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

Abstract

This article discusses the activities of a private policing 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. It asks: how did a private agency, which was designed to regulate private space, and a public body (Bradford Borough Police), which 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? What were the consequences that flowed from this notional partnership for the development of policing in the West Riding, and for the control of labour in the workplace and in the streets? The article suggests that, whilst many private police forces continued throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century, they were increasingly seen as anachronistic in an ever-more centralized system of policing that was seen as more integral to communities as a whole, rather than representing vested interests. The Worsted Committee, by contrast, lasted for nearly two hundred years as a viable concern, continuing to act in the interests of their employers until well after World War Two. The article concludes that this private agency had a significant effect of the development of public policing in West Yorkshire, especially with regard to the Bradford Borough Police. It must therefore be concluded that this employers’ police, empowered by law to coerce and intimidate the workforce, may have been the most dynamic private policing agency seen in England in the last three centuries and which at first impeded, then accommodated, and lastly partnered, the introduction and operation of public policing in the West Riding of Yorkshire.