all that is required for social interaction is the ability to ‘dress oneself clean’, so that anyone can appear as a respectable member of society, regardless of their social standing. In making this argument, Fielding was defining the vices and crimes of the people as direct threats to the security of the state, which needed to be addressed if English liberty and independence were to be preserved. However, the importance of the Enquiry was not only that it translated the well-established language of luxury into the critique of crime and morality, establishing crime and vice as ‘social problems’ with a definite aetiology; its importance was also that it sought to ‘rouse the CIVIL Power from its present lethargic State’ (cited in Dodsworth 2007b: 444). The fundamental problem here was negligence and the incapacity of the existing authorities to deal with contemporary problems. Warning that the roads in and out of London and the streets within would soon become impassable, he suggested that England would live to regret its ‘remissness’ if this were to come to pass (Fielding 1762: 539). This was particularly the case with regard to the laws for governing poverty, some of which have ‘perhaps, though in a very slovenly and inadequate manner, been partly carried into execution’, while others had been ‘utterly neglected and disregarded’ (Fielding 1762: 554). The longevity of this neglect is evidenced with reference to Matthew Hale’s comments on the subject, where he notes, amongst other issues, the unwillingness of people to raise the poor rate or to displease their neighbours by doing so (Fielding 1762:

148 

F. Dodsworth

554–555). The solution was not, however, simply to enforce the existing laws, which would be almost impossible, because ‘the trust is too great for the persons on whom it devolves’ (Fielding 1762: 567). That is to say that the executive mechanisms of government (in this case the justices of the peace and the churchwardens) were fundamentally incapable of the task they had been assigned, the former not least because ‘the business of the sessions is so complicated and various, that it happens, that in all cases where men have too much to do, that they do little or nothing effectually’ (Fielding 1762: 567). Moreover, not only were the authorities incapable of acting but the environment in which they had to do so was ranged against them: the city itself, with its numerous courts, alleys, and lanes, seemed to Fielding as if it had purposely been constructed for the purpose of concealing vagabonds, so that ‘the whole appears as a vast wood or forest, in which a thief may harbour with as great security, as wild beasts do in the deserts of Africa or Arabia: for, by wandering from one part to another, and often shifting his quarters, he may almost avoid the possibility of being discovered’ (Fielding 1762: 572). Once again, then, we are back to the now age-old anxiety, raised in Chap. 2, about the ‘wandering’ of the poor. Fielding explicitly works through the history of the frankpledge (see Chap. 2), noting that all subjects ought to be registered under a tithing and that ‘The master of the family was responsible for all who fed at his board, and were of his livery, and for all his servants of every kind’, even his guests, so that ‘every man, as well freemen as others, ought to belong to some frankpledge … unless he gives some countervailing security to the public’ (Fielding 1762: 573). The innovations that he was proposing, then, are very explicitly being framed as solutions to the mobility and independence of the poor and the breakdown of medieval patriarchal government. The laws in this area, Fielding argued, were now not only almost impossible to effectively enforce, but the problem in contemporary urban life was very different to that for which they were devised. The laws against vagabondage, vagrancy, and settlement dealt with a wide range of issues, but they defined offenders as ‘petty chapmen’, ‘beggars’, or lodgers in ale houses, whereas in London ‘most of the rogues who infest the public roads and streets, indeed almost all the thieves in general, are vagabonds in the true sense of the word, being wanderers from their lawful

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

149

place of abode, very few of them will be proved vagabonds within this act of parliament’ (Fielding 1762: 579). Such people did not get their living as chapmen, nor did they lodge in ale houses but in private houses which, Fielding thought, were almost set aside for that purpose in certain parts of town, where thieves worked in gangs. So numerous were such places, and so wretched were the conditions in which the inhabitants live, Fielding noted that ‘The wonder in fact is, that we have not a thousand more robbers than we have; indeed, that all these wretches are not thieves, must give us either a very high idea of their honesty, or a very mean one of their capacity and courage’ (Fielding 1762: 580). Not only was there anxiety about gangs, but there was an evident concern with the patriarchal protection of women and control of sexuality, with Fielding disapprovingly noting the mingling of the sexes in lodging houses and recalling ‘what I myself once saw in the parish of Shore-ditch, where two little houses were emptied of near seventy men and women; amongst whom was one of the prettiest girls I had ever seen, who had been carried off by an Irishman, to consummate her marriage on her wedding-night, in a room where several others were in bed at the same time’; she herself, it transpired, had robbed her mistress (Fielding 1762: 579–580). The young woman’s impression of justice Fielding is not recorded. The inadequacy of the laws and the executive supervisory power, the incapacity to prevent the ‘wandering’ and independence of the poor that was the root of vagabondage and crime, and the fact that criminals combined into gangs were central to Fielding’s configuration of the vulnerability of society to the threat of crime and represent a contemporary translation of the concerns aired in earlier periods about societies of rogues and the independence of the ‘wandering’ poor (Beier 1985). The notion of gangs of thieves appears several times in the Enquiry, with London’s robbers compared to the gangs of banditti believed to operate in France and Italy (Fielding 1762: 539). Fielding claimed the existence of ‘a great gang of rogues, whose number falls little short of a hundred, who are incorporated in one body, have officers and a treasury; and have reduced theft and robbery into a regular system’, which was an insult to the victims, national justice, and the laws themselves (539–540). The reference to robbery as a system moves it beyond individual moral failings and suggests that more concerted and systematic effort might be

150 

F. Dodsworth

required to prevent and mitigate the problem. Fielding claimed that ‘Officers of justice have owned to me, that they have passed by such with warrants in their pockets against them without daring to apprehend them’, which he did not wonder at, because ‘they could not be blamed for not exposing themselves to sure destruction’, with ‘twenty or thirty armed villains’ liable to come to the assistance of any criminal interfered with (Fielding 1762: 581). Another symptom of a system that was inadequate for the conditions of modern London. In response to this, Fielding listed the obligations incumbent on both private persons and officers of the law to take up felons, their powers for doing so, and the fines that faced them if they failed to do so; and yet, he noted, despite the extensive laws around the subject, still action was not taken. This was in part because of the ‘vulgar maxim’ that ‘what is the business of every man is the business of no man’, so that there was ‘no country in which less honour is gained in serving the public’; further, most people were ignorant of their responsibilities and were satisfied simply by not committing any offence; and thirdly, people were actively ashamed of taking such actions, because ‘The person of the informer is in fact more odious than that of the felon himself; and the thief-catcher is in danger of worse treatment from the populace than the thief ’ (Fielding 1762: 584). Fielding spent considerable time in his Enquiry seeking to counteract this perception by defining action against crime in terms of honour by invoking the Roman example. The scene set by Fielding for his ‘frame of rejection’ of the current system (Burke 1969, 1984), then, was one in which criminal gangs were organised into a system that threatened violence to an extent that the officers of the law were afraid to stop them and in which the thief-taker was less respected than the criminal, giving a deficiency in the agents and agency required to prevent and prosecute offending. Although he did not mention it directly in the Enquiry, at the time of writing, Fielding had already turned his attention to the kind of system that might address such problems and rehabilitate the idea of the thief-taker, and as Beattie (2012: 17–19) argues, the long sections of the Enquiry that attempted to rehabilitate thief-taking as an act of the public good were clearly articulated with these developments in mind. Initially he had devised a plan for the reform of the nightly watch in urban Middlesex and Westminster, but

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

151

this was not successful; following this, he devised the system that has become known to us as the ‘Bow Street Runners’, a group of thief-takers run from his Bow Street magistrates office and which, from 1754, was funded by an annual government grant (Beattie 2012: 8, 17, 21–24).

The Police Idea In fact, although he was responsible for the foundation of the Runners, and his name is always the most closely associated with them, Henry Fielding’s failing health and early death in 1754 meant that his contribution to their 90-year history was relatively brief. As the work of John Beattie (2012) makes clear, the institution that became so central to the development of the police idea in England was actually and most decisively developed by John Fielding (1721–1780), Henry’s half-brother, who succeeded him as Bow Street magistrate and was responsible for both the practical development and the legitimisation of new systems of surveillance and mechanisms of public protection in the second half of the eighteenth century. It is particularly significant that in 1758 John Fielding began to refer to this system of public protection as a system of ‘police’ (Dodsworth 2008: 588). The Bow Street Runners, then, began in late 1749 as a group of thief-­ takers run under the auspices of Henry Fielding, but under the influence of John Fielding, they soon developed into something much more than that. Not only were they state-funded but they also developed a sophisticated system of operation, extending initially to foot, and ultimately mounted patrols of London’s arteries, day and night, with extensive record-keeping and contacts with magistrates all around the country, which Beattie (2012) argues made them England’s first de facto detective force. Just like their successors, the Metropolitan Police’s detective branch would do in the later nineteenth century, in their later years the Runners even played an active role outside London where necessary, acting as a kind of national detective service (Cox 2010). The Bow Street office also employed ancillary staff, such as clerks to man the office almost constantly and to process the large amounts of information that the office was able to accumulate on crime and criminals in London, making the

152 

F. Dodsworth

Bow Street office ‘a clearing house for information about crime across the metropolis’, and, indeed, across the country (Beattie 2012: 27–28, 30–31, 85–86, quotation at 85). In this sense, the Bow Street magistrate’s office represented a specialised extension of the principle of the Universal Register Office, established by the Fieldings at the same time as the Bow Street Runners (1750) and intended ‘to bring the World, as it were, together into one Place’ (Ogborn 1998: 201–230, quotation at 211). As we saw in Chap. 2, this was not novel in and of itself, but what was different in the eighteenth century ‘was the volume of connections and the ways in which they were being made routine, organised, and carefully integrated through new ways of collecting, collating, retrieving and using information’ (Ogborn 1998: 209). There was a presumption that, as Rosalind Williams puts it ‘Social progress was assumed to depend on [the] construction of connective systems’ (cited in Ogborn 1998: 213; see also Siskin 2016). As Ogborn (1998: 220–223) notes, this allowed the power of the magistracy to be extended in both time and space, with detection possible years after a distant event. The circulation of information was central to John Fielding’s conception of the purpose of the Runners. In his Plan for Preventing Robberies within Twenty Miles of London (1755), in which he outlined their origins and purpose, Fielding suggested that using the Public Advertiser as a means of circulating information about highwaymen’s horses, stolen horses, stolen goods, and descriptions of highwaymen was likely to make their pursuit much easier (excerpted in Dodsworth 2014: 42). His plan for the prevention of robberies suggested the creation of prosecution associations, which would organise the creation and transmission (on paper) of any evidence of highway robbery in the area. Descriptions of events and characters were to be as detailed as possible and to be forwarded directly to his Bow Street office; the information was then to be communicated to ale houses, inns, and turnpikes on the way in and out of London, so that the thieves and their steeds would be recognised on their return to the city at night, which was their usual practice, most highwaymen being based within the city and ultimately being captured there (excerpted in Dodsworth 2014: 40; on prosecution associations, see Dodsworth 2016; King 1989; Philips 1989; Schubert 1981). The Bow Street office was to record the names and details of all offences and offenders, producing an

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

153

‘ideology of circulation’ and information which worked as a different grid, counteracting the criminal’s command of urban space (Ogborn 1998: 219–223). However, despite the importance of the circulation of information and the idea of ‘system’ implicit in this (on which, see Dodsworth 2008; Ogborn 1998: 213; Siskin 2016), physical and moral or ‘reputable’ masculinity remained at the heart of the enterprise. The initial success of Henry Fielding’s men in apprehending the ‘daring gang’ of robbers that allegedly plagued the metropolis in the late 1740s was explained as being due to their ‘Bravery and activity’, given the ‘hazardous’ nature of the task (excerpted in Dodsworth 2014: 35–36). It is explicitly noted that all of the initial officers had been constables (except one who had been a court officer),and therefore not only used to arresting debtors ‘who are generally of the desperate kind’ but also, by definition, ‘housekeepers [i.e. masters of the household—F.D.], and reputable ones too, otherwise they could not have been nominated to serve the office of constable’; the ‘bravest’ of those constables discharged from their duties at the end of the year often remained ready to serve the magistrates (excerpted in Dodsworth 2014: 36). Fielding is not, then, directly challenging the established patterns of masculinity associated with public protection, retaining the emphasis on the importance of the status of the respectable householder, the propertied man, and his bravery in the face of danger, which were central to De Veil’s claims to success (above) and to longstanding definitions of constabulary authority (see Chap. 2). The patrician or fraternal dimension of the patriarchal principle remained. This was important for Fielding’s justification of his own work, despite considerable evidence that some of his men were far from respectable (Beattie 2012: 33, 48, 50–51, 69, 70–71, 106). It is also important in the understanding of the transformation of patriarchy being developed here, because these officers were actively engaged in the policing of their social inferiors, with, as we shall see below, particular attention being paid to apprentices, journeymen, and servants, male and female, precisely those people who excited anxiety when they were not attached to, or effectively governed privately by, a householder. What Fielding was doing, however, was translating that patrician masculinity into a new organisational form, serving the magistrate and thereby community at large, rather than the parish of residence directly. Indeed, this was a critical development in the

154 

F. Dodsworth

distancing of policing from the activities of the public, as David Lemmings (2011) has argued, because Fielding and his men seem to have actively encouraged the public to rely on the Runners rather than attempting to arrest felons themselves (Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2015: 227). The long-term shift from the direct policing of the community to a more dispersed form of government at the level of the urban area was something that become more significant over time, first, because Fielding managed to become established on the commissions of the peace for Kent, Surrey, and Essex, as well as Middlesex and Westminster, meaning that his warrants extended into those counties and did not need the support of other magistrates in those areas, and second, as Fielding’s officers increasingly took up tasks relating to moral policing, which would previously have been the responsibility of parish officers and would not have been addressed by thief-takers (Beattie 2012: 35, 42, 47). This latter element made the Bow Street force more than a better-organised gang of thief-takers; it made them an alternative organisation targeted at ameliorating many of the moral and social problems targeted by reformers earlier in the century. If he was an institutional entrepreneur then (Hardy and Maguire 2017; Maguire et  al. 2004; Sine and David 2010), John Fielding was not only an entrepreneur in terms of the creation of a novel detective force, he was also concerned much more broadly with public protection and the prevention of crime and vice, something which became particularly clear in his work An Account of the Origins and Effects of a Police Set on Foot by His Grace the Duke of Newcastle (1758). John Beattie (2012: 43–44) has already noted the significant difference between Fielding’s Plan for Preventing Robberies (1755) and the Account of the Origins (1758), despite their close proximity in both time and subject matter. Beattie (2012: 42–46) sees this as part of a wider ‘preventive turn’ in Fielding’s work, something he ascribes to the reduction in crime that took place during the Seven Years War (1756–1763), which provided the opportunity to direct resources to the prevention of crime rather than its detection. From 1758 Beattie (2012: 42) argues that Fielding’s men engaged in the suppression of popular entertainment of exactly the kind that Henry Fielding had suggested seven years before, and Beattie also notes an alignment with the aims of the rebirth of the reformation of manners campaigns, which had resurfaced under the inspiration of John

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

155

Wesley (on which, see Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2015: 232–237). Beattie suggests that in contrast to the wider use that other (largely later) reformers gave to the term, John Fielding initially deployed the term ‘police’ to legitimise a much more specific and focused set of tasks: ‘investigating offences, catching and prosecuting felons—and in some circumstances preventing felonies from occurring. This is what he meant when he used the word “police”’; indeed, he meant it in a way ‘much closer to the modern sense of the word’ than most of his contemporaries (Beattie 2012: 29). I think that this explanation of Fielding’s use of the term ‘police’ is at least open to question: the activities undertaken by the Runners in the later 1750s mirror very closely the prescriptions Henry Fielding laid out in his Enquiry, and Hitchcock and Shoemaker (2015: 233) note that almost as soon as he took over the running of the office, from 1755, John Fielding was involved in the suppression of various kinds of popular recreation considered immoral and the cause of crime. In the Account of the Origins, Fielding notes that as well as dealing with gangs of robbers, shoplifters, and pickpockets, the aim was also to deal with gamblers and ‘common cheats’, illegal music gatherings, to suppress gambling in public houses, ‘to remove the Nuisance of common Beggars; to prevent Street-­ walking, by keeping the Whores within Doors; and several other Disorders committed by insolent Carmen’ (Fielding 1758: 18). Of course, this is a retrospective argument and justification, but it does fit with recent research findings and makes sense in terms of the sustained commitment Fielding demonstrated to the range of charitable associations associated with the problem of ‘police’ in the period, such as the Magdalen Hospital for the reform of prostitutes, the Female Orphans Asylum, the Marine Society, and the Lying-In Hospital (Andrew 1989). Equally, if Fielding chose to emphasise the pursuit of robbers in his earliest work on the subject, this does not necessarily mean he ‘saw’ the purpose of police that way, it simply means that he took the opportunity, and felt the need, to legitimise that particular activity in those circumstances, because that was, in Bruno Latour’s (2005) terms, the controversy of the day. I think that Hitchcock and Shoemaker (2015: 232) are right to suggest that ‘Virtually the entire response to the post-war [of Austrian Succession, ending in 1748] anxiety about crime can be seen as a renewed attempt at

156 

F. Dodsworth

a reformation of manners, picking up where the previous campaign left off when it collapsed in 1738’. It is certainly no coincidence that Fielding’s revised argument emerged in the context of a great debate about the threat that luxury posed to the nation, which was at its height during the Seven Years War and which provided the opportunity for a text like Fielding’s Account to gain some public traction for these ideas (Dodsworth 2007b; Miller 1994; Sekora 1977). Indeed, I would extend this to argue that the development of the ‘police idea’ emerges directly from that context in the widest sense, as a programme of moral reform driven by (sometimes would-be) institutional entrepreneurs, targeted principally at popular manners and morals. Far from Radzinowicz’s (1956) argument that police reform was ‘diverted’ into a period of moral reform, I would argue that moral reformation, particularly in the form taken by the reform of popular culture (Burke 2009; Hunt 1999), is the very essence of the police idea at its inception (Dodsworth 2008). Just as we saw in Chap. 3 in the context of the moral reform movements associated with the Societies for the Reformation of Manners and moralising magistrates, the classical concept of public virtue as the security for public liberty was being elided with the logic of Christian Reformation, so that public morality became the security for the freedom of a state mired the luxury attendant on a commercial society (Dodsworth 2008: 595–597). The difference between the arguments of the Fieldings and earlier advocates of moral reform was that they argued that the existing institutions for public protection were no longer suitable for the task, and new systems were required in order to defeat the established systems of the gangs of criminals and vagabonds. Fielding’s Account makes the moral dimension of his police organisation abundantly clear, not only through utilisation of the language of ‘Reformation’ but also by arguing that the purpose of the police was to compensate for the lack of moral education amongst the poor. Whereas their education and upbringing ensured the orderliness and decency of the ‘superior Rank of mankind’, the poor lacked such personal restraint and thus had to be restrained by the laws, both the laws of the Gospel and the laws of the land (Dodsworth 2008: 597; Fielding 1758: vii, 28). This model of social education was made particularly clear through the direct link made to the Marine Society, which was discoursed on at length as an example of good police and involved putting destitute and orphaned

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

157

youths into the navy to give them some prospects in life (Fielding 1758: 19–28). There is, however, a change of emphasis from the early period, when there was much more focus on what Pateman (1989) would call the ‘disorder of women’: here this exists only in the general sense of what we might take to be a feminised absence of restraint, in the sense that such lack of restraint distanced the bearer from the self-controlled masculinity that marked out the persona of the governor, instead marking them out as a subject of government. This was particularly applied to apprentices and journeymen as well as servants of both sexes, who, it was felt, needed to be subject to patriarchal supervision for their own good. Fielding noted that through the simple expedient of inviting people to give information against illegal gaming houses and dancing houses, the magistrates were, he claimed, able to remedy the wider problems of disorder and vice which gave rise to offending, by the simple method of using that information to issue notices against such houses, which encouraged most of them to close; thus ‘it is hoped Numbers of young Women have preserved their Characters, and young Men their Morals’ in the context of occasions where ‘Apprentices and Servants of both Sexes, together with Whores, usually made up these Balls and Assemblies’ (Fielding 1758: 31). Once again, then, there is a clear patriarchal concern with the moral regulation of the behaviour of young men and women by respectable householders who, it is claimed, made up Fielding’s force. It was specifically argued that information about such places would benefit neighbours, parents, masters, and mistresses concerned about the whereabouts and morals of their children and servants (Fielding 1758: 31). In addition to concerns with apprentices and servants, there was a re-­ articulation of ancient concerns about beggars and vagabonds, the archetypal masterless men, even down to a repetition of the old superstition that sight of such ‘frightful Objects’ so ‘dismembered and disfigured’ might be hazardous to pregnant women (Fielding 1758: 32–33). And once again, just as with Henry Fielding, there is a concern with the question of social distinction and distinguishability: when dealing with gamblers in need of reformation, John Fielding noted that the first problem ‘was the separating of them from the Nobility, with whom by Means of rich, hired Dresses, they had insolently mixed themselves’; the exposure of their social imposture was sufficient to prevent them preying on the nobility, although not their less fortunate victims (Fielding 1758: 28).

158 

F. Dodsworth

The fact that the poor could pass themselves off as respectable simply by hiring clothes was obviously fundamentally unsettling in a society that remained committed to hierarchy. In many respects, then, this was a new institution for the government of old problems that had evolved beyond the capacity of the existing mechanisms, or social conditions, to control them. As Fielding himself put it, ‘as there is no Evil in this Town of any Size, for which there is not some wholesome Law provided, the Continuation of that Evil must be owing either to the Silence of the Sufferer or the Neglect of the Magistrate’ (Fielding 1758: 39). This emphasis on the neglect of the magistrate would gather greater force in the coming years and lead to the further elaboration of new institutions for protection, which in many respects represented a challenge to existing patriarchal structures but nevertheless sought to recode those established forms of governmental masculinity in new ways. In line with Sylvia Walby’s (1990: 183–184) argument, the subordination of women (and subordinate men) is produced here not simply through their exclusion from established public activity, but through the ways in which new public roles, which created and expanded the ‘public sphere’, were actively shaped around exclusive forms of masculinity. The ability to engage in this novel form of government was, then, being configured as dependent on traditional forms of masculinity, and there was a remaining, if not a more pronounced emphasis on physical masculinity as necessary to counter the elevated threat of violence, with Fielding’s text noting that the suppression of violent gangs led to the death of one of his men and saw one of the robbers ‘cut to Pieces’ (Fielding 1758: 18). Importantly, there was also an emphasis on unity amongst the officers and suitable reward for activity. Constables, it was argued, should be well instructed, paid for any ‘extraordinary and dangerous Enterprizes’, and the magistrates should ‘promote Harmony amongst them’: the civil power, Fielding argued, was weak when divided, but constables who knew one another and were bound by friendship and fellowship ‘become sensible of their Office, stand by one another, and are a formidable Body’ (Fielding 1758: 37). The creation of a united body, bound by fellowship and dedicated to their office, forming a formidable force, is the very principle of the police force as an institution as it was to develop over the succeeding century.

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

159

From the Gordon Riots to the New Police The impact of John Fielding’s reforms was significant. Beattie (2012: 94) suggests that in the years 1767–1773, almost half of all prisoners sent from Middlesex to trial at the Old Bailey, London’s central criminal court, originated at the Bow Street office. Beyond this, both the practical direction of police reform and its discursive legitimation were enormously influenced by the Bow Street example. In 1761 Fielding sought government approval for a new ‘plan of police’ that seems to have borne a strong similarity to the 1792 Middlesex Justices Act, described below, and even before that point, several other ‘rotation offices’ comparable to Bow Street were established where people could expect to find a sitting justice, and these seem to have loosely followed the Bow Street principle, albeit on a small and less stable scale and without, so far as we know, the extensive collation of information (Beattie 2012: 47, 88, 140). On his death in 1780, then, the now knighted Sir John Fielding had played a significant role in the development of new governmental institutions. In fact, however, despite the (frequently unpopular) developments at Bow Street, Fielding’s death coincided with a prolonged period of crisis and debate about public protection. The outbreak of war in the American colonies in 1775 quickly put an end to the transportation of convicts overseas, and from 1776 until the First Fleet sailed for Australia in 1787, convicts had to be accommodated either in the existing prisons, houses of correction, or in floating ‘hulks’, that is, disused ships converted into prisons. Anxiety about crime in the capital at this time was sufficient for the enthusiastic reformer Jonas Hanway to publish a text entitled The Defects of Police in 1775. This text was republished in 1780 as The Citizen’s Monitor in the context of an even greater crisis: the Gordon Riots, which were to play a significant role in the direction of change in public protection until the early nineteenth century, and which have been described by Hitchcock and Shoemaker (2015: 392) as a ‘crisis of obedience’, in our sense, another challenge to the patriarchal ideal. As recent work by Tim Hitchcock (2012) emphasises, what began as an anti-Catholic protest against a parliamentary debate on the Roman Catholic Relief Act on 2 June 1780 quickly escalated into a violent assault, not only against premises associated with Roman Catholicism

160 

F. Dodsworth

but also against wider symbols of authority, particularly the criminal justice system. The most famous incident in the riots was the destruction of Newgate Prison, which prefigured the storming of the Bastille in Paris just nine years later; however, rioters also attacked other prisons, including the Fleet and King’s Bench, the New Prison and house of correction in Clerkenwell, the Old Bailey, and the houses of the Lord Chief Justice and, disastrously for future historians, Sir John Fielding’s Bow Street office, in which all the records his men had patiently compiled about marginal London were deliberately destroyed (Beattie 2012: 148; Hitchcock 2012; Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2015: 343–352). The riots lasted six days before being suppressed by the military and, in addition to the destruction of much of the apparatus and iconography of order, resulted in the deaths of 285 people, although some contemporaries put the figure as high as 700, with suggestions that the bodies of dead rioters were thrown into the Thames to hide their numbers (Dodsworth 2014: 47; Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2015: 351). The targets of the rioters, and the social composition of the rioters arrested and tried, suggest that contemporaries were correct to see this as a rebellion by plebeian London against what they clearly viewed as a range of mechanisms of oppression (Hitchcock 2012; Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2015: 343–352). During and after the Gordon Riots, the ‘respectable’ public organised new parochial patrols and associations for their own protection, a phenomenon not wholly novel—we find, for example, other private associations organising armed patrols earlier in the period, and the guarding of stage coaches was ubiquitous—but something that gained much greater currency and spoke of the anxieties occasioned by the riots and the ­failures of the civil force to prevent them (Beattie 2012: 137 n8; Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2015: 137). The government also introduced and paid for an armed foot patrol in 1782–1783, initially 46 men, by the early years of the next century increased to 68 (Beattie 2012: 143–144, 177; Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2015: 377). The theme of the inadequacy or failure of the civil authorities was also central to the discourses on ‘police’ that emerged in the wake of the Gordon Riots. These discourses drew on the inspiration of the Fieldings to address the problem of London’s government and took place within the context of a renewed reformation of manners campaign (Dodsworth 2007b, 2008; Hunt 1999). Most of

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

161

these discourses were unsuccessful in their reforming aims, although some of them were written by individuals who were influential in the government of life in various ways, such as Jonas Hanway, who had much practical impact on London charity for the poor, or Edward Sayer, the deputy high steward of Westminster; however, the last of these reformers, Patrick Colquhoun, was to go on to have significant practical impact on the policing of London through his role in establishing the Thames River Police, which merged with the Metropolitan Police in 1839 and which continues to operate to this day. Hanway’s text The Defects of Police/The Citizen’s Monitor drew on the inspiration of the work of the Fieldings (unsurprisingly, since he knew John Fielding personally, although they had a somewhat troubled relationship), explicitly referring to their work in what he termed a plan ‘for the security of these cities’ (excerpted in Dodsworth 2014: 47 n4, 59, 61). He may have simply been following John Fielding in his use of the terminology of ‘police’, or he might have been drawing on his experience of the police systems of continental Europe that he must have encountered on his extensive travels (Dodsworth 2014: 47 n4). Deploying the term ‘police’ remained controversial in both 1775 and 1780, in part because of its association with French absolutism and ‘country’ opposition to the idea that a standing army could be used by the government to oppress the people (Philips 1980); in part, however, there was also, perhaps, a more recent problem, in its association with the work of John Fielding and the Bow Street office, which was enormously resented by the poor and frequently contested by those middling people who considered it an unwarranted constitutional innovation and an infringement of the principles of English justice (Beattie 2012 and Hitchcock and Shoemaker 2015 contain many such examples). Clearly, then, given its potential toxicity, Hanway chose this term for a reason and I have suggested elsewhere, on the prompting of Clive Emsley, that the reason for this was that the term ‘police’ encapsulated the idea of a system, with the uniformity, regularity, co-ordinated purpose, and organisation that was often associated with the French police (Dodsworth 2008: 593–594; Dodsworth 2014; on the development of the idea of ‘system’ in this period, see Siskin 2016). It is notable that, like the Fieldings, Hanway decried both the ‘levelling of all distinctions’ and the ‘reduction of thievery to a system’, which

162 

F. Dodsworth

required a rival system to counteract it (excerpted in Dodsworth 2014: 49, 50). Whatever the reason for the choice of term, Hanway defined police in terms of ‘restrictive regulations’ and as a system of ‘discipline’ and a plan of ‘reformation’. Like previous moral reformers, he sought to oppose anarchy, the absence of good government, with true liberty, which depended on legal restraint, without which England faced the prospect of a Roman decline. He drew on Henry Fielding’s discourse on the ‘love of pleasure’ as the chief agent in the lives of the poor to argue, like John Fielding, that a good police was a compensatory system of moral education, supplying the absence of religious and moral education amongst the poor. What was most distinctive, however, was his greater emphasis (unsurprising in the context of both anxieties about crime in the 1770s and the aftermath of the Gordon Riots) on the inadequacies of the existing system of police. A central theme in Hanway’s writing was the inadequacy of authority, particularly the common neglect of religion. He specifically associated this with effeminacy through contrast: ‘in every rank folly predominates: if our superiors lose their taste for what is great and manly, the correction by a well-regulated police will be neglected’ (Dodsworth 2008: 595–601, quotation at 599). This association of failures to exercise authority with effeminacy was not unique to Hanway (Dodsworth 2007a) and the theme of the inadequacy of the existing magistracy was shared with other police reformers. The surgeon William Blizard, for example, was clearly an associate of Hanway’s: it is evident from comparing the texts of Blizard and Hanway that the letters cited by Hanway in his texts are from Blizard and that Blizard’s Desultory Reflections on Police (1785) extends both Hanway’s emphasis on the problem of negligence and his solution (see Dodsworth 2014: 47–137). Edward Sayer’s Observations on the Police or Civil Government of Westminster, published in 1784, also placed enormous emphasis on the disorganisation and poor quality of the Westminster magistracy, lamenting that it not only lacked the unity of organisation and intent to operate properly but that inferior men held its offices (excerpted in Dodsworth 2014: 108, 112). Hanway himself placed great emphasis on the neglect of the poor and their dismal condition, occasioning the disgrace of the nation; he sought to make the state of police a condition of honour, thus making a direct appeal to elite

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

163

masculinity, a conceptual scheme in which honour was the highest social value (cited in Dodsworth 2014: 80; on eighteenth-century England as a timocracy, a property-owning polity organised around the principle of honour, see Clark 2000: 36). In order to inject manly vigour into the system of police, and encourage the superior ranks to do their duty and supervise the moral conduct of their subordinates, Hanway, Blizard, Sayer, and a number of others, sought to configure a revitalised police in terms of a civilian force comparable to the militia, with the policing officer as a ‘species of civil soldier’ (McCormack 2012; see also Dodsworth 2007a, 2014). Blizard himself was a member of the militia in London and had been active in that role in suppressing the Gordon Riots and in later forays into the poorest parts of the city in pursuit of offenders (see Dodsworth 2014: 119–120). Defining a revised police system in terms of the militia, as a body of citizen soldiers protecting their liberty through the bearing of arms and a force that was tied to the counties rather than central government, allowed its proponents to put forward a concept of police that could offset concerns about a government-controlled standing army and a French-­ style militarised police. At the same time, however, it promoted a distinctively and definitively militarised form of masculinity as central to the police ideal (McCormack 2012). Given the recent emphasis on the imbrication of the military and the police ideas in the work of Mark Neocleous (2014), it is interesting to note that the military model was central to debates about the ‘police idea’ from its inception in England. This militarised masculinity represented a direct challenge to the supine, luxuriating and by extension effeminate men who were characterised as inhabiting the vital offices for enforcing order. These plans did not come to fruition; nevertheless, they were important elements in the ‘critical reflection on governmental practice’ that was central to the development of public protection and its orientation around the concept of ‘police’ in the 1780s and 1790s (Foucault, cited in Collier 2011: 18–19). Equally important, however, were the practical developments that took place at the same time. Just as Hanway’s Citizen’s Monitor was produced as a direct response to the Gordon Riots, so Blizard’s Desultory Reflections was produced in anticipation of the Police Bill, which was on the verge of being introduced to supply the defects of police

164 

F. Dodsworth

i­dentified by so many commentators, particularly on the basis of the presumption that the chief limitation was in the quality of the metropolitan magistrates (Beattie 2012: 152). The 1785 Police Bill proposed a unified policing system for the entire metropolis, with salaried ‘commissioners of police’ holding the office of justice of the peace, but committed only to the security of the city, and a hierarchical system of new police officers below them, operating day and night to police a city divided into districts for the purpose of supervision; it also included new powers of search and entry and extended powers over vagrancy and licensed premises and changes to aspects of prosecution and trial (Beattie 2012: 153–154). There was instant opposition to the terms of the Bill from many quarters, but most importantly from those who rejected it on constitutional grounds, in terms of the specifics of the legal changes proposed and the principle of direct control from government, and from the City of London, who resented the interposition on their ancient rights of self-government (Philips 1980). Many accepted the need for reform: one opponent of the Bill recognised ‘that they were got into a lamentable state of police … thieves and rogues of all denominations had increased to an almost incredible number’ (Parliamentary History 1815: 902). However, the system of police being proposed was classed as ‘altogether new and arbitrary in the extreme’, completely against the free, balanced traditions of English law and the evolved political constitution ‘creating, without necessity, new offices, invested with extraordinary and dangerous powers, enforced by heavy penalties, and expressly exempted from those checks, and that ­responsibility, which the wisdom of the law has hitherto thought necessary’ (Parliamentary History 1815: 900–901). While the Solicitor General argued that the Aldermen of the City were too busy to attend to the business of crime and that ‘What was wanted was, in his opinion, some persons, whose constant and unremitted duty it should be to keep upon the look-out, to maintain an active search after offenders’, Alderman Newham preferred to keep the traditional authority of the judicial system, particularly opposing the idea of two barristers operating as temporary judges at the Old Bailey (Parliamentary History 1815: 911). The debate here is whether or not government should be carried out by the unspecialised independent gentleman or one whose whole time was

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

165

to be given over to the task. Newham’s condemnation of the initiative has all the characteristics of conservative defences of the patriarchal, pastoral order: ‘It was, he said, the great comfort of the subject, and the glory of the country, that every man brought for trial at the Old Bailey was to be tried before a Judge, a man perfectly skilled in the criminal law, and what was still more essential, a man who was independent of the Crown, and could have no motive whatever to warp his impartiality’ (Parliamentary History 1815: 909). Barristers, in contrast, had professional preferment from the Crown to look forward to, which could influence their decisions. Further ‘the continued sitting of the court would greatly diminish the dignity of it, take away the solemnity of its proceedings, and weaken its authority in the eyes of the public; of that part of the public more especially to whom it ought to be looked upon with a mixture of awe and reverence, and with some degree of terror’ (Parliamentary History 1815: 909–910). In the long run, the debate would resolve in favour of specialism, but this specialised administration was to have its independence guaranteed in new ways. In this instance, however, the resistance of the City combined with the ‘constitutionalist’ opposition to ensure that, much to the surprise of John Reeves, the author of the Bill, it failed. On one level Reeves’s surprise seems justified: although Beattie (2012: 156–157) emphasises the novelty of the Bill, and the significance of Reeves’s own input, he acknowledges that Reeves may also have drawn upon the range of proposals for police reform that had been received by the Home Office over previous years. As we have seen, the need for greater uniformity was a consistent theme in much of that work and in other proposals that succeeded the Bill. However, what Reeves perhaps did not realise is that although such arguments were popular amongst a set of dedicated reformers of like mind, this did not guarantee wider political support, nor, perhaps, popular approval, given the hostility aroused by the activities of the Bow Street office amongst both the populace and some members of the governing classes themselves. The end of the Police Bill was a significant setback for reformers, but not the end of police reform. Although they opposed the Bill itself, the City of London were not against police reform per se, they merely wished to preserve their own authority over it, and in 1785 they sought to demonstrate this by establishing a citywide patrol for the prevention of crime

166 

F. Dodsworth

and control of vagrants. However, it took seven years for more significant reform to be introduced across most of the metropolitan area in the form of the 1792 Middlesex Justices Act, which was often known as the Police Act (Beattie 2012: 165, 167). This piece of legislation avoided the mistake of impinging on the privileges of the City and focused on the establishment of seven ‘public offices’ in Westminster, Middlesex, and Southwark, broadly modelled along the lines of Bow Street, staffed by three salaried justices of the peace, and supported by teams of six constables attached to each office. Opposition to the Bill was mobilised in terms similar to the 1785 Bill: Charles James Fox, for the opposition, a campaigner against standing armies and defender of English liberties, argued that ‘The police of this country was well administered in the ordinary mode by gentlemen who undertook to discharge the duty without any emolument from it, and in the safest way to the freedom of the subject, because these gentlemen, being under no particular obligation to the executive power, could have no particular interest in perverting the law to oppression’ (Parliamentary History 1817: 1464–1465). Fox’s patriarchal vision of authority saw that as ‘the lower orders of the people, had seldom the means of applying for redress against the abuse of power, they were entitled to the peculiar protection of the legislature in every law…’ (Parliamentary History 1817: 1465). This is a clear statement of the civic duty of the independent gentleman acting freely to secure the public interest and also to care for their dependents in a patriarchal way, in particular against the potentially despotic activities of the Executive. The law was to create freedom through its equal treatment of all subjects from the Monarch downwards. Fox clearly opposed the part of the act that allowed ‘known felons’ to be taken into custody on suspicion by invoking the tradition and principle of English law: ‘The whole of the question fairly to be argued was— Are the persons to be affected by this clause, guilty of offence or not? The learned gentleman said they were notoriously known. How notoriously known? Nothing could be known that had not happened. Nothing by law could be said to have happened as a breach of that law that could not be proved. It was on this principle that, every man in England was declared innocent, until he was pronounced by law to be guilty’ (Parliamentary History 1817: 1471). Windham argued that ‘The clause was calculated to protect the rich. The poor alone were to suffer by it.

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

167

Should they, then, countenance an attack directed against men who could not defend themselves?’ (Parliamentary History 1817:1466). Again, the patriarchal assumption of the role of the legislature, a body of independent citizens working for the public benefit on behalf of their social dependents, is clear here. However, Fox and Windham’s arguments were rebutted. Burton, speaking in its favour, claimed: ‘If the clause was for their [the rich’s] protection only, he would not have given himself a moment’s trouble about it. Rich men had ample means of protecting themselves by their attendants and servants, by riding in their carriages, and by other preventatives. The clause had a larger view. It extended to men of all ranks and descriptions, to those who kept cash at bankers, to banks themselves, to their clerks, and to all who were interested in the property carried through the streets’ (Parliamentary History 1817: 1467–1468).

As such the supposed freedom of the less wealthy was problematised in practical rather than constitutional terms. In essence, two different kinds of freedom are in play here, freedom from interference (criminal or otherwise) against freedom from domination or arbitrary power (on which, see Skinner 1998, 2008). Thus the distinction we encountered between high Tories and Jacobite authors and their Whig critics earlier in the century (Chap. 3) is being maintained in Whig and Tory arguments about ‘police’ towards its end. However, where the Whigs emerged ideologically triumphant in the former circumstances, the reverse was true in the aftermath of the Gordon Riots and in the context of anxieties about the French Revolution (which the Foxite Whigs had supported). The point the Tories wanted to drive home here was that the supposed equality of the rich and poor under the law, as argued by Fox, was illusory given the easier practical circumstances of the rich: ‘The truth was, and reason, justice, and common sense taught it, the richest man in England should have neither more nor less, but exactly as much protection by the law, as the poorest’ (Parliamentary History 1817: 1472). The Bill was intended to ‘extend to men of all ranks and description’ the same freedoms, with the law and its executives acting as the agent of liberty. This became an abiding feature of police reform and represents an active concept of government, whereby the task of the executive in particular, and government in general, was not simply to secure

168 

F. Dodsworth

the conditions necessary for simple ‘naturally free’ subjects to operate without restriction, according to the rights conferred on by the ancient tradition of English law and a balanced constitution, but whereby the task of government was to create the conditions of possibility for free action by all men and women, to extend the traditional civic virtues, independence, and liberties of the Englishman (albeit with some important modifications) throughout society in a practical form. In practice this was opposed to the tradition that saw liberty as inherent in the constitution; however, in theory this has as much in common with a tradition of positive interference as with simple desires for least interference (which were undoubtedly present in some arguments). Justifying the introduction of the Bill, the home secretary, Dundas, invoked the tradition of the ‘rogues progress’ we encountered in Chap. 3, reminding the House that ‘rogues reached the gallows by degrees; that they started as pickpockets when they were about 13 or 14; that they became emboldened by habit and practice; that when by picking pockets they were able to buy a horse, they commenced highwaymen; and by an accumulation of crimes, all highly injurious to the public, they arrived at the climax of their fate, and ended their career by the hands of the hangman. He appealed to the House, whether it would not be practical humanity to rescue such wretches from their fate, and by an early prevention of their pursuits, check their evil courses, and afford them an opportunity of being restored to society?’ (Parliamentary History 1817: 1473–1474; on the aetiology of crime and the role of habit in the ‘rake’s progress’, see Dodsworth 2013).

The government were configuring the poorest as requiring extra support, due to the difficulties of their lives and the weakness of their wills, and that support was to come no longer from the independent body of gentlemen representing the interests of their local dependents but from the Executive itself. The Executive was the only body powerful enough to achieve these ends and accountable enough to be safely entrusted with such power. The ‘problem of poverty’ from this perspective was not the simple one of the threat of ‘outcast London’ or a rising degenerate or politically threatening class it was necessary to control, rather it was one of a problem of poverty as itself restrictive of freedom through the creation of

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

169

dependence. Crucially, although the opposition framed its case in terms of traditional English liberties, the ancient customs and rights of freeborn Englishmen, the 1792 bill was passed. The old systems of pastoral government were either condemned as inadequate or more importantly as actually producing dependence and vice. During the debates in parliament specific reference was made to the Bow Street example as a justification for the proposed Bill’s effectiveness (Beattie 2012: 165–166). The Act, initially running for periods of three years, and being made permanent in 1812, established the principle of the government of crime by magistrates and constables directly funded by, and answerable to, the Home Office. The constables, controversially, had the power to arrest a suspect on suspicion of felony, later to be a key weapon in the arsenal of the new police (Critchley 1967: 37). Although the organisational structure did not directly cover the metropolis as a unified whole, leaving the City of London independent, it nevertheless sought to ensure comparable provision across the urban area. One of the stipendiary magistrates appointed to the new ‘police offices’, as they became known, was Patrick Colquhoun (1745–1820), a Glaswegian merchant with a background in the tobacco trade and a former Lord Provost of the city. Colquhoun was driven from Glasgow by the impact of the American revolution on his business and established himself in London, where he was procured a place at the Worship Street Police Office in Shoreditch (one of the police offices introduced under the new Police Act) by Henry Dundas, Secretary of State for the Home Department, who we encountered above (Paley 2004). Colquhoun embraced his new role with gusto, and, like many of his magisterial forebears, he appears to have seen an opportunity for advancement in advocating changes to the system of police (Philips 2003). Failing to gain the ear of government for his proposals, he soon published some wide-­ranging recommendations on police based on his recent magisterial experience and a degree of creative imagination. His Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis was first published in 1796 and ran to six editions, the last being published in 1806. In addition to this (and a range of works on related subjects), he wrote A General View of the National Police System (1799) and A Treatise on the Commerce and Police of the River Thames (1800). He also gave evidence to Parliament on more than one occasion.

170 

F. Dodsworth

Colquhoun’s Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis built on the by now well-established pattern of writing on police, locating the need for police within the luxury produced by commercial society, lamenting the vice and licentiousness of the populace, and raising the spectre of corruption and decline following the Roman model. He framed the situation in terms of growing depravity and a need to prevent the young from being tempted into the same vicious habits as the most depraved members of society (Dodsworth 2007b: 447–448; Dodsworth 2008: 596). He was particularly concerned by the fate of apprentices and their costly attempts to imitate their masters, drawing them into drinking and fraternising with thieves and prostitutes (Dodsworth 2007b: 450–451). A comparable argument was made in his General View of the National Police System, in which he suggested that the best method to check the progress of vice was to attend to the ‘Morals and the Habits’ of the young, to adapt the laws to improve the manners or the population, and to ‘lead the inferior orders, as it were, insensibly into better Habits, by gentle restraints upon those propensities which terminate in Idleness and Debauchery’ (cited in Dodsworth 2008: 601). The young, the weak and impressionable, then, needed to be protected from themselves, and society needed to be protected from them, by those able to resist such temptations and wise enough to understand their collective effects. Colquhoun sought to make clear his mastery of that position with the assembly of a range of statistics pointing not only to the extent of the problem of vice (at least as he imagined it) but also his knowledge of the subject, establishing a global view over, and distance from, the day-to-day and human interactions of ­people at the sites of temptation and seduction that he sought to eradicate. Like Henry Fielding, Colquhoun was articulating a system of prevention that would fabricate a milieu in which the temptations to crime and vice were reduced (Dodsworth 2007b, 2008, 2013; Neocleous 2000). Colquhoun was nothing like as successful as he had hoped, but his work is important not just as an example of the views of a serving magistrate in the East End; indeed, on this level it is very unrepresentative, as not only was he critiqued by members of the public (Dodsworth 2014: 229–242) but also by other serving officers in the police when they gave evidence to parliamentary committees that flatly contradicted his. But he did have one significant impact, which was his involvement, alongside

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

171

John Harriott, in the creation of the Marine Police, or Thames River Police, which began operating on a trial basis with private finance in 1798. His Treatise on the Commerce and Police of the River Thames, which repeated many of the themes of his other work on police, sought government backing for the scheme, which was ultimately forthcoming, and in 1800 the Thames Police was added to the roster of the seven new police offices and Bow Street. From that time onwards, when people spoke of the ‘police’ of London, or wrote about police reform, it was principally these offices that they had in mind, although the idea could also include the nightly watch. On one level, the Thames Police was pioneering in the sense that its policing of dock workers anticipated the widespread policing and surveillance of factory labour in the nineteenth century. On another level, however, I think that Beattie (2012: 166) is correct to see the creation of the police offices as ‘eighteenth-century solutions for an eighteenth-century problem’ and the culmination of the process of reform initiated by Henry Fielding in the late 1740s. This system of government, and the language that legitimised it, revolved around the figure of the magistrate, supplemented by a government stipend but still a man of property configured as responsible for the patrician oversight of those unable by age, constitution, or limited education, to govern themselves according to the principles of morality. The magistrate’s expert and direct knowledge of the ways and means of the criminal and vicious, gained by constant exposure to them, coupled with his courage, independence, and status, rendered him able to protect the public from crime and the state from corruption. However, if the rhetoric, and for the present the importance of the magistracy, remained relatively constant, the introduction of a direct financial relationship between the new system of police and the Home Office was ultimately to change the dynamic of police reform. This was, of course, part of a wider transformation in the nature and operation of government in the late eighteenth century, which saw increasing governmental intervention in, and policy around, social issues (Innes 2009: particularly 21–47). Like most other fields, much of this intervention was at the very least done in concert with, if not actively prompted by, institutional entrepreneurs like the Fielding brothers and Colquhoun. There certainly were still opportunities for entrepreneurs in policing (Edwin Chadwick

172 

F. Dodsworth

being only the most prominent), but the changing nature of government in the nineteenth century, with more direct initiative coming from within central government itself, directed police reform largely through more formal channels, through discussions in select committees or at Home Office initiative, and less often through individual projects and schemes. If the entrepreneurial spirit and drive for preferment of the police reformers had succeeded in overthrowing the established structures of metropolitan government and made public protection synonymous with the idea of police, police was also becoming synonymous with government direction, so that it is legitimate to characterise the coming of the police as part of the ‘governmentalisation of the state’ (Foucault 1991). As we shall see in the following chapter, this process had a number of consequences for the forms of governing masculinity available, the discourses through which they were articulated, and also for the pattern of crime, which seems to have been significantly affected by these changes. Before we enter the nineteenth century, however, it is necessary to pause briefly in order to take stock of the changes to discourses and practices of protection described in the previous two chapters and place them in a broader cultural context, because the transformations that led to the establishment of an improved system of ‘police’ were only one part of a much wider change in both the structure of the city itself and the cultures of practice within it, ones that had consequences for the ways in which protection and (in)security would be debated, promoted, and practised in the nineteenth century.

The Civilising Process Over the course of the ‘long’ eighteenth century, from the Exclusion Crisis to the creation of the police offices, London underwent a great material, demographic and cultural transformation. The most straightforward aspect of this was its sheer growth in size, with a metropolitan population of something around 400,000  in 1650–575,000 around 1700 and 900,000 by 1800; even in 1700 the population within the walls of the City, which had in previous centuries been the dominant urban component, was only about 80,000 (Wrigley and Schofield, cited

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

173

in Inwood 1998: 270). Not only had the City spilled outside the walls into the surrounding area, but it had now linked up with Westminster, forming a contiguous urban sprawl that encompassed three different jurisdictions: the county of Middlesex, the City of London itself, and the City and Liberty of Westminster. Moreover the character of that city was changing. From the early seventeenth century, the aristocracy and gentry became more prominent in the city, with the London season running from October to June. This was in part due to the increasing importance of Parliament and the frequency of its meetings (which greatly increased in the eighteenth century) but also a desire for engagement with urban culture and, in an age when finance, trade, and commerce were coming to displace the importance of landed wealth, it became increasingly important to be there for business as London became the economic heart of a growing imperial trade network (Shoemaker 2004: 10–12). This was important, as Shoemaker (2004) makes clear, not simply in terms of the complexity of governing the city but because it had a profound impact on social relationships and urban culture. The fundamental transformation that overcame the city in the eighteenth century was the breakdown of the tight-knit familiarity of local communities and traditional relationships. The great growth in population saw an influx of thousands of newcomers to the city every year, mostly young people under 25, from both the countryside and overseas. More than half of them were women, and most of those were unmarried and lived independent lives, a source of considerable consternation for some commentators, including John Fielding, the police reformer, who noted the ‘latitude’ afforded to young women and their ability to frequent places of public entertainment (Shoemaker 2004: 14). At the same time, the economic transformation of the city changed the world of work: the guilds began to lose their control over traditional trades, and new trades and forms of enrichment emerged outside guild control. The traditional guild-based work structure of apprenticeship, living with the master and learning his trade, and eventually becoming oneself a master and a freeman of the city, was being displaced by these new trades and by the extension of the city out into areas beyond guild control. Masters took on more apprentices, or even people who were not apprenticed to their trade; they increasingly rarely lived in and were unlikely ever to

174 

F. Dodsworth

become masters themselves. There were also more and more large-scale employers with dozens of workers. All of this depersonalised employment relations and gave patriarchal figures less control over the lives of apprentices and servants (Shoemaker 2004: 17). This was part of a wider anxiety about the neglect of the duties of authority, which we have encountered in a particular version above. As Langford (1991: 449) puts it ‘It was assumed that the ancient pattern of urban life placed rich in proximity to poor and ensured a harmonious hierarchy of social relations. The head of a respectable household supposedly exercised a benevolent dictatorship, comprising not merely his family, but also his apprentices and employees’, but this ‘patriarchal estate’ was being dismantled by economic rationalism and social snobbery, with servants being ‘boarded out’ through provision of money for lodgings, while their welfare was disregarded or unsupervised. Moreover the whole relationship between the patriarchs and their dependent was changing along with the structure of the city itself, as the wealthier residents sought relief from the hustle and bustle of urban life, its noise and smells, in the new suburbs being built to the west of the city, physically separating them from their social inferiors. The commuting merchant who lived outside the city and travelled into it for business constituted ‘a recognizable revolution in middle-class habits’ (Langford 1991: 449). There was anxiety that this deprived servants and apprentices of the good examples of their masters and their supervision was left to people without the liberal education of the more established gentlemen (Langford 1991: 450). Much of the blame for this could be laid at the door of the cultural changes associated with politeness and the growing ‘sensibility’ of the middling sort, which distanced the gentry from the world of their inferiors and defined the vulgar environment as disagreeable (Barker-Benfield 1992; Carter 2001). These economic and cultural transformations, then, also had an impact on the masters themselves. The expansion of trade and commerce beyond the strictures of the city guilds enabled fortunes to be made and lost quickly and disrupted traditional status hierarchies. The status of the ‘gentleman’ shifted from being something associated with a particular lineage to something claimed by anyone of independent wealth and ‘genteel’ behaviour (Langford 1989: 61–68; Shoemaker 2004: 14). New

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

175

models of polite, urbane manliness emerged to contest the established masculinities of the courtier and the country gentleman, although these alternatives continued to exert rhetorical and political force. Reformers sought to construct a model of urban politeness focused around relaxed sociability and composed of a synthesis of formal manners and Christian virtue, articulated in contrast to the stiff formality and artifice of the courtier and the rude rusticity of the country squire (Carter 2001; Klein 2002). To some extent there was clearly considerable imitation of elite manners here, but there was also a process of conscious self-definition or distinction by an emergingly self-conscious ‘middling sort’, albeit not one that was yet a ‘middle class’ in the sense of the political configuration produced around the turn of the century (Wahrman 1995). A good example of the fluidity of status and the uneasiness with which it was greeted was the response of the architect and playwright John Vanbrugh, who wrote to his fellow architect Lord Burlington that on encountering the name of Thomas Ripley with the title Esq. (Esquire) next to it in the newspaper ‘such a Laugh came upon me, I had like to have Beshit my Self ’ (Colvin 1954: 503). Ripley, who had just been promoted to master carpenter for the Crown, and who would succeed Vanbrugh as Comptroller of the Works in 1726, was a carpenter by trade who had reputedly walked to London from Yorkshire to seek his fortune and secured his promotions through the patronage of Robert Walpole, having married one of his servants (Colvin 1954: 502–503). Throughout the century, as we saw above, there was much concern about the fluidity of rank and the use of acquired accoutrements like dress to inflate or stake a claim to social position (Shoemaker 2004: 15–16). The decline of ‘community feeling’ also had a direct impact on the policing of the city. In the early part of the century, it was expected that people would police the streets themselves, not only responding to the ‘hue and cry’ but also intervening in disputes amongst neighbours and ensuring the moral conduct of the young; by the end of the century, however, such processes seem to have lost their power in a larger city where encounters were most often with strangers (Shoemaker 2004: 27–110). As we saw above, people were encouraged to use formal methods for the resolution of offences, rather than engaging with them directly. Shoemaker (2004) suggests that this might actually have been

176 

F. Dodsworth

an important element in the reduction of violence and disorder that marked the eighteenth century, because it was in the context of informal dispute resolution that violence frequently occurred. In some respects the eighteenth century was riotous in a way that previous centuries had not been. Shoemaker (2004: 112–113) puts this down to the extension of the urban area outside the more controlled confines of the City and the appeal to and mobilisation of public opinion in the political struggles of the Exclusion Crisis and the Revolution Settlement, which we explored in Chap. 3. However, it is notable that, with the important exception of the Gordon Riots discussed above, there were relatively far fewer riots in the second half of the century and these seemed to involve much less popular participation and elite engagement (Shoemaker 2004: 142–144). This followed a pattern of declining violence across the century more broadly. Despite some evidence of an upturn in rates of violence around the mid-century, there was a marked decline in homicide rates, from a rate of about 4 homicides per 100,000 of the population in the early years of the century to about 1 per 100,000 at its end; this constituted a decline from about 20 homicides per year in the 1690s to numbers in the teens in the 1700s–1720s to below 10 towards the end of the century, with a rise into the teens again in the 1760s, all this despite a doubling of the population (Eisner 2001: 622, 2003: 96, 99; Shoemaker 2004: 170–171). In a pattern recognisable in contemporary society, this involved a significant decline in public violence, so that by the end of the century, just as now (and at a similar proportionate rate of offending) around 50% of homicide took place in private spaces. Contemporary criminologists have interpreted the proportionate shift from public to private violence as a significant elimination of public/stranger violence (Eisner 2001; 2003). Shoemaker (2004: 153–176) suggests that the decline in public violence had a number of aspects. The first was a decline in the use of weapons. In the early years of the century, gentlemen almost invariably carried swords as a mark of social distinction and as a symbol of their privileged relationship to violence, which they used to mark out and defend their masculinity and independence. Men used violence to discipline their household and dependents, principally women and subordinate men, and against other independent men to demonstrate to their subordinates

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

177

the extent to which they depended on their guardian for protection and to resolve questions of honour. The latter was probably the most significant change over the century. Many violent disputes arose out of questions of honour and trustworthiness, which were almost invariably answered by men with a physical challenge, either duelling with weapons or boxing. In a context in which most people were armed most of the time, weapons were frequently employed. This only became more important as the fluidity of gentry status increased, because one way to assert such status was to carry a sword and aggressively or defensively buy into the honour culture. So significant was this culture of violent honour defence that although the gentry made up only between 3% and 5% of London’s population, they made up 15% of those indicted for murder. Gentlemen, rather than the poor, were, then, proportionately the worst violent offenders. This changed dramatically over the course of the century. Perhaps because the aspirational began to carry swords, and sword carrying was dispersed throughout the social body, gentlemen began to look for other marks of social distinction. Moreover, as noted above, there were significant challenges to the gentlemanly ideal from the diffusion of cultures of politeness and sensibility, which specifically targeted and sought to ‘civilise’ male behaviour (Barker-Benfield 1992; Carter 2001). Shoemaker (2004: 174–176) notes that the biggest decline in violence over the century was amongst young elite men, who went from being the group most likely to be accused of homicide to the least at the end of the century; but he does not see this as the most important factor. Instead, he suggests that a wider transformation in popular attitudes to violence, which intersected with changes in elite behaviour prompted by the growth of ‘politeness’ and the evangelical revival, were more important. These popular changes, he suggests, were not directly down to the improved policing we noted above but more to the fact that people in general became less involved in the policing of one another, which was a frequent cause of disputes, and to a wider change in expectations about public behaviour. The anonymity of the city and the conduct of life in the face of strangers, he suggests, drew the sting out of the honour culture: not only was violence increasingly stigmatised (as was the honour culture) by reformers but the performance of reputation in the streets simply became less significant as embedding

178 

F. Dodsworth

in face-to-face relationships in tight-knit local communities became less and less a feature of urban life. Reputations were no longer made and lost in the street, people became focused on the cultivation of privacy in public spaces and changed their behaviour and movement in them, and workplaces, clubs, and pubs assumed greater importance as places where opinion and reputation were formed (Shoemaker 2004: 290–298). Beyond that, individual self-examination assumed greater importance in a changing relationship to the self (on which, see also Wahrman 2004). Ultimately, a stronger separation was being asserted between the public and the private, so that the public performance of honour and reputation, the principal cause of violent conflict, simply became less important (Shoemaker 2004: 297–298). However, this was not the only dimension in the reduction of violence. Robert Muchembled’s (2012) study of the decline of violence in Europe in the long term places greatest emphasis on the role of the criminal justice system in the process through increasing prosecution and criminalisation of violence, and we can see a similar process of pacification in operation in the English context as well. As Drew Gray (2009: 92–93) reminds us, the vast majority of violence and assault was of the non-­ lethal, mundane variety and was judged at the level of the summary courts by magistrates, not in the higher courts that dealt with serious offences. This was because assault was generally treated as a dispute between persons, and therefore a civil rather than a criminal matter. However, Peter King’s (1996) research into patterns of prosecution and punishment in Essex demonstrates that the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw a marked shift in the pattern of punishment for assault. In the mid-eighteenth century, more than 70% of those convicted of assault were fined; by the 1790s that had declined to 34% and by the 1820s 13%. Over the same period, sentences of imprisonment had risen from less than 4% to more than 50% by the 1820s. This seems to represent an enormous transformation in the ways in which the criminal justice system handled interpersonal violence, a process of directed pacification that mirrors trends across the European continent towards the removal of violence from daily life, and which also seems to support Elias’ (2000) suggestion that the monopolisation of force by the state is a central driver of the civilising process.

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

179

Elias (2000) also associated the civilising process with increasing interdependence, which is generally read in terms of the expansion of commerce and urbanisation. The latter aspect not only saw the extension and change of the range of connections and interactions between individuals, with encounters between strangers becoming ever more significant aspects of social life, but it also saw significant changes in the physical environment in which those interactions themselves took place. These material changes also have a clear relationship to the civilising process. The drift to the suburbs has already been noted, but this was only part of a large-scale transformation in the urban area itself. Some of this, of course, was occasioned by the great fire of 1666, which destroyed close to 80% of the City of London. However, these transformations also took place in Westminster and Middlesex beyond the City. These changes included the better paving and lighting of the city, the numbering of the streets and houses, construction of public squares and spaces, pleasure gardens, and a range of architectural interventions realised and imagined, which transformed the fabric of the city according to the neo-classical style, principally Palladianism, with its emphasis on principles of harmony, order, and decorum. These changes were not only aesthetic, they were intended to have a political and social impact, with the order of their style imagined to have a direct impact on the psyche of the city dwellers themselves, producing social order through their visual harmony and decorum (Dodsworth 2005, 2012; Ogborn 1998). The ‘police’ of the city was a central component of this wider drive for ‘improvement’: the charitable foundations, like the Magdalen Hospital or the Marine Society, emerged alongside new prisons, new houses of correction (and in different ways private libraries or literary and philosophical societies), and the new mechanisms of policing. All were targeted in different ways at the ‘civilisation’ and discipline of society. In the terminology of Nikolas Rose (1999: 69–74), the city had become an engine of civilisation, but this is not something that was a product of Victorian liberal government but one that began to emerge over the century before. However, like many other aspects of London’s government, it emerged in piecemeal fashion and it was in the great provincial metropolitan centres that the relationship between improvement and police was realised most programmatically and in a more grand, unified manner (Barrie 2008; Dodsworth 2011).

180 

F. Dodsworth

There not only seems to be some empirical support for Elias’ (2000) argument that changing patterns of connectedness, driven here by urbanisation, seem to have encouraged people to internalise a degree of self-­ constraint, but it is equally clear that restraint was central to the civilising projects pursued by urban and moral improvers and police reformers throughout the century. Restraint, particularly of violence, was increasingly encouraged and its failure increasingly punished and shamed. However, the new cultures of politeness and sensibility, although significant factors at work, were not the only drivers of change, as Shoemaker (2004) makes clear. Nor do we need to see this straightforwardly as the emergence of ‘social discipline’ or a ‘disciplinary society’ where discipline did not exist before (Foucault 1977; Gorski 2003; Oestreich 1982). I would suggest, rather, that we pay attention to the ‘social’ dimension of discipline suggested by Oestreich (1982) and the institutional nature of disciplinary society highlighted by Foucault (1977). What this seems to represent is the decline of one form of discipline—the direct, patriarchal structures of the family, the guilds and confessional, backed up by the face-to-face discipline of the wider community—and its replacement by another, more distanced variant, carried out through the civic authorities and new disciplinary institutions. This transformation was not complete: there were also aspects of public government and office-holding in the earlier system of patriarchal control, and there remained large elements of direct and personal control in the later eighteenth century. Nevertheless, the direction of change and its emphasis seems clear. In a sense, then, loosely following Walby (1990: 176–184), we have moved some way from private to public patriarchy. This transformation took place through significant challenges (practical and discursive, patrician and plebeian) to the established system of patriarchy and its gradual replacement with a revised form, which would be further transformed in the century to come. The shift from private to public patriarchy is perhaps most evident in the explosion of printed literature about crime (for a useful recent analysis of which, see Ward 2014). Walby’s (1990: 176–184) example is the replacement of direct patriarchal sexual control through parental supervision to public patriarchal control through discourses on sex, advertising, and the proliferation of pornography. We can chart a similar

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

181

process in evidence here with a shift away from direct patriarchal supervision of behaviour to the proliferation of moral discourses on appropriate conduct (Hunt 1999) and a fascination with crime in all its forms. Publications like The Honest London Spy (Anonymous 1706) purported, amongst other things, to inform the uninitiated about the tricks and cons used to separate the unwary from their peace and prosperity, and the burgeoning world of the newspaper filled the empty spaces between significant, profitable, or politically advantageous content with stories of crime and disorder, which from the outset of the newspaper industry appear to have been recognised as draws for a fascinated readership (Deveraux 2007; King 1987, 2007, 2009; Snell 2007). The rise and fall of the ‘Ordinary’s Account’ of the lives of condemned prisoners and the Proceedings of the Old Bailey, a record of various criminal trials, which began in the 1670s and continued for nearly a century, are emblematic of a fascination with the lives of criminals and nature and causes of crime which were central to the discursive environment of the eighteenth century (Ward 2014; see also Dodsworth 2013; Faller 1987; Galdfelder 2001; McKenzie 2007). Such publications not only constituted a much more intense reflection on the phenomenon of crime than had taken place in the past, but they did so in a way which not only made a claim to present the truth about crime from within a realistic mode, but they also did so, in the form of the newspaper, through the presentation of unsolved crimes, without the moral completeness or instructive nature of earlier texts detailing the consequences of sin and the rake’s progress (King 2007; Snell 2007; Ward 2014: 33–50). There was also a significant change in the ways in which the identity of the criminal was configured, with a shift from an everyman figure and universal exemplar of the dangers of sin to an increasingly classed figure, so that the dangers of crime were more and more associated with those of lower social standing (McKenzie 2007: 87–91). It is perhaps no coincidence that as crime came to be conceived of as a problem stemming from the lower classes, so solutions to the problem of crime came increasingly to rely on mobilising men from the same class, which is the subject of the next chapter.

182 

F. Dodsworth

References Andrew, D. (1989). Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the Eighteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Anonymous. (1706). The Honest London Spy, Discovering the Base and Subtle Intrigues of the Town. London: Robert Gifford. Anonymous. (1748). Memoirs of the Life and Times, of Sir Thomas Deveil …. London: M. Cooper. Barker-Benfield, G.  J. (1992). The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century England. London: University of Chicago Press. Barrie, D. G. (2008). Police in the Age of Improvement: Police Development and the Civic Tradition in Scotland, 1775–1865. Cullompton: Willan. Beattie, J. M. (2001). Policing and Punishment in London, 1660–1750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beattie, J. M. (2012). The First English Detectives: The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750–1840. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beier, A. L. (1985). Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560–1640. London: Methuen. Brewer, J., & Styles, J. (Eds.). (1980). An Ungovernable People? The English and Their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. London: Hutchinson. Burke, K. (1969). A Grammar of Motives (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Burke, K. (1984). Attitudes Toward History (3rd ed.). London: University of California Press. Burke, P. (2009). Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (3rd ed.). Farnham: Ashgate. Burkitt, I. (1996). Civilization and Ambivalence. The British Journal of Sociology, 47(1), 135–150. Burtt, S. (1992). Virtue Transformed: Political Argument in England, 1688–1740. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carter, P. (2001). Men and the Emergence of Polite Society: Britain, 1660–1800. London: Routledge. Clark, J. C. D. (2000). English Society 1660–1832: Religion, Ideology and Politics During the Ancien Regime (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Collier, S. J. (2011). Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics. Oxford: Princeton University Press. Colvin, H. M. (1954). A Biographical Dictionary of English Architects, 1660–1840. London: John Murray.

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

183

Cox, D. (2010). A Certain Share of Low Cunning: A History of the Bow Street Runners, 1792–1842. Cullompton: Willan. Critchley, T.  A. (1967). A History of Police in England and Wales, 900–1966. London: Constable. Dabhoiwala, F. (2007). Sex and Societies for Moral Reform. Journal of British Studies, 66, 290–319. Deveraux, S. (2007). From Sessions to Newspaper? Criminal Trial Reporting, the Nature of Crime and the London Press, 1770–1800. London Journal, 32, 1–27. Dodsworth, F. (2004). ‘Civic’ Police and the Condition of Liberty: The Rationality of Governance in Eighteenth Century England. Social History, 29(2), 199–216. Dodsworth, F. (2005). Virtus on Whitehall: The Politics of Palladianism in William Kent’s Treasury Building, 1733–1736. Journal of Historical Sociology, 18(4), 282–317. Dodsworth, F. (2007a). Masculinity as Governance: Police, Public Service and the Embodiment of Authority, c. 1700–1850. In M. L. McCormack (Ed.), Public Men: Masculinity and Politics in Modern Britain (pp.  33–53). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Dodsworth, F. (2007b). Police and the Prevention of Crime: Commerce, Temptation and the Corruption of the Body Politic, from Fielding to Colquhoun. British Journal of Criminology, 47(3), 439–454. Dodsworth, F. (2008). The Idea of Police in Eighteenth-Century England: Discipline, Reformation, Superintendence, c. 1780–1800. Journal of the History of Ideas, 69(4), 583–604. Dodsworth, F. (2011). Mobility and Civility: Police and the Formation of the Modern City. In G. Bridge & S. Watson (Eds.), The New Blackwell Companion to the City (pp. 235–244). Oxford: Blackwell. Dodsworth, F. (2012). Shaping the City, Shaping the Subject: Honour, Affect and Agency in John Gwynn’s London and Westminster Improved (1766). In G. O’Brien & F. O’Kane (Eds.), Portraits of the City: Dublin and the Wider World (pp. 76–90). Dublin: Four Courts. Dodsworth, F. (2013). Habit, the Criminal Body and the Body Politic in England, c. 1700–1800. Body and Society, 19(2–3), 83–106. Dodsworth, F. (2014). The Making of the Modern Police, 1780–1914 (6 vols., P.  Lawrence, Ed.). Volume 1: The ‘Idea’ of Policing (F.  Dodsworth, Ed.). London: Pickering and Chatto. Dodsworth, F. (2016). Risk, Prevention and Policing, c. 1750–1850. In T. Crook & M. Esbester (Eds.), Governing Risks in Modern Britain: Danger, Safety and Accidents, c. 1800–2000 (pp. 29–53). Basingstoke: Palgrave.

184 

F. Dodsworth

Eisner, M. (2001). Modernization, Self-Control and Violence: The Long-Term Dynamics of European Homicide Rates in Theoretical Perspective. British Journal of Criminology, 41(4), 618–638. Eisner, M. (2003). Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime. Crime and Justice, 30, 83–142. Elias, N. (2000). The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Explorations (Rev. ed., E. Jephcott, Trans.). Oxford: Blackwell. Faller, L.  B. (1987). Turned to Account: The Forms and Functions of Criminal Biography in Late Seventeenth- and Early-Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fielding, J. (1758). An Account of the Origins and Effects of a Police Set on Foot by His Grace the Duke of Newcastle in the Year 1753 …. London: A. Millar. Fielding, H. (1762). The Works of Henry Fielding, Esq; With the Life of the Author. In Four Volumes. Volume the Fourth. London: A. Millar. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1985). The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality Volume 2 (R. Hurley, Trans.). London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1991). Governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (pp. 87–104). Hemel Hempstead: Harvester. Galdfelder, H. (2001). Criminality and Narrative in Eighteenth-Century England: Beyond the Law. London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Gorski, P. S. (2003). The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe. London: University of Chicago Press. Gray, D. D. (2009). Crime, Prosecution and Social Relations: The Summary Courts of the City of London in the Late Eighteenth Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Hardy, C., & Maguire, S. (2017). Institutional Entrepreneurship and Change in Fields. In R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, T. B. Lawrence, & R. E. Meyer (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism (pp.  261–280). London: Sage Publications. Harris, A.  T. (2004). Policing the City: Crime and Legal Authority in London, 1740–1840. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. Hitchcock, T. (2012). Renegotiating the Bloody Code: The Gordon Riots and the Transformation of Popular Attitudes to the Criminal Justice System. In I.  Haywood & J.  Seed (Eds.), The Gordon Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain (pp. 185–203). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hitchcock, T., & Shoemaker, R. (2015). London Lives: Poverty, Crime and the Making of a Modern City, 1690–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

185

Hunt, A. (1999). Governing Morals: A Social History of Moral Regulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Innes, J. (2009). Inferior Politics: Social Problems and Social Policies in Eighteenth-­ Century England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Inwood, S. (1998). A History of London. London: Macmillan. King, P. (1987). Newspaper Reporting, Prosecution Practice and Perceptions of Urban Crime: The Colchester Crime Wave of 1765. Continuity and Change, 2(3), 423–454. King, P. (1989). Prosecution Associations and Their Impact in Eighteenth-­ Century Essex. In D.  Hay & F.  Snyder (Eds.), Policing and Prosecution in Britain, 1750–1850 (pp. 171–210). Oxford: Clarendon. King, P. (1996). Punishing Assault: The Transformation of Attitudes in the English Courts. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 27(10), 43–74. King, P. (2000). Crime, Justice and Discretion in England, 1740–1820. Oxford: Oxford University Press. King, P. (2007). Newspaper Reporting and Attitudes to Crime and Justice in Late-Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth-Century London. Continuity and Change, 22, 73–112. King, P. (2009). Making Crime News: Newspapers, Violent Crime and the Reporting of Old Bailey Trials in the Late Eighteenth Century. Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/Crime, History & Societies, 13, 91–116. Klein, L. (2002). Politeness and the Interpretation of the British Eighteenth Century. Historical Journal, 45, 869–898. Landau, N. (1984). The Justices of the Peace. London: University of California Press. Landau, N. (2002). The Trading Justice’s Trade. In N. Landau (Ed.), Law, Crime and English Society, 1660–1830 (pp.  46–70). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Langford, P. (1989). A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727–1783. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Langford, P. (1991). Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 1689–1798. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-­ Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lemmings, D. (2011). Law and Government in England During the Long Eighteenth Century: From Consent to Command. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Maguire, S., Hardy, C., & Lawrence, T. B. (2004). Institutional Entrepreneurship in Emerging Fields: HIV/AIDS Treatment Advocacy in Canada. Academy of Management Journal, 47(5), 657–679. McCormack, M. (2012). ‘A Species of Civil Soldier’: Masculinity, Policing and the Military in 1780s England. In D.  G. Barrie & S.  Broomall (Eds.), A

186 

F. Dodsworth

History of Police and Masculinities, 1700–2010 (pp.  55–71). London: Routledge. McKenzie, A. (2007). Tyburn’s Martyrs: Execution in England, 1675–1775. London: Hambledon Continuum. Merton, R. (1938). Social Structure and Anomie. American Sociological Review, 3(5), 672–682. Miller, P. N. (1994). Defining the Common Good: Empire, Religion and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Muchembled, R. (2012). A History of Violence: From the End of the Middle Ages to the Present (J. Birrell, Trans.). Cambridge: Polity. Neocleous, M. (2000). The Fabrication of Social Order: A Critical Theory of Police Power. London: Pluto. Neocleous, M. (2014). War Power, Police Power. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Oestreich, G. (1982). Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (D. McLintock, Trans., B. Oestreich & H. G. Koenigsberger, Eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ogborn, M. (1998). Spaces of Modernity: London’s Geographies, 1680–1780. London: Guilford Press. Paley, R. (1989). ‘Imperfect, Inadequate and Wretched’? Policing London Before Peel. Criminal Justice History, 29, 95–130. Paley, R. (2004). Colquhoun, Patrick (1745–1820), Magistrate and a Founder of the Thames Police. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved January 3, 2008, from https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/5992. Parliamentary History. (1815). The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXV, 1st February 1785–5th May 1786. London: Hansard. Parliamentary History. (1817). The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXIX, 27th March 1791–13th December 1792. London: Hansard. Pateman, C. (1989). The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory. Cambridge: Polity. Philips, D. (1980). ‘A New Engine of Power and Authority’: The Institutionalization of Law-Enforcement in England, 1780–1830. In V. A. C. Gatrell, B. Lenman, & G. Parker (Eds.), The Social History of Crime in Western Europe Since 1500 (pp. 155–189). London: Europa. Philips, D. (1989). Good Men to Associate and Bad Men to Conspire: Associations for the Prosecution of Felons in England, 1760–1860. In

  Fratriarchy and the Police Idea, c. 1740–1800 

187

D. Hay & F. Snyder (Eds.), Policing and Prosecution in Britain, 1750–1850. Oxford: Clarendon. Philips, D. (2003). Three ‘Moral Entrepreneurs’ and the Creation of a ‘Criminal Class’ in England, c. 1790s–1840s. Crime, histoires & sociétés/Crime, History & Societies, 7, 79–107. Radzinowicz, L. (1956). A History of English Criminal Law and Its Administration (5 vols., 1948–1986). Vol. 3: Cross-currents in the Movement for Reform of the Police. London: Stevens. Reynolds, E. (1998). Before the Bobbies: The Night Watch and Police Reform in Metropolitan London, 1720–1830. London: Macmillan. Rose, N. (1999). Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schubert, A. (1981). Private Initiative in Law Enforcement: Associations for the Prosecution of Felons, 1744–1856. In V. Bailey (Ed.), Policing and Prosecution in Nineteenth-Century Britain (pp. 25–41). London: Croom Helm. Sekora, J.  (1977). Luxury: The Concept in Western Thought, Eden to Smollett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Shoemaker, R. B. (2004). The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth-­ Century England. London: Hambledon. Sine, W. D., & David, R. J. (Eds.). (2010). Institutions and Entrepreneurship. Bingley: Emerald. Siskin, C. (2016). System: The Shaping of Modern Knowledge. London: MIT Press. Skinner, Q. (1998). Liberty Before Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Skinner, Q. (2008). Freedom as the Absence of Arbitrary Power. In C. Labourde & J.  W. Maynor (Eds.), Republicanism and Political Theory (pp.  83–101). Oxford: Blackwell. Snell, E. (2007). Discourses of Criminality in the Eighteenth-Century Press. Continuity and Change, 22, 13–47. Sugden, P. (2004). Veil, Sir Thomas de (1684–1746). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/38735. Wahrman, D. (1995). Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, 1780–1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wahrman, D. (2004). The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England. London: Yale University Press. Walby, S. (1990). Theorizing Patriarchy. Oxford: Blackwell. Ward, R. M. (2014). Print Culture, Crime and Justice in 18th-Century London. London: Bloomsbury.

5 Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900

In the previous chapter, we traced the development of new systems for public protection and security from the creation of the ‘rotation’ magistrates office at Bow Street under Thomas De Veil, through the establishment and development of the Bow Street Runners under Henry and John Fielding, to the 1792 Middlesex Justices Act, or Police Act, which established stipendiary magistrates in seven ‘police offices’ based on the Bow Street model. We explored the promotion of the Bow Street idea by the Fielding brothers and the ‘police idea’ more generally in the work of moral reformers and would-be entrepreneurs in the second half of the eighteenth century. We saw that concerns with the ‘wandering’ of the poor and their independence from supervision by social superiors remained central to the police idea, just as they had been in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Chap. 2), but these concerns were translated into a new context in which this independence was configured as a consequence of the economic and social transformations effected by commercial society (see Dodsworth 2007b, 2008 for more on this). These changes had not only increased the wealth, and thus the independence of the poor, but also contributed to the negligence of the elite, with an

© The Author(s) 2019 F. Dodsworth, The Security Society, Crime Prevention and Security Management, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43383-1_5

189

190 

F. Dodsworth

implicit critique of the effeminisation of those traditionally responsible for social discipline (see also Dodsworth 2007a). The solution to the problem was to incentivise government through payment, with an emphasis on the employment of officers with the requisite masculinity to conduct the tasks of policing. These characteristics included physical courage, methodical work, fairness, and independence, with a retention of the significance of gentlemanly status in securing that form of independent manhood (on which see Dodsworth 2007a; McCormack 2005). It was also important, however, that the activity of these gentlemen was properly funded and co-ordinated. In response to claims that robbers had formed themselves into a ‘system’, it was necessary that the ‘police’ be formed likewise into a system that was uniform and able to survey the metropolis as a whole. Indeed, the introduction of the term ‘police’ seemed to signify the systematisation of public protection (Dodsworth 2008). This marked an addition to the established power of the parishes and their officers, with much greater involvement of the Executive in the policing of the metropolis as a whole. The new system, then, translated many longstanding concerns and discourses into a new context (Latour 2005) and introduced new organisational forms but retained the emphasis on the role of a particular form of masculinity in policing subordinate men and women. It therefore remained patriarchal in the sense intended in the work of Dubber (2005), Pateman (1989), and Walby (1990). The Police Act of 1792 was not, however, the end of policing reform. Throughout the early nineteenth century, concerns continued to be expressed about the quality of metropolitan policing and the conduct of the officers concerned in effecting it. There were select committee enquiries into the nightly watch in 1812, and into the ‘police of the metropolis’ in 1816, 1817, 1822 and 1828, the latter leading to the reforms that established the Metropolitan Police in 1829, the institutional form that still polices most of London (with the exception of the City) to this day. This was not, then, the creation of a new concept in government, it was the reorganisation of an existing set of practices and officers. Indeed, a clue to the nature of the 1829 Act that established the Metropolitan Police (10 Geo. 4, c.44) is in the title: An Act for Improving the Police in and Near the Metropolis; that is to say it was an Act for improving

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

191

s­ omething that already existed, not for creating something novel in and of itself. At the same time, however, there was a significant transformation in the context of criminality, which also had implications for the debate about public protection. Although the 1812 enquiry into the nightly watch was prompted by the Ratcliff Highway murders, which shocked the city and led to an outpouring of anxiety in the press, there was a general acceptance that violence was much diminished, particularly the forms of highway robbery that caused such concern in the eighteenth century, but that property offences were increasing rapidly, with particular concerns around juvenile offenders, who were emerging as a distinct conceptual category (Beattie 2012: 206–214). The period following the French Revolution, and the years of Peterloo and the emergence of organised labour, also saw much more concern with political subversion. The Metropolitan Police, introduced in 1829 as a way of unifying policing across the metropolis, were created in part to deal with these problems. But they were also introduced under the ‘liberal Toryism’ of Robert Peel as a form of economic government and as part of his war on vested interest and closed, unaccountable oligarchies, in this instance the parish and especially the closed vestry, which, as we saw in Chap. 4, had become much more powerful and central to the provision of security. Peel privately described his reforms as the ‘annihilation of the parochial watch’, despite the fact that, as we shall see below, many of his new police officers were in fact old watchmen (Peel 1899: 114). This aspect was even more obvious in the provinces, where the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act, which had the elimination of established local government oligarchies at its heart, was central to police reform in the boroughs. As we shall see in more detail below, through the example of Manchester, the contemporaneous timing of provincial police reform suggests a clear link to urbanisation, but the link to the Municipal Corporations Act demonstrates an obvious link to a wider programme of governmental reform, beginning in 1835 and fully driven through by the 1856 County and Borough Police Act, alongside enabling legislation in 1833 and 1839. This is important because the ‘politics of protection’ (Huysmans 2006) in this instance was very squarely the partisan politics of the political party and formed part of a contest for control of local government. The problematisation of the existing mechanisms of security, whether by the

192 

F. Dodsworth

‘­liberal’ Toryism of Sir Robert Peel or Whig and Radical critiques of the Tory faction in Manchester, formed part of a bid to break the oligarchic hold on the mechanisms of administration; conversely, demonstration of the power to protect and to provide security for the community effectively became a way of demonstrating fitness to rule. Just as in the eighteenth century, then, there was a profoundly political dimension to the provision of security.

Police Authorities What was most distinctive about the ‘new police’ introduced in 1829 was its organisational form, closely comparable to the Police Bill of 1785 that we encountered in Chap. 4. The Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 did not introduce the principle of paid, hierarchical policing, the use of uniforms, patrolling beats, preventing crime, regulating public order, or detecting offenders: all of these were already in existence under the established system of police. What it did was to realise the ideals of many eighteenth-­ century police reformers by integrating the police of the metropolis, with the exception of the City, into one system, controlled from the centre at Scotland Yard. This allowed a different level of supervision of urban space and also allowed for the co-ordination of much greater force, in a physical and numerical sense, than the existing systems of police had enabled. It also slightly changed the characteristics of the policemen patrolling the streets. The combination of these factors made a significant transformation in what Michel Foucault (1980: 194–198) would call the security ‘apparatus’ and changed the ways in which the power to protect was conceptualised and legitimised. Although many of the men were initially exactly the same men as those who had been parochial watchmen, the overall police hierarchy was changed somewhat. The two Commissioners of Police introduced by the Metropolitan Police Act were given the authority of justices of the peace, just as the 1785 Police Bill had intended, which was solely to provide them with the necessary legal authority to facilitate their business; they were not to be burdened with any of the other duties of a magistrate. Robert Peel envisaged the ideal Commissioner as ‘a man of great energy,

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

193

great activity of both body and mind, accustomed to strict discipline, and with the power of enforcing it, and taking an interest in the duty assigned to him. Then he must be a gentleman, and entirely trustworthy’ (Peel 1899: 114). The commissioners, then, were to be gentlemen and of a particular kind of disciplined, energetic, and forceful masculinity, and it is perhaps unsurprising that, alongside the barrister Richard Mayne, Peel appointed a military man Charles Rowan as joint commissioner. Clearly the discipline he was imagining stemmed from a very definite source. In making this choice an interesting double process was at work here, one that would be evident throughout the organisation of the new police, with an attempt to inculcate organisational discipline on a military model playing out alongside strenuous efforts to distinguish the police from the military, in order to offset anxieties about a standing army and militarism. This was one of the two key ways in which Peel sought to sell the new force to his audience during parliamentary debate on the police improvement bill: Peel ‘saw no mode by which they could hope ultimately to mitigate the severity of their criminal code, but the adoption of some such measures for preventing the increase of crime’, and if such a police was introduced to that effect, he ‘was confident they would be able to dispense with the necessity of a military force in London, for the preservation of the tranquillity of the metropolis (Hansard 1829: 880, 883)’. Not only, then, were the proposed new police not militaristic, but they would enable the withdrawal of military forces from the control of public order. Despite this, however, there remained a profound connection between the police and the military in terms of police personnel and the disciplinary practices involved in shaping the police persona, as we shall see below (see also Dodsworth 2007a; Foucault 1977; McCormack 2012; Neocleous 2014). Below the commissioners, there were superintendents for each division, and below them inspectors and sergeants. Once again the military link is striking: 13 of the 17 original superintendents were former sergeant majors (Emsley 1983: 62). It is, however, notable that preference was given to former non-commissioned officers (NCOs), that is, those relatively junior officers (sergeants, sergeant majors, corporals, lance corporals) who had risen to positions of authority through the ranks, rather than senior officers directly appointed into their position, and after the

194 

F. Dodsworth

initial appointments, all officers were to be appointed internally through promotion from the lowest ranks. This condition was the only direct intervention in the organisational establishment of the Metropolitan Police by Peel, who decreed that ‘all appointments to stations above that of common Constable shall take place from the Ranks of the Police, and that no person shall be qualified to fill a superior station unless he shall have served a given time in a subordinate station, the requisite time being sufficiently long to exclude the probability of temporary appointments to the inferior stations for the purpose of qualifying for the superior’ (Metropolitan Police 1829b). Peel was looking for men dedicated to the service for its own sake, rather than career climbers or the placemen of patronage. This would not only ensure a higher quality of promoted recruit, one who was amenable to discipline, but it would also ensure the men attained their place on merit, avoiding the appearance of corruption, particularly through political influence in the operation of the force, and would hopefully ensure the efficiency needed to convince sceptics of the benefits of the new police. He wrote to the Duke of Wellington that ‘The chief danger of the failure of the new system will be, if it is made a job, if gentlemen’s servants and so forth are placed in the higher offices. I must frame regulations to guard against this as effectually as I can’ (Peel 1899: 115). A servant would not only be socially unsuitable for service in such a senior position, but could also potentially be suspected of influence by patronage. From the rank of superintendent down, however, promotion through the ranks meant that almost the entirety of the force, with the exception of the very senior officers, were drawn from modest backgrounds of the kind associated previously with watchmen rather than constables, despite the new recruits having the status of that office. In 1832 more than 12% of officers were former soldiers, maintaining a significant military link, but they were a much less significant proportion than labourers (36%) and the same as the combined input of servants and shoemakers (6% each) (Emsley 1983: 65). The ‘new police’, then, extended the principle of Home Office payment and supervision and further distanced London’s policing from the parishes and the ordinary justices of the peace, granting significantly more authority to men of lower social position by swearing them in as constables. As the work of Joanne Klein (2010) on a later period makes

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

195

clear, in practice the conduct of policing was necessarily heavily indebted to the values of working-class culture: policemen were working-class men, working alongside hundreds, in London’s case thousands, of other working-class men, and most of the time they enforced the law on their own. In this sense there seems to be a move away from Dubber’s (2006: 100) concept of a patriarchal police power that is fundamentally concerned with status, particularly the status of householder. Nevertheless, the system was hierarchical, with constables supposed to carry out the orders of their superiors and report back to them in mechanical fashion, and Klein (2010: 6) recognises the centrality of the senior officers in defining the ‘personality’ of the force. The rules, regulations, disciplinary mechanisms, and day-to-day operations were, to a significant extent, guided by the moral, social, and political presumptions of men whose holding of office depended on their social status and a particular form of (propertied) masculinity, so there remained a significant element of traditional patriarchy, or paternal domination in Lerner’s (1986) sense. At the same time, however, it was becoming interlinked with a different kind of public patriarchy, one less indebted to status in the hierarchical sense and more invested in the qualities presumed, or claimed, to inhere in the masculinity of the officers themselves. The power to protect had always been closely associated with masculine physicality and the ability to engage with other violent masculinities, but the nature of that physicality was somewhat different and becoming detached from class-based concepts of self-command, although restraint remained central to the configuration of the protector’s persona and authority. The authority of the lower ranks was also presumed to depend upon particular masculine characteristics, themselves driven by an idealised sense of the relationship between the police and the public and an understanding that the core task of policing was the establishment of a particular kind of moral, civil order amongst the populace, something that was reinforced as the century drew on in both London and the provinces, with the 1839 Act for Further Improving the Police in and Near the Metropolis and significant police reform in the rapidly expanding industrial towns of the north and midlands. So far, this sounds like a straightforward narrative of the governmentalisation of the state and the extension of state power; and yet the

196 

F. Dodsworth

­ ineteenth century was also a period of considerable experiment and n innovation in private and personal protection. In terms of organisational solutions, outside London prosecution associations continued to flourish, the employment of private watchmen remained significant, and there were efforts to establish burglary insurance at the start of the century; the period also saw personal practices of self-defence begin to be commercialised; and we begin to see the development of real security technologies, with a range of innovations in  locks and safes coupled with the emergence, late in the century, of the electronic burglar alarm. The emergence of such technologies in many respects represents an alternative to the patriarchal principle in protection, one that would be considerably extended in the twentieth century.

Police Improvement At the end of Chap. 3, we noted the perception of a significant decline in violence. A number of arguments were put forward to explain this general social distancing from, and condemnation of, what had been a traditional means of dispute settlement and social control. It was noted that the decline in violence was particularly marked amongst the upper classes and that much of the critique was driven by the middling sort; Shoemaker (2004) argues strongly for the impact of urbanisation and the different dynamic of living in a society of strangers as the key driver of change and remains sceptical about the extent to which improved policing had an effect. In terms of the kinds of criminal violence about which the public and the press were particularly anxious, however, police improvement does seem likely to have been crucial. Beattie (2012: 209) points out that contemporaries particularly noted the elimination of highway robbery, which had been such a constant concern for the previous century. Part of the explanation for this must lie in the significant improvements made to the guarding of the roads in and out of London in the early nineteenth century and the levels of organisation of the Bow Street operation. Before the introduction of the Metropolitan Police in 1829, there were already a very substantial number of policemen patrolling the streets of the metropolis. Patrick Colquhoun, one of the stipendiary magistrates

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

197

for Shadwell introduced under the 1792 Middlesex Justices Act, estimated that in 1802 there were 832 constables serving in London, Westminster, Holborn, Finsbury, Tower Hamlets, and Southwark, of whom 330 were paid substitutes; 250 of these were in the City. Added to this were 213 stipendiary officers established at the seven police offices created by the Middlesex Justices Act (56 men), the Thames Police Office (80 men), and Bow Street patrols and officers (77 men), making a total of 1045 ‘peace officers’ of various kinds (563 paid), in addition to 2200 watchmen and patrols, including 785 in the City and 180 private watchmen (Colquhoun 1803: xiii–xiv, 87). Overall, then, the City of London had 250 peace officers and 785 watchmen, while the metropolitan area beyond it was covered by 1415 watchmen and 1045 peace officers, giving a total of 2445 officers surveying the streets of the Metropolis excluding the City at the turn of the century, and these numbers were soon augmented. In 1805 a mounted patrol of 54 men, run from the Bow Street office, was set up to guard the roads in and out of the city. This force extended the association between policing and military power, being comprised of former members of the Light Dragoons (Beattie 2012: 176). By 1811 the police offices were also allowed to employ up to 12 constables each, and the Bow Street Horse Patrol, positioned on the roads into London, was expanded to a force of 60 men. In 1821 this was augmented with 100 men in blue coats with scarlet waistcoats serving as an ‘Unmounted Horse Patrol’ operating in suburban areas. These men were sworn in as constables for Middlesex, Surrey, Essex, and Kent and were under the direct authority of the Home Secretary, a governmental strategy later employed by the new police (Critchley 1967: 43). In 1818 the Bow Street foot patrol was formed into two branches with 100 strong night patrol, split into two parts, the ‘country party’ starting off five miles out of London walking in and the ‘town party’ moving out to meet it (Critchley 1967). As with the mounted patrol, these men were all to be veterans of cavalry regiments, under 40  years old, and able to deputise for the mounted patrol in case of need; all the men were given instruction books detailing the rules of their office, instructions for their conduct and duties (Beattie 2012: 234). This reorganisation of the Bow Street patrols, which was driven by Lord Sidmouth in the Home Office, saw the city divided

198 

F. Dodsworth

into 16 districts with a ‘conductor’ of each one of the 16 patrols accompanied by four men on foot. There was a reserve force of 18 men and a conductor available at the Bow Street office (Beattie 2012: 234). In 1821 all the men on foot were brought in to patrol the centre, leaving the suburbs to the horse patrol. In 1822 a Parliamentary Committee recommend a day patrol for the prevention of robbery and a force of 27 men was introduced. These men wore a uniform comprised of blue coat and trousers with a red waistcoat, Peel apparently thinking it would make them ‘proud of their establishment’ (Critchley 1967: 44). In addition to their blue uniform, their similarity to the forthcoming Metropolitan Police lay in the fact that they carried truncheons and handcuffs (neither an innovation at this point: Beattie 2012: 240). By 1828 Critchley (1967) estimates that the Home Secretary had command of 450 ‘policemen’ and there were 4500 watchmen in the City and what became the Metropolitan Police District. Even if one removes the City officers from that number, it seems that when the Metropolitan Police were introduced, there were initially fewer police officers on the streets in 1829 than there had been in 1828. Ruth Paley estimates that there were about 1700 watchmen in the Westminster parishes and adjacent urban areas in 1828, with well over 800 men on patrol at night; they were replaced by only 900 Metropolitan police officers, and only a quarter of those, a little over 200, were on duty at night. However, by 1830 there were 2000 men patrolling the whole Metropolitan Police District at night (cited in Emsley 1996: 27 n8). To be precise, when the force began patrolling on 27 September 1829 there were 909 men; by 13 December this had risen to 1069; by 14 February 1830 this had risen to 2506: and by 23 May the force was up to 3205, and it stayed at roughly that level for the next few years (Metropolitan Police 1857). Even once the force was well established, then, it stood at a little over 3000 men. Without understanding this basic fact, it is difficult to make sense of Peel’s invocation of ‘efficiency’ as one of the key rationales for police improvement during the parliamentary debate on the new police. He asserted that the new police promised both lower cost and increased effectiveness: ‘With respect to the tax which he proposed to levy, he was confident that it would be much less than the present watch-rates; while, as he need not say, it would ensure a far more efficient police’ (Hansard 1829: 878). In

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

199

fact, it turned out to be much more expensive, but it meant the abolition of the old parochial watch and, although the Bow Street operation and police offices continued, they were much diminished: the foot patrols were quickly absorbed into the Metropolitan Police and the mounted patrols in 1836 (Beattie 2012: 254). In 1839 Bow Street and the police offices were reconstituted as police courts and the Runners and the constables attached to the police offices were either pensioned off or re-­ employed, at which point the ‘new’ police had definitively replaced the ‘old’, and the executive role of the magistrate in the policing of London was over (Beattie 2012: 257–259). It is striking that the changes taking place in London were mirrored elsewhere in Britain, particularly in the rapidly expanding provincial towns and cities that were emerging as rival metropolitan centres. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were distinguished by the phenomenon of the ‘improvement commission’, a term historians have applied to administrative bodies established, usually by specific Acts of Parliament, for the improvement of particular towns or aspects of urban government (Barrie 2008; Innes 2009: 78–106; Webb and Webb 1963). The flowering of such programmes for urban improvement seems to support the close association between urbanisation and the civilising process that has been proposed, not only in terms of the cultural changes historians have associated with urbanisation per se (Muchembled 2012; Shoemaker 2004), but also in terms of the way urbanisation problematised existing mechanisms of government. As we shall see, however, the process of problematisation was not simply spontaneous, or driven by material changes in circumstances, but was also driven by partisan politics. The example of Manchester makes this particularly clear. Manchester was already a reasonably substantial provincial town in the mid-eighteenth century, the population of Manchester and Salford (the township on the other side of the river Irwell) being recorded in 1756 as 19,839 (Parkinson-Bailey 2000: 5). However, its rapid expansion under industrialisation made it the ‘shock city’ and symbol of the new age Briggs (1968: 56, 88–138). In 1782 there were just 2 cotton mills in the city and the population numbered around 40,000; within 10 years there were 52 mills and the population at the first census of 1801 was recorded at over 70,000, doubling by 1831 to 140,000 (Briggs 1968: 88; ­Parkinson-­Bailey

200 

F. Dodsworth

2000: 19). By the turn of the twentieth century, Manchester was the core of an industrial conurbation of some two million people (Ortiz-­Moya 2015: 36, fig. 1). In the mid-eighteenth century, however, Manchester remained governed by a manorial court leet of the kind discussed in Chap. 2. As London had experienced in earlier centuries, these medieval systems of government were unsuitable for the administration of a rapidly growing modern city (for a much more detailed history of Manchester’s government at this time, see Redford 1939–1940, vol. 1). There were attempts to improve the situation through improvement acts in 1765, 1776, and 1792, when the latter Act (32 Geo. III, c. 69) established a body called the ‘Police Commission’ (Redford 1939–1940, vol. 1: 200–202). Nevertheless, this seems to have had little immediate impact: William Roberts, in his ‘Charge to the Grand Jury of the Court Leet’ of Manchester, originally delivered in 1788 and published in London and Manchester in 1793, complained that ‘domestic security and good order’, what he explicitly referred to as the ‘police of the town’, was being neglected by the failure to carry out the basic duties of government, noting that ‘a Town increasing as this is in opulence, in populousness, and in importance, requires the exertion of every nerve it possesses, to combat against the prevalence and contagion of licentiousness, irregularity, and disorder’ (Roberts 1793: 12, 17, 18). Roberts reminded his audience of notables that ‘When any man is entrusted with an office, he ought to consider himself as one of the Guardians of the Repose of his Fellow-Citizens’, a duty significant enough that they should only appoint officers ‘who from their good sense, and their respectability, deserve their title to preside over the town’ (Roberts 1793: 32). This is a Platonic configuration of the leet’s officers as those fitted for government through their education in the cardinal virtues. Redford (1939–1940, vol. 1: 192) notes a long-term problem with the leet being unable to get people to accept some of the more unpleasant or onerous offices, with many being left vacant and others being abolished. In 1799 the steward of the court leet, John Cross, once again complained that the ‘interior economy and order’ of the town was being neglected so that during the winter ‘the streets have remained uncleansed and without lights; for some time no watchmen or patroles were appointed—Security and temptation were thus afforded to plunder: and none could pass

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

201

through the streets in safety—Escaping personal violence, they were still in imminent personal danger from the numerous unguarded cellars, pits and various obstructions that everywhere obstructed their passage’ (Earwacker 1889: 256). Following this, action was taken to mobilise the police commission, before substantial reorganisation in 1828 and 1830 saw it become a much more effective system of urban government, one that was focused as much on general improvement of the streets and circulation in the urban environment as policing in the modern sense and as such was clearly a part of the general ‘civilising process’ and the construction of a civic environment noted in the previous chapter and explored in the London context by Miles Ogborn (Dodsworth 2011; Ogborn 1998). The link between the civic and the civil was extended in this period by the building of a range of churches, the Portico Library (1806), the Royal Exchange (1806), a new Town Hall (1825), the Royal Manchester Institution (1835), and the Athenaeum (1839) to name only a few, all of which were constructed in the Classical style and constituted the fabrication of a civic and civilised environment (Parkinson-Bailey 2000: 59–60). Initially the police commission was organised as follows. There was an annual meeting of 16 leading citizens of the town, headed by the boroughreeve and constables (who were the senior leet officers), which constituted the organising committee. This committee delegated responsibility to 42 district commissioners, divided equally among the 14 administrative districts created by the Act of 1792. This represents a slightly different segmentation to that established by the court leet, in which the leet’s officers (local notables) had responsibility for particular streets or markets and particular foodstuffs, nuisances, or other relevant issues. However, the principle of locality was to an extent perpetuated by having said notables responsible for the district within which they lived. In practice this was simply a change in scale of the area covered from a few streets to a district. The advantage of this enlargement was that it spread responsibility out more widely, so that if some commissioners were active in each district, the whole area that was shared between them would remain covered, despite the inaction of a few, whereas if a leet officer was not active in the control of his streets or particular responsibility, they might be left entirely without supervision. The commissioners appointed and

202 

F. Dodsworth

s­ upervised the night watch, initially one watchman for each district; they were also to inspect paving and check the lamps were lit at the correct hours. In 1798 30 new watchmen were introduced. However, for action in any district, there still had to be agreement from at least three district commissioners and in practice the system was not wide enough: their inattention to duty meant some districts were entirely without a watch and were poorly maintained (Redford 1939–1940, vol. 1: 209). The watch was the only aspect of police directly administered by the commission, all other functions were contracted out to private firms, whose activities the district commissioners were supposed to supervise ‘and generally to act as amateur superintendents of police and inspectors of nuisances for their several neighbourhoods’ (Webb and Webb 1963: 259). Although the police commission was a new governmental body, it did not supersede but complemented the court leet, and the two bodies continued to operate in parallel until they were both rendered obsolete by the incorporation of Manchester as a borough in 1839–1842. In fact in terms of personnel, the court leet and the police commission were essentially the same, as was made clear by John Cross in his speech to the leet in 1799, when his call for increased activity from Manchester’s officers extended to matters that were formally outside the leet’s remit ‘as you are all commissioners of the police’ (Earwacker 1889: 254). As Turner (1994: 307) tells us ‘it was common knowledge that the magistrates, the jurors of the court leet, the boroughreeve, constables and manorial officers, the officers of the parish and the leaders of the police commission were all members of the same close-knit oligarchy’. This fact had considerable consequences for the government of security and civility in the town. The establishment of a borough council took several years because of a legal challenge from the police commission, which saw the institution of 1839, which once again operated in parallel and in competition with the police commission, replaced with a new one in 1842 (Redford 1939–1940, vol. 2). The provision of security, then, was not simply a pragmatic matter, it was highly political, a symbol of social authority for a gentlemanly oligarchy that was subject to challenge in the name of representative government. The police commission resisted the incorporation of Manchester as a borough because it was explicitly designed to break the hold of the Tory Anglican oligarchy over the town, which remained established even after

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

203

the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828. Indeed, the reorganisation of the police commission in 1828 was, as we shall see, as much about maintaining the power of that group as it was about improving public protection; or perhaps more accurately, improving public protection was the police commission’s way of demonstrating their competence and fitness to exercise that authority, which was being problematised by both moderate Whigs and Radicals (Turner 1994). The drive to improve the police commission in 1799 led to the appointment of a German merchant and manufacturer, Frederick Brandt, as treasurer, and he forced the body into activity. In 1804 a full-time police officer was introduced with a salary of £150 per annum; his task was to supervise the watch, inspect paving and nuisances, and supervise the lighting and scavenging contractors; a specific supervisor of the watch was also appointed (Redford 1939–1940, vol. 1: 223–226). This was a significant change, institutionalising the supervisory function of the controllers of police activity and establishing civic virtue as a function of salaried independence and political detachment rather than the propertied independence that was the traditional ideal (Langford 1991). This, it was hoped, would end the variation produced by the differing levels of attention given by supervisors to each district, enabling a more uniform police without any gaps due to inattention. Most importantly Brandt organised the collection of the police rate saving the commission from insolvency. The police commission was learning new ways of making itself functional and viable. In 1807 the police commission began to produce their own gas, which granted them a reliable income and allowed them to secure more substantial loans on the basis of projected revenue. In this year they also published their first public accounts, another critical feature for the establishment of automatic systems of scrutiny which would guarantee efficiency and prevent corruption. It was also at this time that houses were numbered at public expense. Like the measuring of the town, carried out first in 1753, and constantly under the commission, this was a way of knowing and fixing the town in a manner that made it possible for the commission and its officers to act in relation to it (Redford 1939–1940, vol. 1: 96–97). Such information made possible calculations about the coverage of the town by the watchmen, and the quantity and density of building; the location of each and every specific house could be pinpointed and processed in

204 

F. Dodsworth

a­ccordance with their records and communicated and interacted with quickly and with certainty. In 1813 William David Evans became the first paid justice in Manchester with a stipend of £1000 per annum, ending the reliance on visiting country JPs, there having been no resident magistrate in Manchester for some years, the propertied people who would normally be expected to perform this role having long since abandoned the increasingly industrial and disorderly town (Redford 1939–1940, vol. 1: 246). It is clear, however, that despite efforts to make the operation of the commission a little more ‘automatic’, there was still a great dependence upon the personality and energy of a few individuals. The next major reform of the administration, after abortive efforts to secure a charter following the Peterloo massacre, came about through the great controversy about how the gas department should be run which demonstrated deeper divisions within the commission about the nature of Manchester government and relationship of the internal parts of that government. The initial dispute was over whether or not the commission should have a monopoly over the manufacture of gas for sale to private customers and what the proceeds should be used for. The majority of commissioners wanted to use the profits to reduce the cost of lighting the streets and to pay for the cost of widening several key thoroughfares, in other words, to integrate the different parts of the system of police into a self-supporting network, underpinning one part with another to improve efficacy. As one commentator put it: ‘in this great and rapidly increasing town there exists no permanent fund whatever for its general improvement, and the public, no less than the Commissioners of Police, have looked forward with great satisfaction to the acquisition of a fund applicable to that purpose’ (Webb and Webb 1963: 263). In 1827 this debate reached a peak when the Gas Committee attempted to secure an Act of Parliament allowing them to use the gas profits to finance the improvement of the town. This was immediately opposed by the Radical faction, both sides in the debate swearing in hundreds of new commissioners in an attempt to gain the upper hand and influence meetings, inflating the number of Commissioners to a point where attendances at meetings occasionally approached 1000. By 1828 there were 1800 commissioners and the fate of the gas profits became a political football in the wider debate about what form provided the most open and efficient govern-

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

205

ment. The prominent Radical William Whitworth framed the debate in terms of ‘oligarchy’ versus ‘democracy’, moving for ballots to decide the commission’s proceedings, assuming a free vote would see a reduction in the police rate in the interest of economic government (Turner 1994). Just as we saw with the introduction of the Metropolitan Police, there was a desire to break the oligarchic control of the existing provision of protection and an assumption ‘that local government would be more efficient if it were made more representative’ (Turner 1994: 303). The link between efficiency and scrutiny in the operation of the commission was eventually to become entrenched with the formalising of observation through the publishing of the accounts and routine auditing, making the accounts available for the study of any of the leypayers (i.e., the rate payers). The disputes over the gas profits were driven by a Radical critique of the expansion of the power (and cost) of government without an expansion in accountability. The Radicals were not opposed to the principle of police itself, but to the direction of it by so few individuals. The desire was that participation in the commission should be extended so that more members of the town could share in their own government. A political compromise saw the introduction of a new police commission in 1828. The inauguration of the new commission was, therefore, the result of a political controversy about wide issues relating to the form of Manchester government. The minutes of the 1828 Act of Parliament Committee demonstrate that opposition to the new commission was framed in terms consistent with impartiality and the ancient constitution of the kind that reverberated around debates about public protection in London in the late eighteenth century (see Chap. 4). Richard Collins complained ‘I have ever considered Mr. Browne’s Vestry Act as a most flagrant departure from the principles of our happy Constitution’ and felt that the number of permanent office holders would be insufficient ‘to supply the various committees without exposing the most active and useful members to a suspicion of either undue influence or personal and interested motives’ (Manchester Police Commission 1828: 5, 6). Those in favour of a new act of parliament felt it ‘desirable to secure for a Committee authorised to effect improvements under the act greater ­permanence of existence, as a means of providing more unity and consistency of purpose and action in the fulfilment of the objects entrusted to

206 

F. Dodsworth

them’ (Manchester Police Commission 1828: 16). The working of the commission is described as the commission of a public trust and the executive officers employed by the commission as ‘Servants of the Commission’ (Manchester Police Commission 1828: 67). The process of reforming Manchester’s police was, then, highly political, but it had significant consequences for the provision of security. The process of gaining an act of parliament to push through the required reforms is interesting in itself, as it demonstrates that the localities were instrumental in their own reform in general, as opposed to being dictated to from the centre (see also Innes 2009: 21–47 and Kent 1995). The minutes of the Act of Parliament Committee established to secure a new improvement act demonstrate continuous interaction between the men in government in London and Manchester, and it is evident that they were very aware of, and actively sought out information about, reforms taking place contemporaneously (see Manchester Police Commission 1828 throughout). In the end, the new body was a compromise which allowed the old hierarchy to resume its position with the addition of a few moderate Whigs, leaving the Radicals largely powerless (Turner 1994). However, this ignores the significance of some of these changes. The 1828 police commission established four regular committees: the accounts committee; the finance committee; lamp, scavenging, fire engine, and main sewer committee; and the watch, nuisance, and hackney carriage committee. The boroughreeve and constables were always to be commissioners, and furthermore the boroughreeve was always to be chairman and treasurer of the commission as a whole and as such chairman of the accounts and finance committees. The senior constable was always to be the chairman of the watch, nuisance, and hackney carriage committee and the junior constable was chairman of the lamp, scavenging, and sewer committee. The new commission also thoroughly reorganised its practices and circulated printed notices and an agenda before each meeting. At the same time, ‘A public accountant was called in to audit the receipts and expenditure … A professional valuer was appointed to revise the assessment of the town … The collection of rates was systematised and regularly checked. The management of the little force of night police was overhauled, and the number of men increased by fifty percent, their hours of duty being reduced and the old-fashioned watch boxes being

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

207

discontinued, as “they hinder rather than promote the service”’ (Turner 1994: 268–269). The key features here are the regularity and automation of these functions. Efficiency was to be assured through surveillance, both of the operation of the commission as a whole by the leypayers and of the operation of the officers of the commission by its supervisors, which vigilance was made automatic in a variety of ways. The new commission was organised along what may be termed bureaucratic lines; however the casual use of this term hides some of the more significant relationships involved in its operation. The commission operated through the 1830s with a series of committees considering separately each aspect of police, interacting where necessary and ultimately directed through the unitary body of the police commission at the annual meeting. The commission split itself, through its most active members, into the separate committees to determine the policy of each branch of police, making all strategic decisions. Each individual department put the instructions of its guiding committee into practice through a series of paid officers, whose task was simply to put their instructions into practice and make their job achievable. Each branch of the police was governed by precise rules and regulations, published for the study of each individual member. It was the task of the executive divisions of police simply to apply their effort in the obedience of these instructions and the orders of their superior officers. Provided all these orders and rules were obeyed and the allotted tasks set out were performed, the idea was that the organisation would effectively run itself, barring extraordinary circumstances, at which point advice was to be sought, in an equally routinised automatic manner, through the appropriate channels above. Efficiency, it was imagined, was assured through constant supervision by those of virtuous character, who could be relied on to hold the best interests of public service at heart. Likewise independence should be ensured by the separation of the executive branches of police from the politics that bedevilled its governance, which removed any suggestion of partiality from the disinterested executive officers and thus, it was hoped, served to augment faith in the impartiality of the police. The system was bureaucratic, then, but what Thomas Osborne (1994: 291) calls the ‘ethical subjectivity of power’ that provided the authority to supervise and steer this system remained that of the gentleman who held office by virtue of a particular

208 

F. Dodsworth

kind of propertied masculinity, rather than the kind of bureaucratic persona that was to emerge as a distinct moral form over the course of the nineteenth century. For the Manchester Police Commission, then, just as for the Metropolitan Police, organisation was crucial to the demonstration of competence. As we saw in Chap. 4, the stress on ‘system’ (Siskin 2016; Rosalind Williams, cited in Ogborn 1998: 213) was a constant one throughout debates on policing and security at this time. The 1812 Select Committee report on the nightly watch praised the police of the City of London as ‘an example of that unity, and of that dependence of parts on each other, without which no well constructed and efficient system of Police can ever be expected. If such a system could be successfully initiated in Westminster and its Liberties, and within other adjacent Parishes which have hitherto formed an unconnected mass of scattered and uncontrouled [sic] local Authorities, considerable benefits might be expected to ensue’ (Parliamentary Papers 1812: 96). Despite their reservations about a unified system of police for the whole of Westminster, and perhaps the City, the Committee recognised that it was necessary for there to be an effective system for ‘those leading principles of preventative Superintendence and Controul, and to that system of provident Vigilance, which, by watching assiduously over the interests of the Community, may maintain, without interruption, its good Order and Security’ (Parliamentary Papers 1812: 102). The 1822 Select Committee on the police was similarly impressed, as it was with the Bow Street mounted and foot patrols and they felt they could ‘earnestly recommend the further extension of the principle on which they are founded, and the application of a system of patrol by day to those parts of the Metropolis which offer the greatest temptation or facility to the commission of crime’ (Parliamentary Papers 1822: 95–96, quotation at 99). There was, then, a continuous acknowledgement of the importance of ‘system’ and the principle of organisation in the provision of protection. Not only was the patriarchal principle being transformed by the introduction of new kinds of men into the office of constable and the displacement of the magistrate, but the non-human dimension of ‘system’, the organisational ­principle, was problematising the concentration on physical and gentlemanly masculinity as the foundation of public protection. Nevertheless,

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

209

as we shall see, this did not mean a complete abandonment of the patriarchal or paternal principle and most definitely not the end of the elision of protection with physical masculinity; rather it was a process of translation and recoding into a new form for the new police.

Police Power In London the principal change in terms of the assembly of a police force was not so much the absolute numbers of the new police, which were no greater than that of the old, but the way their unification enabled their co-ordination and mobilisation as a whole. It was this co-ordination of large bodies of men that made the new police into a new form of police power, one that enabled the streets to be controlled and pacified in new ways. Shortly after the introduction of the new police, a correspondent to the Times noted the way the new police had ‘greatly quietened’ the streets: ‘Since the new police have been on service I can bear testimony to the quietness of our western streets: and last night it was particularly gratifying to observe their activity in Bow Street, where, notwithstanding the hosts of bad characters infesting the approaches to the theatres, they kept a clear pathway and quiet streets. Such order is quite new’ (R.J. 1829: 4 col. a; this reference was sourced from Emsley 1983: 66, 1996: 31 n25). The correspondent continued ‘It is to be hoped that the police-men will steadily persevere in clearing the streets of all disorderly and drunken people: and by doing so they will improve the vicious, be a terror to the simple uninitiated youths, and a security to the peaceful inhabitants of this great metropolis’ (R.J. 1829: 4 col. a). Another correspondent emphasised the importance of the police in securing a decorous space for Sunday worship, noting a change in the ‘disgraceful’ state of the market place and Seven Dials areas of St. Giles and St. Paul’s Covent Garden: ‘The scenes of drunkenness, riot and debauchery of every kind (not unfrequently accompanied with acts of daring and desperate outrage and robbery on the unoffending passenger), and the truly horrible language which met the ear at every turn, were truly shocking, and it was a matter of reproach to the parochial authorities, and to the police under the old sys-

210 

F. Dodsworth

tem, that such a state of things should be suffered to exist…. the new civil force appear resolved to act in the performance of this disagreeable duty’

(Anonymous 1829: 4 col. c). It is notable that the concern here is not only with crime but with the sights and sounds of vice and disorder, particularly the ‘horrible language’ offending polite society. This was as much, then, about securing a civilised space as it was about preventing crime. The way this had been achieved was that a substantial body of policemen had been assembled in those districts, arresting a few of the worst offenders, which then precipitated a general assault on their officers. The police, it seems, were ready for this as they were rapidly reinforced by between 40 and 50 men who drove the crowd back and arrested about 30 of the ‘ringleaders’ who were taken to what were still being known (probably because they were often the same buildings) as ‘watch houses’. Apparently ‘The police continued their exertions in clearing the streets, and in a quarter of an hour the whole neighbourhood was as quiet and orderly, comparatively, as St. James’ square’ (Anonymous 1829: 4 col. c). The same scene was also witnessed in the market place with its coffee shops and ‘flash houses’, and the police were successful enough that ‘when the hour of Divine Service approached, the streets were clear, and the respectable inhabitants going to their devotion were no longer in danger of witnessing some disgusting exhibition, or having their ears offended with blasphemous and filthy expressions’ (Anonymous 1829: 4 col. c). There is a clear desire here for the fabrication of a civilised environment, one in which the sights and sounds of the vicious and disorderly do not impinge. It is notable that the police were insulted in the following terms: ‘There go the b—y policemen—there go the soldier-traps—the—gens-­de-­harms’ and that resistance ranged from jostling to ‘hard knocks’ being exchanged (Anonymous 1829: 4 col. c). There are obvious references to the police as a military force or gendarmerie. There was nothing novel about such exchanges: the work of Beattie (2001, 2012) on the eighteenth century and Griffiths (2008) on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is replete with examples of attempts to resist arrest and successful attempts by crowds to free prisoners; the difference with the new police seems to have been that their ability to amass superior force now allowed them to repel such efforts. This power was even more in evidence in the control of large crowds, the phenomenon which had been at the heart of anxieties about policing

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

211

in the eighteenth century, as popular protest became a more common urban phenomenon, culminating in the Gordon Riots in London (see Chap. 4) and the Peterloo disaster in Manchester. The test for the Metropolitan Police came in 1833 at Coldbath Fields in Clerkenwell, where a meeting of the National Union of the Working Classes led to a fierce confrontation between the police and the crowd. The meeting was declared an illegal assembly. One way of controlling political meetings was by creating a rule that the meeting had to be cleared with the police for their control, guaranteeing them a presence at every political event. The Coldbath Fields meeting was, the police considered, for ‘a National Convention of an illegal and very dangerous character’ and was attended by ‘the lowest classes’ who it was believed arrived armed and ready for the police (Parliamentary Papers 1833b: 591, 596, 610). Notice had been given that the meeting was illegal and that it would be dispersed if it met, and the police waited for the meeting to be addressed so that it could definitely be identified as the meeting of the NUWC organised through the Poor Man’s Guardian and the Working Man’s Friend. As the meeting was proclaimed by its organisers, they publicly acknowledged its illegality (Parliamentary Papers 1833b: 594–595). At this point the police moved in 70 men under Superintendent May, who allegedly dispersed the meeting in five minutes, arresting the leaders and pursuing others through the streets for a short time. It was in the confrontations in the streets following the dispersal that three policemen were stabbed, one fatally. Whether or not this was precisely the turn of events, or whether some of the police were drunk, as was alleged, and knocked down women and children in the process, may never be known for certain. However, the methods the police used to gain control over the area are interesting. As early as 1833, they had developed strategies for dealing with large-scale disturbances, no doubt learnt from the previous riot experience of the yeomanry. First, they gained a prior knowledge of the ground on which the meeting was to take place, a plan of which was presented to the committee, which allowed them to devise their strategy before even deploying in the area (Parliamentary Papers 1833b: 594). Much of this knowledge was gained through plain-clothes observation of NUWC meetings by those such as the controversial Sergeant Popay, whose overzealous investigation demonstrated the prevalence of the police use of plain-clothed

212 

F. Dodsworth

officers (see below and Parliamentary Papers 1833a). They augmented this prior knowledge with the presence of (presumably plain-clothed) officers who were able to place themselves close enough to the meeting to hear the words of the orators and thus establish that this was the advertised meeting and that ‘most of the men were desperate characters, holding principles subversive of all existing institutions, and destructive of property; that language of the most inflammatory sort was used by them’ (Parliamentary Papers 1833b: 596). They also established in advance the number of people likely to attend, with the knowledge that there were 3000 members of the NUWC in London. In the event about 500 were assembled to take part and there were approximately 740 policemen stationed in various stables around the area (Parliamentary Papers 1833b: 595, 607). The police then moved in groups of 100 through the surrounding streets clearing the area, dispersing so as not to allow the meeting to assemble elsewhere whilst they guarded the field (Parliamentary Papers 1833b: 596–597). The police thus established their authority in three ways: through gathering information and planning before the event; this gave them enough knowledge to gain an advantage in position and numbers; deploying the law in their own service, identifying this specific gathering as an illegal one, its threatening nature and their own measured conduct, and utilising the physical force they possessed as a result of this knowledge to literally overpower the demonstrators. These tactics, in less extreme form, were the ones used by the police to cement their position on the streets in general. Whilst this won them no friends amongst the working classes, the latter were gradually forced to accept their constant and considerable physical presence on the streets, although for many this acceptance was always grudging. Nevertheless, it is clear that the new police were able to secure a new degree of ‘civility’ and to establish their position as protectors of a particular form of ‘civilised’ society.

Shaping Policemen In order to make this power effective, however, the police needed disciplined men who could be co-ordinated, but who were also, to an extent, respected by the public. Wilbur Miller’s (1999: 1) classic study of police

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

213

authority begins very perceptively by quoting Walter Bagehot’s observation that authority must first be gained before it can be used and points out that the police played a very active role in the construction of their own image. They needed to work hard at this because their initial appearance was definitely divisive. Although we now tend to remember the relatively affectionate nicknames given to the new police, the ‘Bobbies’ or the ‘Peelers’, both obviously deriving from their founder Robert Peel, the forceful tactics they used to dominate the streets also earned them the much less affectionate nicknames of the ‘crushers’, the ‘blue devils’, the ‘blue locusts’, or the ‘Jenny Darbies’ (a corruption of gens d’armes) (see, e.g. Cruikshank 1833; Hypochondriac 1830). In many respects the latter was highly perceptive, because the reason that they were able to ‘crush’ any opposition was due to the disciplinary practices deployed within the organisation, through which they sought (sometimes unsuccessfully) to shape their officers and regulate their behaviour, and many of these disciplinary practices were military in origin. As Foucault (1977) has demonstrated, this was not something particularly unique to the police, as such practices were widely disseminated throughout the social body; however, it was inconvenient in a context in which the Home Office and the police authorities were keen to distance themselves from accusations of maintaining a standing army and militarism. The police authorities went to considerable effort to establish the new police as a civil force rather than a ‘standing army’, and this was something that became central to the institutionalisation of the new police organisation, that is, its establishment as a meaningful element in the national narrative and symbol system, rather than a purely functional organisation. Great efforts were made to promote the idea that the constable was simply a member of the public with very few extra powers, which dates back to the traditional constable’s role as a volunteer citizen. As H.B.  Simpson (1895: 635) noted in his study of the subject, the ­position of constable was complex and ‘when the law was more closely examined it was found that his actual powers for the preservation of the peace differed very slightly from those of the lieges who were not involved with the dignity of the office’. While it was acknowledged that the constable’s position was special and he had ‘great powers of interference with others’, Bicknell’s Police Manual stressed that the duty of constable to

214 

F. Dodsworth

arrest on a felony was no different to that of the common citizen (Bicknell 1882: 6, 16). By the twentieth century, it had become a commonplace that ‘In the words of the Desborough Report, the police officer acts as a citizen representing the rest of the community and exercising powers which, at any rate in their elements, are possessed by all citizens alike’ (Moriarty 1937: 15). However, as we shall see below, it seems that neither the public nor the police officers themselves were ever convinced by this rhetoric, and both sides seem to have viewed the ‘protection’ provided by the police as the establishment of a distinctive power relationship, for good or ill. One of the ways the police authorities sought to identify the police officer as a civil rather than a military officer was through the uniform. Of course, as we have seen, there was nothing novel about the provision of a uniform, which had been worn by the ‘old’ police in previous decades and by civic officials for centuries; however, care was taken to distinguish the police from the army through the nature and colour of the uniform, which in the case of the Metropolitan Police, was blue like that provided for the Bow Street foot patrol. The Bow Street foot patrol, as we have seen, had a uniform of blue coats with yellow buttons, blue trousers, Wellington boots, black hats, and a scarlet waistcoat which earned them the nickname of ‘robin redbreasts’ (Critchley 1967: 44). The Metropolitan Police’s uniform was also, perhaps not coincidentally, predominantly blue and intended to distinguish the officers from the military. Miller argues that the uniform was a ‘vital element of police authority, separating the men from the public both on and off duty, symbolizing the force’s emphasis on prevention rather than detection of crime, and helping to alleviate fears of a secret spy network. The uniform became the symbol of impersonal authority, according to an American observer, giving the bobby “a great moral power” which “lies in his coat”’ (Miller 1999: 34). The uniform also had other functions: first, it operated as a vehicle for the cultivation of corporate identity for the force itself; second, it was intended to develop some identification between the force and the authority they were governing on behalf of, be that, the town or the parish; third, through this, to give the police officers the trappings of authority; and finally it functioned as a means for identifying policemen for public recognition and institutional discipline (Miller 1999: 32). Other

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

215

new urban forces also had a uniform, as the Manchester police discovered when seeking information to help them refine their own system. The 47 senior officers of the Glasgow police were supplied with a coat and waistcoat once a year, the 34 sergeants sporting ‘a uniform of blue with red Collar and buttons Stampt [sic] with the City Arms, the remainder have no uniform’ (Manchester Police Commission 1828–1829: 28). The wearing of the City arms on the buttons prefigures the wearing of the corporation or borough arms on the uniform of most borough police forces, demonstrating the direct link between the officers and the civic authority they were enacting. Again, this was not a radical innovation, but the wider extension of an established principle: in the eighteenth century, the constables of the City of London were to ‘place the City Arms over their doors’ to identify them and link their personal authority to that of the City whose inhabitants had elected them (Paul 1776: 61). By the 1820s the Manchester watchmen, like most other forces, already had a uniform. This most commonly took the form of regulation clothing handed out to the men, which remained the property of the force itself and thus was literally public property. However, following the reform of the watch in 1828, they were issued with a new uniform which was not only more practical for duty, but also carried a distinctive badge ‘in order that the public may distinguish police from private watchmen, the one being frequently confounded with the other’ (Manchester Police Commission 1828–1833: 408). The police commission’s force carried an identifiably civic emblem with Roman overtones, bearing a laurel and shield. When Manchester was incorporated as a borough under the Municipal Corporations Act, it was necessary, as Redford has demonstrated, that the new council actively construct its authority in the face of opposition from the police commission. One of the ways they did this was to create a new police force styled along the lines of the Metropolitan Police; however the conflict between this and the existing forces meant that the central government intervened and a state-controlled force was introduced to preside over the town for the two years in which the legal argument over the future of the Corporation took place. The Borough Police that were finally introduced in 1842 wore a uniform carrying the arms of the city (see Redford 1939–1940: vol. 2). How successful the police uniform was at achieving that identification, however, is a moot point. It certainly

216 

F. Dodsworth

became one of the most recognisable symbols of the police; however to many it still appeared too military, while for others it was a source of amusement and, for the police, embarrassment: as Timothy Cavanagh recorded in his memoirs ‘When I looked at myself in the glass with the uniform on for the first time, I wondered what could have led me to take the fatal step of becoming a “peeler”’, because the old uniform was ‘about a cross between that worn by the ex-Emperor Zoolooki of the Squeejee Islands, and the policeman in the pantomime’ (Cavanagh 1893: 3, 4). As Miller (1999) argues, one of the most important features of the uniforms of the new police was that they appear those of a civil force, not a military one, as fears of a tyrannical system of ‘police spies’ were elided with fears of a standing army and the police were at great pains to promote themselves as a new kind of ‘citizen-army’, a modern, specialised take on the traditional citizen-soldier for internal defence. This was ironic, of course, given that, as we have seen in previous chapters, the use of informers was central to the old police in London, and, as Redford (1939–1940: vol. 1, 85) shows, the same was true in Manchester. These concerns with distinguishing the new police from government spies became particularly acute during the notorious case of William Popay in 1833, which highlighted the dangers for the police of appearing in the role as agent provocateurs or spies and prompted the first of three Parliamentary enquiries into the new police that year (Parliamentary Papers 1833a). Sergeant William Popay had been observing the activities of members of the National Political Union of the Working Classes dressed in plain clothes, rather than his police uniform. He was accused by the Union of acting as an agent provocateur, encouraging them to use stronger language, teach the use of weapons, deprecate the government, celebrate the French Revolution, and generally ‘to delude the thoughtless into the commission of crimes, to bring misery upon their wives and families, and themselves to deaths ignominious’ (Parliamentary Papers 1833a: 411). The Select Committee that enquired into the use of plain-clothed police encouraged the police authorities to ‘urge the most cautious maintenance of those limits [between necessary and intrusive plain-clothed work], and solemnly deprecate any approach to the Employment of Spies … as a practice most abhorrent to the feelings of the People and most alien to

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

217

the spirit of the Constitution’ (Parliamentary Papers 1833a: 409). The Commissioners themselves claimed to ‘have repeatedly cautioned the superintendents and the men, if we have seen them doing anything which could be represented that they were acting in the odious sense of the word spies’ (Parliamentary Papers 1833a: 486). Nonetheless the practice was so widespread that the Metropolitan Police were even employing plain-­ clothed policemen in churches (Parliamentary Papers 1833a: 578). After the Popay case, Mayne reviewed the whole procedure and found 15 sergeants and 55 constables permanently employed in plain clothes and 2 sergeants and 102 constables temporarily so ‘and the latter, which are stated to be so employed temporarily, are in effect permanently employed’ (Mayne 1834). The solution was to outlaw the practice without specific permission. In fact, partly because of these concerns, the Metropolitan Police resisted the creation of a detective department until 1842, although this is less surprising once one considers that until 1839 the Bow Street Runners remained active, and therefore it was not clear that the Metropolitan Police required its own detective force. Carrying the arms of the town or city, then, was one way of embodying their civic function, as was the swearing of the oath of service. This had the twin function of defining police service as a civic duty in the traditional manner, as well as defining the constable’s primary loyalty as due to the elected representatives of the community. The lack of armament was also important, although the new police were never entirely unarmed, Metropolitan Police Inspectors being permitted to carry pistols and officers being drilled with, and sometimes carrying cutlasses when required on dangerous beats (Emsley 1996: 57–58; Miller 1999: 49–50). It was not enough, however, to have a uniform that displayed the civic nature of the police force if its occupant was unable to embody authority himself. When the Manchester Watch Committee were constructing their new force in 1828–1829, they were at pains ‘to impress upon the men the responsibility of their situation and to shew them that they have nothing but their own good conduct to depend upon, and they are fully aware that no personal intercession can screen them from the effects of delinquency’ (Manchester Police Commission 1828–1833: 273). Misconduct was not only a matter of basic efficiency: the committee were ‘desirous to

218 

F. Dodsworth

place it on record from the firm conviction that the welfare of the service is eminently promoted by a strict adherence to the principle’ (Manchester Police Commission 1828–1833: 273). In other words, the whole image of the ‘service’, and the ability of the officer to command obedience, depended upon individual conduct, not a presumption of standing or authority. This was particularly important in a context in which the patriarchal principle of government by gentleman householders was being replaced on a large scale with paid, working-class men, who could not expect any automatic deference from the public (although as Griffiths (2008) makes clear, even in the early modern period such deference was rare in practice). To accomplish this end, ‘A complete set of instructions has been framed for the government of this department by selecting from the Police regulations of London, Edinburgh and Glasgow such parts as appeared applicable to the Police regulations of this Town.’ Every watchman was given a copy ‘for his own government, and to produce if necessary as his authority for acting’ (Manchester Police Commission 1828–1833: 407). The instruction manual therefore not only guided the police officers in their behaviour, but also acted as an instrument of authority itself, a tool to assist in the demonstration of legal power. These instructions and the creation of disciplined men were designed to automate the response of the men, to ‘programme’ their conduct as far as possible. The replacement of gentlemen whose virtue guaranteed their conduct with unknown members of the lower class necessitated the creation of men whose conduct could be controlled and their virtue regulated. A series of important disciplinary techniques were designed to create civil, obedient, and attentive officers of temperate disposition, who were to embody authority and respectability. The cardinal virtues of wisdom, temperance, benevolence, and courage were the values which were not only the social ideal, but whose performance entitled the governor to wield authority. It was necessary first to select men who were amenable to transformation and discipline, to introduce them into the force in such a way as they were interpellated into the culture, to ensure that they carried out police orders as automatically and effectively as possible, and to be able to observe and punish any transgression. As noted above a variety of strategies were already being used by local authorities to govern their

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

219

watchmen, and it is from these that Manchester’s Watch Committee learned their disciplinary techniques, having sent observers to study the police systems of several comparable towns, and having been in constant communication with London during the period in which the Metropolitan Police were being introduced; it may be no coincidence that on 6 October 1828 the main guest at a public dinner held by the police commission was Robert Peel (Manchester Police Commission 1828: 153–164, 1828–1829). The Manchester commissioners discovered that Birmingham’s watch were supervised by six night constables, one of whom remained in the watch house and the other five of whom took charge of the inspection of the 106 watchmen. They were required to visit each watchman ‘three times during the night, and when they have finished visiting the whole of them to report in their own handwriting to the Constable at the Watch house, whatever may have happened worthy of notice’ as well as the details of their contact with each watchman (Manchester Police Commission 1828–1829: 5–6). This not only ensured all the watchmen were present and correct, but created a permanent record of the constables’ duty, verifiable with reference to each individual’s unique handwriting and which created a picture of the night’s activity which could be digested and responded to away from the scene in the ‘centre of calculation’ of the police office. In this sense the records of the constables formed an ‘immutable mobile’ which the police authorities could transport to themselves in a usable form at any time in the future they chose and which they could use to formulate strategy, assess the success of current police practice, and learn about the state of the town without leaving their offices (see Latour 1987: 223–227). This further enabled them to link the government of the watch with other information coming in from different branches of the police and enabled them to develop a ­comprehensive response to the government of all the different aspects of the town, relating one to the other and giving them a power of observation and knowledge greater than that possible to any individual observer out in the city. The permanence and mobility of this record gave the police authorities control over the city outside of the traditional space and time possible to either the individual constable, watchman, or criminal.

220 

F. Dodsworth

The Birmingham watchmen were, like the Manchester watchmen, required to be local residents, but there was no restriction regarding age or occupation and there was a general inspection only once a year (Manchester Police Commission 1828–1829: 5). However, there were two features considered worthy of note, which found their way into the revised Manchester instructions: ‘one giving them authority to reward Old and Worn out Watchmen, and the other imposing a fine on all Publicans allowing Watchmen to be on their premises during the hours of duty’ (Manchester Police Commission 1828–1829: 6). The watchmen were not allowed to walk together, appear on duty intoxicated, or talk to colleagues (Manchester Police Commission 1828–1829: 6, 12). The Glasgow police had no periodical inspection, but also superannuated their officers. No watchman was taken in Glasgow over the age of 45, but he could reside in any parish. As in Birmingham the constables (of which there were ten, divided in pairs throughout four wards and two in the office) supervised the 103 watchmen on duty (Manchester Police Commission 1828–1829: 29). The method of supervision in Glasgow was that each watchman should take a brass ticket at the office before going on duty, which was collected by the constables on their rounds. The watchmen returned to the office at two o’ clock and collected a second ticket which was again collected by the constables. In addition the watchmen were liable to supervision at any time by the constables who patrolled at their discretion, and they were required to line up in the main streets every hour ‘for the purpose of shewing they are on duty’ (Manchester Police Commission 1828–1829: 29–30). The Glasgow police regulations stipulated that officers must be ‘extremely attentive to sobriety and temperance, active and diligent in the discharge of his duty and maintain on all occasions a calm, civil and obliging, but firm and steady conduct, not suffering himself to be biased in the execution of his duty’ (Manchester Police Commission 1828–1829: 62). The regulations framed by the Metropolitan police clearly drew on the experience of the parish watchmen and perhaps on the military experience of Rowan. Before working upon them, it was necessary to select men likely to respond to the task well, Peel suggesting to the commissioners ‘The experience which you have already had will enable you to

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

221

determine generally what is the age, and what are the previous occupation of candidates, which offer the greatest probability they can be usefully employed in the police’ (Metropolitan Police 1829b). The Metropolitan Police’s General Instructions (Metropolitan Police 1829a: 1) were ‘not to be understood as containing rules of conduct applicable to every variety of circumstances that may occur in the performance of their duty; something must necessary be left to the intelligence and discretion of individuals’. However, this only made the problem of police conduct more acute and instead of prescribing precise actions to each situation it was necessary to produce men of a generally acceptable disposition who would respond in the desired way of their own accord. Each Metropolitan policeman was to ‘devote his whole time to the Police Service’, ‘He shall serve and reside wherever he is appointed’, should ‘promptly obey all lawful orders of his superiors’, conform to all regulations laid out for the government of the force, take new clothes whenever the Commissioners direct, and ‘at all times appear in his complete Police Dress’ (Metropolitan Police 1829a: 7–8). The men coming on duty were to be inspected before leaving the station ‘to ascertain they are all perfectly sober and correctly dressed and appointed’ (Metropolitan Police 1829a: 14). They were inspected by both the inspectors and sergeants and occasionally the superintendent throughout the night. Constables were told that they were forbidden to get into debt, were given an account book which they were required to be able to produce at all times, and were liable to immediate dismissal for ‘unfitness’, ‘negligence’, or misconduct, in particular for being drunk on duty. Indeed the commissioners held almost complete power over their lives while in the service, having the power to ‘if they shall think fit, dismiss him, without assigning any reason’ (Metropolitan Police 1829a: 8–10). They were even able to vet his choice of wife and their place of residence. In Manchester it was particularly important that neither he nor his wife should own a pub or sell liquor (Manchester Police Commission 1830: 9). In order to cement the image of independence and incorruptibility, they were also excluded from the franchise, to avoid suggestions of political preference, and were not allowed to take money from anyone, to offset anxieties about bribes, neither were they to enter any house or pub except in the course of their duty, again, not only to prevent drunkenness, with which watchmen had sometimes

222 

F. Dodsworth

been associated, but also to offset concerns about favouritism and bribery (Dodsworth 2007a; Miller 1999: 12). Interestingly, despite Peel’s own criticisms of the old watchmen, who he argued were ‘not very remarkable for their abstinence from intoxicating liquors’ and who ‘did no duty at all, except indeed that of making out very long bills’, Peel told the commissioners that ‘I should be disposed, even now, to give a preference to those who have served [in the police] wherever their qualifications are not decidedly inferior to the new candidates’ (Hansard 1829: 874; Metropolitan Police 1829b). This may have been a pragmatic attempt to maintain the support of the parish men, but it was also a recognition that a suitable and ready-made labour force existed for his endeavour in London, filled with the kind of men considered suitable. The structure of the existing forces was also maintained, with the patrol or beat work of the watchmen or constables supervised by senior officers who, in the new Metropolitan force, were augmented by higher ranks covering larger sections of the city. However, the structure introduced by the Metropolitan Police was nothing more than an extension of networks, a consequence of the unification of the area of government. The basic units of the force operated in the same way as the pre-1829 police of London, Manchester, and other major cities, being broken down into divisions, sub-divisions and sections. However, if a hierarchical system was not in and of itself distinctive, it was certainly elaborated and stressed more in the new police. The ranks were distinguished from one another through a series of symbolic and performative devices: insignia of rank, a structure of command, and modes of address. Every rank in the force was marked in military fashion with a distinctive badge positioning each officer very precisely in the hierarchy for the public and other officers to see. The uniform also bore the letter of the division to which the officer was assigned, and his personal number, which identified him both as a member of a unit and as an individual for the purposes of discipline and command. Officers were referred to by their number in any official documentation and they were not to refer to their fellow officers by name. All this had the effect of depersonalising relations between the men in an attempt to ensure that friendship did not lead to favouritism and ‘inefficiency’. It also constituted the personality of the policeman as unimportant for his mechanical performance

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

223

of his job; indeed, Miller (1999: 25) argues that the police authorities ‘sought to submerge the individual recruit’s personality into an institutional personality’. The position of the constables was fixed by their status at the bottom of the chain of command, carrying out the orders read to them by the Sergeants directly from the day’s orders as framed by the commissioners. Such discipline was necessary as ‘when so many men of different classes and habits are enlisted in one service, some rules applicable to all are necessary for the purpose of ensuring uniformity in discipline, action, conduct and appearance’ (‘Address’ by Sir Henry Hawkins, in Vincent 1886: 4–5). Their relation to their senior officers was intended as an entirely responsive one. The relationship between the constables and their commanding officers was further defined through the system of drill. The constables were paraded by the sergeants in military fashion, learning through repetition the correct disposition of the body in an upright, proud, and respectable position, carrying themselves with authority and resolution, and bearing all the hallmarks of the ‘superior’ notion of movement. The system of drill encouraged control over the disposition of the body and its movements, a ‘bodily economy’ which constituted the policeman as restrained and moral in his presence and as a subject suited and used to command, as the Chief Constable of Sheffield much later noted: ‘Drill in close order is of great importance in producing discipline, cohesion and the habits of absolute and instant obedience to the order of a superior’ (Hall-Dalwood 1919: 7). If anything the Manchester police placed even greater emphasis on drill, with Willis, their chief constable in the 1840s, noting that the Metropolitan police had either lost some of their initial smartness or had since been overtaken by other forces, he felt because of a failure to practise their drill (Manchester Borough Council 1845–1848: 120, 2 July 1846). The power of the police was not, however, produced only through discipline and obedience; it was augmented by the physical presence of the men appointed. Recruits to the Metropolitan Police had to be at least 5’7” in height (1.70 m), above the average for the time, and they were to be fit men between 22 and 35 years of age (Miller 1999: 26). Manchester’s police had to be at least 5’8” (1.73  m), but having observed Dublin’s police, who averaged nearly 5’11” (1.80 m) and were ‘exceedingly well

224 

F. Dodsworth

drilled’, Willis wondered whether his own force ought to increase their height requirement, having ascertained the advantage that the Dublin force accrued ‘from the size and strength of the men … they possess a great advantage in putting down street disturbances, indeed it is assured by the Officers of the Force that many parties who would with men of their own size not to be taken into custody quietly, give themselves up immediately to the large sized and powerful men feeling satisfied that it would be useless to resist’ (cited in Dodsworth 2007a: 48). Not only, then, was there a physical advantage in the co-ordination of force by the new police, but the forces being co-ordinated were an imposing physical presence. Drill was one of the first things learned by new recruits; the rest of their instruction was through the informal process of accompanying a sergeant on their rounds and an experienced officer on their beat for a few weeks, after which, having absorbed the local way of doing things, they were sent out onto the street alone. Once he appeared on the beat, the constable was to be a transparent agent of the will of his superiors, acting in as mechanical a way as possible according to the most recent direction. The constable was to be, as one contemporary put it ‘a well-regulated machine’ (Miller 1999: 38). Having been read the orders of the day as he paraded for duty he then proceeded to his nominated beat, which it was ‘indispensably necessary, that he should make himself perfectly acquainted with … He will be expected to possess such a knowledge of the inhabitants of each house, as will enable him to recognise their persons’ (Metropolitan Police 1829a: 38). Although the Metropolitan commissioners had a preference for officers from outside London, being suspicious of the character of Londoners and seeking to ensure that people did not police their own locality and thus compromise their independence, or be fearful to act, they nevertheless wanted detailed local knowledge to enable effective policing (Shpayer-Makov 1991). To achieve this the constable was to mechanically traverse his beat; in Manchester the speed of movement was specified as two miles per hour (Manchester Borough Council 1852–1856: 343, 27 April 1854). In the process of conducting his beat, the officer was instructed to be ‘civil and attentive to all persons of every rank and class; insolence or incivility will not be passed over’, he was to act with decision and boldness, but not

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

225

interfere idly, and he must at all times control his temper (Metropolitan Police 1829a: 41). These stipulations were reproduced almost exactly in the regulations for the revised Manchester watch, produced in 1830, where constables were informed that ‘there is no qualification more indispensable to a Police Officer than perfect command of temper, never suffering himself to be moved in the highest degree’, indeed ‘if he do his duty in a quiet and determined manner, such conduct will probably induce well disposed bystanders to assist him’. This meant doing his duty so as ‘on the one hand not to interfere with that which does not concern him, and on the other, not to permit anything to be neglected which it is his duty to notice. He must be firm and determined in the discharge of his duty, but, at the same time careful not to make use of unnecessary violence’ (cited in Dodsworth 2007a: 46). Senior officers were instructed to be ‘extremely attentive to sobriety and temperance, active and diligent in the discharge of his duty and maintain on all occasions a calm, civil, and obliging, but firm and steady conduct, not suffering himself to be biased in the execution of his duty’, bearing in mind that their role meant they would be ‘exposed to strong temptation, held out to them by depraved or interested parties, who will be the first to expose their compromise of independence and effect their ruin. Integrity, sobriety, intelligence, a systematic correctness in business, civility and humanity are the leading qualities of a good Police Officer’ (Dodsworth 2007a: 47). So central were these concerns that they continued to be echoed throughout the century. The police were keen to enlist the support of the respectable by not subjecting them to interference. The guides issued for constables made these aspects explicit. Vincent’s widely read Police Code reminded officers to ‘Beware of being overzealous or meddlesome’ as ‘A meddlesome constable who interferes unnecessarily on every trifling occasion stirs up ill-feeling against the force’ (Vincent 1886: 6). It was a constant complaint against the police that they were interfering unjustly, which not only made them unpopular, but was against the principle of prevention. Richard Mayne had to reprimand a constable ‘for interfering with a Gent for stopping and speaking to a female at night in the street’, the necessity of intervening only occurring ‘when common decency is violated by the party’ (Metropolitan Police 1843: 13). This kind of overzealousness was a common source of public complaint. Bicknell wrote in

226 

F. Dodsworth

his Police Manual ‘Possessing, as he will, great powers of interference with others, he [the constable] will recommend himself to the respect and confidence of those amongst whom he is stationed by a conciliatory and forbearing style of deportment’ which, it was commonly stated, would make his duty easier and was better than punishing crimes after they occurred (Bicknell 1882: 16). These sentiments were still being echoed in 1908  in the Police Instruction Book produced by Manchester’s Chief Constable of the day: the constable ‘must avoid altercations, and display perfect command of temper’; he must ‘Treat with the utmost civility all classes of the community, and cheerfully render assistance to all in need of it. Be cautious not to interfere with any person unnecessarily’ and ‘in no case interfere with drunken persons unless they are disorderly’ (Peacock 1908: 80, 83–84). The policeman, then, was to conform to the norms of civility and politeness that were presumed to be common to the refined notable constable of the early 1800s but which it was felt more necessary to instil in ‘rude’ recruits from the labouring classes. A particular problem surfaced in London as the police experienced great problems giving evidence in court. They often gave evidence not included in the deposition and elaborated too much, exposing themselves to jibes from the defence. A further problem, however, was that ‘Many of the officers, while in the [confines?] of the Courts shew by their conversation that they are conversant with the “vulgar tongue” and unobservant of the Third Commandment—it would be well if they left out of their vocabulary offensive words commencing with the letter B____ which the mind of proper thinking persons induces him to believe the utterer a blackguard’ (Metropolitan Police 1833). Thus the inculcation of civility had an operational as well as an authoritative practicality: it was necessary so as not to prejudice operations. Ideally, of course, officers would be of good character on entry to the police. One way of attempt to ensure this was to ask for character references, a practice that did not originate with Peel but in the parochial police, from where it became widespread. As early as 1783, St Marylebone watch committee required that every watchman had to provide both a written reference and make an appearance before the vestry in person ‘to satisfy them what they know respecting his Character’ (Reynolds 1998: 65). Patrick Colquhoun argued that even for paid substitutes, ‘It is of the

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

227

utmost importance to society, that they should be men of good moral character, and, in a certain degree, respectable’ and it was essential that the constable should ‘execute the trust committed to his charge with prudence and propriety’, because ‘Where corruption prevails and bribes are received, there can never be a good Police’ and men who were either dishonest or incapable of their duty would be unable ‘to guard the public against personal injury and depredation upon property’ (Colquhoun 1803: xv, 52, emphasis in the original). Character continued to be defined through references provided by a respectable person or by a previous respectable and suitable occupation; however character also became quantified and measurable through the system of recording conduct. Discipline was a matter of record and the police were also dispersed subjects of figures, punishments, and commendations as each rank recorded all exceptional conduct of those below them, which records were opened upon any new breach of discipline or application for promotion. Nevertheless, useful though references were, the police did not simply rest with the character of officer they were given, they also attempted to improve them and to encourage them to improve themselves. Literacy was a basic requirement of the police from the start (without which the production of written reports would have been impossible), but in practice there was much complaint about the standard of literacy many men possessed. The Manchester Borough Police sought to deal with this by not only raising the educational standard for the police but encouraging them to better themselves, which they found of great benefit: ‘The Constables also being all able to read and write and generally better educated than was formerly the case has also contributed materially to the advancement of good order and the attainment and maintenance of a higher tone of moral feeling and consequently a greater discrimination in the ­ performance of their duties’ (Manchester Borough Council 1845–1848: 231, 18 March 1841). This had in part been achieved by ‘the beneficial measures which have been adopted to promote good order and to create a greater attachment to the service by the establishment of a class of merit at an increased rate of wages, and the formation of a fund for those who might be injured’ (Manchester Borough Council 1845–1848: 239, 18 March 1841). They also established a library and reading room, which was not only an attractive feature to encourage men to stay with the

228 

F. Dodsworth

force, but as Patrick Joyce (1999) has argued, such features were crucial in the formation of the kind of idealised independent, self-improving liberal subject (Manchester Borough Council 1845–1848: 341, 18 November 1847 and 383, 9 March 1848). By the later part of the century, as we shall see below, officers were helping to improve themselves in more organised ways, through the inclusion of educational material in trade magazines (discussed below) and through the publication of dedicated works on the subject (Childs 1895). As noted, literacy was essential for the day-to-day operation of the police and for their ability to translate the events of the day or night into a textual record, one that could be returned to the ‘centre of calculation’, enabling the commissioners of the Manchester or Metropolitan police to gain oversight of the entire city. In order to make this possible, the constable was not just a conduit to carry out the instructions of his superiors, memorising and acting on the orders of the day at the point he was sent on duty, but he was also to report back up the chain by noting all occurrences precisely and factually in his notebook. Having developed a complete knowledge of his beat, he was to attain the habit of fixing his eye on all that occurred, ‘a habit not difficult to acquire if you are in earnest and when once acquired you will find the cultivation of it a source of pleasure, and the hours of duty will be less irksome’ (Vincent 1886: 5). By 1932 it was a standard practice in Manchester simply to copy the contents of the constable’s notebook into the station occurrence book (Maxwell 1932). In London all occurrences were to be noted down in the station occurrence book, the contents of which were then reported to the superintendent, who summarised the day’s activity in his division for the commissioners, who thus built up a picture of the state of police everyday throughout the whole of London and reported on this to the Secretary of State. The police were thus, in London, the eyes and ears, as well as the limbs of the government, and a source of both knowledge and material power to the authorities. A side effect of this, however, was that they were also the most visible agent of the authorities and the policeman’s body was liable to any direct reprisals against the state or local authority. This became central to the ways in which the police configured their own identities; the ways they did so also emerged in interesting dialogue with the efforts of the police authorities to shape their character and sense of identity.

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

229

Institutionalisation Attempts to create ‘police’ men were not initially very successful. Turnover in the first years of the Metropolitan Police was high: of the 2800 constables in service in May 1830, only 562 were still in service four years later (Emsley 1983: 63). By the second half of the nineteenth century, however, improvements to working conditions, pay and pensions meant that policing was stabilising as a career and some officers were spending decades in the job (Shpayer-Makov 1990–1991). Carolyn Steedman (1984) suggests that long service in the organisation and the construction of a career pathway encouraged the men to identify with their role; many of them began to engage in a process of self-definition as ‘policemen’ rather than people who were, for some period of their lives, working in the police. The ‘social identity approach’ (Hornsey 2008) suggests that such identities are formed through processes of self-categorisation, involving the distinction of an ‘in-group’ (in this case the police) from an ‘out-­ group’ (the public) and the coalescence of power within the group around the embodiment of the prototypical attributes, values, and behaviours associated with the group. And this does indeed appear to be broadly what happens in the case of police identities, which were clearly demarcated from a public characterised either as actively hostile or ignorant and uncomprehending, but also against the senior officers of the force and the developing militarism associated with them in the late nineteenth century, marked by the recruitment of military men into higher ranks, ­barrack accommodation, and cutlass drill (Lawrence 2003; ShpayerMakov 2006; Steedman 1984: 137–139). In London this militarism was driven by two Metropolitan commissioners, Lieutenant Colonel Edmund Henderson (Commissioner from 1869 to 1886) and General Sir Charles Warren (1886–1888). Henderson, who succeeded Richard Mayne, is described as ‘an army officer and prison official [who] seems to have carried discipline even further, giving the force “a greater military smartness throughout” and appointing assistant commissioners “whose ideas savour more of the barrack than of the police station”’ (Miller 1999: 40). Complaints were raised against Charles Warren’s imposition of discipline, one officer suggesting the Metropolitan force had been ‘to a great extent demoralised by “discipline” and discord’

230 

F. Dodsworth

(P.C. 1888: 3). The vehemence of the resistance to these changes is easily understood when it is considered that what was under attack included some of the most central identifications of the early Victorian police, which had functioned to make a difficult and unpopular job bearable and imbued it with some pride and the officers with some self-worth. Indeed, it is striking that if we examine the self-fashioning (Greenblatt 1980) of police officers in the second half of the nineteenth century, we find that their identities are to a large extent articulated in relation to the kind of steadfast masculinity promoted in the instruction manuals. The collective self-fashioning of policemen (Arditi 1998) was carried out in the trade publications that emerged in the second half of the century. The publications were produced by rank and file officers and generally reflect their concerns and experiences through letters and articles, although obviously there was an element of editorial selection of contributions. The Police Service Advertiser, which later became the Police Guardian and finally the Police Chronicle, began publication in 1866. It was followed in 1893 by the Police Review and Parade Gossip, which circulated nationally and was important in defining the police as a group, something which took place alongside emerging demands for union recognition and improved pay and conditions (on which see Shpayer-Makov 1990–1991; Steedman 1984). Indeed, much of the content of these publications concerned straightforward practical matters, such as conditions of service, but they also actively sought to help the men ‘better themselves’, just as the authorities encouraged them to do. The Police Review included instructions on the application of particular laws, a subject discussed by officers in their pages, as well as an educational column offering relevant quizzes, tests on arithmetic, spelling, and dictation practice (Dodsworth 2012: 132). But it also included considerable discussion of the police’s wider role and their relationship to the public, much of which revolved around the issue of violence, both by and against officers. Almost every issue of the journals carried a report of violence against the police, drawn from different locations across the country, indeed the Police Review usually carried a column reporting ‘assaults on police’. Many of these assaults were quite generic—soldiers seem to have been fond of assaulting the police, as were ‘roughs’ of various kinds—but many were very serious, with assaults by large groups, with

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

231

weapons, and policemen receiving a range of very serious injuries, including a broken skull; deaths were rare, but not unheard of (Dodsworth 2012: 131–133). The language used here is instructive, that of ‘roughs’ marking out the distinction between the ‘rough’ and the ‘respectable’ that F.M.L.  Thompson (1988) identifies as central cultural constructs that bound Victorian Britain together across class. Rather more descriptive was the language of ‘bloodthirsty rascals’ or references to people ‘of the lowest classes’ and those living in ‘slums’ (Dodsworth 2012: 132). Perhaps inevitably, given the reality that officers appear to have been assaulted on average at least once a year, the capacity to withstand such danger became central to the ways in which policemen defined themselves. The capacity to combine courage with temperateness and equanimity was central to police masculinity (Dodsworth 2012: 133). Of course, the vignettes of police life in the trade journals were relatively brief; more expansive forms of self-fashioning were the autobiographies that serving policemen began to produce towards the end of the nineteenth century, contributing to the burgeoning genre of occupational autobiography (Lawrence 2003). This form of self-fashioning was both individual and collective, representing both a life of individual achievement and progress and an account of the wider protective role played by the police. Once again, engagement with violence played a central role in the production of the image of the policeman, configured as protecting an unsuspecting public from the largely unknown and unseen world of vice, crime, and violence that existed beyond the fringe of civilised society. One thing that differentiated the police autobiography from the trade journals was the fact that the vast majority of them were written by detectives; however, this difference can be overstated, because all detectives had begun their careers as ‘bobbies on the beat’ for at least three years, so Andrew Lansdowne, a CID detective inspector, felt able to ‘speak for Scotland Yard’ because his career had taken him through most parts of the service (cited in Dodsworth 2012: 125). The detective memoir was, of course, targeted at a reading public fascinated by the detective story, which flowered as a genre from the third quarter of the nineteenth century (Evans 2009). The memoir, however, did not straightforwardly embrace or trade on the genre of the detective story; rather, it critically engaged with it, attempting to undermine what officers saw as the

232 

F. Dodsworth

­ isleading and fantastical characterisation of detective work put forward m in novels and stories and to present the reality of the work that the police did to protect the public. As Carolyn Steedman (1984: 144) informs us, this work was often presented as a form of missionary activity: ‘By the late 1860s the policeman was the target of those organisations that sought to find in the archetype of the respectable working man both the secular counterpart of the missionary (walking daily through hidden haunts), and the guard (protecting the respectable from onslaught)’. The police themselves embraced this and wrote about themselves in terms comparable to the work of the ‘social explorers’, such as Henry Mayhew, author of London Labour and the London Poor (1861–1862), Andrew Mearns, The Bitter Cry of Outcast London (1883), George Sims, How the Poor Live (1883), and William Booth, In Darkest England (1883) (Dodsworth 2012: 127). These social investigators often presented their activity as comparable to the missionaries and explorers who traversed the empire, bringing ‘civilisation’ and Christianity to the ‘uncivilised’ peoples of Africa and Asia, in the process configuring ‘outcast London’ as a primitive culture, cut-off and distinct from ‘civilised’ society. Police memoirs built on this, giving detailed descriptions of criminal sub-cultures, typologies of crime, evocative descriptions of underworld haunts, and habits of a world that respectable citizens were almost entirely unaware of. Like an explorer, the policeman’s combination of knowledge and daring meant that he was able to travel in and out of this underworld, knowing its character and able to communicate with its occupants, while remaining separate from it (Dodsworth 2012). It was this familiarity with the underworld, and his physical courage in being able to enter into it and withstand its (often physical) assaults, that enabled the police officer to protect the public, who, because of the protective role of the police, were barely aware of its presence. The characterisation of detective work as cerebral, something that involved cogitating in an armchair, so popular in some detective fiction, was misleading: it was the physical strength and courage of the men, their vigorous and steadfast masculinity, that made for successful detective work. As officers like George Greenham and John Sweeney both pointed out, the reality of police work was not only shadowing suspects in the dark and rain for many hours, it also involved the knowledge that at any moment the

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

233

hunter may turn hunted, often with a knife or a gun. The dangers of police work were constantly emphasised, with police memoirs including stories of assaults with red-hot iron bars, beatings and being held at gunpoint, some of which resulted in lengthy periods of hospitalisation for the victims (Dodsworth 2012). Such accounts not only served the purpose of informing the public about the ‘reality’ of police work, hopefully generating sympathy and support, but they also served to (re)define police work as a significant social role, acting as points of identification for prospective and serving policemen, giving their suffering meaning and contributing to the ‘institutionalisation’ of the police organisation by making their work poetically central to the maintenance of the high state of civilisation that Victorian and Edwardian people thought they had achieved. In the process of institutionalisation, the detective memoir was soon accompanied by histories of the police, first Clarkson and Richardson’s (1889) Police! followed by W.L. Melville Lee’s (1901) A History of Police in England and Moylan’s Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police (1929), which emerged to commemorate the centenary of the Metropolitan force. The Second World War saw Moylan extend this with The Police of Britain (1946), which was complemented by several texts from Charles Reith, perhaps the most notable being The British Police and the Democratic Ideal (Reith 1943). Clarkson and Richardson’s Police! was the first substantial history of the English police and one produced with the support of the organisation itself. Clarkson himself had spent more than 30 years in the force, and the book claimed the support of the current Metropolitan commissioner and the receiver (Clarkson and Richardson 1889: vii). Like contemporaneous police memoirs, their aim was ‘to set forth how much of self-­ sacrifice, forethought, perseverance, and watchfulness is daily and hourly exercised by the duty-regarding constable, in order that the inhabitants may dwell in security’ and in order that the police might gain ‘the respect and appreciation of the public’ (Clarkson and Richardson 1889: 370). The history they produced was quite detailed, but perhaps without an overarching narrative beyond the improvement of the organisation and demonstration of its significance. This was not the case for Melville Lee’s history of police. In 1901 Lee already felt able to refer to the police as ‘a national institution’, and not

234 

F. Dodsworth

any institution, but ‘one so eminently characteristic of our race’ because it was ‘so little modified by foreign influences’ (Lee 1901: viii). The importance of the police was such that police questions ‘touch each one of us so intimately in our daily life, in our personal liberty and in our self-­respect; the character of a nation is so profoundly influenced by the control to which it is subjected’ (Lee 1901: ix). The nature of English policing, then, is said to have deeply influenced the national (or ‘racial’) character and sense of identity. The nature of that system of control is not, however, straightforwardly reduced to the innovation of the Metropolitan Police, which some later writers would emphasise, but was traced back to a time before the Norman conquest, with its principles being ‘slowly moulded by the careful hand of experience’, adjusted to the ‘popular temper’ and the principles of local self-government (Lee 1901: ix). The emergence of the new police was not, however, underplayed. The period before the new police was characterised by ‘The depth of lawlessness under which London lay submerged’, with the previous police ‘a feeble bulwark’ in ‘deplorable condition’. This ‘lawless confusion’ is contrasted to the ‘security of recent years’ (Lee 1901: 228). The importance of the police in establishing this security was fundamental: the establishment of ‘civil government’ was explicitly linked to the emergence of people ‘from a savage state’ and was ‘of vital importance in the commonwealth’, with the qualities of a good police defined as of equivalent importance for society ‘as are self-imposed moral and physical restraints to the health of the individual’ (Lee 1901: ix, xii). The metaphor of the body politic, therefore, still underlies this alignment of social self-government with personal self-government, both of which mark the distinction between savagery and civilisation, and the police are central to the construction of that boundary, as they not only enforce compliance with the law, but also ‘encourage a general recognition of the unwritten code of manners which makes for social progress and good citizenship’ (Lee 1901: xi). By explicitly repeating the claim, often implicit in police memoirs, that the police established the boundary between civilisation and barbarism, Lee was not simply celebrating a ‘national institution’, he was institutionalising the organisation, placing it at the heart of the symbols associated with national life and identity. This principle was not as obvious in Moylan’s work, but was taken up once again by Charles Reith in

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

235

the context of wartime. Like Lee, Rieth sought to place the police at the centre of national identity and British exceptionalism: ‘It is an unquestionable historical fact that the appearance of public orderliness in Britain, and of willingness to co-operate in securing and maintaining it, coincides with the successful establishment of the police institution’ (Reith 1943: 3). It was this that was the source of the growth of ‘moral education’ in the country (Reith 1943: 4). Indeed, the system of police was what had established British liberty: Reith argued that the imposition of the police on a ‘bemused and sullen populace’ had ‘the immediate effect’ of ‘the creation of liberty which had been unknown for centuries’ (Reith 1943: 17). It was the distinctive nature of liberty in Britain, created by the police institution, which Reith argued had enabled Britain to resist Hitler, unlike France’s capitulation. By the twentieth century, then, the establishment of the ‘new police’ was being written into narratives of British exceptionalism based around a distinctive combination of liberty and orderliness, which characterised a higher state of civilisation than those countries subject to ‘gendarmeries’.

Security Technologies The new police that emerged from the period of reform did not, then, dispense with the fundamental emphasis on masculinity, albeit the nature of that masculinity was transformed, with a much greater emphasis on the physicality of working men rather than the authoritative status of the gentleman. Nevertheless, there remained echoes of the values of gentility in the respectability and temperateness expected of the new police officers (Dodsworth 2007a). The emphasis placed on the importance of ‘system’ and organisation, however, did significantly change the ways in which protection and security were imagined, and this was only one dimension of a significant change to the security ‘apparatus’ (Foucault 1980: 194–198) which was coming to integrate more diverse human and non-­ human elements (see also Latour 2005; Law and Hassard 1999). If the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had seen the incorporation of the material of the watch box and handcuffs, and the organisational risk mitigation of the prosecution association (see Dodsworth 2016), as well as

236 

F. Dodsworth

the fundamental element of money, the nineteenth century saw a range of new technologies emerge, which intersected in interesting ways with the idea(l) of the masculine protector as security provider. One of the most obvious innovations was the development of new locking technologies. Of course, people have always locked and guarded their properties. Amanda Vickery (2008) elaborates on the various ways that early modern English people protected their possessions, ranging from the presence of dogs and live-in servants to bars, padlocks, shutters, lockable boxes, and alarms constructed from bells and tripwires. The lock was the principal barrier, whether attached to a box or an internal or an external door, and locks were, of course, of ancient origin; however, the impact of industrialisation and technological progress was significant in this field, with the development of Barron’s tumbler lock in 1778; Bramah’s challenge lock, patented in 1784; Chubb’s detector lock in 1818; Yale’s pin tumbler lock in 1843; and combination and time locks in the 1850s and 1870s. The nineteenth century saw the emergence of a market in security technologies, in which lock picking featured ­prominently, with celebrity lock picker Alfred C. Hobbs starring at the Great Exhibition in 1851 (Churchill 2015; see also Smith 2012). The late nineteenth century also saw the development of the electric burglar alarm. Les Johnston (1992: 18) suggests that the modern burglar alarm emerged in 1852 when a Boston inventor created the first electric alarm, which was marketed in New York as a device to prevent unauthorised entry to doors or windows and came with such familiar appendages as security lights. This business rapidly expanded in the USA and was soon controlled by a few large companies, particularly AT&T.  Nigel South (1988) argues that the first commercial burglar alarm did not arrive in England until 1916, as insurance companies put pressure on East End traders to reduce their losses. In fact, however, there were a number of adverts for commercial burglar alarms in the late nineteenth century. The earliest I have encountered is an advertisement in the Fishing Gazette, which included a recommendation from a satisfied client from Clapham, who states that their electric bells frightened off a burglar and therefore ‘I owe the security of my house, if not my very existence, to your wellnamed burglar alarm’ (Francis and Company 1877: 15). This is followed by two satirical pieces on ‘modern improvements’ in the 1870s (Hale

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

237

1879: 245; Ware 1879: 326) and by a number of items in the 1890s, most of which were also satirical in nature. The idea of the burglar alarm as an unnecessary and ridiculous Heath-Robinson construction is evident in most representations. In 1894 Illustrated Chips carried a comic sketch of a burglar alarm that operated through a phonographic recording of ‘Uncle Ephraim’s’ snoring, scaring off the burglar who, on hearing the hideous racket, imagining there are wild beasts on the premises (Illustrated Chips 1894: 4–5). Likewise in the cartoon ‘All That Was Left’, the ‘infallible burglar alarm and housebreaker frightener’, purchased at a cost of hundreds of pounds, is once again a Heath-Robinson affair, and the only thing not stolen by the burglar, who leaves it behind because ‘that’s no use to me or anyone else’ (Chums 1896: 616). The same principal underlay ‘Rough on the Elect’, a cartoon in which a wealthy Jew surveys a safe stripped of valuables, the only thing remaining being the burglar alarm, purchased for 25s that very morning (Pick Me Up 1896: 136). A failed burglar alarm, which failed to alert the unfortunate Mr Chips to the presence of burglars, was also the subject of an illustrated story in Illustrated Chips (1896: 2), in which the unfortunate Mr Chips was asleep in Chips Villa when he and Mrs Chips were awoken about 2am by the sound of scraping; the illustrations show Mr Chips listening to the burglars as they drank his whiskey, then, in the next image, Chips creeping downstairs to fetch his revolver. Unfortunately a creaky stair alerts the burglars, who flee with their silver plate, while in the dark and confusion Mr Chips is hit on the head with a poker by his wife, knocking him out. On recovery, they retreat to bed, only to be woken almost immediately by the burglar alarm, which Mr Chips promptly beat into pieces. A similar theme of failure is set to verse in ‘The House that Bill (Sykes) Burgled’ (Punch 1893: 89). The malfunctioning burglar alarm, then, was a commonplace of humour in the 1890s. However, even if the alarm went off, it was unclear exactly what purpose it might serve. In a brief comic insert in the Birmingham Pictorial Post, a proud newlywed is showing her mother the advanced state of her new home. Mrs. Newlywed:

‘That is our new burglar alarm—you see, if a burglar should get into the lower part of the house, that would ring.’

238 

F. Dodsworth

Her mother: ‘Oh! And scare him off?’ Mrs. Newlywed (doubtfully): Well, it might; but it would give Clarence and me plenty of time to hide in the attic anyway. (Birmingham Pictorial Post 1897: 11) In the same year, the journal Chums ran a similar piece: Customer: Shopman:

‘Is this the latest style of burglar alarm?’ ‘Yes, Sir.’ ‘What is the principle of it?’ ‘It rings a bell when the burglar raises a window, and by means of an indicator tells in what part of the house an entrance is being attempted.’ ‘And am I supposed to get out of bed and grapple hand to hand in the darkness with the burglar or burglars?’ ‘Certainly.’ ‘Humph! I think somehow we’ll make the old style burglar alarm, the dog, last a little longer’. (Chums 1897: 231) The former piece was entitled ‘an invaluable device’; the latter ‘too advanced for him’. In both pieces the burglar alarm is standing for novelty, the latest gadgetry, and the desire to display how up-to-date one is. Indeed, most of the humour around burglar alarms stems from poking fun at people trying to appear modern or to protect themselves using ‘modern devices’. This is a general critique of the attempt to use modern technology to replace the time-honoured patterns of life: in this case, the use of dogs, secure fastenings, weapons, or servants to guard the house. Like the comic commentary on the various devices created to ward off ‘garrotters’ during the garrotting scare of the 1850s and 1860s, illustrated in Pearson (1983: 139–141), the utilisation of novel technologies to protect oneself signified to the satirist cowardice and excessive worry. However, there was clearly a developing market for such devices, no doubt boosted by the emergence of another new form of protection: burglary insurance, which was developing around this time (Moss 2011). In fact, there had been an abortive attempt to develop burglary insurance at

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

239

the turn of the nineteenth century; however this had not been a commercial success (Cockerell and Green 1976: 47–56). In the 1890s, however, it took off and provided a context in which technologies like alarms made sense, leading to the commercial success of alarms in the early twentieth century. From 1936 Post Office telephone lines were used to connect alarms to a central monitoring point, pioneered in London by the Rely-a-Bell company. This system was soon extended throughout the UK.  In 1938 it was augmented by an automatic dialling system run through the telephone network, which enabled a silent message to be sent on 999 lines (themselves created in 1937), something first used by the Burgot Alarm Co. (South 1988: 64–65). The emergence of such technologies took place alongside attempts by the police authorities to encourage the public to take greater care of their persons and possessions—to ‘responsibilise’ them, in the contemporary terminology (Churchill 2017: 125–146). This despite the increased role that the ‘new’ police played in pursuit and prosecution meant that there were contradictory directions in the development of protection in the nineteenth century. Although the state was assuming greater significance in the protection of the public, it never held an absolute monopoly in this regard (Churchill 2014), and the emergence of new preventive technologies—locks, alarms, insurance schemes—meant that protective masculinities were by no means left as the exclusive sources of security at the turn of the twentieth century.

References Anonymous. (1829, October 14). The New Police. The Times, Issue 14044. Arditi, J. (1998). A Genealogy of Manners: Transformations of Social Relations in France and England from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries. London: Chicago University Press. Barrie, D. G. (2008). Police in the Age of Improvement: Police Development and the Civic Tradition in Scotland, 1775–1865. Cullompton: Willan. Beattie, J. M. (2001). Policing and Punishment in London, 1660–1750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beattie, J. M. (2012). The First English Detectives: The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750–1840. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

240 

F. Dodsworth

Bicknell, P. B. (1882). The Police Manual (6th ed.). London: Knight and Co. Birmingham Pictorial Post. (1897, September 3). An Invaluable Device. The Birmingham Pictorial Post and Dart, Issue 1089. Briggs, A. (1968). Victorian Cities. London: Pelican. Cavanagh, T. (1893). Scotland Yard, Past and Present: Experiences of Thirty-Seven Years. London: Chatto and Windus. Childs, H. (1895). Self-Education for the Police. London: Police Review. Chums. (1896, May 20). All That Was Left. Chums, Issue 193. Chums. (1897, December 1). Too Advanced for Him. Chums, Issue 273. Churchill, D. (2014). Rethinking the State Monopolisation Thesis: The Historiography of Policing and Criminal Justice in Nineteenth-Century England. Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History and Societies, 18(1), 131–152. Churchill, D. (2015). The Spectacle of Security: Lock-picking Competitions and the Security Industry in Mid-Victorian Britain. History Workshop Journal, 80(1), 52–74. Churchill, D. (2017). Crime Control and Everyday Life in the Victorian City: The Police and the Public. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clarkson, C. T., & Richardson, J. H. (1889). Police! London: Field and Tuer. Cockerell, H.  A. L., & Green, E. (1976). The British Insurance Business, 1547–1970: An Introduction and Guide to Historical Records. London: Heineman. Colquhoun, P. (1803). A Treatise on the Functions and Duties of a Constable; Containing Details and Observations Interesting to the Public, as they Relate to the Corruption of Morals, and the Protection of the Peaceful Subject Against Penal and Criminal Offences. London: W. Bulmer and Co. Critchley, T.  A. (1967). A History of Police in England and Wales, 900–1966. London: Constable. Cruikshank, R. (1833). Cruikshank v. the New Police; Showing the Great Utility of that Military Body, Their Employment &c. London. Dodsworth, F. (2007a). Masculinity as Governance: Police, Public Service and the Embodiment of Authority, c. 1700–1850. In M. L. McCormack (Ed.), Public Men: Masculinity and Politics in Modern Britain (pp.  33–53). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Dodsworth, F. (2007b). Police and the Prevention of Crime: Commerce, Temptation and the Corruption of the Body Politic, from Fielding to Colquhoun. British Journal of Criminology, 47(3), 439–454.

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

241

Dodsworth, F. (2008). The Idea of Police in Eighteenth-Century England: Discipline, Reformation, Superintendence, c. 1780–1800. Journal of the History of Ideas, 69(4), 583–604. Dodsworth, F. (2011). Mobility and Civility: Police and the Formation of the Modern City. In G. Bridge & S. Watson (Eds.), The New Blackwell Companion to the City (pp. 235–244). Oxford: Blackwell. Dodsworth, F. (2012). Men on a Mission: Masculinity, Violence and the Self-­ Presentation of Policemen in England, c. 1870–1914. In D.  G. Barrie & S.  Broomall (Eds.), A History of Police and Masculinities, 1700–2010 (pp. 123–140). London: Routledge. Dodsworth, F. (2016). Risk, Prevention and Policing, c. 1750–1850. In T. Crook & M. Esbester (Eds.), Governing Risks in Modern Britain: Danger, Safety and Accidents, c. 1800–2000 (pp. 29–53). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Dubber, M.  D. (2005). The Police Power: Patriarchy and the Foundations of American Government. New York: Columbia University Press. Dubber, M. D. (2006). The New Police Science and the Police Power Model of the Criminal Process. In M.  D. Dubber & M.  Valverde (Eds.), The New Police Science: The Police Power in Domestic and International Governance (pp. 107–144). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Earwacker, J. P. (Ed.). (1889). The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester (from the Year 1552 to the Year 1686, and from the Year 1731 to the Year 1846) (Vol. IX, 1787–1805). Manchester: Blacklock and Co. Emsley, C. (1983). Policing and Its Context, 1750–1870. London: Macmillan. Emsley, C. (1996). The New Police: A Political and Social History (2nd ed.). London: Longman. Evans, M. (2009). The Imagination of Evil: Detective Fiction and the Modern World. London: Continuum. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1980). The Confessions of the Flesh. In C. Gordon (Ed.), Power / Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (pp. 194–228). New York: Pantheon. Francis and Company. (1877, November 30). Electric Burglar Alarms. A Complete Set Suitable for Office, Front Door or Stable. Advertisement in The Fishing Gazette: An Illustrated Journal for Anglers, Fishermen & Angler-­ Naturalist, Issue 32. Greenblatt, S. (1980). Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From Moore to Shakespeare. London: University of Chicago Press.

242 

F. Dodsworth

Griffiths, P. (2008). Lost Londons: Change, Crime and Control in the Capital City, 1550–1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hale, L.  P. (1879, February 1). Modern Improvements at the Peterkins. St. Nicholas, Issue 4. Hall-Dalwood, Lt.-Col. J. (1919). Police Guide to Platoon, Company, Battalion and Ceremonial Drill. London: Harrison. Hansard. (1829). Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, N.S., vol. XXI, 31st March 1829–24th June 1829. London. Hornsey, M. J. (2008). Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorisation Theory: A Historical Review. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(1), 204–222. Huysmans, J. (2006). Agency and the Politics of Protection: Implications for Security Studies. In J. Huysmans, A. Dobson, & R. Prokhovnik (Eds.), The Politics of Protection: Sites of Insecurity and Political Agency (pp.  1–18). London: Routledge. Hypochondriac, A. (1830). The Blue Devils; or, New Police. A Poem in Three Cantos. London. Illustrated Chips. (1894, March 17). Another Burglar Alarm. Illustrated Chips, Issue 185. Illustrated Chips. (1896, February 8). Mr. Chips’ Chat. Illustrated Chips, Issue 284. Innes, J. (2009). Inferior Politics: Social Problems and Social Policies in Eighteenth-­ Century England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johnston, L. (1992). The Rebirth of Private Policing. London: Routledge. Joyce, P. (1999). The Politics of the Liberal Archive. History of the Human Sciences, 12(2), 35–49. Kent, J.  (1995). The Centre and the Localities: State Formation and Parish Government in England, circa 1640–1740. The Historical Journal, 38(2), 364–404. Klein, J. (2010). Invisible Men: The Secret Lives of Police Constables in Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Langford, P. (1991). Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 1689–1798. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Latour, B. (1987). Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-­ Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Law, H., & Hassard, J.  (1999). Actor Network Theory and After. Oxford: Blackwell.

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

243

Lawrence, P. (2003). ‘Scoundrels and Scallywags and Some Honest Men…’: Memoirs and the Self-Image of French and English Policemen, c. 1870–1939. In B.  Godfrey, C.  Emsley, & G.  Dunstall (Eds.), Comparative Histories of Crime (pp. 125–144). Cullompton: Willan. Lee, W. L. M. (1901). A History of Police in England. London: Methuen. Lerner, G. (1986). The Creation of Patriarchy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Manchester Borough Council. (1845–1848). Watch Committee Minutes, vol. 1, 16 October 1845–28 September 1848. Manchester Borough Council. (1852–1856). Watch Committee Minutes, vol. 3, 8 January 1852–27 March 1856. Manchester Central Reference Library, Local Studies Unit, Archive Service. Manchester Police Commission. (1828). Minutes of the Act of Parliament Committee, 1828. Manchester Central Reference Library, Local Studies Unit, Archive Service, M91/30/7. Manchester Police Commission. (1828–1829). Reports of the Police Establishments in Various Towns. Manchester Central Reference Library, Local Studies Unit, Archive Service, M9/30/9/1. Manchester Police Commission. (1828–1833). Proceedings of the Commissioners, 25 August 1828–9 January 1833. Manchester Central Reference Library, Local Studies Unit, Archive Service, M9/30/1/6. Manchester Police Commission. (1830). Regulations for the Government of the Watch Department of the Manchester Police. Manchester: Henry Smith. Maxwell, J. (1932). The Constable’s Note Book. Manchester: Blacklock. Mayne, R. (1834). Memorandum by Sir Richard Mayne as to the Discontinuance of the Employment of Constables in Plain Clothes Unless in Specially Authorised Cases, 23 January 1834. The National Archives: MEPO 2: Metropolitan Police: Office of the Commissioner: Correspondence and Papers, 2/28. McCormack, M. (2005). The Independent Man: Citizenship and Gender Politics in Georgian England. Manchester: Manchester University Press. McCormack, M. (2012). ‘A Species of Civil Soldier’: Masculinity, Policing and the Military in 1780s England. In D.  G. Barrie & S.  Broomall (Eds.), A History of Police and Masculinities, 1700–2010 (pp.  55–71). London: Routledge. Metropolitan Police. (1829a). General Instructions. The National Archives, MEPO 8: Metropolitan Police: Office of the Commissioner: Confidential Books and Instructions, record 8/1.

244 

F. Dodsworth

Metropolitan Police. (1829b). Letter ‘As to Recruitment’ from Robert Peel to the Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police, 10 December 1829. The National Archives, MEPO 2: Metropolitan Police: Office of the Commissioner: Correspondence and Papers, record 2/38. Metropolitan Police. (1833). Conduct of Police in Court. No date, watermarked 1833. The National Archives, MEPO 2: Metropolitan Police: Office of the Commissioner: Correspondence and Papers, record 2/28. Metropolitan Police. (1843). Police Orders. The National Archives, MEPO 7: Metropolitan Police: Office of the Commissioner: Police Orders, record 7/131, 19 April 1843. Metropolitan Police. (1857). Weekly State of Police, 1829–1857. MEPO 4: Metropolitan Police: Office of the Commissioner: Miscellaneous Books and Papers, record 4/1. Miller, W. R. (1999). Cops and Bobbies: Police Authority in New York and London, 1830–1870 (2nd ed.). Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. Moriarty, C.  C. H. (1937). Police Procedure and Administration (3rd ed.). London: Butterworth. Moss, E. (2011). Burglary Insurance and the Culture of Fear in Britain, c. 1889–1939. Historical Journal, 54, 1039–1064. Muchembled, R. (2012). A History of Violence: From the End of the Middle Ages to the Present (J. Birrell, Trans.). Cambridge: Polity. Neocleous, M. (2014). War Power, Police Power. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Ogborn, M. (1998). Spaces of Modernity: London’s Geographies, 1680–1780. London: Guilford Press. Ortiz-Moya, F. (2015). Coping with Shrinkage: Rebranding Post-Industrial Manchester. Sustainable Cities and Society, 15, 33–41. Osborne, T. (1994). Bureaucracy as a Vocation: Governmentality and Administration in Nineteenth Century Britain. Journal of Historical Sociology, 7(3), 289–313. P.C. (1888). The Metropolitan Police and Its Management. A Reply to Sir Charles Warren’s Article in ‘Murray’s Magazine.’ By a P.C. London: Cassell and Co. Parkinson-Bailey, J. J. (2000). Manchester: An Architectural History. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Parliamentary Papers. (1812). PP. 1812 (127) II, Report on the Nightly Watch and Police of the Metropolis. London: HMSO. Parliamentary Papers. (1822). PP. 1822 (440) IV, Report of the Select Committee on the State of the Police of the Metropolis. London: HMSO.

  Institutionalising Fratriarchy, c. 1800–1900 

245

Parliamentary Papers. (1833a). P.P. 1833 (627) XIII, Report from the Select Committee on the Petition of Frederick Young and Others (Police). London: HMSO. Parliamentary Papers. (1833b). P.P. 1833 (718) XIII, Report from the Select Committee on the Conduct of the Metropolitan Police in Dispersing the Cold-­ Bath Fields Meeting (on 13th May 1833). London: HMSO. Pateman, C. (1989). The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory. Cambridge: Polity. Paul, J. (1776). The Parish Officer’s Complete Guide (3rd ed.). London. Peacock, R. (1908). City of Manchester Police Instruction Book. Manchester: John Heywood. Pearson, G. (1983). Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears. London: Macmillan. Peel, R. (1899). Sir Robert Peel, From His Private Papers (Vol. 2, C. S. Parker, Ed.). London: John Murray. Pick Me Up. (1896, November 28). Rough on the Elect. Pick-Me-Up, Issue 426. Punch. (1893, February 25). The House that Bill (Sykes) Burgled. Punch. R.J. (1829, October 7). New Police. The Times, Issue 14038. Redford, A. (1939–1940). The History of Local Government in Manchester (2 vols.). London: Longman. Reith, C. (1943). The British Police and the Democratic Ideal. London: Oxford University Press. Reynolds, E. (1998). Before the Bobbies: The Night Watch and Police Reform in Metropolitan London, 1720–1830. London: Macmillan. Roberts, W. (1793). A Charge to the Grand Jury of the Court Leet for the Manor of Manchester … (2nd ed.). London and Manchester. Shoemaker, R. B. (2004). The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth-­ Century England. London: Hambledon. Shpayer-Makov, H. (1990–1991). The Making of a Police Labour Force. Journal of Social History, 24(1), 109–134. Shpayer-Makov, H. (1991). The Appeal of Country Workers: The Case of the Metropolitan Police. Historical Research, 64, 186–203. Shpayer-Makov, H. (2006). Explaining the Rise and Success of Detective Memoirs in Britain. In C.  Emsley & H.  Shpayer-Makov (Eds.), Police Detectives in History, 1750–1950 (pp. 103–133). Aldershot: Ashgate. Simpson, H. B. (1895). The Office of Constable. The English Historical Review, 40, 625–641. Siskin, C. (2016). System: The Shaping of Modern Knowledge. London: MIT Press.

246 

F. Dodsworth

Smith, D.  L. (2012). Securing the Englishman’s Castle: Situational Crime Prevention in the Nineteenth Century. Victorian Literature and Culture, 40(1), 263–285. South, N. (1988). Policing for Profit: The Private Security Sector. London: Sage. Steedman, C. (1984). Policing the Victorian Community: The Formation of English Provincial Police Forces, 1856–1880. London: Routledge. Thompson, F. M. L. (1988). The Rise of Respectable Society: A Social History of Victorian Britain, 1830–1900. London: Fontana. Turner, M. J. (1994). Gas, Police and the Struggle for Mastery in Manchester in the Eighteen-twenties. Historical Research, 67(164), 301–317. Vickery, A. (2008). An Englishman’s Home Is His Castle? Thresholds, Boundaries and Privacies in the Eighteenth-Century London House. Past and Present, 199, 147–173. Vincent, C. E. H. (1886). A Police Code, and Manual of the Criminal Law (5th ed.). London: Cassell and Co. Walby, S. (1990). Theorizing Patriarchy. Oxford: Blackwell. Ware, K.  G. (1879, June 1). Modern Improvements. The Ladies’ Treasury: A Household Magazine. Webb, S., & Webb, B. (1963). A History of English Local Government: Special Bodies for Special Purposes (Vol. 4, 2nd ed.). London: Cass and Co.

6 Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000

In the previous chapter, we saw that the emergence of the new police continued and accelerated some significant changes to the security apparatus (Foucault 1980: 194–198). While in many respects the new police took over the functions of the old watchmen, indeed, they were often the same men (Reynolds 1998), nevertheless they held the office of constable, an office traditionally associated with more elevated social status. This was not entirely novel: the use of paid substitutes for constables had, as we have seen, been common since the seventeenth century (see Chaps. 2, 3, and 4). However, once this became universal it meant a significant change in the rationalisation of police authority. The power to protect was still lodged in the policeman’s masculinity, and there remained an emphasis on temperateness, restraint, and independence, but these had to be guaranteed in different ways: it was no longer possible to appeal to the social status of the men as a guarantee for their incorruptibility or character. Social status remained central to the authority of the senior ranks of the force, who were usually gentlemen, frequently with a military background in the commissioned ranks; however, all officers below the highest level were promoted directly from the ranks, or in the occasional case of intermediate level officers brought in from the army, they tended to be © The Author(s) 2019 F. Dodsworth, The Security Society, Crime Prevention and Security Management, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43383-1_6

247

248 

F. Dodsworth

­ on-­commissioned officers, themselves promoted from the ranks of the n troops. The encounter between the police and the public, then, tended to be an encounter between different groups of working-class men, although the nineteenth century also saw the creation of ‘juvenile crime’ as a social problem (Shore 1999) and significant concerns with prostitution (Petrow 1994; Walkowitz 1980). There remained, then, a straightforwardly patriarchal dimension to Victorian policing, but this was inflected with a rather different emphasis. By the late nineteenth century, policemen engaged in practices of self-fashioning through memoirs which tended to define their role in terms of their physical strength and courage, which they used to protect the public from the incursions of ‘uncivil society’. It is still possible to define this system as patriarchal, in the ‘fraternal’ sense identified by Pateman (1989), because the power to protect remained defined in terms of the possession of particular ‘masculine’ attributes: strength, courage, fortitude, temperateness, and reason. But the nature of this patriarchy was different. Equally, the police organisations were directed by gentlemen, and to some extent, therefore, as Storch (1975, 1976) long ago suggested, this meant that policing involved the imposition of some of the values of a particular section of the middle classes, with the opinions of the Chief Constable setting the tone for much of the direction of police work (Klein 2010: 6). But the relationship involved in the control of working-class men by working-class policemen was more complex. As Klein (2010: 222–284) shows, much policing involved the imposition of working-class norms not only on the policed population, but also within the police organisations themselves. The boundary between the ‘rough’ and the ‘respectable’ (Thompson 1988) seems to have cut across class lines, extending the dynamic of the ‘civilising process’ that had been oriented around politeness and sensibility in the eighteenth century (Chaps. 3 and 4). One might, of course, argue that this working-class respectability involved an imitation of middle-­class values, but the civilising process is generally understood as more dynamic than that, involving a process of self-definition that worked through contrast and distinction as much as imitation (Dunning and Hughes 2013; Fletcher 1997; van Krieken 1998), and this certainly seems to have been the case in the formation of distinctive working-class identities (Joyce 1991, 1994). Nevertheless, a dominant and d ­ omineering

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

249

masculinity remained at the heart of working-class political and social identity formation in the nineteenth century, with political struggle for emancipation being configured in terms of the recognition of manhood and the associated right to participate in the (male) public sphere, in the process recovering lost patriarchal authority (Clark 1995). And there certainly remained an emphasis in police work on controlling subordinates: women, juveniles, and their failure to conform to the behavioural expectations of dominant males. There were, however, significant changes and challenges to governmental masculinities. In many respects, with working-class masculinity protecting ‘civilised society’, propertied heads of households were expecting to be protected by security professionals, rather than being the protectors of their dependents themselves. Again, this was not novel, but the formalisation and generalisation of a longstanding practice. But as it became formalised, the emphasis on the formalisation itself, on the ‘system’ according to which protection was organised, as much as the masculine characteristics that were deployed through it, introduced a new conceptual element into the security apparatus. Masculinity in and of itself was necessary, but no longer sufficient for the provision of security in an advanced, urban society. Indeed, it was complemented or perhaps suffered competition from a range of security technologies—locks, safes, alarms, and insurance schemes—which offered to provide security without any human input; security, like other fields of employment and expertise, was becoming technical. The security ‘apparatus’ (Foucault 1980: 194–198) was coming to integrate an ever-wider range of non-­ human elements into a network of heterogeneous actors (Latour 2005; Law and Hassard 1999). In the twentieth century, this process accelerated, and the association between security and masculinity was problematised further, from various directions, and new security agencies emerged to challenge the established forms; some of these placed masculinity at their heart, but others challenged the gendered notions of protection and security. The patriarchal model of police protection was subject to direct challenge from the emerging feminist movement, first with drives for emancipation from subordinate status and unwanted male interference at the turn of the century, including self-defence training for women (Bland 2002; Godfrey

250 

F. Dodsworth

2012; Walkowitz 1992); second, through the development of a movement promoting women police during and after the First World War (Jackson 2006); and finally, in the ‘second wave’ of feminism, through the further promotion of self-defence practices for women, all of which together held the potential for the liberation of women from dependence on patriarchal protection. This was accompanied by a wider challenge to patriarchal authority from the youth movement and the wider ‘counterculture’ of the 1960s, in which the traditional subordinates (women, the young, the working classes, and increasingly members of ethnic minority communities), and many ‘progressive’ members of the traditional social elite, successfully challenged many of the presumptions and assertions on which patriarchal policing was based. This challenge took place at a time of rapidly rising crime rates and relatively low police numbers, precipitating a crisis in established models of protection, leading to great public anxiety and a generalised loss of confidence in the capacity of the criminal justice system to protect the public (Garland 2001). This loss of confidence in the power of police protection formed part of a broader critique of the capacity of ‘the state’ to shape social life mobilised by the ‘new right’, spearheaded by Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher. The new right self-consciously invoked the ideas of ‘Victorian values’ and ‘liberalism’, with an emphasis on law and order and personal, moral responsibility. This ‘neo-liberalism’ (Burchell et  al. 1991; Barry et  al. 1996; Rose 1999) meant a combination of symbolic reinvestment in policing and drives to ‘responsibilise’ society, criticising public dependence on the police and an expectation that they would be able to provide complete security (Garland 1996). The drive for responsibilisation encouraged, and was mobilised by, a range of commercial security entrepreneurs who filled this confidence gap by promoting innovations in protection, some of which deployed versions of physical masculinity as a protective force, such as bouncers and security guards, and we shall examine the agencies shaped in relation to these roles below. Others, however, mobilised a new range of technological security solutions which threatened to displace masculinity or to diminish its importance in the apparatus of security: investment in police and detective science, motorised patrols, electronic surveillance, Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, and situational crime prevention—none of these required the application of

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

251

either rough physicality or social status to protect the public. In fact, many of these developments were not novel (Johnston 1992; South 1988), what happened was that they were massified and commercialised in the context of a discourse of public responsibilisation. As has been noted in other contexts, however, far from providing reassurance, discourses of responsibilisation and risk can often generate anxiety and concern (Garland 2001; Wilkinson 2001). If patriarchal protection has been challenged, perhaps fatally undermined, it is not clear that, whatever their practical efficacy, commercial protective solutions are integrated into a coherent account of the power to protect likely to provide the public with security.

The Feminist Challenge As Sylvia Walby (1990: 188) reminds us, there were pioneering feminist voices throughout the nineteenth century engaged in a wide range of movements beyond campaigns for the franchise, ranging from educational and legal reform to moral and labour campaigns. We can count amongst these the admission of women to the University of London (1848), the passage of the Matrimonial Causes Act (1857) and the Married Women’s Property Acts (1870, 1882), the establishment of Cheltenham Ladies’ College (1854), the English Woman’s Journal (1858), the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women and the Ladies Institute (1859), and the admission of women ratepayers to the franchise in local elections in 1869 (an event which is persistently ignored in public commemorations) and parochial elections in 1894; all were important milestones and depended upon pioneering female engagement. However, feminism as an organised political movement began to have its greatest public impact in the controversy over the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864–1869, and it is no coincidence that it was a campaign that emerged around the policing of women’s bodies. The regulation of women’s sexuality in general, and of prostitution in particular, has, of course, been one of the principal targets of policing activity since the early modern period, and there is a sense in much historical work on policing that the development of the ‘new police’ led to

252 

F. Dodsworth

greater imposition of bourgeois moral values on the general public (Petrow 1994; Storch 1975, 1976). Certainly the regulation of public morality remained central to Victorian policing, and even to the emergence of women police, as we shall see below. However, the concern was not an abstract one in the Victorian and Edwardian period, any more than it had been in the eighteenth century: the concern with morality was still articulated in terms of harm, even by the police themselves. The regulation of indecency, for example, was generally carried out not because particular acts were in and of themselves considered indecent, but because they were visible. For example, when the Metropolitan police received ‘Very numerous complaints’ relating to ‘the indecency and public annoyance of persons indecently bathing publicly near inhabited houses’, the emphasis was very much upon the fact that the bathing was not indecent in itself, but was so because it took place ‘in the public view’ or ‘in a River near inhabited houses from which he may be distinctly seen’ and which annoyed the inhabitants (Metropolitan Police 1852: 225–226). ‘It is’, wrote the Commissioner, ‘an established principle that whatever outrageous indecency [sic] and is injurious to public morals is a Misdemeanour in Common Law’ (Metropolitan Police 1852: 226), although one might note the rather Freudian slippage between ‘outrages’ and ‘outrageous’, which might be due to the Commissioner’s spelling or his personal opinion. The same was true of prostitution, which was not (and is not) illegal in and of itself, but was only an offence if it was practised to the annoyance of passers-by (Walkowitz 1980: 14). The ambivalent relationship between the police and prostitution is demonstrated by an attempt to gain police assistance when a man and a prostitute took a room in a brothel at the price of three pence, where they remained for three quarters of an hour, which the owner of the house deemed too long and therefore charged them a further three pence. On refusing to pay, the prostitute’s shawl was taken as payment and the couple complained (unsuccessfully) to the police (Metropolitan Police 1833). The concern might be to maintain decorum and limit the visibility and temptation of prostitution, but more than anything, the concern seems simply to have been to enforce the law as it was written, which was around the regulation of nuisances. Timothy Cavanagh recalled that when he began his career in the Metropolitan

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

253

Police at Stone’s End police station, Revel’s Row in the Borough (an area of central south London long associated with prostitution), he found that most of the Row consisted of brothels, which adjoined the police station. This continued ‘for many a year’, and the police did not interfere with them (cited in Dodsworth 2012: 206). Such practical accommodation did not, however, prevent moral campaigners from encouraging the government and the police to take more coercive action against prostitution (Petrow 1994). The police, of course, could only act within the law, and certainly some members of the police authorities displayed more personal concern around the subject than others, which appears to have had a considerable impact on the extent of their force’s engagement with the issue. However, legal assistance was on the way to aid the moral reformers. Mid-nineteenth-century anxieties around rates of venereal disease amongst the troops and concerns about Britain’s fighting fitness, with echoes of eighteenth-century moral campaigns against vice, prompted the government to launch a committee to enquire into the problem. The result of the enquiry was the passage of three Contagious Diseases Acts between 1864 and 1869. These Acts allowed the police to arrest women suspected of being prostitutes if they were in particular designated areas around military garrisons or ports, upon which they could be subjected to a compulsory physical examination by a doctor to determine whether they were suffering from venereal disease. If so, they were liable to be detained in a ‘lock hospital’, initially for three months and ultimately for up to a year. The imposition of these acts outraged so many women that they led to the establishment of the first really co-ordinated women’s political movement to repeal the acts, driven by the energy and enterprise of Josephine Butler (Walkowitz 1980). The significance of the acts was not only that they criminalised the simple status of being a prostitute, and made women liable to arrest for the very act of walking in a particular place, but that they were potentially subject to humiliating and forcible male examination, and even incarceration without the commission of a specific offence, and all based only on the suspicion of a male policeman. This was seen by campaigners as unacceptable not only because it might mean ‘respectable’ women being mistakenly subject to what amounted to sexual violation, but because such actions were unacceptable against any woman—they were unacceptable in principle and

254 

F. Dodsworth

c­ ontrary to English legal precedent. Moreover, they were a clear sign of the sexual double standard, given that the soldiers who used prostitutes were not interfered with, despite the fact that the same ends could have been achieved simply confining the men to barracks rather than harassing and humiliating women. The campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts was lengthy—it took 20 years before the Acts were repealed in 1886—but this allowed it to have considerable influence. The Langham Place Petition, the first call for women’s suffrage, was delivered in 1865 in the aftermath of the first Contagious Diseases Act; the Women’s Suffrage Committee was formed in 1866 the same year as the second Act. The successful tactics of the campaign also influenced the drive for women’s suffrage more directly, with Millicent Fawcett, one of Butler’s co-campaigners, becoming leader of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (established in 1897), combining the various organisations campaigning for electoral equality at that point, and also becoming Josephine Butler’s biographer. Indeed, Susan Kingsley Kent (1999: 245–253) argues that the campaign for women’s suffrage was ultimately driven by the feminist critique of sex, marriage, and masculinity: securing the vote was the only way feminists saw themselves being able to realise their goal—the release of women from subordination by men—most obviously manifest in the sexual double standard and the violence that often accompanied it. As the women’s suffrage movement gained momentum, and ran into considerable opposition, it became more radical, with Fawcett’s suffragists complemented by the more militant ‘suffragettes’ of the Women’s Social and Political Union, led by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. This is a familiar story that does not need retelling here, but the important point from our perspective is that the confrontations between the suffragettes and the state were largely conflicts between the suffragettes and the police, culminating in the notorious ‘Black Friday’ incident following the defeat of a Women’s Suffrage Bill in Parliament in 1910. In the wake of the defeat, a suffragette march on Parliament of some three hundred women was met by a body of policemen who, along with civilian bystanders, physically and sexually assaulted the women for a period of some six hours. For the suffragettes, the actions of the police and the crowd demonstrated the violence immanent within male attitudes to,

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

255

and control over, women (Kent 1999: 267–268). Once again, far from being their protectors, the police were controlling and oppressing women, often violently and sexually. Police violence ultimately led the suffragettes to form a ‘bodyguard’ group to protect their leader, and this group was trained by Edith Garrud in the Japanese art of jiu-jitsu, which, as we shall see below, was emerging as a popular phenomenon in the early twentieth century (Godfrey 2012: 90–106). Indeed, the well-known actress and jiu-jitsu practitioner Marie Studholme explicitly made the connection between learning self-defence and female emancipation: ‘Hitherto it seems to have been a man’s privilege to act as “defender of women.” But why should this be so?’ (cited in Godfrey 2012: 90). Women, she argued, should be just as capable of engaging in athletic pursuits as men, and she explicitly noted the feeling of independence granted by knowing jiu-­jitsu, which meant she did not need to rely on the presence of a man to defend her against a ‘hooligan’ (cited in Anonymous 1909: 414). The campaign for women’s suffrage was interrupted by the outbreak of the Great War in August 1914, but in many respects, this gave women further opportunity to challenge the patriarchal framing of protection by providing the opportunity for them to engage in police work themselves. Prominent feminists put together two rival organisations, the Women Police Volunteers (later the Women Police Service) and the Voluntary Women Patrols (Jackson 2006). In fact, there had been groups of women police volunteers cross the country since the end of the nineteenth century, closely associated with both the suffrage movement and moral vigilance associations. These groups patrolled the streets dealing with ‘undesirable’ and vulnerable women, particularly around army barracks during the Great War, but also in factories and even cinemas (Jackson 2006: 47–89; Johnston 1992: 17–18; Owings 1925; South 1988: 18–19). As one of the pioneers of women police put it, ‘their function was to help and protect girls who by their own folly and inexperience might get into trouble of one kind or another’ (Wyles 1952: 14). Their duties were ‘protecting the many young girls who were attracted to London during the war years. A large city full of troops drawn from many lands can be no place for the young and unsophisticated’ (Wyles 1952: 14). The greatest concern was reserved for ‘those most wretched of women, outcast from all decent society—prostitutes’ who ‘lurked’ in the

256 

F. Dodsworth

shadows and doorways ‘accosting and suggesting, plying their abominable profession, to all appearances unashamedly and without restraint’ (Wyles 1952: 31). Although they were women police, then, they were still engaged in policing the sexuality of subordinate women, and there was particular concern about the behaviour of wives left alone for long periods while their husbands were serving overseas, so in many respects these women’s patrols were substituting for the patriarchal supervision of the husband. Likewise, there were great anxieties around the much-­ satirised attraction of women to soldiers during the Great War, which increased the demands for women’s involvement in supervision and broke down some of the considerable resistance to it (Kent 1999: 275–280). The resistance to women police was unsurprising given the considerable investment made by policemen in their physical masculinity as their unique qualification for the role (Chap. 5). Although there had always been women involved in policing as matrons, searching female prisoners, for example, a role often performed by policemen’s wives, there was great resistance to the involvement of women in front-line policing because it called into question the claim that the policeman’s ability to protect the public depended upon his masculinity. However, the wartime experience, which had seen women successfully perform a range of other roles previously perceived to be fundamentally masculine, opened the door for the formalisation of a female police presence. The volunteer women’s patrols during the war were not officially part of the police, although they were given identity cards and the police were instructed to work with them. At the end of the war, however, a more formal relationship was established by the incorporation of members of the Voluntary Women Patrols into the Metropolitan Police. In November 1918, Lilian Wyles was one of twenty-five women chosen to form an experimental force (ultimately intended to be one hundred women) to work alongside the men of London’s Metropolitan Police. Wyles recounts that she and her group were initially seen as ‘laughable’ and ‘grotesque’; her future male colleagues ‘proclaimed their distaste of the idea loudly and forcibly’, fearing women would bring a ‘frivolous tone’ to their work. Indeed, some men exhibited ‘downright malice’ and a ‘vindictive spirit’ towards them (Wyles 1952: 11–12). This hostility was based around two principal concerns about the ability of women to carry

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

257

out the task of policing. Firstly, it was argued that women were incapable of the physical task of policing, which was considered to be a rough and arduous job. This was accepted even by those who campaigned for full recognition of women’s policing role, a position regularly aired in The Times and the Manchester Guardian. For example, Lord Sydenham advocated official recognition of women police but nonetheless was reported as saying that he felt it ‘natural to shirk from exposing women to the liability to perform those duties of the police which required the exercise of physical force’ (Anonymous 1916: 11). Secondly, Wyles records a sense that women were ‘so unpredictable, so impulsive’, or liable to commit ‘some rash act’, that they would bring discredit upon the force (Wyles 1952: 28, 30). This is a classic articulation of a concept that Carole Pateman (1989) calls ‘the disorder of women’: an assumption that women were unable to regulate their emotions and behaviour in the same way as men and were therefore unable to display the temperateness that was defined as central to police work (see Chap. 5). Women were thus disqualified on the grounds of both physique and temperament, and allowing them to engage in what was fundamentally a masculine role would undermine both the power and authority of the institution. Nevertheless, the experiment went ahead, and although when they began in 1919 the earliest women patrols were, somewhat bizarrely, shadowed by two male officers, it was generally considered a success, and in 1923 the women were granted full powers of arrest (Wyles 1952: 28). Women achieved the fully sworn status of constables in 1931 (Heidensohn 2008: 647). As Wyles put it, ‘One of the last strongholds held exclusively by men had been stormed, and a partial victory won’ (Wyles 1952: 11). That it was a partial victory, though, was clear, as women police remained a ‘separate sphere’ in Heidensohn’s (2008: 647) words, until well after the Second World War. Women police carried out what were considered to be gender-appropriate activities, principally dealing with female offenders and children. They were also paid less and wore different uniforms (Heidensohn 2008: 647), and until the passage of sex discrimination legislation in the 1970s, they were still designated ‘WPC’ for Woman Police Constable, rather than ‘PC’ like their male counterparts. However, their numbers swelled, reaching more than 400 in the Metropolitan Police at the end of the Second World War and more than 4000 by the 1970s

258 

F. Dodsworth

(Heidensohn 2008: 649). During the 1970s, women police were fully integrated into the police service in all forces, and women began to take on the same tasks as male officers; nevertheless, there remained (and to some extent remains) considerable cultural barriers for women police to overcome, often having to perform to masculine cultural stereotypes to win acceptance and particularly promotion, and there remain significant barriers to progress for women into the senior ranks, although there have now been a number of female chief constables, and it is striking that at the time of writing, the Metropolitan Police are currently headed by a women for the first time (Heidensohn 2008; Silvestri 2003; Westmarland 2001). The presence of women does seem to be gradually changing police culture, but much of the history of women policing has taken the form of women entering into and adapting to masculine cultural norms. Nevertheless, the fact that some 30% of UK police officers are now women presents a striking challenge to the idea that the ability to protect the public depends upon a certain kind of physical masculinity (Hargreaves et al. 2018: 33).

 he Counterculture and the Preventive (Re) T Turn If the ‘first wave’ of feminism led to the introduction of women police, producing one kind of challenge to the subordination of women and the idea of dependence upon men, the ‘second wave’ of feminism that is conventionally dated to the late 1960s formed part of a much broader challenge to the notion of subordination in general, which tends to be summarised under the labels the ‘counterculture’ and the ‘permissive society’ (Davies 1975), albeit such terms have recently been subject to much more critical scrutiny and nuanced analysis (Mort 2010; Rycroft 2011). Since the emergence of a distinctive ‘youth culture’ in the 1950s, the presumption that authority and wisdom resided with the older generations had been subject to sustained challenge, not unreasonably given those generations had just pitched much of the world into a second terrible conflict. By the 1960s the challenge to the presumption of ­patriarchal

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

259

authority was being felt not only from ‘below’, from youth culture, but also from within, by social liberals in government who sympathised with the ‘progressive’ agenda and were highly critical of established practice (Garland 1996). It was accompanied by a pronounced emphasis on individualism, which seems to have been the cause rather than the consequence of the ‘new right’ in the 1970s and 1980s and which was central to the wider challenge to conservative social mores (Robinson et  al. 2017). All of this contributed to what Ralph Miliband called ‘desubordination’ and the decline of deference for social ‘superiors’ and the values they espoused (Garland 2001). Wouters (1999) explicitly aligns this transformation in attitudes to social control and personal restraint in the direction of greater informalisation to the great rise in crime that took place from the 1960s onwards (see also Ray 2013), a claim that was also made by contemporary critics of the ‘permissive society’ (on which see Pearson 1983). The persistence of this rise in crime was a central element in the challenge to the authority of the police in particular, who appeared powerless to stop it (Garland 1996). Recorded crime in the UK doubled between 1955 and 1965, and again between 1965 and 1975, and again between 1975 and 1990 (Garland 2001). By the 1980s it was also evident from victimisation surveys that recorded crime represented only a fraction of the actual offences committed (Hough and Mayhew 1983). Another important dimension, drawn out by David Garland (2001: ch. 4), is the extent to which what Goffman called ‘backstage’ behaviour was increasingly illuminated by more intensive media coverage, part of the wider questioning of deference to authority and the broader call for greater transparency and accountability in government and authority positions. Central to this dynamic in Britain were a series of high-profile corruption scandals involving the Metropolitan Police in particular, but the process was also driven by the revolution in education of the 1960s, which not only saw the democratisation of the education system and access to university for those whose social background would previously have excluded them, but also the emergence of new disciplines, most notably criminology and the sociology of deviance. Critical criminological research, which demonstrated the relative ineffectiveness of beat policing, the sometimes problematic occupational culture of the police, and which often cast the police as agents of the oppressive, capitalist state, was

260 

F. Dodsworth

central to the undermining of police authority amongst educated opinion (Garland 1996, 2001; Reiner 2000). Loss of confidence in the criminal justice system centred not only on the ability of the police to detect offences and assemble the evidence for prosecution, but also affected perceptions of the ability of the system to reform offenders and thus control offending and protect the public (Garland 2001). From the 1960s, therefore, as crime rates rose, prisons became overcrowded, and courts struggled to hear cases fast enough, renewed effort was put into crime prevention. Of course, the prevention of crime was central to the idea of police from its inception (Dodsworth 2007, 2008, 2014; Neocleous 2000). In fact John Beattie (2012) has suggested that crime prevention was taken for granted as the purpose of policing in the early modern period and that modern methods of detection were in fact the great eighteenth-century innovation. One might argue that the kind of systematic approach favoured by Colquhoun and others, suggesting the regulation of the urban environment to reduce the temptations for offenders, was somewhat distinct from earlier patterns of patrol and preventive activity, but it could also be argued that this just represents an intellectual synthesis of a set of practices and assumptions around urban regulation that were already common practice. Regardless, it is clear that in terms of the practice of policing the regulation of sites of temptation, disorder, and vice, seen as the sources of crime, remained central to police work throughout the nineteenth century (see, e.g. Petrow 1994), and this continued to be the case well into the twentieth century; indeed, Joanne Klein (2010: 43–61) suggests that if anything, the general ‘service’ element of police work increased over that time. Modern criminologists have tended to stress the extent to which modern policing shifted away from the preventive ideal under the new police, but if so, this was a late and brief transformation. Throughout the nineteenth century, the proportion of the police involved in detective work was tiny, and dealing with ‘crime’ remained (and to this day remains) a small proportion of police work. There was, however, a change in the pattern of that work in the twentieth century. The great transformation in policing that took place in the twentieth century was not so much a shift from prevention to detection or crime-­ fighting, which was much more prominent in public debates about

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

261

­ olicing and in representations of policing than in police work itself; p rather it was a change in the pattern of policing and the visibility of the police, with the emergence of the ‘emergency service’ model of policing. We tend to associate this very strongly with the development of unit beat policing (UBP) in the 1960s, whereby the number of officers on the beat was reduced and replaced with officers in cars, patrolling a much wider area and responding to situations through radio direction any time, day or night (Williams 2014: ch. 6). The development of the UBP system turned the patrol into a ‘fire brigade’ style emergency response service (Reiner 2000) distancing the police from the public by taking them off the streets. In fact, however, as Klein (2010: 61–71) and Williams (2014: chs. 5–6) have shown, the drift of officers away from the beat was an interwar phenomenon, driven by the requirements of traffic policing, as well as the diversion of police into a range of other duties, and policemen were already being encouraged to use telephones and motor vehicles to cope with their expanding role. The introduction of the police telephone system in the 1920s seems to have exacerbated the trend, making further demands on already stretched resources. Policemen began walking longer beats, double beats, or leaving beats vacant long before UBP was introduced, and the police box and pillar system were established as substitutes. The roots of the distancing between the police and the public cemented by the unit beat system were, then, established between the World Wars (Klein 2010: 71). The use of the radio system was complemented in London by the creation of an ‘information room’ and ‘map room’, introduced by the new Commissioner Hugh Trenchard, who had been Chief of the Air Staff in the First World War and was instrumental in the establishment of the Royal Air Force. The map and information rooms allowed the visual display of the displacement of patrols around the city, a format that was considerably extended as the century wore on, so that it covered real-time patrol dispersal in the form of a modern ‘control room’ (Williams 2014: 151–153). By the late 1960s, personal radios were being extended throughout UK forces, and by 1975 every officer on the beat had one, changing patterns of deployment, which in practical terms often meant distancing of the police from the public and the integration of the police into tighter-knit teams (Williams 2014: 160–161).

262 

F. Dodsworth

At the same time as the police were increasingly being drawn off the beat and into rapid-response patrol cars, there was also a drive to revitalise preventive policing in a different form. In 1960 the UK Home Office established the Cornish Committee to explore ways of developing policing more generally, and in 1965 the committee recommended that each force should appoint a dedicated crime prevention officer at the level of Inspector, with associated junior officers. This was something that some forces were already trialling and it was generalised across all forces. In 1963, the Home Office also established a National Crime Prevention Centre in Stafford. A Standing Committee on Crime Prevention was formed in 1966 which incorporated not only representatives of the police, but insurance companies, the Confederation of British Industry, and the Trades Union Congress, and the committee dealt with issues like agreeing the fitting of steering locks to all new cars and codes for levels of building security. Forces were also encouraged to set up Crime Prevention Panels for liaison with local authorities and businesses (Gilling 1997: ch. 4). It will be noted that these developments took place alongside the emergence of the UBP system, and so rather than view this as a drift towards either prevention or crime-fighting, we might better view this period as one of increasing specialisation and partnership between the police and different agencies, with the police assisting with the development of what were often technological, material, or organisational means of protecting people and businesses from crime, particularly property crime. Just as this institutional development was taking place in the UK, there were important intellectual developments taking place in the USA. Jane Jacobs’s classic text The Death and Life of Great American Cities, published in 1961, launched a stinging critique of 1950s urban planning, particularly its tendency to zone and compartmentalise urban behaviour, creating a fortress mentality and removing the natural crime prevention element of continuous observation caused by busy pavements (sidewalks) and densely populated communities. Jacobs’s observations were further developed in the work of Oscar Newman’s Defensible Space, published in 1972, and C.  Ray Jeffrey’s Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design which sought to explore ways of reducing crime by shaping the built environment and has since become institutionalised enough as a form of urban intervention to deserve its own acronym: CPTED (Atlas

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

263

2008; Crowe 2013; Gilling 1997: ch. 2). By the 1980s architectural approaches were being addressed by the Metropolitan Police, who established Crime Prevention Design Advisors, leading, in 1989, to the ‘Secured by Design’ initiative, which, in concert with the police, establishes design standards for the built environment with the aim of ‘designing out crime’ (Secured by Design n.d.). The late 1970s and early 1980s also saw the emergence of the ‘situational crime prevention’ (SCP) paradigm at the Home Office’s Research and Planning Unit (Garland 2000; Gilling 1997: ch. 2). Central to the development of SCP was the work of Ronald Clarke on ‘rational choice theory’ and Marcus Felson and Lawrence Cohen on ‘routine activity theory’. Clarke suggested that decades of criminological work focusing on criminality was misplaced and had little impact: both offenders and crimes were so various and particular that trying to understand and affect the motivations of offenders had largely proven fruitless. Instead, Clarke directed his attention to the circumstances of the crime, focusing particularly on reducing the opportunities and motivations for committing specific acts (Clarke 1980). Felson and Cohen likewise directed the attention towards the reduction of criminal opportunity by removing one of what they considered the three requirements for an offence to take place: a motivated offender (the focus of most existing criminological research), a suitable target, and the absence of a capable guardian (Clarke 2005). There is still an obvious concern here with a capable guardian, but the important thing to note from the SCP perspective is that the capable guardian does not need to be a person, it could be CCTV or a lock. Ultimately, the principal focus of SCP was on reducing the opportunities for, and temptations towards, offending, and it is striking that the language of temptation appears here (Clarke 2005), in a clear figural fulfilment of the ideas of Fielding and Colquhoun (Chap. 4) (White 1999). The important element in this drive towards ‘situational crime prevention’, CPTED, the use of CCTV, property marking, and so on is that all of these are mechanisms of prevention and protection that do not rely on the masculinity of the operator, the designer, or the architect. Those fields might historically have been male-dominated, but in terms of the direct implementation of protection, these are technical and material solutions in which masculine characteristics were simply less obviously relevant.

264 

F. Dodsworth

Furthermore, with the emphasis on crime prevention partnerships, industry design standards, and awareness campaigns, the responsibility for protection was being displaced from the police, who increasingly act as assessors and managers of, or advisers on, risk (Ericson and Haggerty 1997), and on to communities, corporations, and individuals. This displacement of responsibility was, by the 1980s, programmatic and a central element in both the rhetoric and policy of government; this practice of ‘responsibilisation’ has been identified as central to the practice of (neo)liberal government (Garland 2001; Rose 2000). The language of ‘responsibilisation’ pushed both individuals and communities towards the consumption of security products and services on the open market, which provided an alternative model of security to the systems of public protection and made distinctive claims to expertise in the field. They also opened out the scope for new protective identities.

Responsibilisation and Security Consumption As we have seen in Chap. 5, the commercial security sector was not a creation of the late twentieth century. There had been private security firms in operation since at least the eighteenth century, followed by a big rise in private detective operations after the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act, which led to a great rise in divorce-related surveillance. Hilary Draper (1978: 14–15) suggests that these were an offshoot of the earlier security companies, which supplied guards to wealthy houses and for factories. Harry Benson was perhaps the most well-known Victorian private eye, uncovering various scandals amongst the elite. However, private detective agencies also acted as agent provocateurs and procurators, supplying prostitutes and mistresses, and infiltrated factories and working men’s organisations, leading to a credibility crisis in the early twentieth century (Draper 1978: 15–16). In the early twentieth century, several larger private security firms were established, seeking to make a less seedy name for themselves, with Garnier’s being one of the first and most prominent multi-purpose agencies, established in 1901. The security industry also sought to promote a better image for themselves by establishing associations for their promotion: The Association of British

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

265

Investigators (1913), the Institute of Professional Investigators, the British Security Industry Association, the National Supervisory Council for Intruder Alarms, and the International Professional Security Association, formerly the Industrial Police and Security Association (Draper 1978: 21–22). There had also been private guarding in Britain since the eighteenth century, with stagecoach firms, wealthy merchants, and City offices hiring men to guard their wares and wealth (Draper 1978: 17–19). It is also worth noting that the public police were frequently hired by private individuals and organisations (Williams 2008). However, the early twentieth century saw a new wave of modern security firms. Johnston (1992: 19) identifies 1926 as the birth of the first private guarding firm, Machinery and Technical Transport, which used couriers to safeguard cash transport. In 1935 Night Watch services were established, to protect Mayfair residents against both ‘roughs’ and fascists. In 1947 the company changed its name to Security Corps, but after this was criticised for being too militaristic, this was changed to Securicor (Johnston 1992: 19). Group 4 was established in 1952 as an offshoot of Swedish parent company Securities International, amalgamating four companies: Cash in Transit, Securities Alarms, Store Detectives, and Factory Guards Limited (South 1988: 21), while 1955 saw the establishment of the Armoured Car Company (Draper 1978: 20). The commercial security sector is not, then, a product of ‘late modernity’ or the growing anxieties of the crime wave of the 1960s–1990s. Indeed, it seems to have emerged during the period of the least criminal activity on record: the mid-twentieth century. What has happened since the 1960s is the massification of the sector: services that were once the preserve of the social and economic elite have been made available to the wider public. One might view this as the democratic extension of the privileges of protection to the public, or the democratisation of security (see Wood and Shearing (2007) for a discussion of the subject); or, one might think, with Zygmunt Bauman (2006: 2–3, 143), that ‘locking ourselves behind walls, surrounding the approaches to our living quarters with TV cameras, hiring armed guards, driving armoured vehicles, or taking martial arts classes’ is a sign of the failure of the ‘modern project’, which was supposed to release us from fear, rather than provoke and profit from it. Alternatively, we might treat

266 

F. Dodsworth

the expansion of the commercial security sector as a particular dimension of the emergence of the consumer society more broadly, and therefore in addressing the consumption of security goods and services, we need to address them as acts of consumption (Goold et al. 2010; Loader 1999). As Ian Loader (1999: 379–380) reminds us, to ‘consume commodities is not only to “do something”, but also to “say something” …. Consumption involves not only a material act (in the present case, purchasing goods and services that purport to offer protection from crime); it is also an emotionally-laden cultural performance, redolent with social meaning’, a performance that involves the reproduction of ways of life, social relations, and marks of identification. Consumption is inextricable from daydreaming and fantasy and the ‘imaginative realization of ideals’ or the ‘formation of mental projects in which individuals conjure up a sense of the satisfaction they hope to obtain by purchasing particular goods or services’ (Loader 1999: 80), something close to Markus and Nurius’ (1986) concept of ‘possible selves’ engaged in the fantastic enactment of particular cultural scripts. When people buy security, then they are not only buying it, but also ‘buying into’ it on some level. One of the most prominent forms taken by security consumption in the latter part of the twentieth century was training in martial arts and self-defence. Of course, training in the martial arts has many more dimensions than the criminological, as the emerging discipline of ‘martial arts studies’ makes clear (Bowman 2015; Farrer and Whalen-Bridge 2011b). However, although the importance of the martial arts as ‘a set of combat skills developed to defend one’s self, friends, and family’ is acknowledged as ‘the predominant Western paradigm’ in discussion of the subject, the criminological aspect of the explosion of interest in martial arts is displaced in this literature and rendered too obvious to be worthy of extended analysis (Farrer and Whalen-Bridge 2011b: 9). The relationship between fears of victimisation and martial arts practice is recognised but moved out of focus: ‘Supposedly people go to martial arts studios to fend of attackers in the street, but practitioners know that this is an inadequate explanation of the phenomena’, which is as much to do with ‘social’ self-defence, that is, psychological defence against the injuries of class and marginalised identities, achieved through self-­ advancement, as it is to do with anxieties about mugging or sexual assault

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

267

(Farrer and Whalen-Bridge 2011b: 6). It is certainly true that there is much more to the martial arts than self-defence in the very narrow sense of fighting off attack in the streets, as the many excellent contributions to field of ‘martial arts studies’ make clear; however, the fact remains that the great explosion of interest in the martial arts between the 1960s and 1990s took place in the context of the contemporaneous crime wave, and, as we shall see, martial arts practitioners very clearly used that context as a point of engagement through which to articulate themselves as experts in self-defence. The possible selves or identity roles (Markus and Nurius 1986; Stryker 2007; Stryker and Burke 2000) that martial arts entrepreneurs held out for internalisation by the consuming public were those of the skilled, almost invincible practitioner, the ‘super martial artist’ (Peterson 1986: 7), a person of suprahuman abilities who could not only protect themselves against the emerging folk devil of the mugger, but could protect others too. As Farrer and Whalen-Bridge demonstrate, martial arts practice can be considered an ‘embodied fantasy’ in which the anxious subject identifies with the hero of the martial arts story, usually moving from a weak, humiliated, or almost-murdered victim transformed through martial arts training into ‘“the most unstoppable son-of-a-bitch” people ever knew’ (Farrer and Whalen-Bridge 2011b: 13). Visual references to the genre of the martial arts movie in martial arts magazines and training manuals encouraged the martial arts practitioner to identify with the role of martial arts avenger or protector, aligning the practitioner with a cultural role common in other revenge dramas or urban vigilante films of the period, such as Billy Jack (1971), Dirty Harry (1971), and Death Wish (1974). The link between the martial arts film and revenge drama was not only inherent in a film like Billy Jack, in which the practice of the Korean art hapkido was central to the plot, but was also noted by contemporaries (Glaessner 1974). The urban vigilante film drew on the narrative traditions of Renaissance revenge drama and the Western (a link made particularly visible through Clint Eastwood’s appearance in Dirty Harry) to attempt to validate individual violence in the context of an apparent breakdown in legitimate or capable governmental authority (Simkin 2006: particularly 39–41, 59–60). Urban vigilante films offered an idealised solution to the crisis of governance of the period, one articulated in

268 

F. Dodsworth

terms of an explicit (largely conservative) critique of the incapability, corruption, or bureaucracy of a legal order that seemed to privilege the rights of criminals over those of victims and represented the city as an ‘urban jungle’ without effective law or justice (Simkin 2006: 42–60). There is an obvious link here to the collapse of confidence in the capacity of the criminal justice system to maintain law and order, a crisis which beset both the UK and the USA in the 1970s and 1980s, with the mantra ‘nothing works’ becoming emblematic of attitudes to law and order (Garland 1996, 2001). The urban vigilante film allowed concerns about the collapse of legitimate order to be played out and poetically resolved (Simkin 2006). In doing so, however, it mounted a social critique which was often highly conservative in nature. Death Wish and Dirty Harry were both directly critical of the ‘counterculture’ and ‘liberal values’ (Simkin 2006: 42–51). In this sense the genre would appear to form part of the conservative configuration of the ‘urban nightmare’ identified by Macek (2006) as central to the configuration of ‘law and order’ as a political problem in this period and a response to the increased informalisation and relaxation of discipline amongst large sections of the public associated with the ‘permissive society’ (Ray 2013; Wouters 1999, 2004), coupled with both the failure of disciplinary institutions and a pronounced de-civilising process (Fletcher 1997; Wacquant 2011). It is striking that the common response to this situation in both Death Wish and Dirty Harry was recourse to firearms, something that appears to have translated into real life in the USA and elsewhere in the context of lack of public confidence in the legitimacy or effectiveness of government (Carlson 2012, 2014). However, not all films operated in this way, and it is notable that Billy Jack worked in the opposite direction, with the martial artist standing up for the counterculture and subordinate identities against a corrupt, uncomprehending, or oppressive mainstream. This, I want to argue, was characteristic of many martial arts films, which performed a similar function to the vigilante drama but pulled in a different direction. The proliferation of martial arts courses, training manuals, and magazines constituted part of a mass culture phenomenon which offered the public the ability to take up the roles of avenger and protector themselves, enabling people to address their anxieties about a lack of viable public

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

269

protection and gain reassurance that they were themselves equipped to protect themselves and their loved ones, but they did so in ways that often drew upon and contributed to the values of the counterculture by liberating the practitioner from dependence on the state while, through the Asian inflexion of much martial arts training, maintaining the link to Asian culture and philosophy that was central to the counterculture itself (Bowman 2015; Farrer and Whalen-Bridge 2011a). The martial arts were frequently articulated as a vehicle for the defence and legitimation of identities that have traditionally been subordinated in Western societies, particularly post-colonial masculinities (Bowman 2010, 2011, 2013; Brown 1997; Lu 2011; Whalen-Bridge 2011) but also, as we shall see below, femininities. Of course, as we have seen, Western interest in Asian martial arts as a means of self-defence, and the martial arts/self-defence manual as a genre, existed long before the 1970s. Since the seventeenth century, fencing masters had produced training manuals for would-be gentlemen to learn the art of sword fighting, in a context in which ‘gentlemanly’ status was increasingly fluid and open to all who could demonstrate wealth and adherence to the ‘polite arts’ (see Carter 2001; Dodsworth 2015; Langford 1989: 61–68; Shoemaker 2004: 14 and Chap. 4). Carrying a sword was central to gentlemanly deportment in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, as was its use to defend one’s ‘honour’, so for those aspiring to gentle status, learning how to use a sword was essential, particularly in the context of the vogue for duelling. By the later eighteenth century, however, duelling was coming under pressure from increasing moral condemnation, and boxing was beginning to be proposed to the middling sort as an alternative means for defending one’s honour, not something that should be limited to the lower classes (Dodsworth 2015; Shoemaker 2004). By the mid-nineteenth century, boxing was being promoted as a means of self-defence against criminal attack, as opposed to insult (Dodsworth 2015), and at the turn of the century, in the context of the ‘hooligan’ scare, Edward Barton-Wright and a team of European and Japanese instructors promoted aspects of both European and Asian martial arts as a form of self-defence against assault. This developed into a longstanding engagement with judo and jiu-jitsu in the UK and the USA, and a number of judo or jiu-jitsu training manuals were produced

270 

F. Dodsworth

instructing the reader in techniques for self-defence (Dodsworth 2015; Godfrey 2010, 2012; Rouse 2015, 2017; Wolf 2005). Dojos training people in judo/jiu-jitsu (a distinction only in the process of emerging at the time) were established in Gordon Square in London in 1903 and on Oxford Street in 1908, before Gunji Koizumi established the Budokwai dojo in London in 1918. The Budokwai was to remain at the centre of British judo for much of the rest of the century and remains in operation to this day (Godfrey 2010; Goodger 1981). The Budokwai took part in the first international match against Germany in 1926 and were featured on the newly established BBC in 1937. Koizumi was ultimately instrumental in founding the British Judo Association in 1948, before the creation of the European and World Judo Championships in the 1950s (Budokwai n.d.). Judo was represented at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, where Australia, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, and the USA all sent full teams. Although the Japanese took the gold in the three restricted weight categories, a competitor from the Netherlands won the open competition, and the medallists across the other categories included athletes from the USA, the Soviet Union, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, and Australia, suggesting that there was already a considerable pool of Western talent in the sport. David Chow, co-author of a book on kung fu described below, started teaching judo at UCLA in 1951 and notes the flowering of karate, jiu-jitsu, and aikido in the 1960s (Chow and Spangler 1982: 204, n. 1). Zimmerman (1979: 52) suggests that the teaching of karate in the USA began in 1956 and that its growth was down to ‘a blossoming interest that Americans have had in Oriental history and philosophy; an increasing crime rate, meaning many people have taken up karate as a means of self-protection; servicemen studying karate while stationed in the Orient; and increasing awareness of the importance of physical conditioning; and film stars utilizing more and more dynamic karate techniques’. A world championship in karate arrived in 1970. Likewise, although 1973 is commonly perceived as a pivotal year of the emergence of the ‘kung fu craze’, with the release of the hugely influential Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon, which took the subject to an enormous global audience (Bowman 2010, 2011, 2013; Brown 1997), contemporaries were already anticipating the ‘craze’ at the moment of its

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

271

emergence (MacClaughlin 1972) because there were, of course, already a significant number of representations of Asian martial arts on both the large and the small screens. These were largely Japanese martial arts, not ‘kung fu’, or any kind of Chinese martial art, but at the time ‘kung fu’ was not clearly differentiated in public discourse from other striking arts. The US martial arts magazine Black Belt, which was also available in the UK, carried out regular, if completely unscientific, surveys of their readers and instructors in the 1960s and 1970s and estimated that the number of ‘karate’ practitioners in the USA had risen from approximately 80,000  in 1965 to 110,000  in 1966; 130,000  in 1967 and 1968; 120,000  in 1969 and 1970; 150,000  in 1971; and 160,000  in 1972 (Zimmerman 1979: 52; approximate figures drawn from their graphs). By 1979, despite the long run of the ‘kung fu craze’, the magazine found that 63% of its readers actually practised Korean martial arts (Tang Soo Do, taekwondo, and hapkido), and only 7% Chinese and 7% Japanese arts (Zimmerman 1979: 50). A similar survey in 1973 at the height of the craze noted a jump of 16,000 in practitioner numbers in late 1972/early 1973 but recorded kung fu at only 4% of the total of ‘karate’ types and would not separate kung fu from karate for analysis until the next survey (Black Belt 1973). The emergence of a mass market in martial arts classes, magazines, and training manuals, then, took place alongside contemporaneous growth in the portrayal of martial arts on screen. From the middle of the twentieth century, at first slowly, Asian martial arts began to appear in mass culture produced not only in the UK, but also the USA and Hong Kong, and made available to UK audiences through a highly globalised mass market (Hunt 2003). Just as the British authorities had worried about the impact of US gangster films in the 1930s, so they worried in the 1970s and 1980s about the violence portrayed in martial arts films and vigilante dramas (Springhall 1998). As early as 1945, there was an extended judo fight in the James Cagney film Blood on the Sun, and the 1955 film Bad Day at Black Rock featured either jiu-jitsu or aikido (West 2006: 208). From the early 1960s, the British television series The Avengers (1961–1969) featured female protagonists who were skilled martial artists (first Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale and then Diana Rigg as Emma Peel). Versions of judo and ‘karate’ were also deployed in the James Bond

272 

F. Dodsworth

films Dr. No (1962) and Goldfinger (1964, also starring Honor Blackman), before the ninja made an appearance alongside widespread martial arts action in You Only Live Twice (1967), a film that contemporaries saw as pivotal for increasing the popularity of Asian martial arts in the West (MacClaughlin 1972: 16). Readers of Ian Fleming’s novels (published in 1958, 1959, and 1964 respectively) would, of course, already have been aware of such skills, as would any reader of the ‘Bulldog Drummond’ novels in the 1920s and 1930s, in which the prototype James Bond figure Drummond was an expert in jiu-jitsu. Indeed, following the examples of Drummond and Bond, expertise in Asian martial arts became a staple of the spy series that were such a phenomenon in the screen culture of the mid-1960s. The popular US television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964–1968) featured ‘karate’ occasionally, while the short-lived Honey West (1965–1966) cast Anne Francis as a judo black belt. The Matt Helm films also involved martial arts expertise, most notably The Wrecking Crew (1968) which featured a number of famous martial artists either as advisors or actors including Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, David Chow, Mike Stone, Joe Lewis, and Ed Parker. Bruce Lee himself came to prominence in the USA by displaying his kung fu skills in the TV series The Green Hornet (1966–1967), something that saw him elevated to the cover of Black Belt magazine for October 1967, before returning to Hong Kong to play his first starring role in The Big Boss (1971). So great was the demand for martial arts abilities that from the 1960s, training in Japanese martial arts became a part of American actor training programmes and from the 1970s tai chi grew in popularity as a way of training focus and producing a holistic form of mind-body training (Hunt 2003: 25). It is notable that Bob MacClaughlin (1972: 15) gives great prominence to the year 1971 as the real start of the craze for martial arts films, highlighting the role played by Tom Laughlin’s film Billy Jack (1971) with its significant and realistic hapkido fight scenes inspiring Hollywood producers to begin ‘romancing their neighbourhood karate instructors’ and paving the way for more than a dozen films to follow in its wake. Charles Bronson also features in two martial arts-themed films at that time, Red Sun (1971), which, before the TV series Kung Fu, situated Japanese martial arts in the American West, with a starring performance by Toshiro Mifune (Harvin 1972), and The Mechanic (1972) in which Bronson

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

273

­ imself takes up martial arts (MacClaughlin 1972: 19). MacClaughlin h (1972) also makes reference to the film Melinda and the ongoing production of the television series Kung Fu, starring David Carradine (1972–1975), and Enter the Dragon (1973), but these works were to be the ultimate extension of the craze, not its origin. Martial arts instructors and practitioners were quick to tap into the potential offered by film and television exposure and contemporary concerns with violence and crime. Honor Blackman’s book of self-defence was co-written by Blackman and her instructors, Joe and Doug Robinson, and explicitly made reference to her starring roles in The Avengers and Goldfinger, with the dustjacket proclaiming confidently that ‘A girl who can throw James Bond can really take care of herself: look at Pussy Galore of Goldfinger on the back of this jacket. Pussy used the same techniques as Cathy Gale, that other lovely blonde whose habit it was to toss strong men over her shoulder with a flick of her wrist’ (Blackman et al. 1965: dustjacket). The reader was directly encouraged to identify with these mass culture heroines: ‘In this book Honor Blackman tells how Pussy and Cathy did it, and how you can do it too’ (Blackman et al. 1965: dustjacket). The emphasis here was not on the pursuit of martial arts for its own sake, rather the book ‘deals with self-defence based on judo, and does not in any way pretend to be a manual on judo itself ’ (Blackman et al. 1965: 12). Judo, it is argued, actually originated in ancient China rather than Japan, being used by monks ‘to defend themselves against thieves and bandits’ (Blackman et al. 1965: 11). Immediately, then, judo is being linked in its essence to protection against crime and particularly robbery. It also encouraged the reader that judo ‘is essentially a form of combat where your opponent’s superior strength or size, far from being an automatic advantage are, in fact, used against him’ so that ‘using your knowledge of anatomy and leverage will allow you to turn the tables on the most powerful adversary if he does not possess a knowledge of judo’ (Blackman et al. 1965: 11–12). It was noted that judo was not only an excellent exercise, but ‘in a dangerous situation it is a means of self-­ defence which can be used with lethal effect’ (Blackman et al. 1965: 12). The first part of the book introduces students to the basics of judo (break-falls, throws, holds, and so on) before the second part moves on to more direct engagement with self-defence, also incorporating elements of

274 

F. Dodsworth

karate. It is noted that ‘Judo started out as a form of self-defence against aggression, and today … it remains the highest form of self-defence’ (Blackman et al. 1965: 71). This is configured as something particularly important in contemporary society, because although it is recognised that constant danger or marauding bands are unlikely to lurk on the average high street ‘in its own way, this is a remarkably violent age’, with robbery increasing tenfold from 2899 crimes of violence being recorded in 1939 to more than 20,000 in 1963 and more than 5000 people convicted of crimes of violence compared to 279 people in 1938 (Blackman et  al. 1965: 71). The Cambridge Institute of Criminology recorded 528 attacks in the London area in one year in the 1950s and 380 fights in pubs and cafés, and other surveys of London robberies recorded that the offenders were generally unarmed, either threatening or punching their victims; judo, then, would provide the victim with a ‘secret weapon’, and ‘you, of course, would have the confidence of knowing you were capable of looking after yourself under any circumstances’ (Blackman et al. 1965: 71). In the illustrations for the self-defence section, there is an effort to make the images as realistic as possible, with Blackman wearing high heels and fashionable clothes in contemporary domestic and urban contexts. What is striking from the contemporary perspective is the energy and aggression displayed by Blackman. Later publications targeted at women would emphasise granting oneself permission to release such aggression as the core of effective self-defence for women (Dodsworth forthcoming); this is not explicit here, but is implicit in the visual representation and the taken-for-granted right of women to respond aggressively not only to instances of violent attack, but also to more general unwanted sexual contact. Just as Honor Blackman utilised her visibility to encourage people into judo, so the ‘kung fu craze’ opened up the opportunity for practitioners to promote their own forms of self-defence. Bruce Lee’s posthumously published The Tao of Jeet Kune Do (1975) can hardly be seen as typical, given its association with Lee and its status as the ‘bible’ of the composite martial art ‘jeet kune do’ that he designed himself. However, on the cover of the 61st printing of 2008, the publishers claim to have sold 750,000 copies in nine languages, giving some idea of the levels of public interest in such texts (Lee 2008). Not quite so stratospherically successful, but

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

275

still in print in the twenty-first century, was David Chow and Richard Spangler’s book Kung Fu, first published in the USA by Doubleday in 1977 and recorded in the British Library Catalogue as published in the UK by David and Charles in 1978. The authors state that they published the book as a response to the many questions raised by the public in response to the 1970s Kung Fu television series, aiming to ‘reveal for the first time in English some of Kung Fu’s astounding secrets’ but more importantly from our perspective ‘to establish the historical basis of the most refined self-defense [sic] techniques in the world’ (Chow and Spangler 1982: ix–x). The TV series Kung Fu, it must be remembered, featured David Carradine as a half-American Shaolin monk who flees China to the American West in the nineteenth century, establishing a direct link between the lone avenger of the Western tradition and the martial arts avenger operating in the context of an absence of effective justice. One of the co-authors of the book, David Chow, was a technical advisor on the series, as well as a number of other Hollywood and television productions (Chow and Spangler 1982: 194). Kung fu, the authors argue, is ‘an expression of man’s indomitable will to survive adversity in the most direct, self-reliant manner possible’ (Chow and Spangler 1982: x). Asian martial arts, then, are already being interwoven with a discourse of self-reliance that resonates with the contemporary neo-liberal drive for responsibilisation. At the same time, they point out that the Chinese characters for wushu, what the authors refer to as ‘the actual Chinese term for martial arts’, symbolise the use of (military, or here martial) power ‘to subdue violent disorder and promote peace’ by doing away with the use of weapons; martial arts were to be used ‘to serve and protect’ (Chow and Spangler 1982: xi–xii). Again, the purportedly ancient martial arts known in the West as ‘kung fu’ are being woven into an American cultural discourse on the preservation of order, in this case by aligning the practice of kung fu with the mission embodied in the motto of the Los Angeles Police Department: ‘To Protect and to Serve’; the martial artist, then, is their own personal peace officer, but one able to pacify without the weapons that were becoming configured as such a problematic part of American urban life. The book follows a common discursive strategy in such volumes by locating the art in question in a narrative that mixes speculative, mythic

276 

F. Dodsworth

history and partially documented records which are central to the legitimisation of expertise in the field. The invocation of an ancient past functions not only as a means of defining expertise and authenticity, but as a form of defence against alternative traditions or attacks on credibility (Farrer and Whalen-Bridge 2011b: 8, 18; see also Bowman 2015: 56–66). In this particular instance, Chow and Spangler draw on texts like John Pfeiffer, The Emergence of Man, and James Liu, The Chinese Knight-Errant, in order to provide some foundation for their argument. However, what is important at this juncture is the way in which this introduction naturalises conflict as the condition of human life, ranging from the Palaeolithic period, when ‘Survival of the mightiest was the natural process of life’, through to the inevitability of human conflict when humans began to establish co-operative groups and territorial rights: ‘Inevitably, man was fighting against man. These haphazard struggles for primitive existence led gradually to the origins of preconceived self-defense techniques’ which were, they claim ‘perfected in China’ (Chow and Spangler 1982: 1–2). Pursuing these ‘perfected’ arts, proponents were ‘to become Chun-­ tzu, morally and physically superior men’ (Chow and Spangler 1982: 2). In doing so, once again according to the rather romanticised account of the ‘knight-errant’ tradition in China, the ancient martial artists were not mindless mercenaries, but operated with their own chivalric codes serving ‘ordinary citizens in distress’, so that ‘In their courageous, Robin Hood-like concern for justice, they would offer their swords in defence of those wronged while “risking death for others without a thought for their own safety”’ (Chow and Spangler 1982: 3). Again, the trope of the martial artist as protector of the weak through their moral and physical superiority is mobilised. Such principles were the basis through which ‘men in a stable society live together in harmony’ (Chow and Spangler 1982: 3). Knowledge and practice of the martial arts, then, was the key to social peace. The threats to this peace, and the ways in which kung fu enabled a response to them that would protect the practitioner or any other innocent victims, are clearly defined, and examples are frequently given. For example, at one point it is argued that when faced with a ‘no-holds-barred street mob’, a kung fu master could ‘hit efficiently’ ‘at least one hundred twenty times within sixty seconds, although this would never be required

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

277

since only a few naturally responsive blows (as a result of proper training) would be enough to deter a single assailant’ (Chow and Spangler 1982: 19). The 12-man mob ‘could be rendered defenseless in twelve seconds or less with a master’s automatic and efficacious movements’ (Chow and Spangler 1982: 19–20). However, although the illustrations of practical techniques in this book certainly address what might have been considered to be common threats in the twentieth-century urban environment, such as defences against wrist grabs, hair grabs, lapel grabs, headlocks, chokes, and so on, as well as kicks and punches and knife attacks, what is striking is that these techniques are illustrated by people wearing Chinese dress for kung fu practice (Chow and Spangler 1982: 92–137). This might have served to emphasise the authenticity of the practice and to connect the practice of Chinese arts to the practicalities of self-defence in the contemporary West, not least by establishing a visual link to kung fu films and particularly to the television series that spawned the book, and which was set in the nineteenth century. Other publications, however, took a different route, as Honor Blackman had done in our previous example. For example, another publication from 1977, which built on the wave of interest in kung fu and which bore the name of Donn Draeger, who was a major figure in the dissemination of knowledge of Asian martial arts in the West, also sought to inform its readers about an exotic subject but mixed references to the Eastern traditions with examples in contemporary dress.1 This introduction to ‘Phoenix-Eye Fist’, or Chuka Shaolin, a relatively obscure form of wushu emanating from the Chinese community in Malaysia and Singapore, also acknowledged the significance of the so-called kung fu movie in generating interest in Chinese culture and ‘hand-to-hand fighting arts’, albeit like Chow and Spangler, lamenting the ‘generally fanciful and distorted’ presentation of Chinese ‘combative arts’, which the book sought to correct (Leong and Draeger 1977: 7). Despite beginning with the standard mythical-historical background to the art, the book was clear that it was ultimately intended for self-defence: ‘Who can validly deny that a simple and practical system like Chuka Shaolin is useful in  The author purchased this edition, which is the third, 1985 printing, in a bookshop in Cambridge at some point in the late 1980s or early 1990s. 1

278 

F. Dodsworth

our modern world? It is a regrettable fact that the world today is full of unscrupulous people who commit acts of violence and terrorism. Therefore the average citizen will certainly find it worthwhile to master some practical means of self-defense’ (Leong and Draeger 1977: 7). Chuka Shaolin, then, was being sold not only as an esoteric and elegant art, but as an effective form of self-defence in an age of violence. The bulk of this text is concerned with the forms and mechanics of the art of Chuka Shaolin, but the final chapter on ‘Self-Defense Applications’ concerns situations that, although hypothetical, ‘are, nevertheless, real in the sense that such things do often occur in everyday life’ (Leong and Draeger 1977: 149). These situations, such as defences against common punches, are illustrated by models dressed in everyday twentieth-century clothing to enhance the realism of the situation (Leong and Draeger 1977: 151–167). Such representational strategies became common for illustrating the (real world) ‘applications’ of martial arts training. It was the intrusion of ‘the real’, however, that was to become one of the dynamics that saw kung fu displaced as the vogue martial art of the day. In part this can be attributed to the vogue for the ninja, launched by the 1980 film Enter the Ninja and the promotional work of Stephen K. Hayes (Hayes 2013; Vandehey 1989; West 2006: 218). A different challenge, however, came from a renewed focus on the ‘reality’ of violence and the practicalities of self-defence, a focus that initially emerged from the women’s self-defence movement and which became increasingly prominent across the self-­ defence world in the 1980s and 1990s, sufficient to constitute a new form of expertise in protection.

(Self-)Protection As we saw at the start of this chapter, there have been self-defence texts targeted at women since the early years of the twentieth century. The 1970s and 1980s, however, saw some significant developments in those texts. Where most self-defence manuals before that time focused on techniques for responding to assault, such as how to use an opponent’s weight against them, how to escape grips or holds from particular angles, and so on, from the 1970s in the USA and the 1980s in the UK, women’s

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

279

s­elf-­defence came to focus more on attitudinal issues: building confidence, situation management and deterring potential assailants through deportment or verbal response, and engaging with the inhibitions most women felt about aggressiveness. The prototype was probably the Model Mugging programme founded in the USA in 1971, which pitted padded male ‘muggers’ against women learning self-defence, producing a high-­ adrenaline situation that attempted to mimic the reality of an assault; the course worked on the assumption that successful assaults stemmed not from the physical inability of women to defend themselves, but from their tendency to freeze rather than fight, a response to the way women are conditioned by patriarchal society to believe that they cannot resist male aggression (McCaughey 1997: 60–62). It is easy to see an overlap here with the more general ‘preventive turn’ in crime control noted above; but there is also a more general overlap or perhaps development into a wider discourse on the ‘reality’ of crime that places much more emphasis on attitude, emotion, and situation management than it does on technique. Elements of this are also evident in various forms of ‘true crime’ and ‘hard man’ literature, further aspects of which will be explored below. The women’s self-defence movement emerged in the 1970s as part of the wider feminist movement and the campaign against male violence that accompanied it, but it also tapped into the concerns with rising violent crime that were a wider feature of contemporary culture. One British self-defence manual targeted at women in the early 1980s wrote of the ‘epidemic of violence’ that was consuming British society and included a range of accounts of terrible assaults from the newspapers (Biffen and Search 1983: 9). The explicit aim of the authors was ‘To release women from men’s physical dominance … to remove the last barrier to equality’ (Biffen and Search 1983: 10). As with the example of Model Mugging, the problem was the perception of female weakness, which created their vulnerability: men attacked women on the presumption that they could do so with impunity (Adams and Webster 1986: 7). The answer to this problem was ‘you must change your attitude … It is the survival of the strongest (not physical strength but mental strength). This is the most difficult lesson to learn. You do not need strength, you need a change of attitude’ in order to defend yourself (Adams and Webster 1986: 10). Doing so involved advice on controlling the visible signs of fear (Biffen

280 

F. Dodsworth

and Search 1983: 50–55) but also on ‘reprogramming’ the body so that one’s general deportment and response to fear changed, unconsciously communicating to an attacker that you are not a soft target (Houseman 1993: 42–48). There was advice on situational awareness, use of public transport, where to walk on the pavement, how to use everyday objects as weapons, and a more general drive to inculcate self-esteem in women, which would give them the inner strength to fight back if necessary but which, it was hoped, would deter attackers by virtue of the appearance of strength and preparedness (Biffen and Search 1983: 15–20; Quinn 1993: 14–16; this section is a brief summary of Dodsworth forthcoming). These texts did contain some physical techniques for getting out of holds, or for disabling attackers, but by the 1990s, the texts were focusing much more on the psychological dimension, on encouraging women to shape and to publicly communicate a persona that was self-confident, self-­ valuing, and free from dependence on, or fear of, men. A woman ‘with her wits about her’, as one American volume on women’s self-defence success stories put it, could protect herself; she simply had to ignore the police advice not to fight back for fear of being hurt more, because all the research evidence, and the anecdotal evidence of hundreds of rape crisis callers, suggested quite the opposite (Caignon and Groves 1989: xxi). Recent research has provided further empirical support for this and for the effectiveness of self-defence training as a form of assault prevention and self-protection (Hollander 2004, 2014, 2016). Expertise in women’s self-defence was framed in various ways, but one of the most potent was the appeal to experience in the ‘reality’ of violence. Unlike the US context, in which there were developed and explicitly feminist, female-fronted self-defence programmes for women (Hollander 2004; McCaughey 1997; Searles and Berger 1987), most of the British texts were written by men for women, sometimes with a female co-author. The justification for this was the experience of those particular men either as martial artists or more often with a background in the military (see Dodsworth forthcoming). This appeal to the ‘real’ as the ground of expertise, and the power to protect, is comparable to that made by the police (see Chap. 5), but the proliferation of new roles in the security field, described above, meant that claims to expertise in that field were no longer the preserve of the police. The claim to ‘the real’ became

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

281

a feature of martial arts practice more broadly in the 1990s, particularly under the influence of self-defence-oriented arts and the popularity of mixed martial arts (Bowman 2015: 109–135). However, it also figured much more widely in the fields of self-defence and protection, and the appeal to ‘the real’ to some extent displaced the appeal to tradition and technique in the martial arts as the primary site of expertise in protection. One of the security fields that became particularly prominent in the 1980s and 1990s was door work: the ‘bouncer’ has become a common feature at nightclubs and some large or centrally located pubs across Britain. Considerable research has now been conducted into the subject by criminologists (e.g. Hobbs et  al. 2003), but the public image and impact of door work has been less thoroughly researched. However, doormen have produced some very prominent pieces of self-shaping (Greenblatt 1980), and I will give two very different examples of the ways in which the experience of violence has been used by doormen to produce a profile of themselves as experts in the negotiation and commission of violence and, at least in one case, as experts in protection. Both have a grounding in the martial arts but also exceed and sometimes critique the effectiveness of those arts as the foundation for self-defence; and both, like the literature on women’s self-defence, emphasise the affective and attitudinal dimension of self-defence and self-protection. In doing so they have been involved in the production of a public image for commercial consumption in both literature and film, no doubt involving financial gain based around that consumption itself, personal satisfaction, and identity production and projection, but this work also has consequences for public perceptions of security and the marketing of the authors themselves and their ideas as security experts. The two men concerned here are two of the most prominent ‘celebrity’ doormen of their time: Stellakis Stylianou and Geoff Thompson. Stylianou and Thompson both worked as doormen in the 1980s and 1990s, the former in London and the surrounding area, the latter in Coventry, and both have created a public image based on their success in the field. Both feature in Kate Kray’s (2005) Ultimate Hard Bastards, and there is a crossover here with the ‘hard man’ and ‘true crime’ literature; however, the way they have shaped their respective images, and the consequences for security culture more broadly, are very different. Stylianou articulates a physical

282 

F. Dodsworth

­ asculinity in which his capacity to protect the public depends on the m fact that he ‘sees clearly, acts fairly, and is prepared to show extreme violence where necessary’ (Tony Papa-Adams, introduction to Stylianou 2013), whereas Thompson offers a very different appraisal of the psychological reality of violent encounters, one that was to play an important role in the publicisation of ‘realistic’ self-defence in the 1990s. Like many of the security entrepreneurs we have encountered in previous chapters, Thompson constructs his expertise in opposition to that of established authorities, critiquing and problematising the claims put forward by some martial arts practitioners that they are able to provide effective systems for personal protection. Stellakis Stylianou, who styles himself as ‘Britain’s hardest bouncer’, was part of the generation that saw what was once a niche profession became massified in the 1980s and 1990s, and this is central to his ‘rags to riches’ story of ascent from illiterate poverty in Plumstead (south London), shooting pigeons for food and struggling in school because he did not learn English until the age of seven, to a well-known figure on the London protection scene (Stylianou 2013: ch. 1 loc. 113, 167). Stylianou made his name working the door of the first Whitbread pub to have bouncers in the 1980s, the Station Hotel in Welling, south east London (Stylianou 2013: ch. 1 loc. 113). His drive to build himself up physically was driven by a ‘sickly’ childhood (ch. 1 loc. 144) and the discovery of judo, which he was forced to practice at school (ch. 1 loc. 272). Judo gave him the confidence to face off and defeat his school bully, although he notes that his new-found confidence also made him disruptive in class (ch. 1 loc. 296). His metalwork teacher at school, Terry Kilroy, was head doorman at the Henry Cooper pub on Old Kent Road and had been a British champion wrestler, but it was John Madden, head doorman of the Music Machine (originally the Camden Theatre and best known as the Camden Palace, now KOKO), who gave him his break, asking him to look after a personal appearance by Sid Vicious (ch. 1 loc. 384). At this stage of his apprenticeship, due to his youth (being only 18), the other doormen protected him somewhat (ch. 2 loc. 445–454). In those days he used physical intimidation as both a means of protection and intimidation, robbing petrol stations by threatening the staff, as well as working the doors at Woolwich Polytechnic (now Greenwich University) (ch. 2

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

283

loc. 470). Not much is said about the nature of his apprenticeship at the Music Machine, although in his interview with Kate Kray, he once again credits Madden with teaching him the ‘dos and don’ts’ of the job (Kray 2005: 210); he also notes that he ran the door at Woolwich Polytechnic alone, and initially he also worked at the Station Hotel in Woolwich alone; this is, therefore, very much a ‘self-made’ story of learning the ropes through a series of physical encounters that teach him the dangers of the job. The nature of that job is very clear: Stylianou defines himself as a ‘threat to the unruly’ (Stylianou 2013: ch 1 loc. 144), and there is a clear sense in which he sees his role as protecting society from ‘the unruly’ by imposing rule upon them. This is made evident in his description of his time at the Station Hotel in Welling, which stood opposite a pub called The Plough ‘where all the fucking rough lot used to drink, the building types that wore jeans and couldn’t get in to the Station’ (ch. 3 loc. 735). His job was to stop ‘the ragged ones’ from coming in and to ‘throw the bloody rowdy ones out’, remarking about issues with ‘some yobs’, ‘three bloody skinheads’, or ‘one little toe-rag or another’ (ch. 3 loc. 815, 942, 1024), common British terms that mark distinctions between the ‘rough’ and the ‘respectable’, between ‘civil’ and ‘uncivil’ society. This job became more and more taxing, however, as ‘Throughout the eighties the level of violence increased dramatically around South London’, and he had to recruit new staff all the time ‘until there was a real pack of people working there trying to keep the scum out’ (ch. 4 loc. 1087). This was where his career took off: ‘I didn’t know at the time I was creating a fucking legend for myself, but that’s exactly what I was doing’. He also became a figure on the bodybuilding scene, opening a gym which produced some sports champions (ch. 4 loc. 1167). There is, then, a basic physicality to Stylianou’s power to protect, to provide security, whether for the respectable pub-goer or in more formal versions of personal protection. Ultimately, however, his ‘legend’ for Kate Kray lay in his experience: ‘he has been there, done it, and got every fucking T-shirt available’, giving an impression of being ‘bomb-proof ’ (Kray 2005: 205). In terms of the door work itself, Stylianou frequently mentions the violence, but it is rarely described in great detail and does not seem to be particularly theorised, although he does seem to have a preference for

284 

F. Dodsworth

rendering people unconscious with a judo stranglehold, and he achieved a black belt in the art, so was clearly highly skilled. He does, however, note that the door staff developed strategies for negotiating violence, so, for example, they kept a stock of clean black jackets behind the door, so that if there was a confrontation, they could change their jackets before the police arrived and it would not look as though they had been fighting (Stylianou 2013: ch. 4 loc. 1271). He also notes its psychological impact, recognising that as it got more violent, he was getting ‘edgy, I was really jumpy all the time’, ‘the level of violence was not just escalating, but it was starting to get to me as well’ (ch. 4 loc. 1247, 1263). Essentially he and his fellow doormen were, like the policemen of the Victorian era we encountered in Chap. 5, engaged in a physical contest for control with the ‘rough’ element of society, the ‘braying mob of drunken louts’ (ch. 4 loc. 1337) who objected to their exclusion from the new, more ‘upmarket’ pub, the Station Hotel, with its ‘smart’ dress, no jeans policy. Unlike the policemen encountered previously, however, the battle for control is not over the streets, but over access to, and use of, the private premises of the ‘public’ house. One such occasion is particularly vividly described in which Stylianou is involved in a verbal altercation with the ‘yobs’ at The Plough, continuing the ongoing dispute between their customers and the door staff of the Station, who are clearly seen as rivals or targets. This leads to a ‘free for all’ in the street and the showering of the Station with bottles and glasses, while ‘Stilks’ is held back by his fellow doormen yelling ‘come on, ya scum bastards, come and fight’ (ch. 4 loc. 1311–1328). After enough contests over the door, ‘Stilks’ writes that he became something of a ‘face’, that is, a well-known hard man, a fact which could be useful in preventing things ‘going off’ at all, for fear of the consequences (ch. 5 loc. 1403). If it did ‘go off’, however, the first rule of being a good bouncer was ‘to get over there and get stuck in and don’t think about it. I never, ever think about my own safety. I always think about the safety of others, the safety of people in the club’ (ch. 5 loc. 1418). He acknowledges the thrill of the fight, but this is justified by the fact that ‘you’re putting someone right. They shouldn’t have been doing what they were doing in the first place’ (ch. 5 loc. 1418). The idea is to make the manager of the club feel safe and to create the feeling that someone is in control: ‘it’s that aura of control that marks out a fucking good bouncer’

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

285

(ch. 5 loc. 1468). Violence, then, is a way of ordering the world, of righting wrongs, and protecting others. The capacity to protect others depends on physical resilience, a degree of selflessness, and a capacity to dish out high levels of violence to others. Geoff Thompson’s account of his time on the doors is very different. Like ‘Stilks’, Thompson had a background in the martial arts, which was central to his physical ability to work the door. However, Thompson’s drive for entering that world, and his response to it, took him in a very distinctive direction that led to him becoming a prominent figure in the field of realistic self-defence. The experience that provided the basis for his claims to expertise was more than 300 fights on and around the doors of pubs and clubs in Coventry from the early 1980s onwards. He records encounters involving glassings, occasional use of weapons, kicking, punching, and stamping, often stemming from very trivial slights or manufactured incidents sparked by people specifically looking for a fight, posturing, or defending reputation, or disguised attacks, and occasional melees. Although these are often ‘one-on-one’ incidents, they take a very different form to the standard face-off evident in sports fighting or in martial arts films, which he sees as focused on the aesthetic to the detriment of effectiveness (Thompson 2004b: Foreword loc. 201). As he puts it in the introduction to his autobiography Watch My Back, ‘All this bollocks about karate, about this range or that range, about bridging the gap, setting up, weakening them with a kick—there’s no need, just hit the fuckers … very hard!’ (Thompson 2009: untitled section following ‘Coventry’, loc. 112). Most of Thompson’s encounters, with a few rare exceptions, were brief and devastating, following the pattern of the ‘three-­ second fight’ that he was later to theorise more extensively (Thompson 2004b). What is most significant about the ‘three-second fight’, however, and the encounters described in Watch My Back (Thompson 2009) is that the three seconds in question are those before, not during the fight. In the three-second fight, ‘the leading technique is dialogue and deception and, more often than not, one blow—usually a punch—decides the outcome’ (Thompson 2004b: Foreword loc. 241). For Thompson, successful self-­ defence is all about controlling the impact of the adrenaline rush that overwhelms the body once it enters ‘fight or flight’ mode: ‘This is where the key to fighting lies—controlling your arse so it doesn’t go from the

286 

F. Dodsworth

size of a sixpence to the size of a dustbin lid—making yourself step forward when every fibre of your body wants to do the Italian march and run like the wind blows’ (Thompson 2009: ch. 1 loc. 359, quotation at ch. 4 loc. 750). Ultimately, for Thompson, the self-defence situation involves being confronted by, and often overwhelmed, by fear, and how one manages that fear, whether one freezes or takes pre-emptive action, will often decide the outcome. Thompson went into door work quite deliberately, but for an unusual reason: to conquer his fear, having been beset by depression and a pronounced fear of violence and fighting from a young age. Seeing Bruce Lee overcome all adversaries on film inspired him to take up martial arts, but he found that accomplishment there did not reduce his fear. Instead, he focused on educating himself out of depression and fear and produced a list of his greatest fears, at the top of which was violent confrontation; the solution to this, he decided, was to face that fear by starting to work on the doors (Thompson 2009: ch. 1 loc. 390–431). He states that the reality of door work quickly forced him to adapt his karate training, and to add boxing and judo skills as well, but it also made him engage with the question of attitude and cultivating the ‘bottle’ to use it, something which, he asserts, can be learned, and which he attempts to teach in self-­ defence training (Thompson 2009: ch. 2). The rationale for learning self-defence and how to protect oneself is clearly spelled out: ‘The seemingly mindless violence that certain individuals are prepared to inflict on others is not restricted only to nightly venues in Coventry, but can now be found daily on our streets, and even the average man from those streets will find something in this book which may at some time prove life-saving. Not “quick fix” physical techniques but attitude, which in certain circumstances may be all that will see him through’ (Peter Consterdine, introducing Thompson 2009: loc. 170). Technique is not entirely irrelevant: Thompson (2004b: ch. 1) emphasises the importance of having a ‘main artillery’, a backup and a general game-plan, if possible, in a situation. However, the main principles when in a threatening situation are ‘first to avoid, second to escape, third to use dissuasive verbal and, as a last resort, to be as ferocious as the situation demands’ (Thompson 2004b: ch. 1 loc. 300). Prevention and avoidance are the ideal, we are taught, but both these and proper preparedness to

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

287

survive a violent encounter depend on developing proper awareness of the rituals associated with attack, and the importance, should it arise, of pre-emptive action, rather than the kind of ‘unworkable’ and ‘unrealistic’ techniques that are ‘the perfunctory by-products of most defence books’ (Thompson 2004b: ch. 2 loc. 348). This is because the reality, for Thompson, is that most violent encounters are neither ambushes nor match fights (though both also occur), but are ‘attacks preceded by ritualistic, though often innate, priming entrapments’ (Thompson 2004b: ch. 2 loc. 356). Learning how to read and respond to such pre-attack rituals, then, is at the heart of Thompson’s approach, as is what he explicitly terms ‘target hardening’, terminology directly imported from the literature on crime prevention. As he puts it, most attackers are cowards and ‘looking for victims, those that are in code white and/or detached from the herd. Alone or with a team, these people, due to their proverbial yellow streaks, will not cross your path if you practice target hardening’ or, more succinctly, ‘If you can spot the ritual you can stop the crime’ (Thompson 2004a: 36, 37). Thompson is one of the pioneers in the field, but he is far from alone, not least because much of his work has been conducted alongside Peter Consterdine, who also emerged from the martial arts and door work and who now operates in the world of personal security, where he also produces manuals on bodyguard work or ‘close protection’ (Consterdine 2006). Consterdine’s work, like Thompson’s, with which it is closely aligned, also stresses the importance of preparedness and prevention, and the dynamics of the encounter when unavoidable, but he outlines a broad approach to personal security, from the home and vehicle to the work environment, encouraging the reader to ‘be your own bodyguard’ and engage in what he calls ‘self-protection’ rather than self-defence (Consterdine 1997). Similar work has also appeared in the USA, particularly that of Rory Miller (2008, 2011) and the wide-ranging work and web presence of Marc ‘Animal’ MacYoung.2 Learning self-protection, from this perspective, is not about learning a particular set of techniques to respond to a physical assault, although this should also be done to an extent, but with the proviso that the flooding of the body with adrenaline  See https://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/ last accessed 1 January 2019.

2

288 

F. Dodsworth

will hinder the deployment of fine motor skills, rendering sophisticated techniques difficult to enact. Rather, learning to protect oneself means educating yourself about the nature and rituals of violence and recognising the differences between status contests and predation and the different kinds of attack and attacker involved; it means learning the basic psychology of offenders and also of the fear response. The overall drive is to understand and manage the psychological dynamic involved in an attack and one’s own response to it, with the aim of disrupting and deterring the plans of the attacker. Both Thompson and Stylianou, then, configure the contemporary urban environment as a place of extreme, and often surreptitious violence, driven by psychological dynamics that are resistant to the ideals of ‘civility’ or politeness and which stand far from the rules and assumptions of order and restraint usually imagined to regulate daily life. Their encounters often bear little relationship to the kind of ‘duels’ which characterise much of the martial arts imaginary. Thompson does frequently engage in one-on-one encounters, but they are short, usually one-punch or one-kick affairs, followed by the administration of what amount to punishment beatings as a way of deterring future reprisals and warning off other potential antagonists. Even where, however, both he and ‘Stilks’ also engaged in a range of messy, chaotic encounters and even where there was one opponent, there were generally elements of disguise or dissimulation in the build-up to conflict. Their responses to these are very different: Stylianou offers a form of protection dependent on a certain kind of physicality, one centred around the gym and physical intimidation and backed up with some martial arts knowledge. This form of physicality is not impossible for women, but it is closely associated with masculinity in a particular form. Thompson’s approach is very different, focusing, like much of the recent literature on ‘self-protection’, on the psychological dynamic of the violent encounter, understanding its build­up, how to avoid it, and, if all else fails, how to manage the fear and adrenaline that dominates the actual physical encounter. Most of Thompson’s work is not gender specific, although much of it does concern men primarily because it is usually men who indulge in the status conflict that Rory Miller (2008: ch. 3, 2011: 26) calls the ‘monkey dance’. It is clear, however, from earlier work on women’s self-defence, which in

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

289

many ways pioneered this approach, that this is part of a much broader reorientation of security expertise away from the kind of responsive mode promoted in earlier forms of martial arts-inspired self-defence training and towards a concept of self-protection that draws on the language and some basic psychological ideas comparable to that deployed in the field of situational crime prevention. The drive for ‘responsibilisation’ in the criminal justice field of the 1980s and 1990s (Garland 1996, 2001) opened up a field of opportunity for people like Thompson and Stylianou to establish themselves as experts in protection, providing security for a public beset by visions of an ‘urban nightmare’ populated by muggers, rapists, drunken disorder, drug gangs, and knife crime (Macek 2006). Like the Victorian policeman, many of these new actors, Stylianou and Thompson being classic examples, were working-class men who were now just as often cast in the role of protector rather than subordinate protected. The protection they provided, whether in person or as security experts, not only gave them a public profile and prestige, but also, in the case of women’s self-defence and the wider self-protection literature, opened out the possibility for their students to reduce their dependence on patriarchal protection. In the process, however, they also drove another significant shift in the concept of protection, by effecting a transformation in the target of anxiety or the source of vulnerability. Although the distinction between ‘civil’ and ‘uncivil’ society remained central to the accounts of both Stylianou and Thompson, and, indeed, to other writers in the genre, the preeminent problem in this literature is particular forms of masculinity focused around contests over honour or a predatory mentality. As we have seen, this was not the first time in history that masculinity has been configured as a dangerous source of violence that needed to be civilised (see Barker-­ Benfield 1992; Shoemaker 2001, 2002), but it was certainly distinctive in form and represented part of a wider shift from a view of patriarchal masculinity as the source of stability and order and the foundation of public protection to masculinity as the source of much violence and disorder. The focus on masculinity provided by feminism not only called into question the role of patriarchal masculinity in the subordination, and often brutalisation, of women, but created much greater awareness of the violence faced by women on an everyday basis and gave a new

290 

F. Dodsworth

­ imension to our understanding of the nature and extent of violence and d crime and its social impact (Walby and Myhill 2001; Walby et al. 2014). This prompted greater theoretical sophistication in the discussion of one of the most overwhelming features of crime in general and violent crime in particular: it is committed largely by men, a fact that has remained remarkably consistent throughout history and across cultures (Eisner 2003; Muchembled 2012; Newburn and Stanko 1994). Both crime and crime control are now understood as vehicles through which particular masculinities can be accomplished or enacted, vehicles through which people can test and confirm their role identities (Stryker 2007; Stryker and Burke 2000). The range of agencies through which such roles could be enacted extended beyond the institutions of public protection, principally the police, to include doormen, self-defence instructors, bodyguards, and security officers. In many of these roles, physical masculinity remained central; but this was increasingly challenged by recognition of the emotional dynamic that both men and women needed to engage with in order to successfully protect themselves. By the 1990s it was evident that if the ‘problem’ of giving oneself permission to use violence to protect oneself became most obvious in women’s self-defence first, it was a problem widely shared in a period in which, since the 1960s, the exercise of violence was increasingly problematised through programmes of moral regulation (Hunt 1999), most notably driving campaigns against the death penalty, police brutality, domestic abuse, and corporeal punishment in schools and of one’s own children, to name just the most prominent. These developments ask complex questions about the relationship between transformations in protective masculinities and a putative ‘civilising process’, which we will address in the conclusion.

References Adams, F., & Webster, G. (1986). Hands Off! Hap-ki-do Self-defence for Women. Norwich: Jarrold. Anonymous. (1909, December 18). The World of Women. Penny Illustrated Paper. Anonymous. (1916, March 15). Women Police. A Demand for Official Recognition. The Times. Atlas, R.  I. (2008). 21st Century Security and CPTED: Designing for Critical Infrastructure Protection and Crime Prevention. Boca Raton, FL: Auerbach.

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

291

Barker-Benfield, G.  J. (1992). The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century England. London: University of Chicago Press. Barry, A., Osborne, T., & Rose, N. (Eds.). (1996). Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government. London: UCL Press. Bauman, Z. (2006). Liquid Fear. Cambridge: Polity. Beattie, J. M. (2012). The First English Detectives: The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750–1840. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Black Belt. (1973, October). And the Boom Goes On. Black Belt Yearbook, pp. 67–71. Biffen, C., & Search, G. (1983). Hit Back! Self-Defence for Women. Glasgow: Fontana. Blackman, H., with Robinson, J., & Robinson, D. (1965). Honor Blackman’s Book of Self-defence. London: André Deutsch. Bland, L. (2002). Banishing the Beast: Feminism, Sex and Morality. London: Tauris Parke. Bowman, P. (2010). Theorising Bruce Lee: Film, Fantasy, Fighting, Philosophy. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Bowman, P. (2011). The Fantasy Corpus of Martial Arts, or, The ‘Communication’ of Bruce Lee. In D.  S. Farrer & J.  Whalen-Bridge (Eds.), Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a Transnational World (pp. 61–96). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Bowman, P. (2013). Beyond Bruce Lee: Chasing the Dragon Through Film, Philosophy and Popular Culture. Chichester: Wallflower / Columbia University Press. Bowman, P. (2015). Martial Arts Studies: Disrupting Disciplinary Boundaries. London: Rowman and Littlefield. Brown, B. (1997). Global Bodies/Postnationalities: Charles Johnson’s Consumer Culture. Representations, 58, 24–48. The Budokwai. (n.d.). 100 Years of the Budokwai. Retrieved December 10, 2018, from http://www.budokwai.co.uk/history. Burchell, G., Gordon, C., & Miller, P. (Eds.). (1991). The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. With Two Lectures by and an Interview with Michel Foucault. London: Harvester. Caignon, D., & Groves, G. (1989). Her Wits About Her: Self-Defence Success Stories. London: Women’s Press. Carlson, J.  D. (2012). ‘I Don’t Dial 911’: American Gun Politics and the Problem of Policing. British Journal of Criminology, 52(6), 1113–1132.

292 

F. Dodsworth

Carlson, J.  D. (2014). States, Subjects and Sovereign Power: Lessons from Global Gun Cultures. Theoretical Criminology, 18(3), 335–353. Carter, P. (2001). Men and the Emergence of Polite Society: Britain, 1660–1800. London: Routledge. Chow, D., & Spangler, R. (1982). Kung Fu: History, Philosophy, Technique. Orange, CA: Unique Publications. Originally Doubleday, 1977. Clark, A. (1995). The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class. London: University of California Press. Clarke, R. V. G. (1980). ‘Situational’ Crime Prevention: Theory and Practice. British Journal of Criminology, 20(2), 136–147. Clarke, R. V. G. (2005). Seven Misconceptions of Situational Crime Prevention. In N.  Tilley (Ed.), Handbook of Crime Prevention and Community Safety (pp. 39–70). Cullompton: Willan. Consterdine, P. (1997). Streetwise: The Complete Manual of Personal Security and Self Defence: Be Your Own Bodyguard. Leeds: Protection Publications. Consterdine, P. (2006). The Modern Bodyguard: The Complete Manual of Close Protection Training (4th ed.). Leeds: Protection Publications. Crowe, T. D. (2013). Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (3rd ed., Revised by L. J. Fennelly). Kidlington: Elsevier. Davies, C. (1975). Permissive Britain: Social Change in the Sixties and Seventies. London: Pitman. Dodsworth, F. (2007). Police and the Prevention of Crime: Commerce, Temptation and the Corruption of the Body Politic, from Fielding to Colquhoun. British Journal of Criminology, 47(3), 439–454. Dodsworth, F. (2008). The Idea of Police in Eighteenth-Century England: Discipline, Reformation, Superintendence, c. 1780–1800. Journal of the History of Ideas, 69(4), 583–604. Dodsworth, F. (2012). Men on a Mission: Masculinity, Violence and the Self-­ Presentation of Policemen in England, c. 1870–1914. In D.  G. Barrie & S.  Broomall (Eds.), A History of Police and Masculinities, 1700–2010 (pp. 123–140). London: Routledge. Dodsworth, F. (2014). Introduction to Volume 1: The Idea of Police. In F. Dodsworth (Ed.), The Making of the Modern Police: Volume 1: The ‘Idea’ of Policing (pp. xi–xxvi). P.  Lawrence (General Ed.). London: Pickering and Chatto. Dodsworth, F. (2015). Epochalism and the Society of Security: Continuity and Change in Self-Defence Culture. In M. Lytje, T. K. Nielsen, & M. Ottovay Jorgensen (Eds.), Challenging Ideas? Theory and Empirical Research in the Social Sciences (pp. 88–107). Cambridge: Scholar Press.

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

293

Dodsworth, F. (forthcoming). Fighting for the Right to the Streets: The Politics and Poetics of Protection in Women’s Self-Defence. In A. Philippopoulos-­ Mihalopoulos & S.  Watson (Eds.), Spatial Justice in the City. London: Routledge. Draper, H. (1978). Private Police. London: Harvester. Dunning, E., & Hughes, J.  (2013). Norbert Elias and Modern Sociology: Knowledge, Interdependence, Power, Process. London: Bloomsbury. Eisner, M. (2003). Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime. Crime and Justice, 30, 83–142. Ericson, R.  V., & Haggerty, K.  D. (1997). Policing the Risk Society. Oxford: Clarendon. Farrer, D. S., & Whalen-Bridge, J. (Eds.). (2011a). Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a Transnational World. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Farrer, D.  S., & Whalen-Bridge, J.  (2011b). Introduction: Martial Arts, Transnationalism, and Embodied Knowledge. In D. S. Farrer & J. Whalen-­ Bridge (Eds.), Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a Transnational World (pp.  1–25). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Fletcher, J.  (1997). Violence and Civilization: An Introduction to the Work of Norbert Elias. Cambridge: Polity. Foucault, M. (1980). The Confessions of the Flesh. In C. Gordon (Ed.), Power / Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (pp. 194–228). New York: Pantheon. Garland, D. (1996). The Limits of the Sovereign State: Strategies of Crime Control in Contemporary Society. British Journal of Criminology, 36(4), 445–471. Garland, D. (2000). Ideas, Institutions and Situational Crime Prevention. In A. von Hirsch, D. Garland, & A. Wakefield (Eds.), Ethical and Social Perspectives on Situational Crime Prevention (pp. 1–16). Oxford: Hart. Garland, D. (2001). The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. London: University of Chicago Press. Gilling, D. (1997). Crime Prevention: Theory, Policy and Practice. London: UCL Press. Glaessner, V. (1974). Kung Fu: Cinema of Vengeance. London: Lorimer. Godfrey, E. (2010). Masculinity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature: Duelling with Danger. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Godfrey, E. (2012). Femininity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature and Society: From Dagger Fans to Suffragettes. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

294 

F. Dodsworth

Goodger, B. C. (1981). The Development of Judo in Britain: A Sociological Study. PhD Thesis, University of London. Goold, B., Loader, I., & Thumala, A. (2010). Consuming Security?: Tools for a Sociology of Security Consumption. Theoretical Criminology, 14(1), 3–30. Greenblatt, S. (1980). Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From Moore to Shakespeare. London: University of Chicago Press. Hargreaves, J., Husband, H., & Linehan, C. (2018). Police Workforce, England and Wales, 31 March 2018. Statistical Bulletin 11/18. London: Home Office. Harvin, A. (1972, September). Red Sun. Black Belt, pp. 36–39. Hayes, S. K. (2013). The Complete Ninja Collection. Black Belt Books. Heidensohn, F. (2008). Gender and Policing. In T. Newburn (Ed.), Handbook of Policing (2nd ed., pp. 642–665). Cullompton: Willan. Hobbs, D., Hadfield, P., Lister, S., & Winlow, S. (2003). Bouncers: Violence and Governance in the Night-time Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hollander, J. A. (2004). ‘I Can Take Care of Myself ’: The Impact of Self-Defense Training on Women’s Lives. Violence Against Women, 10(3), 205–235. Hollander, J.  A. (2014). Does Self-Defense Training Prevent Sexual Violence Against Women? Violence Against Women, 20(3), 252–269. Hollander, J.  A. (2016). The Importance of Self-Defense Training for Sexual Violence Prevention. Feminism and Psychology, 26(2), 207–226. Hough, M., & Mayhew, P. (1983). The British Crime Survey: First Report. London: HMSO. Houseman, R. (1993). Unleash the Lioness: A Woman’s Guide to Fighting off Violent Attack. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Hunt, A. (1999). Governing Morals: A Social History of Moral Regulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hunt, L. (2003). Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger. London: Wallflower. Jackson, L. (2006). Women Police: Gender, Welfare and Surveillance in the Twentieth Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Johnston, L. (1992). The Rebirth of Private Policing. London: Routledge. Joyce, P. (1991). Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1848–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Joyce, P. (1994). Democratic Subjects: The Self and the Social in Nineteenth-­ Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kent, S.  K. (1999). Gender and Power in Britain, 1640–1990. London: Routledge. Klein, J. (2010). Invisible Men: The Secret Lives of Police Constables in Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

295

Kray, K. (2005). Ultimate Hard Bastards: The Truth about the Toughest Men in the World. London: John Blake. van Krieken, R. (1998). Norbert Elias. London: Routledge. Langford, P. (1989). A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727–1783. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-­ Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Law, H., & Hassard, J.  (1999). Actor Network Theory and After. Oxford: Blackwell. Lee, B. (2008). The Tao of Jeet Kune Do. Valencia, CA: Black Belt Communications. Leong, C. C., & Draeger, D. (1977). Phoenix-Eye Fist: A Shaolin Fighting Art of Southern China. New York: Weatherhill. Loader, I. (1999). Consumer Culture and the Commodification of Security and Policing. Sociology, 33(2), 373–392. Lu, J. (2011). Body, Masculinity, and Representation in Chinese Martial Arts Films. In D. S. Farrer & J. Whalen-Bridge (Eds.), Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a Transnational World (pp. 97–119). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. MacClaughlin, B. (1972, October). The Coming Rage in Entertainment. Black Belt Yearbook, pp. 14–22. Macek, S. (2006). Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right, and the Moral Panic over the City. London: University of Minnesota Press. Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible Selves. American Psychologist, 41(9), 954–969. McCaughey, M. (1997). Real Knockouts: The Physical Feminism of Women’s Self-­ Defense. New York: New York University Press. Metropolitan Police. (1833). Police Information. Queen’s Square, 6 July. No date, paper watermarked 1833. The National Archives: MEPO 3: Metropolitan Police: Office of the Commissioner: Correspondence and Papers, Special Services, record 3/1. Metropolitan Police. (1852, July 14). The National Archives: MEPO 7: Metropolitan Police: Office of the Commissioner: Police Orders, record 7/131. Miller, R. (2008). Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training and Real World Violence. Wolfeboro, NH: YMAA Publication Centre. Miller, R. (2011). Facing Violence: Preparing for the Unexpected, Ethically, Emotionally, Physically (… and Without Going to Prison). Wolfeboro, NH: YMAA Publication Centre. Mort, F. (2010). Capital Affairs: London and the Making of the Permissive Society. London: Yale University Press.

296 

F. Dodsworth

Muchembled, R. (2012). A History of Violence: From the End of the Middle Ages to the Present (J. Birrell, Trans.). Cambridge: Polity. Neocleous, M. (2000). The Fabrication of Social Order: A Critical Theory of Police Power. London: Pluto. Newburn, T., & Stanko, E. (Eds.). (1994). Just Boys Doing Business? Men, Masculinities and Crime. London: Routledge. Owings, C. (1925). Women Police: A Study of the Development of the Women Police Movement. London: Hitchcock. Pateman, C. (1989). The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory. Cambridge: Polity. Pearson, G. (1983). Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears. London: Macmillan. Peterson, K. C. (1986). Mind of the Ninja: Exploring the Inner Power. Chicago, IL: Contemporary Books. Petrow, S. (1994). Policing Morals: The Metropolitan Police and the Home Office, 1870–1914. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Quinn, K. (1993). Khaleghl Quinn’s Art of Self-Defence. London: Thorsons. Ray, L. (2013). Mark of Cain: Shame, Desire and Violence. European Journal of Social Theory, 16(3), 292–309. Reiner, R. (2000). The Politics of the Police (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reynolds, E. (1998). Before the Bobbies: The Night Watch and Police Reform in Metropolitan London, 1720–1830. London: Macmillan. Robinson, E., Schofield, C., Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, F., & Tomlinson, N. (2017). Telling Stories about Post-war Britain: Popular Individualism and the ‘Crisis’ of the 1970s. Twentieth-Century British History, 28(2), 268–304. Rose, N. (1999). Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rose, N. (2000). Government and Control. British Journal of Criminology, 40, 321–339. Rouse, W. (2015). Jiu-Jitsuing Uncle Sam: The Unmanly Art of Jiu-Jitsu and the Yellow Peril Threat. Pacific Historical Review, 84(4), 448–477. Rouse, W. (2017). Her Own Hero: The Origins of the Women’s Self-Defense Movement. New York: New York University Press. Rycroft, S. (2011). Swinging City: A Cultural Geography of London, 1950–1974. Farnham: Ashgate. Searles, P., & Berger, R.  J. (1987). The Feminist Self-Defense Movement: A Case Study. Gender and Society, 1(1), 61–84. Secured by Design. (n.d.). About Secured by Design. Retrieved December 12, 2018, from http://www.securedbydesign.com/about-secured-by-design/.

  Protection Beyond Patriarchy, c. 1900–2000 

297

Shoemaker, R. B. (2001). Male Honour and the Decline of Public Violence in Eighteenth-Century London. Social History, 23(2), 190–208. Shoemaker, R. B. (2002). The Taming of the Duel: Masculinity, Honour and Ritual Violence in London, 1660–1800. Historical Journal, 45(3), 525–545. Shoemaker, R. B. (2004). The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth-­ Century England. London: Hambledon. Shore, H. (1999). Artful Dodgers: Youth and Crime in Early 19th-Century London. London: Boydell. Silvestri, M. (2003). Women in Charge: Policing, Gender and Leadership. Cullompton: Willan. Simkin, S. (2006). Early Modern Tragedy and the Cinema of Violence. Basingstoke: Palgrave. South, N. (1988). Policing for Profit: The Private Security Sector. London: Sage. Springhall, J. (1998). Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics: Penny Gaffs to Gangsta Rap, 1830–1996. London: Macmillan. Storch, R. (1975). The Plague of the Blue Locusts: Police Reform and Popular Resistance in Northern England, 1840–57. International Review of Social History, 20(1), 61–90. Storch, R. (1976). The Policeman as Domestic Missionary: Urban Discipline and Popular Culture in Northern England, 1850–1880. Journal of Social History, 9(4), 481–509. Stryker, S. (2007). Identity Theory and Personality Theory: Mutual Relevance. Journal of Personality, 75(6), 1083–1102. Stryker, S., & Burke, P. J. (2000). The Past, Present and Future of an Identity Theory. Social Psychology Quarterly, 63(4), 284–297. Stylianou, S. (2013). On the Doors: If You’re Not on the List, You’re Not Coming In (Kindle ed.). London: John Blake Publishing Ltd. Thompson, F. M. L. (1988). The Rise of Respectable Society: A Social History of Victorian Britain, 1830–1900. London: Fontana. Thompson, G. (2004a). Dead or Alive: The Choice Is Yours: The Definitive Self-­ Protection Handbook. Chichester: Summersdale. Thompson, G. (2004b). Three Second Fighter: The Sniper Option (Kindle ed.). Chichester: Summersdale. Thompson, G. (2009). Watch My Back (Kindle ed.). Chichester: Summersdale. Vandehey, T. (1989, May). The Ninja Phenomenon: Has It Truly Vanished or Is It Simply Rebuilding? Black Belt, pp. 36–40. Wacquant, L. (2011). Decivilizing and Demonizing: The Remaking of the Black American Ghetto. In C. Buschendorf, A. Franke, & J. Voelz (Eds.), Civilizing and Decivilizing Processes: Figurational Approaches to American Culture (pp. 149–173). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press.

298 

F. Dodsworth

Walby, S. (1990). Theorizing Patriarchy. Oxford: Blackwell. Walby, S., & Myhill, A. (2001). New Survey Methodologies in Measuring Violence Against Women. British Journal of Criminology, 41(3), 502–522. Walby, S., Towers, J., & Francis, B. (2014). Mainstreaming Domestic and Gender-Based Violence into Sociology and the Criminology of Violence. The Sociological Review, 62(2), 187–214. Walkowitz, J. (1980). Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walkowitz, J. (1992). City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London. London: Virago. West, D. (2006). Chasing Dragons: An Introduction to the Martial Arts Film. London: I.B. Taurus. Westmarland, L. (2001). Gender and Policing: Sex, Power and Police Culture. Cullompton: Willan. Whalen-Bridge, J.  (2011). Some Versions of the Samurai: The Budō Core of DeLillo’s Running Dog. In D. S. Farrer & J. Whalen-Bridge (Eds.), Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a Transnational World (pp. 29–60). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. White, H. (1999). Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect. London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Wilkinson, I. (2001). Anxiety in a Risk Society. London: Routledge. Williams, C.  A. (2008). Constables for Hire: The History of Private ‘Public’ Policing in the UK. Policing and Society, 18(2), 190–205. Williams, C.  A. (2014). Police Control Systems in Britain, 1775–1975: From Parish Constable to National Computer. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Wolf, T. (Ed.). (2005). The Bartitsu Compendium: Volume 1: History and Canonical Syllabus. Raleigh, NC: Lulu Books. Wood, J., & Shearing, C. (2007). Imagining Security. Cullompton: Willan. Wouters, C. (1999). Changing Patterns of Social Controls and Self-Controls: On the Rise of Crime since the 1950s and the Sociogenesis of a ‘Third Nature’. British Journal of Criminology, 39(3), 416–432. Wouters, C. (2004). Changing Regimes of Manners and Emotions: From Disciplining to Informalizing. In S. Loyal & S. Quigley (Eds.), The Sociology of Norbert Elias (pp. 193–211). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wyles, L. (1952). A Woman at Scotland Yard: Reflections on the Struggle and Achievement of Thirty Years in the Metropolitan Police. London: Faber & Faber. Zimmerman, R. (1979, January). Survey ’78. Black Belt ’78, 11th Annual Yearbook, pp. 50–56.

7 Conclusion: Genealogies of Security

In Chap. 6 we saw that the twentieth century generated a range of new security technologies and practices, alongside significant challenges to the dominant forms of public protection. On the one hand, new technologies like the telephone, electronic alarms, and CCTV changed the landscape of possibilities in surveillance and control (Williams 2014), forming part of a commercial security sector that increasingly sold its wares to a public initially confined to the well-to-do but increasingly, as the century wore on, to a mass audience (Johnston 1992; South 1988). On the other hand, these technologies also transformed, and to some extent undermined, the traditional forms taken by public protection, drawing police officers away from patrolling the streets and into motor vehicles, available for rapid despatch on an ‘emergency service’ model to any location where they were needed (Klein 2010; Williams 2014). The challenge to the police model was more explicit from feminism, which cast the police in the role of oppressors of women and purveyors of a patriarchal masculinity that was a source of violence, rather than a means for its control. These challenges were accompanied by significant social, economic, and demographic change that led to a rapid increase in recorded crime in the period from 1960 to 1995; the combined effect was so significant that these © The Author(s) 2019 F. Dodsworth, The Security Society, Crime Prevention and Security Management, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43383-1_7

299

300 

F. Dodsworth

challenges undermined the faith of members of the governing classes in the existing system, as well as significant sections of the general public (Garland 1996, 2001). Politicians and policy-makers in Britain sought to address this problem by promoting a self-conscious return to ‘Victorian values’, in terms of both morality and personal independence, manifest particularly in a drive to ‘responsibilise’ the public, encouraging them to cater more for their own protection, giving further impetus to the development of the commercial security sector (Garland 1996, 2001). It was in the light of these developments that scholars first began to pay critical attention to the phenomenon of ‘security’. This concluding chapter will reflect on the ways in which these developments fed into criminological conceptions of ‘security’ as a field and locates the contribution of this book in relation to the two principal genealogies of security outlined in the introduction: work developing Michel Foucault’s insights into ‘neo-liberalism’ (Barry et al. 1996; Burchell et al. 1991; Dean 1999; Rose 1999) and work developing Norbert Elias’ account of the ‘civilising process’ (Dunning and Hughes 2013; Fletcher 1997; van Krieken 1998; Loyal and Quilley 2004). This will involve reflection upon the kind of account of securitisation being offered here, arguing that the two genealogies can be linked but also critiqued, through the genealogy of governmental masculinities developed in this book. Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 have put forward the argument that securitisation is not a function of the neo-liberal transformation of the welfare state since the 1970s or a symptom of ‘late capitalism’; rather, securitisation is a long-term process emerging from a series of challenges to the patriarchal system of social ordering inherited from the medieval period (Bauman 1987; Dubber 2005). A series of practical and political challenges to the principle of subordination in society, that every member of society should have a master, who would be responsible for both their protection and control, led to the appearance of specialists in surveillance and protection—security experts—who would police the masterless, independent people who increasingly dominated the anxieties of the modern age (Beier 1985; Neocleous 2011a). In a certain sense, we might view the initial securitisation of society as the outcome of a particular ‘fear of freedom’, albeit one articulated in a very different way from that analysed by Erich Fromm (2001). The establishment of specialists in

  Conclusion: Genealogies of Security 

301

security ultimately developed its own dynamic, with a range of ‘institutional entrepreneurs’ (Hardy and Maguire 2017; Maguire et  al. 2004; Sine and David 2010) engaging in the problematisation of existing security provision as ways of promoting themselves and their ability to better protect individuals and society against the various threats they defined as sources of vulnerability. This process of ‘problematisation’ (Barry et  al. 1996: 2–7; Foucault 1985: 9–12) can be seen to constitute the kind of ‘critical reflection on governmental practice’ that drives the development of new forms of political and governmental reason (Foucault, cited in Collier 2011: 18–19). It also, however, established new forms of power, and as such there was a distinct politics to the provision of protection, as it created new agencies, new social visibilities, opportunities, and challenges, as well as new mechanisms of control and subordination (Huysmans 2006). The securitisation of society provided important ways for people to enact and realise particular forms of socially validated masculinity, but it also allowed these masculinities to be contested and transformed and for new roles and identities to claim a place in important national narratives and imaginaries.

The Security Society In the late 1970s and early 1980s, it was discovered that private security personnel had already begun to exceed the public police in terms of the absolute number of employees, which was seen as having significant implications for the government of order (Schubert 1981; Shearing and Stenning 1981, 1983; Spitzer and Scull 1977). At the same moment, observing the transformation of the criminal justice systems in France and the USA, Michel Foucault began to wonder whether the articulation of power through disciplinary institutions, which he had recently identified in Discipline and Punish (Foucault 1977), was not being challenged and whether ‘the general economy of power in our societies is becoming a domain of security?’ (Foucault 2009: 9, 10–11). Foucault’s initial aim in these lectures was ‘to undertake a sort of history of technologies of security and try to identify whether we can really speak of a society of security’ (Foucault 2009: 11).

302 

F. Dodsworth

It is worth noting that what is translated as ‘security’ here is the French word securité, which implies the future-oriented management of risk, as distinct from sûreté, which translates more straightforwardly as ‘safety’ (Valverde 2008: 28); criminological use tends to conflate these aspects. What Foucault was proposing, then, was a genealogy of a third modality of government, one distinct from government through law, which he defined as prohibiting certain undesirable actions, and distinct from discipline, which he saw as compelling people towards optimal forms of behaviour. By exploring ‘security’ Foucault proposed to analyse a form of government which deals with life as it is, not as it ought, or ought not to be; for Foucault security ‘lets things happen’ and responds to reality, seeking to manage a series of probable events dealt with at the level of the population rather than the individual, defining a bandwidth of acceptability around their occurrence in a particular milieu (Foucault 2009: 6, 11, 20–21, 45–47). In the event, these tensions and questions remained unresolved, because Foucault never completed this project. From the fourth lecture in the series, he changed the focus of the course quite significantly, abandoning the language of ‘security’, perhaps because of its statist connotations for his audience, in favour of the neologism gouvernmentalité, translated into English as ‘governmentality’, a term he probably encountered in the work of Roland Barthes (Barthes 1972: 130; Foucault 1991; Rindzevičiūtė 2016: 8; Valverde 2008: 28–30). In fact, however, this shift towards ‘governmentality’ was to be tremendously influential in criminological work on security in various ways, as we shall see below. The exploration of the security field continued apace throughout the 1980s and 1990s as the private provision of security gained ever greater visibility and economic significance (Johnston 1992; Jones and Newburn 1998; Shearing and Stenning 1987; South 1988). By the late 1990s, the development of private policing had been complemented by significant transformations in the structure and practice of public policing with the promotion of ‘crime prevention and community safety’ as policing ideals and organisational realities (Gilling 1997; Hughes 2007), a new emphasis on risk management (Ericson and Haggerty 1997), and a profound pluralisation of the policing role, sufficient for Bayley and Shearing (1996: 585) to declare that we had reached a ‘watershed’ in our systems

  Conclusion: Genealogies of Security 

303

of crime control, so that ‘Future generations will look back on our era as a time when one system of policing ended and another took its place’. By the early years of the new millennium, criminologists were starting to use the term ‘security’ to refer to the general problem of crime control, in large part to make clear that when they did so they were talking about practices of control that were not reducible to the activities of the public police (Hope and Sparks 2000; Johnston 1999; Johnston and Shearing 2003; Shearing 2001; Zedner 2000). From that time onwards, the term ‘security’ began to gain much more currency within criminology (see Zedner 2009 and Crawford and Hutchinson 2016). In doing so scholars, particularly the enormously influential work of David Garland (1996, 2000, 2001) and Les Johnston and Clifford Shearing (2003), were drawing directly on Foucault’s work on ‘governmentality’ and particularly his emphasis on the importance of government beyond the state (Rose and Miller 1992).

Governmentality Foucault’s lecture on ‘governmentality’ appeared in print in English as early as 1979, but its revised publication in The Foucault Effect in 1991, alongside a range of insightful essays developing its analysis, enormously extended its influence (Burchell et al. 1991; Foucault 1991). In his wide-­ ranging introduction to the volume, Colin Gordon (1991: 20) drew attention to the importance of Foucault’s arguments about security and the idea of the ‘society of security’ put forward in the Collège de France lectures, which at that time remained largely unpublished, suggesting that ‘from the eighteenth century onwards, security tends increasingly to become the dominant component of modern governmental rationality: we live today not so much in a Rechtsstaat or in a disciplinary society as in a society of security’. In this initial formulation, then, the idea of a ‘society of security’ was central to the governmentality analysis and was dated as emerging gradually since the eighteenth century. A series of influential further publications went on to establish ‘governmentality’ as a significant form of analysis within social science generally (Barry et al. 1996;

304 

F. Dodsworth

Dean 1999; Gane and Johnson 1993; Rose 1999), and ­criminologists were centrally involved in these developments and their popularisation (Garland 1996, 1997; O’Malley 1992, 1996). What Foucault was doing in this work was conducting what he called a ‘history of the present’, which sought to ‘destabilise’ the apparent naturalness of the present by illustrating its contingency and the historical specificity of the ‘problematisations’ that give rise to our current concerns and experiences (Barry et al. 1996: 2–7). As he explored the transformations in government that he saw taking place around him in the 1970s, in which politicians and commentators of the ‘new right’ were beginning to eulogise the principles of Victorian liberalism as the solution to the ills of dependency they claimed to have identified in the post-war welfare state, Foucault began to explore Victorian liberalism itself in order to understand the principles that were being laid claim to by those who saw themselves as its inheritors. His analysis of the development of what he called ‘liberal’ governmental reason in the eighteenth century, and to which late twentieth-century ‘neo-liberals’ made explicit reference, sought to establish a particular kind of relationship between classical liberal and neo-liberal governmental thought (Barry et  al. 1996; Burchell et  al. 1991). His analysis of the relationship between what we have come to call ‘neo-liberalism’ and the classical liberalism to which it was explicitly linked constitutes a dynamic that Hayden White, following Eric Auerbach, might call ‘figural causation’, a way of thinking about temporal relationships that allows us to move away from teleological concepts of causation based on determinacy, but which also allows us to sidestep straightforward continuity. The idea of ‘figural causation’ suggests instead that late twentieth-century attempts to revive the principles of Victorian liberalism in a contemporary context can be understood as ‘fulfilling the promise’ of Victorian liberalism in the same sense that a figure is related to its later fulfilment in a narrative or poem; the genealogical linkage is established from the present to the past through the retrospective attempt of contemporary agents to configure themselves as the inheritors of past traditions (White 1999: 88–89). From this perspective, then, it not only makes sense to explore those past traditions in order to understand aspects of contemporary developments, but it also provides us with a particular way of thinking about the relationship between continuity and change.

  Conclusion: Genealogies of Security 

305

The work of David Garland (1996, 2001), influenced by Foucault and Nikolas Rose (2000), is a good example of this. For Garland, the period from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century saw the construction of a coherent and relatively stable ‘mentality’ of criminal justice administration which he terms ‘penal welfarism’. This revolved around the medicalised and psychologised treatment of offenders targeted at their individual reform, with the ultimate ideal of the elimination of criminality altogether. The low crime rates and relatively small numbers of ‘incorrigible offenders’ of the mid-twentieth century encouraged the idea that this ideal was achievable. However, the rapid upswing in crime rates from the 1960s to the 1990s, and the evident failure of the established institutions of criminal justice to have any impact on them, undermined both public and governmental faith in the capacity of the penal-welfare complex, inducing a sense not simply that ‘nothing works’, in the infamous (and usually misquoted) words of Martinson, but that attention should be turned instead to how to live in consistently ‘high-­ crime’ societies. Rather than making futile attempts to eradicate crime, the sense was that we should focus on minimising the risks and harms of victimisation. What Garland calls the ‘culture of control’ emerges as a response to the perceived failure of the modernist penal-welfare project. When it does so, however, it does not do so without any reference to the past; rather, attempts are made to reconfigure aspects of the purportedly successful criminal justice regimes of the past in order to act upon the present. Conservative commentators identified the Victorian period, with its emphasis on ‘character’ and ‘independence’, as the point at which crime control began to have a transformative impact on offending rates; in contrast, they also identified the ‘social’ era of the welfare state and the ‘permissive society’ of the 1960s and 1970s as the era in which personal controls were loosened, crime rose, and people demanded solutions from the state. The aim of those involved in transforming the criminal justice system between the 1970s and the 1990s was therefore to reinscribe the liberal principles of independence, self-reliance, and restraint in society through programmes of ‘responsibilisation’, which would make individuals, communities, and organisations participants in, and responsible for, their own security. These programmes of responsibilisation were, of course, very different from, and enacted in very different contexts to,

306 

F. Dodsworth

Victorian liberal government, but the retrospective link to classical liberalism established the connection. In this sense, then, there is both continuity, through the figural link to Victorian liberalism, but there is also discontinuity in the sense that liberal government was to some extent effaced by the more ‘social’ or ‘welfarist’ emphasis of the mid-twentieth century (although see Hindess 1996 on the links between liberalism and social government), before the perceived failures of that transformation (re)introduced (neo)liberalism. Alongside this methodological insight, however, governmentality has also provided scholars with some substantive insights into the genealogy of security. In the governmentality account, a concern for ‘security’ in the modern sense emerges in the context of the development of ‘reason of state’ in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The devastating effects of the European wars of religion and their, at least partial, resolution in the Peace of Westphalia (1648) posed a very particular problem in governmental thought. Rather than seeking to unite Europe and all Christendom in a new empire, and battling to define who controlled that empire and what form and confession it should take, Westphalia constituted the recognition that no state was powerful enough to dominate all the others and that Europe would consist of a range of co-existing states held in a balance of power, each of which would order its internal affairs largely as it saw fit. The central dynamic in political and governmental thought from that point on was how to maintain one’s own state in perpetuity, in other words how to maintain the security of the state (Dean 1999: 87). The construction of a stable state was linked not only to the problem of how to maintain the kind of moral, engaged political personality that classically influenced authors considered essential to the perpetuation of a free state in the context of modern commercial society, so eloquently analysed by J.G.A. Pocock (1975, 1985; see also Burchell 1991), but also how to actively construct a stable, coherent, and peaceful society out of the devastation of a war that had killed more than half the population of some German states. The idea and ‘science’ of ‘police’, addressed in Chap. 4 in this volume, was one of the solutions put forward to resolve this problem (Dodsworth 2007, 2008; Gordon 1991: 8–11; Pasquino 1991).

  Conclusion: Genealogies of Security 

307

Chapter 3 also addressed these issues directly in the British context, exploring the ways in which new configurations of ‘security’, and new security roles and initiatives, emerged from the social and political arguments generated in the religious and political conflicts of the seventeenth century, which in the British context culminated in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the expulsion of James II, and the Revolution Settlement of 1689–1701, which established a Protestant kingdom under William III and Mary II, James’ daughter and son-in-law (and nephew). In this context the very survival of the British state was at stake, under pressure from, and in competition with France, which supported a rival claimant to the throne (James) with considerable sympathy from the British public. At the same time, the expulsion of James II cast doubt on the legitimacy of the entire state, and thus the obedience due to it. The idea of the ‘rule of law’ was promoted both as a way of legitimising the authority of the state, regardless of the person of the monarch, and as a way of legitimising and mobilising the government of public morality, which was configured as essential to the strength of the state and its capacity to withstand invasion. The virtue defined as central to the perpetuation of a free state, which Pocock (1975, 1985) argues depended on a particular kind of engaged masculinity, was being extended to include a form of personal and public morality defined according to the aims of moral reformers (Burtt 1992). The perpetuation of the state and its strength through the administration and augmentation of its people had consequences. As the capacity to perpetuate the state was understood to be subject to the numbers and wealth of the people, so a focus on this aspect of human life led to intellectual and political innovations that were to transform the conceptualisation of government. The French physiocrats and Scottish political economists argued that direct attempts to intervene in economic life were counterproductive: the state could not know the best outcome for any or all individuals in any given circumstances; attempting to directly administer the entirety of social and economic relations according to set principles was actually hindering the augmentation of wealth and well-being and as such reducing the security of the state in its competition with its rivals. The solution to this was to allow the economy and social interaction to operate as far as possible according to their ‘natural laws’, allowing

308 

F. Dodsworth

Adam Smith’s infamous ‘hidden hand’ to work its magic, increasing the prosperity of all by allowing each person to pursue their own economic interests (Burchell 1991). Foucault identified this fundamentally critical attitude towards governmental intervention as ‘liberal’; from the liberal perspective, the fundamental problem was how to frame the ‘natural’ processes of economy and society within mechanisms of security, which would allow them to operate as freely as possible according to their own logic, provided that they did not destabilise the whole system. From this perspective security is fundamentally tied to liberty, to the idea that the wealth, power, and freedom of the state and its ultimate security depends on the freeing of individuals and domains of socio-economic life as far as possible, enabling them to pursue their own productive interests (Burchell 1991; Gordon 1991; Rose 1999: 61–97). To put it another way, liberal government constitutes a set of interventions concerned with promoting a ‘certain form of life’ characterised by the ideal of personal autonomy (Hindess 1996: 65). In the Foucauldian account, then, the securitisation of society is closely connected to what Nikolas Rose (1999: 86) calls ‘technologies of freedom’, by which he means a range of governmental techniques devised to produce a particular kind of free subject, an autonomous subject capable of governing their own behaviour and perhaps that of dependents not considered fully autonomous. This autonomy is understood to depend upon adherence to and embodiment of particular norms of behaviour and categories of identity. In terms of identity, this autonomy, or independence, has historically, largely been the preserve of propertied, adult males (McCormack 2005; Langford 1991; Pocock 1975). One way of understanding the argument of this book would be as an exploration of the dynamics of claims to autonomy and technologies of freedom as they have developed since the sixteenth century. As we saw in Chap. 2, in the early modern period autonomy, or independence, was a highly gendered and classed concept: the only people considered fully autonomous were the male heads of households; all others ought to be subordinate to and dependent on them. Heads of households were in principle responsible for the behaviour of all their dependents; this responsibility was pooled, so that government was established at the scale of the ‘tithing’, nominally ten households. The head of

  Conclusion: Genealogies of Security 

309

the tithing was the petty (or parish) constable; acting as parish constable was both the duty of independent men, but also a sign of their status, and it is clear that, in London at least, large numbers of men participated in the government of their community in such local offices. The succeeding chapters explore the challenges to this exclusive claim to full masculinity and more generally independence, and thereby the capacity for self-­ government, and thus freedom, in both political theory and social practice. They also explore the ‘technologies of freedom’—conduct manuals, training, and education—used as devices to extend the capacity for self-­ government, and thereby the right to govern others and to be freer from government, to new groups and new individuals previously considered subordinate. Initially this involved the extension of governmental power to new groups of men from lower social strata, but by the nineteenth century and particularly in the twentieth century, this status was increasingly being claimed by women. In many respects, then, we can see the genealogy of security as homologous to the genealogy of liberalism in the long term, as part of a long process of autonomisation, through which capacities and powers previously considered unique to, and inherent in, elite masculinity were devolved to, and inculcated in, previously subordinate men, and ultimately women.

The Civilising Process One aspect of the expansion of definitions of autonomy to a wider membership, initially through an expanded concept of gentility, and ultimately through a much more diffuse set of values, was that the capacity for freedom was increasingly associated with particular moral values and forms of behaviour, rather than presuming those values to be inherent in a particular social position. The dissemination of the idea(l)s of ‘politeness’, ‘sensibility’, ‘civility’, and ‘respectability’ (Barker-Benfield 1992; Carter 2001; Klein 1994, 2002; Thompson 1988) allowed those without genteel birth to participate in civil society and to lay claim to the capacity to govern themselves and others. It is here that the Foucauldian genealogy of liberalism intersects with Elias’ (1996, 2000) genealogy of ‘civilisation’ (Rose 1999: 40n). As Nikolas Rose points out, in practice the vision of the autonomous subject

310 

F. Dodsworth

configured under Victorian liberalism was strongly coded in relation to class, gender, religion, and ethnicity and was shaped through a range of interventions ranging from medical and health practices to architecture, planning, and social and economic policy (Rose 1999: 69–78, 86–87). Those who failed to conduct their freedom according to ‘civilised’ norms of behaviour, or those whose performance of religion, gender, ethnicity, or class left them outside the accepted ‘in-group’ associated with that civility, frequently found themselves defined as sources of social insecurity and subject to various governmental interventions, just as Loader and Walker (2007) have identified contemporary neo-liberal government as in various ways concerned with the regulation of ‘uncivil society’ and preservation of ‘civility’. Surprisingly, however, despite referring to the ‘civilising’ of security, the divisions forged between ‘civil’ and ‘uncivil society’, and the focus of security practices on regulating the latter, Loader and Walker (2007: 17n) explicitly distance themselves from Elias’ work, despite its obvious relevance to their concerns. No doubt this is because although Elias’ approach has recently been subject to renewed interest and development (see, e.g. the special issue of The Sociological Review in 2011; Buschendorf et al. 2011; van Krieken 2012; Loyal and Quilley 2004; Mennell 2007; Wouters 1999, 2004, 2007, 2011), his methods remain controversial and contested. Elias’ work has been subject to critique on the basis of being functionalist; impossible to measure; Eurocentric; of ignoring large-scale conflict and genocide; of a reliance on discredited Freudian psychoanalytic ideas; being mistaken about the extent or timing of changes in psychological dispositions; mistaken about the causes and dynamics of patterns of self-­ restraint; neglecting the importance of religion; neglecting the significance of culture, belief, and intentional programmes of reform; and confusing ontogeny and phylogeny (see, e.g. Collins 2008; Gillingham 2002; van Krieken 1990, 1998: 114–128; Malešević 2013; Malešević and Ryan 2012; Pepperell 2016; Redner 2015; Turner 2004). This is a formidable list, and some of these critiques appear well founded. Despite this, however, there is a large volume of historical work that suggests that there were significant changes not only in the ways in which people in the past viewed violence and disorder, but also in the ways in which they sought to regulate it and the real incidence of violence itself (in addition to the citations below, see Johnson and Monkkonen 1996; Watson 2007).

  Conclusion: Genealogies of Security 

311

In terms of changing attitudes to violence, there is a wide range of historical research that supports this contention, with demonstrable effects on social practice. Indeed, not only have violence and ‘disorder’ been subject to increasing formal and informal regulation, but the means of regulation themselves have also been subject to the same process, with significant declines in the use of violent, physical punishment and public shaming methods evident in the early modern period, particularly in the eighteenth century (Deveraux and Griffiths 2004; Spierenburg 1984, 2012). Changing attitudes to violence and evidence of a ‘civilising process’ in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century English context are also evident in the work of Robert Shoemaker (2001, 2002, 2004) on duelling, disorder, and fear of the ‘mob’ and in Peter King’s (1996) analysis of increasing tendencies to prosecute assault in the courts, complemented by recent work by Klingenstein et al. (2014) on prosecution at the Old Bailey. The Victorian and Edwardian periods are now well researched from the perspective of violence, with considerable analysis of anxieties about violence and increasing attempts to control its occurrence, as well as its cultural meanings (Archer 2011; Crone 2012; D’Cruze 1998, 2000; Emsley 2005; Shore 2011; Wiener 2003; Wood 2004). As Wood (2004) points out, what Michel Foucault has to say about the history of sexuality, that the nineteenth century saw not the simple repression of sexuality, but its invention through a huge range of discourses that exhaustively analysed, categorised, and sought to control it, could also be said about violence, which was subject to the same ‘productive’ discourses of power, producing violence as a social problem to be acted upon through a range of new institutional interventions. From at least the eighteenth century onwards, then, violence was increasingly debated, analysed, problematised, condemned, and controlled. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 focus on exploring the ways in which this process took place. A central element in this was the process of the accumulation of a state monopoly on violence, something that Elias (2000) saw as fundamental to the civilising process. It was argued in Chap. 2 that this was an ambivalent process, because the centralisation of power in the monarchy also lay at the heart of the social dislocation explored towards the end of Chap. 2 and particularly in Chap. 3. Nevertheless, the accumulation of policing power by the state, in a process that Foucault (1991)

312 

F. Dodsworth

would term the ‘governmentalisation of the state’, was clearly part of a wider elaboration of police power, not in theory, but in practice, over the modern period, most evident in Chap. 4 and particularly Chap. 5. This no doubt prompted the significant decline in both toleration for and the incidence of violence within states between the seventeenth and the end of the nineteenth century which has been demonstrated in a wide range of historical research (analysed in Eisner 2001, 2003 and Muchembled 2012), albeit possibly leading to the capacity for greater violence between states (Burkitt 1996; Malešević 2013; Malešević and Ryan 2012). This would seem to explain the development of what Loader (2008, drawing on Ericson 2007 and Simon 2007) sees as one of the central aspects of contemporary crime control: the presumption that an environment free from the risk of attack is a reasonable expectation. Recognising this, however, presents us with further difficulties, because once we begin to look at the mechanisms used to control violence and disorder, and the practices that were targeted for control, it is evident that, unlike the changes in the manners of individuals and groups that Elias analyses, the assault on violence by the criminal justice system, and other forms of social action, appears to have been conscious, deliberate, and carefully directed, rather than solely the unintended outcome of processes of social differentiation (although this may well, as we shall see, have played a part: see particularly Chap. 4). Here Bauman (1987: 92–93), Fletcher (1997), and van Krieken (1990) extend the analysis of the civilising process somewhat by developing the idea of a ‘civilising offensive’ or ‘civilising projects’ that accompany, and are driven by, the civilising process (see also Neocleous 2011a, b, 2014). Fletcher (1997) notes that the concept of ‘civilisation’ as it developed in France was closely associated with the physiocrats, whose ideas we already encountered above in the work of Michel Foucault. For the physiocrats ‘civilisation’ not only meant a courtly code opposed to barbarism, it also came to mean a process with a goal. Just as in the Foucauldian account, the physiocrats came to reject the idea that monarchs or their ministers were able to exercise all-powerful control over the processes of civilisation; what was necessary was rational and planned administration enabling and promoting social reform. Civilisation was the term given to both the social regularities with which rulers were confronted and the

  Conclusion: Genealogies of Security 

313

direction of the development and reform that the reformers sought to implement. Ultimately this meant that any dimension that could be stigmatised as ‘barbaric’ or ‘uncivilised’ ought to be reformed along ‘civilising’ lines. The reform programme ranged from the improvement of popular manners to the pacification of the territory (Fletcher 1997). It is here, in the ‘civilising project’, at the point at which the civilising process becomes something like a ‘biopolitical’ programme of government, at which the work of Elias most closely intersects with that of Foucault (1977) but also with Oestreich (1982) and Gorski (2003) and the ‘reform of popular culture’ explored in the work of Peter Burke (2009). Robert Muchembled (2012) specifically identifies the civilising process as a judicial revolution, originating in the cities, that sought to criminalise and control the violence of young men by restricting and supervising their pastimes and the ‘festivals of violence’ which were frequent elements in the social calendar and by challenging masculine codes of honour and the violent contests associated with them. This work has in many respects supported Muchembled’s argument, but it has extended it beyond the supervision of young men into the subordinate members of society in general and into the problematisation of governing masculinities, as well as subordinate subjects.

Projects, Poetics, and Patriarchy Study of the intentional practices of ‘civilising projects’, however, required a rather different set of conceptual tools to the ‘civilising process’ itself, although I would argue that the use of those tools can also illuminate the civilising process too. There is a tendency in the literature on the civilising process to explain changing cultural attitudes to violence through particular ‘social processes’, which are taken to explain the cultural changes associated with increasing problematisation and restraint of aggression (Mennell 2007: 332n4). However, recent work challenges the methodological basis of this approach. Bruno Latour’s (2005) ‘sociology of associations’ or ‘sociology of translation’ calls into question the very idea of using ‘the social’ as an explanation for anything; rather, he sees the social as that which is to be explained, the outcome of a series of nonsocial

314 

F. Dodsworth

associations and translations which produce what appear to us as ‘social context’ or ‘social relations’. In many respects Elias’ process sociology appears very amenable to this approach: with small modifications in language, and if care is taken not to preclude or to privilege any particular form of association a priori, then Elias’ concept of ‘figurations’ would appear very close in spirit to Latour’s sociology of associations. However, there remains a problem here with the subject of ‘culture’, which is still treated as epiphenomenal. This is problematic in and of itself, given the significant insights produced by the ‘cultural turn’ that has dominated social science since the 1980s, on the basis that no processes of change or social interaction, association, or translation take place outside structures of meaning (Hunt 1989; Joyce 1994); it is also problematic in terms of attempts to explain the more deliberate practices of ‘civilising projects’, which cannot easily be attributed to the work of anonymous processes. Approaching the civilising process and civilising projects from the perspective of the cultural turn enabled us to add another dimension to ‘figurational’ analysis, encouraging us to treat figurations literally in the sense that they are frequently made meaningful and driven through discursive or visual figures. This meant paying attention to the tropes, narratives, rhetorical strategies, and cultural ‘grammar’ of the figurational processes around civility and security, constituting a ‘poetics’ of security, which is to say an analysis not so much of what ‘security’ means in any given situation, but an analysis of the things that make such meanings possible (Burke 1969; Culler 2001; Montrose 1989; White 1978). Although there is considerable debate about the exact nature and source of ‘meaning’ here and how it relates to practice (Biernacki 1999, 2000; Sewell 1999), this approach certainly calls into question the tendency to treat the ‘experience’ of social reality as the source of meaning, suggesting instead that the assignment of subject positions through discourse is fundamental to the positioning that is experienced (Scott 1991). This is not to deny the effects of experiences, or their capacity to explain behaviour, but it does historicise them in precisely the kinds of ways Elias might have hoped for. Indeed, in practice we find figurational work already deploying cultural explanations. For example, while explaining differences in the historical development of British and American violence in terms of the relative absence of effective law and

  Conclusion: Genealogies of Security 

315

order at the US frontier, Mennell (2007: 146, drawing on Richard Maxwell Brown) dismisses the possibility of the British developing a tradition of vigilantism comparable to the USA because vigilantism was ‘repugnant to the British approach to law and order’. This is nothing if not a cultural explanation and this book has sought to further develop this, emphasising that the production and possibility of meaning is a process as central as any other to the formation of the ‘habitus’ of any actor; culture is one of the motors of change, not simply one of its markers. In terms of a theory of change, Elias’ approach has also been helpful in offsetting a tendency towards ‘epochalism’ (Du Gay 2003; Savage 2009) in much recent criminological work (for analyses of which, see Churchill (2018); Dodsworth (2015); Hutchinson (2006); O’Malley (2000)). Foucault’s emphasis in his earlier work was frequently on discontinuities in ways of thinking and acting, and this has to some extent been continued in the literature, both sociological and criminological, inspired by him (an emphasis he seems later to have regretted: Barry et  al. 1996: 4–5). However, some of Foucault’s later work, and the alternative genealogy of government and self-government provided by Elias, tends to provide a more continuous genealogy characterised by gradual incremental change (Smith 1999). Elias’ (1996, 2000) account of the ‘civilising process’ suggests the gradual internalisation of behavioural norms through socialisation, changing over generations, in a process that, although contingent, contextually variable, and certainly reversible, has tended in a particular direction, namely, the monopolisation of legitimate force by the state, increasing constraint of aggressive drives, detachment from emotional involvement in social situations, and formalisation and pacification of interaction within stable states. The exception to this less discontinuous narrative is perhaps Arditi’s (1998) revision of Elias, which seeks to incorporate some of Foucault’s insights into a ‘genealogy of manners’, tracing broad changes in what he calls the ‘infrastructure of social relations’ over long periods of time. Even here, however, Arditi (1998: 6–13) stresses the idea of ‘metamorphosis’ rather than mutation and argues that it is important to understand Foucault’s ‘discontinuities’ as phenomena that can emerge over centuries rather than brief periods of years. In a similar vein, the story told here has been one of gradual and directional change, not necessarily driven by a coherent programme, or

316 

F. Dodsworth

with an end goal in mind, and often proceeding in different directions and with different targets, but ultimately cumulative in its overall effects. This is not to say that this is a story of continuity: quite the opposite, it is a story of continuous change, but the change that is mapped here is generally relatively gradual (although it is worth noting that there can be occasional rapid, sometimes temporary, reversals in the direction of change, see Fletcher 1997; Wacquant 2011). As we have already seen, in terms of the specific content of the cultural changes involved in the processes of securitisation, this book has privileged the transformation of governmental masculinities and the patriarchal power that underlay social ordering for much of the modern period. Building on existing feminist research (Lerner 1987; Pateman 1989; Walby 1990), and work on the ‘police power’ (Dubber 2005, 2006), it has explored the process of securitisation as a series of cultural and practical problematisations of patriarchy, that is, ‘the organization of the human community (from a family to a larger society) that gives a male ruler dominance over other men, and overall gives men control over women’ (Jensen 2017: 38). It has followed Sylvia Walby (1990: 176–184) in arguing that as the practical hold of the heads of households over their dependents diminished somewhat, there was a gradual shift from private to public patriarchy, whereby the state, or civil society, increasingly takes on roles traditionally performed by the head of the household (Chaps. 2, 3, and 4). Over the course of the eighteenth and particularly the nineteenth centuries, these protective masculinities were increasingly of the ‘fraternal’ rather than the ‘paternal’ kind (Pateman 1989: ch. 2), exercising ‘paternalistic dominance’ (Lerner 1987: 217, 239–240), and they were based on more generic ‘masculine’ virtues such as courage, physical strength, fortitude, and temperateness, rather than a particular relationship to property or social status (Chaps. 4–5) However, despite its differences from the direct government of the household, this form of government remains identifiable as ‘patriarchal’, because the power to protect is still located within qualities that are inherent in the masculinity of the protector. In the twentieth century, however, sustained challenges to patriarchy came from several directions at

  Conclusion: Genealogies of Security 

317

once, with the consequence not only that many members of the patriarchy itself lost confidence in their own capacity and that of the state that they governed to provide protection, but also that technological and organisational solutions to security rather displaced patriarchy, providing systems of protection that did not rely on governing masculinities at all, indeed, some of these promised the liberation of women, and perhaps also subordinate men, from dependence on patriarchal or paternalist protection (Chap. 6). This process produced a range of new possible roles and identities, a set of new ‘possible selves’ (Markus and Nurius 1986) centred around the idea(l) of protection which did not necessarily depend on subordination to other people, but which might imply subordination to a socio-technical ‘system’, a security ‘assemblage’ (Schuilenburg 2015; Wood and Shearing 2007) that is both hard to identify and hard to identify with. Nevertheless, even in the late twentieth century, the power to protect remains one of the central ways in which governmental masculinities are claimed, promoted, challenged, and enacted. Historically, then, security has been closely associated with ‘paternalistic dominance’ (Lerner 1987: 217, 239–240). However, if the process of securitisation represents the institutionalisation of particular forms of domination, that does not mean we should understand it solely in terms of repression; repression might describe one aspect of its outcome, but to reduce it to that would be to misunderstand its dynamic. As Michel Foucault (1979, 1980) argued, power is productive, not only repressive, and this is certainly true of security, because each successive wave of problematisation, each articulation of a new politics of protection (Huysmans 2006), meant the bringing to visibility and configuration of agency for new social actors. As Walby (1990: 183–184) has argued, a central dimension in the history of patriarchy is that women (and in our case subordinate men) have not simply been excluded from areas of life where they had previously been included (indeed, Lerner’s (1987) work shows that the subordination of women is a process dating back millennia); rather, the decline in direct and private patriarchy saw the fashioning of new organisations and new methods of public subordination through which dominance was reinscribed and which were

318 

F. Dodsworth

not open to women, and sometimes subordinate men. Looking at securitisation from this perspective reveals it as a process of the active creation and maintenance of new gendered roles and governing agencies through processes of individual and collective self-fashioning (Arditi 1998; Greenblatt 1980). The power of security, then, resides not simply in its capacity to exclude, to control, or to monetise fear; it also resides in its capacity to provide a means for shaping agency and identity for a wide range of social groups and particular individuals and on the ability of those individuals and groups to capitalise on that agency in a wide range of ways in exchange for their putative expertise and power to protect. One of the primary things we should take away from this is that security agencies—individual, institutional, state—do not simply possess power by virtue of their existence, their power had itself to be created, or, in the language of actor network theory, assembled (Latour 2005; Law and Hassard 1999). A second important point to recognise is that very often in our account the institution and institutionalisation of security agencies, and of agencies through security, has been carried out by people on the edge of spheres of influence: by the middling sort in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and by the working classes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Securitising discourses and practices have provided people with roles that they were able to internalise as identities, often enabling them to make themselves visible as actors and to have a transformative social impact that they might otherwise have been denied (Huysmans 2006; Stryker 2007; Stryker and Burke 2000). The capacity to step into, shape, or challenge the role of protector is a clear example of power operating in the positive sense (which is not to say that the outcome of doing so is necessarily positive in the normative sense). From the perspective of the social identity approach, power within groups operates through the embodiment of ‘prototypical’ attitudes, values, and behaviours of the group, so that influence is exerted through fashioning the self so as to embody those values and behaviours (Hornsey 2008: 211). Inevitably, as Stephen Greenblatt (1980) reminds us, such practices of self-fashioning never take place outside power, they always draw on, adapt, or translate (Latour 2005) existing ‘discursive regularities’ (Foucault 1972) and take place within, or in relation to, specific ‘cultures of practice’ (Biernacki 1999,

  Conclusion: Genealogies of Security 

319

2000; Sewell 1999), equipping the fashioner with one form of authority to challenge another or to position themselves socially, constituting what Mitchell Dean (1996) calls the ‘enfolding of authority’ into the person. This ‘collective self-fashioning’ (Arditi 1998) is not a solipsistic activity: power is relational in nature, and often in modern Europe it is representational, with patterns of social differentiation and integration frequently emerging through the cultivation and display of particular forms of behaviour, which mark out positions in the social hierarchy; make claims to, and critiques of, status; and solidify group identity, similarity, and visibility (to one another and to others), often through orientation around a particular cultural value manifest as behavioural practice (Arditi 1998: 224–228; van Krieken 1998: 84–90). The story of this book has been the story of the transformation of the cultural values and social practices associated with governing masculinities as a particular form of the politics of protection (Huysmans 2006) articulated in relation to processes of civilisation and autonomisation. The intersection of these processes in the idealised and embodied persona of the patriarchal protector of subordinate men and women, and the successive problematisation and transformation of that role, has produced a range of new roles and potential identities able to imbue those assuming them with the power to protect, with a socially validated sense of agency, moral worth, and purpose. By taking on security roles and identities, people have variously been encouraged to see themselves as gentlemen, as engaging in a programme of moral reformation, as protecting the country against the threat of tyranny, as defending civilisation and respectability against barbarism and vice, and as liberating themselves and others from dependence on patriarchy. Recognising this suggests that whatever political position we take in relation to the securitisation of society, whether we want to critique it (Peoples and Vaughn-Williams 2014), to govern it (Hoogenboom 2010; Johnston and Shearing 2003), to civilise it (Loader and Walker 2007), to embrace its democratising potential (Wood and Shearing 2007), or to resist it (Neocleous 2008; Neocleous and Rigakos 2011), we need to understand and engage with the ways in which securitisation intersects with the shaping of agencies and identities and the wider cultural values associated with patriarchal masculinity.

320 

F. Dodsworth

References Archer, J. (2011). The Monster Evil: Policing and Violence in Victorian Liverpool. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Arditi, J. (1998). A Genealogy of Manners: Transformations of Social Relations in France and England from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries. London: Chicago University Press. Barker-Benfield, G.  J. (1992). The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century England. London: University of Chicago Press. Barry, A., Osborne, T., & Rose, N. (Eds.). (1996). Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government. London: UCL Press. Barthes, R. (1972). Mythologies (A. Avers, Trans.). London: Jonathan Cape. Bauman, Z. (1987). Legislators and Interpreters: On Modernity, Post-Modernity and Intellectuals. Cambridge: Polity. Bayley, D. H., & Shearing, C. (1996). The Future of Policing. Law and Society Review, 30(3), 585–606. Beier, A. L. (1985). Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560–1640. London: Methuen. Biernacki, R. (1999). Method and Metaphor After the New Cultural History. In V. E. Bonnell & L. Hunt (Eds.), Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (pp.  62–92). London: University of California Press. Biernacki, R. (2000). Language and the Shift from Signs to Practices in Cultural Enquiry. History and Theory, 39, 289–310. Burchell, G. (1991). Peculiar Interests: Civil Society and Governing the ‘System of Natural Liberty’. In G.  Burchell, C.  Gordon, & P.  Miller (Eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (pp. 119–150). Hemel Hempstead: Harvester. Burchell, G., Gordon, C., & Miller, P. (Eds.). (1991). The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. With Two Lectures by and an Interview with Michel Foucault. London: Harvester. Burke, K. (1969). A Grammar of Motives (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Burke, P. (2009). Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (3rd ed.). Farnham: Ashgate. Burkitt, I. (1996). Civilization and Ambivalence. The British Journal of Sociology, 47(1), 135–150.

  Conclusion: Genealogies of Security 

321

Burtt, S. (1992). Virtue Transformed: Political Argument in England, 1688–1740. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Buschendorf, C., Franke, A., & Voelz, J.  (2011). Civilizing and Decivilizing Processes: Figurational Approaches to American Culture. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Carter, P. (2001). Men and the Emergence of Polite Society: Britain, 1660–1800. London: Routledge. Churchill, D. (2018). History, Periodization and the Character of Contemporary Crime Control. Criminology and Criminal Justice, OnlineFirst, https://doi. org/10.1177/1748895818811905. Collier, S. J. (2011). Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics. Oxford: Princeton University Press. Collins, R. (2008). Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory. Oxford: Princeton University Press. Crawford, A., & Hutchinson, S. (2016). The Future(s) of Security Studies. British Journal of Criminology, 56, 1049–1067. Crone, R. (2012). Violent Victorians: Popular Entertainment in Nineteenth-­ Century London. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Culler, J. (2001). The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. With a New Preface by the Author. London: Routledge. D’Cruze, S. (1998). Crimes of Outrage: Sex, Violence and Victorian Working Women. London: UCL Press. D’Cruze, S. (Ed.). (2000). Everyday Violence in Britain, 1850–1950: Gender and Class. Harlow: Pearson. Dean, M. (1996). Foucault, Government and the Enfolding of Authority. In A.  Barry, T.  Osborne, & N.  Rose (Eds.), Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government (pp.  209–229). London: UCL Press. Dean, M. (1999). Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. London: Sage. Deveraux, S., & Griffiths, P. (Eds.). (2004). Penal Practice and Culture, 1500–1900: Punishing the English. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Dodsworth, F. (2007). Police and the Prevention of Crime: Commerce, Temptation and the Corruption of the Body Politic, from Fielding to Colquhoun. British Journal of Criminology, 47(3), 439–454. Dodsworth, F. (2008). The Idea of Police in Eighteenth-Century England: Discipline, Reformation, Superintendence, c. 1780–1800. Journal of the History of Ideas, 69(4), 583–604.

322 

F. Dodsworth

Dodsworth, F. (2015). Epochalism and the Society of Security: Continuity and Change in Self-Defence Culture. In M. Lytje, T. K. Nielsen, & M. Ottovay Jorgensen (Eds.), Challenging Ideas? Theory and Empirical Research in the Social Sciences (pp. 88–107). Cambridge: Scholar Press. Du Gay, P. (2003). The Tyranny of the Epochal: Change, Epochalism and Organizational Reform. Organization, 10(4), 663–684. Dubber, M.  D. (2005). The Police Power: Patriarchy and the Foundations of American Government. New York: Columbia University Press. Dubber, M. D. (2006). The New Police Science and the Police Power Model of the Criminal Process. In M.  D. Dubber & M.  Valverde (Eds.), The New Police Science: The Police Power in Domestic and International Governance (pp. 107–144). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Dunning, E., & Hughes, J.  (2013). Norbert Elias and Modern Sociology: Knowledge, Interdependence, Power, Process. London: Bloomsbury. Eisner, M. (2001). Modernization, Self-Control and Violence: The Long-Term Dynamics of European Homicide Rates in Theoretical Perspective. British Journal of Criminology, 41(4), 618–638. Eisner, M. (2003). Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime. Crime and Justice, 30, 83–142. Elias, N. (1996). The Germans: Power Struggles and the Development of Habitus in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (E. Dunning & S. Mennell, Trans., M. Schröter, Ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press. Elias, N. (2000). The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Explorations (Rev. ed., E. Jephcott, Trans.). Oxford: Blackwell. Emsley, C. (2005). Hard Men: The English and Violence Since 1750. London: Hambledon Continuum. Ericson, R. V. (2007). Crime in an Insecure World. Cambridge: Polity. Ericson, R.  V., & Haggerty, K.  D. (1997). Policing the Risk Society. Oxford: Clarendon. Fletcher, J.  (1997). Violence and Civilization: An Introduction to the Work of Norbert Elias. Cambridge: Polity. Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge (A.  Sheridan, Trans.). London: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1979). The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality Volume 1 (R. Hurley, Trans.). London: Penguin.

  Conclusion: Genealogies of Security 

323

Foucault, M. (1980). Truth and Power. In C. Gordon (Ed.), Power / Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (pp.  109–133). New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1985). The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality Volume 2 (R. Hurley, Trans.). London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1991). Governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (pp. 87–104). Hemel Hempstead: Harvester. Foucault, M. (2009). Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977–1978 (M.  Senellart, Ed., G.  Burchell, Trans.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Fromm, E. (2001). The Fear of Freedom (Routledge Classics ed.). London: Routledge. Gane, M., & Johnson, T. (Eds.). (1993). Foucault’s New Domains. London: Routledge. Garland, D. (1996). The Limits of the Sovereign State: Strategies of Crime Control in Contemporary Society. British Journal of Criminology, 36(4), 445–471. Garland, D. (1997). ‘Governmentality’ and the Problem of Crime. Theoretical Criminology, 1(2), 173–214. Garland, D. (2000). Ideas, Institutions and Situational Crime Prevention. In A. von Hirsch, D. Garland, & A. Wakefield (Eds.), Ethical and Social Perspectives on Situational Crime Prevention (pp. 1–16). Oxford: Hart. Garland, D. (2001). The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. London: University of Chicago Press. Gilling, D. (1997). Crime Prevention: Theory, Policy and Practice. London: UCL Press. Gillingham, J. (2002). From Civilitas to Civility: Codes of Manners in Medieval and Early Modern England. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 12, 267–289. Gordon, C. (1991). Governmental Rationality: An Introduction. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (pp. 1–52). Harvester: Hemel Hempstead. Gorski, P. S. (2003). The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe. London: University of Chicago Press. Greenblatt, S. (1980). Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From Moore to Shakespeare. London: University of Chicago Press.

324 

F. Dodsworth

Hardy, C., & Maguire, S. (2017). Institutional Entrepreneurship and Change in Fields. In R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, T. B. Lawrence, & R. E. Meyer (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism (pp.  261–280). London: Sage Publications. Hindess, B. (1996). Liberalism, Socialism and Democracy: Variations on a Governmental Theme. In A. Barry, T. Osborne, & N. Rose (Eds.), Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government (pp. 65–80). London: UCL Press. Hoogenboom, B. (2010). The Governance of Policing and Security. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Hope, T., & Sparks, R. (Eds.). (2000). Crime, Risk and Insecurity: Law and Order in Everyday Life and Political Discourse. London: Routledge. Hornsey, M. J. (2008). Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorisation Theory: A Historical Review. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(1), 204–222. Hughes, G. (2007). The Politics of Crime and Community. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Hunt, L. (Ed.). (1989). The New Cultural History. London: University of California Press. Hutchinson, S. (2006). Countering Catastrophic Criminology: Reform, Punishment and the Modern Liberal Compromise. Punishment and Society, 8(4), 443–467. Huysmans, J. (2006). Agency and the Politics of Protection: Implications for Security Studies. In J. Huysmans, A. Dobson, & R. Prokhovnik (Eds.), The Politics of Protection: Sites of Insecurity and Political Agency (pp.  1–18). London: Routledge. Jensen, R. (2017). The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men. Melbourne: Spinifex. Johnson, E. A., & Monkkonen, E. H. (Eds.). (1996). The Civilization of Crime: Violence in Town and Country Since the Middle Ages. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Johnston, L. (1992). The Rebirth of Private Policing. London: Routledge. Johnston, L. (1999). Policing Britain: Risk, Security and Governance. London: Longman. Johnston, L., & Shearing, C. (2003). Governing Security: Explorations of Policing and Justice. London: Routledge. Jones, T., & Newburn, T. (1998). Private Security and Public Policing. Oxford: Clarendon. Joyce, P. (1994). Democratic Subjects: The Self and the Social in Nineteenth-­ Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Conclusion: Genealogies of Security 

325

King, P. (1996). Punishing Assault: The Transformation of Attitudes in the English Courts. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 27(10), 43–74. Klein, L. E. (1994). Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Klein, L. E. (2002). Politeness and the Interpretation of the British Eighteenth Century. Historical Journal, 45, 869–898. Klein, J. (2010). Invisible Men: The Secret Lives of Police Constables in Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Klingenstein, S., Hitchcock, T., & DeDeo, S. (2014). The Civilizing Process in London’s Old Bailey. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(26), 9419–9424. van Krieken, R. (1990). The Organisation of the Soul: Elias and Foucault on Discipline and the Self. European Journal of Sociology, 31(2), 353–371. van Krieken, R. (1998). Norbert Elias. London: Routledge. van Krieken, R. (2012). Celebrity Society. London: Routledge. Langford, P. (1991). Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 1689–1798. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-­ Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Law, H., & Hassard, J.  (1999). Actor Network Theory and After. Oxford: Blackwell. Lerner, G. (1987). The Creation of Patriarchy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Loader, I. (2008). Review Symposium: The Anti-Politics of Crime. Theoretical Criminology, 12(3), 399–410. Loader, I., & Walker, N. (2007). Civilizing Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Loyal, S., & Quilley, S. (2004). The Sociology of Norbert Elias. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maguire, S., Hardy, C., & Lawrence, T. B. (2004). Institutional Entrepreneurship in Emerging Fields: HIV/AIDS Treatment Advocacy in Canada. Academy of Management Journal, 47(5), 657–679. Malešević, S. (2013). Forms of Brutality: Towards an Historical Sociology of Violence. European Journal of Social Theory, 16(3), 273–291. Malešević, S., & Ryan, K. (2012). The Disfigured Ontology of Figurational Sociology: Norbert Elias and the Question of Violence. Critical Sociology, 39(2), 165–181.

326 

F. Dodsworth

Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible Selves. American Psychologist, 41(9), 954–969. McCormack, M. (2005). The Independent Man: Citizenship and Gender Politics in Georgian England. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Mennell, S. (2007). The American Civilizing Process. Cambridge: Polity. Montrose, L. A. (1989). Professing the Renaissance: The Politics and Poetics of Culture. In H. A. Veeser (Ed.), The New Historicism (pp. 15–36). London: Routledge. Muchembled, R. (2012). A History of Violence: From the End of the Middle Ages to the Present (J. Birrell, Trans.). Cambridge: Polity. Neocleous, M. (2008). Critique of Security. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Neocleous, M. (2011a). Security as Pacification. In M. Neocleous & G. Rigakos (Eds.), Anti-Security (pp. 23–56). Ottawa: Red Quill. Neocleous, M. (2011b). The Police of Civilization: The War on Terror as Civilizing Offensive. International Political Sociology, 5(2), 144–159. Neocleous, M. (2014). War Power, Police Power. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Neocleous, M., & Rigakos, G. (Eds.). (2011). Anti-Security. Ottawa: Red Quill. O’Malley, P. (1992). Risk, Power and Crime Prevention. Economy and Society, 21(3), 252–275. O’Malley, P. (1996). Risk and Responsibility. In A.  Barry, T.  Osborne, & N. Rose (Eds.), Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government (pp. 189–207). London: UCL Press. O’Malley, P. (2000). Criminologies of Catastrophe? Understanding Criminal Justice on the Edge of the New Millennium. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 33(2), 153–167. Oestreich, G. (1982). Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (D. McLintock, Trans., B. Oestreich & H. G. Koenigsberger, Eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pasquino, P. (1991). Theatrum Politicum: The Genealogy of Capital  – Police and the State of Prosperity. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (pp.  1105–1118). Hemel Hempstead: Harvester. Pateman, C. (1989). The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory. Cambridge: Polity. Peoples, C., & Vaughn-Williams, N. (2014). Critical Security Studies: An Introduction (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.

  Conclusion: Genealogies of Security 

327

Pepperell, N. (2016). The Unease with Civilization: Norbert Elias and the Violence of the Civilizing Process. Thesis Eleven, 137(1), 3–21. Pocock, J. G. A. (1975). The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Chichester: Princeton University Press. Pocock, J.  G. A. (1985). Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Redner, H. (2015). The Civilizing Process – According to Mennell, Elias and Freud. Thesis Eleven, 127(1), 95–111. Rindzevičiūtė, E. (2016). The Power of Systems: How Policy Scientists Opened Up the Cold War World. London: Cornell University Press. Rose, N. (1999). Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rose, N. (2000). Government and Control. British Journal of Criminology, 40, 321–339. Rose, N., & Miller, P. (1992). Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government. British Journal of Sociology, 42, 172–205. Savage, M. (2009). Against Epochalism: An Analysis of Conceptions of Change in British Sociology. Cultural Sociology, 3, 217–238. Schubert, A. (1981). Private Initiative in Law Enforcement: Associations for the Prosecution of Felons, 1744–1856. In V. Bailey (Ed.), Policing and Prosecution in Nineteenth-Century Britain (pp. 25–41). London: Croom Helm. Schuilenburg, M. (2015). The Securitization of Society: Crime, Risk and Social Order (G.  Hall, Trans., introduced by D.  Garland). London: New  York University Press. Scott, J. W. (1991). The Evidence of Experience. Critical Inquiry, 17(4), 773–797. Sewell, W. H. (1999). The Concept(s) of Culture. In V. E. Bonnell & L. Hunt (Eds.), Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (pp. 35–61). London: University of California Press. Shearing, C. (2001). Punishment and the Changing Face of Governance. Punishment and Society, 3(2), 203–220. Shearing, C., & Stenning, P. (1981). Modern Private Security: Its Growth and Implications. In M. Tonry & N. Morris (Eds.), Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research (Vol. 3, pp. 193–245). London: University of Chicago Press. Shearing, C., & Stenning, P. (1983). Private Security: Implications for Social Control. Social Problems, 30(5), 493–506. Shearing, C., & Stenning, P. (1987). Private Policing. London: Sage.

328 

F. Dodsworth

Shoemaker, R. B. (2001). Male Honour and the Decline of Public Violence in Eighteenth-Century London. Social History, 23(2), 190–208. Shoemaker, R. B. (2002). The Taming of the Duel: Masculinity, Honour and Ritual Violence in London, 1660–1800. Historical Journal, 45(3), 525–545. Shoemaker, R. B. (2004). The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth-­ Century England. London: Hambledon. Shore, H. (2011). Criminality and Englishness in the Aftermath: The Racecourse Wars of the 1920s. Twentieth Century British History, 22(4), 474–497. Simon, J. (2007). Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sine, W. D., & David, R. J. (Eds.). (2010). Institutions and Entrepreneurship. Bingley: Emerald. Smith, D. (1999). The Civilizing Process and The History of Sexuality: Comparing Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault. Theory and Society, 28(1), 79–100. South, N. (1988). Policing for Profit: The Private Security Sector. London: Sage. Spierenburg, P. (1984). The Spectacle of Suffering: Executions and the Evolution of Repression: From a Preindustrial Metropolis to the European Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spierenburg, P. (2012). Violence and Punishment: Civilizing the Body Through Time. Cambridge: Polity. Spitzer, S., & Scull, A. (1977). Privatization and Capitalist Development: The Case of the Private Police. Social Problems, 25(1), 18–29. Stryker, S. (2007). Identity Theory and Personality Theory: Mutual Relevance. Journal of Personality, 75(6), 1083–1102. Stryker, S., & Burke, P. J. (2000). The Past, Present and Future of an Identity Theory. Social Psychology Quarterly, 63(4), 284–297. Thompson, F. M. L. (1988). The Rise of Respectable Society: A Social History of Victorian Britain, 1830–1900. London: Fontana. Turner, B.  S. (2004). Weber and Elias on Religion and Violence: Warrior Charisma and the Civilizing Process. In S. Loyal & S. Quigley (Eds.), The Sociology of Norbert Elias (pp.  245–264). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Valverde, M. (2008). Police, Sovereignty, and Law: Foucaultian Reflections. In M. D. Dubber & M. Valverde (Eds.), Police and the Liberal State (pp. 15–32). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

  Conclusion: Genealogies of Security 

329

Wacquant, L. (2011). Decivilizing and Demonizing: The Remaking of the Black American Ghetto. In C. Buschendorf, A. Franke, & J. Voelz (Eds.), Civilizing and Decivilizing Processes: Figurational Approaches to American Culture (pp. 149–173). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press. Walby, S. (1990). Theorizing Patriarchy. Oxford: Blackwell. Watson, K.  D. (Ed.). (2007). Assaulting the Past: Violence and Civilization in Historical Context. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. White, H. (1978). Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. London: Johns Hopkins University Press. White, H. (1999). Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect. London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wiener, M. J. (2003). Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness and Criminal Justice in Nineteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, C.  A. (2014). Police Control Systems in Britain, 1775–1975: From Parish Constable to National Computer. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Wood, J.  C. (2004). Violence and Crime in Nineteenth-Century England: The Shadow of Our Refinement. London: Routledge. Wood, J., & Shearing, C. (2007). Imagining Security. Cullompton: Willan. Wouters, C. (1999). Changing Patterns of Social Controls and Self-Controls: On the Rise of Crime since the 1950s and the Sociogenesis of a ‘Third Nature’. British Journal of Criminology, 39(3), 416–432. Wouters, C. (2004). Changing Regimes of Manners and Emotions: From Disciplining to Informalizing. In S. Loyal & S. Quigley (Eds.), The Sociology of Norbert Elias (pp. 193–211). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wouters, C. (2007). Informalization: Manners and Emotions since 1890. London: Sage. Wouters, C. (2011). How Civilizing Processes Continued: Towards an Informalization of Manner and a Third Nature Personality. Sociological Review, 59(1 suppl.), 140–159. Zedner, L. (2000). The Pursuit of Security. In T.  Hope & R.  Sparks (Eds.), Crime, Risk and Insecurity: Law and Order in Everyday Life and Political Discourse (pp. 200–214). London: Routledge. Zedner, L. (2009). Security. London: Routledge.

Index1

A

Agency, xiii, 13, 17, 19, 24, 71, 116, 120, 150, 249, 250, 262, 264, 290, 301, 317–319 Anarchy, 20, 71, 78–80, 87, 91, 98, 100, 103, 109–111, 118, 120, 130, 162 Anne (Queen), 73, 74, 113 Apparatus, 6, 22, 55, 160, 192, 235, 247, 249, 250 assemblage, 22 Apprentices, 19, 20, 43, 44, 91, 111, 153, 157, 170, 173, 174 Arditi, Jorge, 12, 13, 24, 54, 118, 230, 315, 318, 319 Aristotle, 78–80, 82, 104, 109, 110 Authority challenges to, 19, 40, 54, 70, 76, 250, 258, 259, 319

sources of, 71, 90, 91, 119, 228 See also Dean, Mitchell Autonomy, 308, 309 See also Liberalism; Liberty B

Bauman, Zygmunt, 12, 14, 19, 41, 43, 46, 52, 72, 265, 300, 312 Beattie, John, 6, 52, 107, 114, 131, 133, 135, 143, 150–155, 159–161, 164–166, 169, 171, 191, 196–199, 210, 260 Beier, A. L., 6, 40, 44, 46, 47, 54–57, 63, 149, 300 Birmingham Police, 220 Blackman, Honor, 271–274, 277

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2019 F. Dodsworth, The Security Society, Crime Prevention and Security Management, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43383-1

331

332 Index

Blizard, Sir William, 144, 162, 163 Bow Street Magistrates’ Court, 137, 142 Runners, 21, 61, 143, 151, 152, 189, 199, 217 Bridewell, 57–60, 69 Burglar alarms, 3, 196, 236–238 Burke, Kenneth, 9, 138, 142, 150, 314 Burke, Peter J., 9, 117, 267, 290, 318 Burnet, Gilbert, 59, 60, 92, 108n3, 109 Burrow, Robert, 100–103 Burscough, William, 99, 100 Burtt, Shelley, 91, 93, 95, 96, 130, 307 C

Carter, Benjamin, 103 Catholicism, 45, 70, 72, 73, 92, 117, 159 Charles II, 72, 73, 94 Chow, D., 270, 272, 275–277 Kung Fu, 270, 275 Churchill, David, xii, xvii, 6, 7, 236, 239, 315 Civilising process, the civilising offensives/projects, 14, 72, 180, 312–314 civility, 8, 11, 309 de-civilising, 23 manners, 175 politeness, 16, 248, 309 respectability, 248, 309 sensibility, 16, 248, 309 uncivil society, 11, 310

Civil wars (English), the, 45, 62, 71, 76, 78, 79, 81, 87, 120 Class middling sort/middle-class, 10, 23, 24, 85, 174, 175, 196, 248, 269, 318 working-class/labouring classes/ commonalty, 18, 22, 195, 212, 218, 226, 248–250, 289, 318 Claydon, Tony, 91–93 Colley, Linda, 73–77 Colquhoun, Patrick, 62, 132, 169–171, 196, 197, 226, 227, 260, 263 Constable handbooks, 47–49 parish or petty constable, 47, 48, 106, 115, 202, 309 See also Police Consumption, 144, 264–278, 281 Contagious Diseases Acts, see Prostitution Corruption, 64, 71, 72, 93, 112, 114, 115, 118, 119, 130, 141, 142, 145, 146, 170, 171, 194, 203, 213, 259, 268 See also Effeminacy; License; Luxury Courts assizes, 76, 88, 97, 105 church, 41, 58, 60, 62, 71, 93, 94 leet, 41, 42, 47, 53, 200–202 quarter sessions, 76, 84, 97, 106, 111

 Index 

Crime prevention CCTV, 263 Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, 2, 3, 250, 262, 263 Design Against Crime, 2 situational crime prevention, 250, 263, 289 temptation, 260 See also Self-defence, self-protection Cultural turn, the, 314 D

Dabhoiwala, Faramerz, 44, 60, 85, 94–96, 130 De Veil, Sir Thomas, 20, 132, 137–143, 153, 189 Dean, Mitchell, 5, 7, 24, 51, 119, 300, 303, 306, 319 enfolding of authority, 24, 319 Detective/detection plain-clothed, 216, 217 Popay, William, 216, 217 Disney, John, 94, 103 Dubber, Markus, xi, 17, 42, 44, 45, 56, 190, 195, 300, 316 Duelling, 177, 269, 311 See also Self-defence Dundas, Henry, 168, 169 E

Effeminacy, 162 See also Luxury Elector of Hannover, 74 Elias, Norbert, x, xii, xiii, 8, 10–15, 18, 23, 45, 46, 72, 101,

333

102, 145, 146, 178–180, 300, 309–315 Epochalism, 315 Exclusion Crisis, the, 70, 76, 79–81, 109, 172, 176 F

Feminism, 250, 251, 258, 289, 299 Feudalism, 40 frankpledge, 42, 43, 148 manor/manorial, 41, 46 See also Courts, leet Fielding, Henry, 21, 61, 132, 137, 140, 143, 151, 153–155, 157, 162, 170, 171, 189 Fielding, Sir John, 21, 61, 132, 137, 151, 152, 154, 155, 157, 159–162, 173 Figural causation, see White, Hayden Figurational sociology, 15 See also Civilising process, the; Elias, Norbert Filmer, Sir Robert, 79, 80, 82, 83, 88, 96, 104, 108–110, 112 Foucault, Michel, ix, x, xii, xiii, 3, 7, 8, 12, 15, 16, 22–24, 52, 55, 57–59, 72, 102, 119, 131, 163, 172, 180, 192, 193, 213, 235, 247, 249, 300–305, 308, 311–313, 315, 317, 318 See also Governmentality; Liberalism Fratriarchy, 129–181, 189–239 Freedom, see Liberty

334 Index G

Garland, David, 4, 5, 8, 250, 251, 259, 260, 263, 264, 268, 289, 300, 303–305 Gentleman, see Class George I, 74, 75 See also Elector of Hannover Glasgow police, 215, 220 Glorious Revolution, the, 19, 70, 74, 77, 99, 103, 115, 117, 129, 307 Gonson, Sir John, 89, 96, 106–110, 106n1, 106n2, 112–116, 130, 132, 137, 146 Gordon, Colin, 3, 5, 7, 15, 303, 306 Gordon Riots, the, 21, 159, 160, 162, 163, 167, 176, 211 Gorski, Philip, 15, 57–59, 69, 180, 313 Governmentality, ix, xii, 5, 44, 51, 58, 62, 302–309 Greenblatt, Stephen, 9, 15, 22, 24, 119, 230, 281, 318 Griffiths, Paul, 6, 10, 43, 49–52, 54, 55, 57–62, 210, 218, 311 H

Hanway, Jonas, 144, 159, 161–163 Hitchcock, Tim, xii, 16, 63, 64, 81, 85, 96, 130, 131, 134, 136, 140, 143, 154, 155, 159–161 Hoadly, Benjamin, 80, 81, 98, 99 Hornsey, Matthew, 13, 119, 229, 318

Humanism, 58, 59, 120 Hunt, Alan, 10, 15, 18, 44, 95, 130, 145, 156, 160, 181, 271, 272, 290, 314 Huysmans, Jef, xiii, 16–18, 24, 319 I

Identity, x, xiii, 3, 9, 13, 15, 16, 22–24, 43, 44, 51, 54, 64, 77, 116–120, 181, 214, 228–230, 234, 235, 248, 249, 256, 264, 266–269, 281, 290, 301, 308, 317–319 identity theory, 116 Informalisation, see Permissive society (counterculture) Information, 2, 61, 62, 115, 151–153, 157, 159, 203, 206, 212, 215, 219, 261 Innes, Joanna, 53, 58, 171, 199, 206 Institutional entrepreneurs, 14, 19, 20, 23, 143, 154, 156, 171, 301 Insurance, 22, 196, 236, 238, 239, 249, 262 See also Prosecution associations J

Jacobites/Jacobitism, 74, 75, 94, 129 James II, 20, 70, 74, 75, 78–81, 92, 94, 117, 129, 307 Joyce, Patrick, 7, 15, 16, 116, 228, 248, 314

 Index 

Justices of the peace (magistrates, JPs), 52, 53, 56, 57, 63, 76, 96, 106, 107, 111, 115, 133, 134, 136–138, 148, 166, 192, 194 petty sessions, 76, 77, 136 See also Colquhoun, Patrick; De Veil, Sir Thomas; Fielding, Henry; Fielding, Sir John; Gonson, Sir John; Montagu, James; Middlesex Justices Act (1792) K

Kent, Susan Kingsley, 40, 44, 254–256 Kermode, Frank, 39, 40 Klein, Joanne, xii, 194, 195, 248, 260, 261, 299 L

Landau, Norma, 6, 75, 88, 106, 133 Law, rule of, 20, 69–120, 130, 307 Lerner, Gerda, 16, 17, 19, 195, 316, 317 Leslie, Charles, 80–82, 88, 96, 110 Liberalism, x, 4, 250, 304, 306, 309, 310 neo-liberalism, x, 6, 250, 300, 304, 306 Liberty freedom, 20, 71, 82, 97–100, 103, 110, 117, 156, 167, 308 opposed to license and licentiousness, 64, 70, 71,

335

94, 97–100, 102, 103, 105, 110, 118 License, see Liberty; Morality Loader, I., 4, 54, 266, 310, 312, 319 Locke, John, 79, 81, 82, 104, 105, 108n3, 110 Luxury, 71, 92, 93, 131, 144–147, 156, 170 See also Effeminacy; Negligence M

Macek, Steve, xiii, 4, 23, 268, 289 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 80, 110, 112, 112n4 Magistrate, see Justices of the peace (magistrates, JPs) Magna Carta, 83, 87, 108 Manchester Borough Council, 223, 224, 227, 228 Manchester police (Borough and City), 215, 227 Manchester Police Commission, 205, 206, 208, 215, 217–221 Mary II, 129, 307 Masculinity, x, 16, 17, 22, 23, 132, 139, 142, 153, 157, 158, 163, 172, 175, 176, 190, 193, 195, 208, 209, 230–232, 235, 239, 247, 249, 250, 254, 256, 258, 263, 269, 282, 288–290, 299–301, 307, 309, 313, 316, 317, 319 Masterless men, 12, 39–64, 69, 71, 136, 157 McCormack, Matthew, xvi, 16, 17, 19, 22, 163, 190, 193, 308

336 Index

Metropolitan Police commissioners, 192, 220, 221, 224, 228, 233, 252 Metropolitan Police Improvement Act (1829), 190 Thames River Police, 161, 171 Middlesex Justices Act (1792), 21, 159, 166, 189, 197 Militarism, see Police Miller, Wilbur, 212, 214, 216, 217, 222–224, 229 Mobility, 5, 63, 64, 139, 148, 219 Monarchy, 12, 19, 42, 45, 46, 53, 62, 70–72, 74, 76–80, 83, 84, 94, 98, 102, 103, 108–110, 117, 120, 311 Montagu, James, 77, 87, 88, 90, 109, 113 Morality houses of correction, 64, 159, 179 (see also Bridewell) reformation, 58–60, 64, 92, 93, 96, 117, 118, 120, 130, 156, 319 Societies for the Reformation of Manners, 130, 131, 146, 156 vice and license, 94 Moyle, Walter, 109, 110 Muchembled, Robert, 12, 18, 40, 178, 199, 290, 312, 313 N

Negligence, 114, 133, 147, 162, 189, 221 See also Luxury

Neocleous, Mark, xi, 3, 4, 8, 11, 12, 14, 22, 40, 56, 163, 170, 193, 260, 300, 312, 319 O

Oestreich, Gerhard, 15, 58, 180, 313 Ogborn, Miles, 7, 152, 153, 179, 201, 208 P

Parish civil parish/parochial government, 47, 52, 134, 135 offices and officers, 47, 63, 71, 85, 95, 130, 133, 135, 154, 190, 202, 214 vestry, 52, 134, 191 Pateman, Carole, x, 16, 20, 72, 132, 157, 190, 248, 257, 316 Patriarchy fratriarchy, xi householder/heads of households, 16, 19, 69, 72, 131, 157, 195, 218, 316 paternalistic dominance, 316, 317 patricians, 153, 180 politics of, 44 private patriarchy, 19, 317 public patriarchy, 55, 91, 180, 195, 316 subordination, x, 54, 72, 289, 317 Peel, Sir Robert, 136, 191–194, 198, 213, 219, 220, 222, 226

 Index 

Permissive society (counterculture), 258–264, 268 informalisation, 259, 268 Pocock, J. G. A., 78, 83, 87, 90, 93, 306–308 Poetics, 15–18, 97, 313–319 Police 1785 Police Bill, 164, 192 autobiographies, 231 discipline, 22, 132, 193, 212, 223, 227 drill, 22, 223 force/power/violence, xi, 17, 53, 56, 95, 158, 195, 209–212, 215, 217, 255, 312, 316 histories, 17, 233, 258 idea, 6, 21, 129–181, 189 journals, 230, 231 men, 22, 195, 210–228, 230, 231, 233, 248, 254, 256, 261, 284 militarism, xi, 193, 213, 229 uniform, 1, 135, 190, 192, 203, 214–216 unit beat policing, 261 women, 250, 252, 255–258 See also Birmingham Police; Constable; Glasgow police; Manchester Police (Borough and City); Metropolitan Police Politics Tory, 73, 89 Whig, 73, 76, 78, 105 Polybius, 78, 104 Possible selves, 24, 266, 267, 317

337

Poverty, 12, 62–64, 111, 133, 136, 144, 145, 147, 168 See also Class Power, ix–xi, xiii, 8, 11, 12, 16, 17, 19–22, 24, 44–47, 53, 56, 58, 59, 69–71, 73, 78, 82–85, 87, 89–91, 94, 99, 103, 109, 111, 112, 115, 117–119, 133, 134, 136, 141, 147, 149, 150, 152, 158, 164, 166–169, 175, 190, 192, 193, 195, 197, 203, 205, 207, 209–214, 218, 219, 221, 223, 226, 228, 229, 247, 248, 250, 251, 257, 275, 280, 283, 301, 306, 308, 309, 311, 312, 316–319 See also Foucault, Michel Problematisation, x, 16, 23, 191, 199, 301, 304, 313, 316, 317, 319 Prosecution associations, 6, 152, 196, 235 Prostitution, 107, 248, 251–253 Contagious Diseases Acts, 251, 253, 254 Protection, x, xi, 12, 14–23, 41, 52, 94, 120, 129–132, 137, 142, 149, 151, 153, 154, 156, 158–160, 163, 166, 167, 172, 177, 189–191, 196, 203, 205, 208, 209, 214, 235, 238, 239, 247–290, 299–301, 317, 319 See also Self-defence, self-protection

338 Index R

Reformation, the, 40, 55, 58, 59, 95, 119, 156, 162 Reformation of manners, see Morality Religion, 11, 58, 84, 86, 94, 112, 113, 162, 306, 310 See also Catholicism; Morality, reformation Responsibilisation, 4, 5, 99, 250, 251, 264–278, 289, 305 See also Liberalism Revolution Settlement, the Act of Settlement, 63, 74, 77, 81, 111 Act of Union, 77, 216 Reynolds, Elaine, 52, 131, 135, 136, 226, 247 Rome, fall or decline of, 58, 112, 114, 145, 146 See also Corruption; Luxury Rose, Nikolas, xvii, 15, 19, 99, 102, 179, 250, 264, 300, 303–305, 308–310 S

Sayer, Edward, 161–163 Schuilenburg, Marc, 1, 4, 22, 317 Securitisation, x, xi, 2–4, 11, 12, 14–16, 23, 24, 40, 41, 142, 300, 301, 308, 316–319 Self-defence martial arts film and television, 273 jiu-jitsu/judo, 255, 269–274, 282, 284, 286 kung fu, 271, 274–278 training manuals, 267–269, 271

self-protection, 23, 270, 280, 281, 287, 289 women’s, 23 Self-fashioning, 9, 22, 23, 230, 231, 248 collective self-fashioning, 13, 54, 118, 230, 318, 319 Servants, 9, 19, 20, 43, 44, 55, 56, 85, 91, 97, 138, 148, 153, 157, 167, 174, 175, 194, 236, 238 Settlement, Acts of, 77 See also Mobility Shoemaker, Robert, xii, 6, 9, 63, 64, 81, 85, 96, 114, 130, 131, 134, 136, 137, 140, 143, 154, 155, 159–161, 173–178, 180, 196, 199, 269, 289, 311 Sidney, Algernon, 79, 104, 108n3, 110 Siskin, Clifford, 21, 132, 152, 153, 161, 208 Social identity approach, 13, 229, 318 Societies for the Reformation of Manners, see Morality Spangler, R., 270, 275–277 Kung Fu, 275 Stryker, Sheldon, 9, 23, 116, 117, 267, 290, 318 Stylianou, Stellakis, 281–284, 288, 289 Subordination, see Patriarchy Surveillance, x, 3, 17, 21, 22, 41, 43, 44, 47, 52, 59, 69, 71, 72, 130–132, 135, 151, 171, 207, 250, 264, 299, 300 supervision, 21, 72

 Index 

System, ix, xii, 3, 5, 10, 12, 18, 20–23, 40–44, 46, 48, 51–54, 56, 61–64, 69, 71, 72, 77, 79, 83, 84, 91, 92, 108, 109, 114, 129, 132, 135–137, 144, 149–153, 156, 160–164, 169–172, 178, 180, 189, 190, 192, 194, 195, 200–204, 207–210, 213, 215, 216, 219, 222, 223, 227, 234, 235, 239, 248–250, 259–262, 264, 268, 277, 282, 300–303, 305, 308, 312, 317

339

van Krieken, Robert, 3, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 72, 248, 300, 310, 312, 319 Violence, xi, 8–11, 13–16, 18, 21, 46, 101, 110, 111, 142, 150, 158, 176–178, 180, 191, 196, 201, 225, 230, 231, 254, 255, 267, 271, 273, 274, 278–286, 288–290, 299, 310–314 W

Technology (security), xii, 1, 4, 22, 59, 196, 235–239, 249, 299, 301 See also Apparatus Temptation, see Crime prevention Thompson, Geoff, 281, 282, 285–289 Turner, M. J., 202, 203, 205–207 Tyranny, 20, 71, 78, 81, 98, 99, 103, 109–112, 118, 130, 319 standing armies, 109 (see also Militarism)

Walby, Sylvia, 16, 19, 72, 91, 132, 158, 180, 190, 251, 290, 316, 317 Walker, N., 4, 54, 310, 319 Walkowitz, Judy, 248, 250, 253 Watchmen, 52, 61, 134, 135, 191, 192, 194, 196–198, 200, 202, 203, 215, 219–222, 247 White, Hayden, 40, 52, 263, 304, 314 figural causation, 304 William III (William of Orange), 70, 73, 78, 92–94, 99, 129, 307 Williams, Chris, xii, xvii Wouters, Cas, 23, 259, 268, 310 Wyles, Lilian, 255–257

V

Z

Vagrancy and vagabondage, 55, 148

Zedner, Lucia, 3, 4, 6, 303

T