Policing the industrial north of England 1777-1877: the control of labour at work, and in the streets

Abstract

Amongst the considerable and valuable canon of work on the introduction of public uniformed police services in the nineteenth-century, there has been a robust strand of research on privately-funded agencies of control. Whilst research on publicly-funded bodies has largely focused on order-maintenance and preventative crime-control; others have studied the protection that private policing agencies offered to sectional interests. This article seeks to make some connections between the activities of one particular private agency – the Worsted Committee and their Inspectorate – and the development of public policing in the West Riding of Yorkshire in the industrial north of England. In particular the article questions: how did a private agency designed to regulate private space and a public body (Bradford Borough Police) that was supposed to protect public order in public spaces find a working partnership in the mid- to late-nineteenth century; how successful was this unofficial arrangement; and what were the consequences that flowed from this notional partnership for the development of policing in the West Riding, and the control of labour in the workplace and in the streets?