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Public men, private interests: the origins, structure and practice of police courts in Scotland, c.1800–1833

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2012

DAVID G. BARRIE  and
SUSAN BROOMHALL
DAVID G. BARRIE
Affiliation:
Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia.
SUSAN BROOMHALL
Affiliation:
Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia.
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Abstract

This article examines how civic tensions and the rise to prominence of a new class of businessmen contributed to the evolution of police courts in Scottish towns, c.1800 to 1833. It argues that men of property intertwined civic imperatives with their own moral and economic interests in order to effect reform and defend their position, status and influence. It also contends that police courts were important institutions in reflecting and exposing the divisions and shared interests that existed among ‘public men’ and the private interests they sought to promote and safeguard. In doing so, the article highlights social hierarchies – both between men of property and different classes – as an important force in shaping the development and institutional workings of police courts.

Hommes publics, intérêts privés: origines, structure et jurisprudence des tribunaux de police en ecosse, entre 1800 et 1833

Cet article examine comment l'existence de rapports tendus au sein de la société civile et l'importance croissante d'une nouvelle classe d'hommes d'affaires ont pu contribuer à faire évoluer les tribunaux de police dans des villes écossaises, entre 1800 et 1833. Nous soutenons que les grands propriétaires ont combiné les impératifs de la vie civile avec leur propre morale et leurs intérêts économiques, pour obtenir des réformes tout en défendant leurs positions, statut et influence. Nous pensons que les tribunaux de police étaient des institutions importantes qui reflétaient et mettaient en évidence les divergences et les points communs qui pouvaient exister entre les intérêts des hommes publics et les intérêts privés qu'ils cherchaient à promouvoir et à sauvegarder. De cette manière, nous mettons en avant la hiérarchie entre les hommes de la classe possédante et les autres, comme force importante dans le développement et les mécanismes institutionnels des tribunaux de police.

Öffentliche männer, private interessen: ursprünge, struktur und praxis der polizeigerichte in schottland, ca.1800 bis 1833

Dieser Beitrag untersucht, wie zivile Spannungen und der Aufstieg einer neuen Schicht von Geschäftsleuten dazu beitrugen, dass zwischen etwa 1800 und 1833 in schottischen Städten Polizeigerichte entstanden. Die These ist, dass wohlhabende Männer bürgerliche Normen mit ihren eigenen sittlichen und ökonomischen Interessen verknüpften, um Reformen in Gang zu setzen und ihre soziale Stellung, ihren Status und ihren Einfluss zu verteidigen. Es wird ferner behauptet, dass Polizeigerichte wichtige Institutionen waren, um Unstimmigkeiten ebenso wie gemeinsamen Interessen widerzuspiegeln und zum Ausdruck zu bringen, die zwischen “öffentlichen Herren” und den privaten Interessen existierten, die sie zu befördern und abzusichern versuchten. Auf diese Weise stellt der Beitrag heraus, dass soziale Hierarchien – sowohl unter wohnhabenden Männern als auch zwischen ihnen und anderen Klassen – ein wichtiger Einflussfaktor für die Entwicklung und die institutionelle Funktionsweise von Polizeigerichten waren.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , May 2012 , pp. 83 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

ENDNOTES

1 John Stark, Picture of Edinburgh; containing a history and description of the city, with a particular account of every remarkable object in, or establishment connected with, the Scottish metropolis (Edinburgh, 1806), 179.

2 The first, and most significant, of these acts were introduced in the rapidly expanding industrial and/or commercial centres of Glasgow (1800), Edinburgh (1805), Paisley (1806), Calton (1819) and Dundee (1824). Glasgow (39 & 40 George III, cap. 88); Edinburgh (45 George III, cap. 21); Paisley (46 George III, cap. 116); Calton (59 George III, cap. 3); and Dundee (5 George IV, cap. 129).

3 See, for instance, Drew D. Gray, Crime, prosecution and social relations in London: the summary courts of London in the late eighteenth century (Basingstoke, 2009); Beattie, J. M., ‘Sir John Fielding and public justice: the Bow Street magistrates’ court, 1754–1780', Law and History Review 25, 1 (2007), 61–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, Bruce P., ‘The emergence of public prosecution in London, 1790–1850’, Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 18, 29 (2006), 29–62Google Scholar; Peter King, Crime, justice and discretion in England, 1740–1820 (Oxford, 2000), passim; and Norma Landau, ‘The trading justice's trade’, in Norma Landau ed., Law, crime and English society, 1660–1830 (Cambridge, 2002), 46–70.

4 See, for instance, V. A. C. Gatrell and T. B. Hadden, ‘Criminal statistics and their interpretation’, in E. A., Wrigley ed., Nineteenth-century society: essays in the use of quantitative methods for the study of social data (Cambridge, 1972), 336–96; V. A. C. Gatrell, ‘The decline of theft and violence in Victorian and Edwardian England’, in V. A. C., Gatrell, B. Lenman and G. Parker eds., Crime and the law: the social history of crime in Western Europe since 1500 (London, 1980), 238–370; D. V. J. Jones, Crime in nineteenth-century Wales (Cardiff, 1992); and David Philips, Crime and authority in Victorian England: The Black Country, 1835–1860 (London, 1977).

5 The literature is too extensive to list in full. Amongst the most significant studies are V. A. C. Gatrell, ‘Crime, authority and the policeman-state’, in F. M. L. Thompson ed., Cambridge social history of Britain, 1750–1950 (Cambridge, 1992), 243–310; Godfrey, Barry, ‘Changing prosecution practices and their impact on crime figures, 1857–1940’, British Journal of Criminology 48, 2 (2008), 171–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Martin J. Wiener, Men of blood: violence, manliness and criminal justice in Victorian England (Cambridge, 2004); and S. D'Cruze, Crimes of outrage: sex, violence and Victorian working women (London, 1998).

6 Emsley, Clive, ‘Filling in, adding up, moving on: criminal justice history in contemporary Britain’, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/Crime, History and Societies 9, 1 (2005), 118–19Google Scholar.

7 This point includes those studies listed in footnote 4.

8 Although focusing on assize courts and quarter sessions, an interesting study of crime in provincial England is provided by Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton, Rogues, thieves, and the rule of law: the problem of law enforcement in north-east England, 1718–1800 (London, 2004).

9 For studies of summary justice in early-modern London not already cited, see Robert B. Shoemaker, Prosecution and punishment: petty crime and the law in London and rural Middlesex, c.1660–1725 (Cambridge, 1991); and Ruth Paley ed., Justice in eighteenth-century Hackney: the justicing notebook of Henry Norris, volume 28 (London Record Society, 1991). For wider studies on crime, prosecution and urban order, see J. M. Beattie, Crime and the courts in England 1660–1800 (Princeton, 1986); J. M. Beattie, Policing and punishment in London, 1660–1750: urban crime and the limits of terror (Oxford, 2001); D. Hay and F. Snyder eds., Policing and prosecution in Britain, 1750–1850 (Oxford, 1989); and Robert B. Shoemaker, The London mob: violence and disorder in eighteenth-century England (London, 2004).

10 Beattie, ‘Sir John Fielding’, 61–100.

11 Paley, ‘The Middlesex justices act of 1792’.

12 Lindsay Farmer, Criminal law, tradition and legal order: crime and the genius of Scots law, 1747 to the present (Cambridge, 1997), 97.

13 See, for instance, David G. Barrie, Police in the age of improvement: police development and the civic tradition in Scotland, 1775–1865 (Cullompton, 2008), 93, 114, 150, 152–3, 199, 239, 262 and 268; and Susan Broomhall and David G. Barrie, ‘Making men: media, magistrates and the representation of masculinity in Scottish police courts, 1800–1835’, in David G. Barrie and Susan Broomhall eds., A history of police and masculinities, 1700–2010 (London, 2012), 72–101.

14 In recent years, a number of social histories have examined how the police and the High Court of Justiciary dealt with crime, protest and criminals, especially violent women and homicide, and the role procurators played in investigating and prosecuting crime. See, for instance, Anne-Marie Kilday, Women and violent crime in enlightenment Scotland (Suffolk, 2007); Donnachie, Ian, ‘“The darker side”: a speculative survey of Scottish crime during the first half of the nineteenth century’, Scottish Economic and Social History 15 (1995), 5–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and M. Anne Crowther, ‘Crime, prosecution and mercy: English influence and Scottish practice in the early nineteenth century’, in S. J. Connolly ed., Kingdoms united? Great Britain and Ireland since 1500: integration and diversity (Dublin, 1999), 225–38.

15 Although often on the fringes of civic administration, ‘public men’ included members of the mercantile and craft institutions from which the composition of local councils was usually drawn. They were, therefore, burgess and guildry members and men for whom it was incumbent to be active in public life – not least, in watching, warding and policing. For more on the concept of civic virtue and its role in Scottish public life, see Barrie, David G., ‘Police in civil society: police, enlightenment and civic virtue in Scotland, 1780–1833’, Urban History 37, 1 (May, 2010), 45–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Both McLaren and Nenadic note that legal professionals, in the latter's words, are among those with ‘the highest capacity for personal wealth and the highest status and power’ along with merchants engaged in overseas trade in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scottish towns. Stana Nenadic, ‘The rise of the urban middle class’, in T. Devine and R. Mitchison eds., People and society in Scotland, volume. 1: 1760–1830 (Edinburgh, 1988), 27–52; and A. A. McLaren, ‘Patronage and professionalism: the “forgotten middle class” 1760–1830’, in David McCrone, Stephen Kendrick and Pat Straw eds., The making of Scotland: nation, culture and social change (Edinburgh, 1989), 123–42.

17 Gray, David, ‘The people's courts? Summary justice and social relations in the city of London, c.1760–1800’, Family and Community History 11, 1 (2008), 7–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; King, Peter, ‘The summary courts and social relations in eighteenth-century England’, Past and Present 183, 1 (2004), 125–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davis, Jennifer S., ‘A poor man's system of justice? The London police courts in the second half of the nineteenth century’, Historical Journal 27, 2 (1984), 309–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Morgan, G. and Rushton, P., ‘The magistrate, the community and the maintenance of an orderly society in eighteenth-century England’, Historical Research 76, 191 (2003), 54–77Google Scholar.

18 David Philips, ‘“A new engine of power and authority”: the institutionalisation of law-enforcement in England, 1780–1830’, in Vic Gatrell, Bruce Lenman and Geoffrey Parker eds., Crime and the law: the social history of crime in Western Europe since 1500 (London, 1980), 155–89. Paul Langford's Public life and the propertied Englishman 1689–1798 (Oxford, 1991) provides an excellent overview of how men of property introduced police and improvement commissions in the eighteenth century, but little attention is given to the summary courts.

19 For a critique, see Dodsworth, Francis, ‘“Civic” police and the condition of liberty: the rationality of governance in eighteenth-century England’, in Social History 29, 2 (2004), 199–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 For an overview of Scottish criminal courts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Stephen J. Davies, ‘The courts and the Scottish legal system 1600–1747’, in V. A. C. Gatrell, Bruce Lenman and Geoffrey Parker eds., Crime and the law: the social history of crime in Western Europe since 1500 (London, 1980), 120–54; Johan Findlay, All manner of people: the history of the justices of the peace in Scotland (Edinburgh, 2000); Anne E. Whetstone, Scottish county government in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Edinburgh, 1981), chapter 2; and David M. Walker, A legal history of Scotland, six volumes (Edinburgh, 1996), IV, 473 and V, 494–7. For church courts, see Leah Leneman and Rosalind Mitchison, Sin and the city: sexuality and social control in urban Scotland 1660–1780 (Edinburgh, 1998).

21 Solemn procedure is the formal legal process used in serious cases involving high court or sheriff court trials before juries.

22 Scotland had lower rates of male committals to trial – which accounted for the overwhelming majority of all committals – than in England in the nineteenth century, although female committals were higher. Crowther, ‘Crime, prosecution and mercy’, 231.

23 Lenman, B. and Parker, G., ‘Crime and control in Scotland, 1500–1800’, History Today XXX, 1 (1980), 16Google Scholar.

24 See Dundee City Archives (hereafter DCA), ‘Lawburrows books of Dundee, 1775 to 1799’, no reference numbers.

25 Perth and Kinross Council Archive, ‘Perth town council legal papers 1753–1866’, PE/51/1-7, especially bundles 1 to 7 for cases in the second half of the eighteenth century.

26 For more on lawburrows, see Encyclopaedia of the laws of Scotland, volume IX, land tax to midwives (Edinburgh, 1930), 53.

27 ‘Return of the number of persons charged with criminal offences in England and Wales, Ireland and Scotland, 1822–1823’, 26.

28 Joy Cameron, Prisons and punishment in Scotland from the middle ages to the present day (Edinburgh, 1983), 57.

29 Joseph John Gurney, Notes on a visit made to some of the prisons in Scotland and the north of England, in company with Elizabeth Fry; with some general observations on the subject of prison discipline (London, 1819), 25–6.

30 In Scotland, private criminal prosecutions were extremely rare. Crowther, ‘Crime, prosecution and mercy’, 225–6.

31 British Parliamentary Papers (hereafter BPP), ‘Eleventh report of the commissioners appointed for inquiring into the duties, salaries, fees and enrolments, of the several officers, clerks, and ministers of justice, of the courts in Scotland. Burgh courts’, 1822 [558], 69.

32 See BPP, ‘Fourth report by her Majesty's Law Commissioners, Scotland, 1839’, 1840 [241], 251–339.

33 See complaints from citizens about this in the Dundee, Perth and Cupar Advertiser, 29 December 1815 and 29 November 1816.

34 Dick Institute, ‘Kilmarnock town council minute book’, BK/1/1/2/2, 26 October 1796.

35 Ibid., 8 December 1801.

36 ‘Fourth report by her Majesty's Law Commissioners, Scotland, 1839’, 251–339.

37 I. E. Maver, ‘The guardianship of the community: civic authority before 1833’, in T. M. Devine and G. Jackson eds., Glasgow, volume I: beginnings to 1830 (Manchester, 1995), 254–5.

38 There were no national rules on criminal procedure in the local courts before the passing of the Act of Adjournal in 1827. The only definite forms of criminal procedure concerned jury trials in the High Court. See Farmer, Criminal law, 70. However, procedure was often governed by local customs charters and statutory laws. See ‘Eleventh report of the commissioners’, passim.

39 Ibid., 9.

40 Edinburgh Central Library (hereafter ECL), ‘Reports of the committee of commissioners of police and minutes of general meetings thereto’ (Edinburgh, 1807), YHN8198, A5999, 23 February 1807.

41 ‘Fourth report by her Majesty's Law Commissioners, Scotland, 1839’, 327.

42 Farmer, Criminal law, 107.

43 Glasgow City Archives (hereafter GCA), ‘Glasgow town council minute book’, C1/1/36, 2 March 1779.

44 Barrie, ‘Police in civil society’, 45–65, which cites Adam Ferguson's An essay on the history of civil society (1767).

45 ‘Glasgow town council minute book’, C1/1/36, 2 March 1779.

46 Ibid.

47 R. Renwick, Extracts from the records of the burgh of Glasgow, volume VIII, 1781–1795 (Glasgow, 1913), 29 June 1785, 172–3.

48 Crowther, ‘Crime, prosecution and mercy’, 233–5.

49 Ibid.

50 For more on this, see Barrie, Police in the age of improvement, chapters 3 and 5.

51 See, for instance, GCA, ‘Trades’ house minutes', T-TH1/1/8, 17 April 1789 and 15 October 1789; ‘Merchants’ house minute book', T-MH/1/3, 11 February 1790; ‘Answers to proposals of committee of heritors and burgesses relating to police bill’, C2/1/1, 19 February 1790, 174–90; and ‘Glasgow town council minute book’, C1/1/38, 18 August 1790.

52 In 1793, magistrates claimed that ‘street robberies, shop and house breakings, thefts and other crimes are more frequently committed there in proportion to the extent of the place, than in any other city in Britain’; see GCA, ‘Process papers of the city of Glasgow before the Court of Session’, ‘Answers for James Montgomery and the deacon convenor and the trades’ house of Glasgow to the petition given in the name of the said trades' house, but without their authority', A2/2/1, 11 April 1793, 1–2.

53 For more on this, see Barrie, David G., ‘Patrick Colquhoun, the Scottish enlightenment and police reform in Glasgow in the late eighteenth century’, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/Crime, History and Societies 12, 2 (2008), 59–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 ‘Answers to proposals of committee of heritors and burgesses relating to police bill’, 190.

55 Barrie, Police in the age of improvement, chapter 5.

56 GCA, ‘Trades’ house minutes', T-TH1/1/8, 23 March 1792.

57 Ibid.

58 For the influence of this on the framing of the 1805 Edinburgh Police Act, see Edinburgh Advertiser, 27 August 1805.

59 42 George III (cap. 47).

60 Glasgow University Library (hereafter GUL), ‘A vindication of the observations on the heads of a new police bill for the city of Glasgow and on the report of the commissioners of police, to the magistrates and town council, respecting the proposed alterations to the present law’ (Glasgow, 1807), special collections, Mu61-a.3, 4.

61 The 1800 Glasgow Police Act stated that magistrates' existing judicial rights were to be safeguarded, but made no specific reference to summary justice. The 1807 Glasgow police act stated that all prosecutions against police offences were to be carried out in a summary manner, so long as punishment did not exceed 30 days confinement in Bridewell and/or a fine of more than 2 pounds; The 1807 Glasgow Police Act (47 George III, cap. 29), clause 56. The 1821 Glasgow Police extended summary powers to cover fines up to 5 pounds and imprisonment to 60 days, which ensured that a greater range of offences were covered by the police court's jurisdiction; John Scott, ‘Abstract of the police acts of Glasgow’ (Glasgow, 1821) at GUL, special collections, Mu22-a.1, 67.

62 James Cleland, ‘Enumeration of the inhabitants of the city of Glasgow and its connected suburbs; together with population and statistical tables, relative to Scotland and England’ (Glasgow, 1820), 29.

63 Interestingly, the 1800 Glasgow Police Act – or, indeed, the subsequent acts of 1807 and 1821 – made no specific reference to the establishment of a police office or police court. There were, however, a few contemporary sources which referred to these: e.g.: ‘Report of the committees appointed by the merchant company, incorporations, and several other public bodies in the city of Edinburgh, to consider the effects of the act lately passed for regulating the police of the said city’ (Edinburgh, 1806), 16–18; and Cleland, ‘Enumeration of the inhabitants’, 29.

64 Maver, ‘The guardianship of the community’, 254–5.

65 Dundee, Perth and Cupar Advertiser, 12 July 1805.

66 Ibid.

67 For more on this, see Christopher A. Whatley, ‘The experience of work’, in T. M. Devine and R. Mitchison eds., People and society in Scotland, volume I, 1760–1830 (Edinburgh, 1988), 234–9.

68 David G. Barrie, ‘Urban order in Georgian Dundee, c.1770–1820’, in C. A. MacKean, B. Harris and Chris Whatley eds., Dundee: from renaissance to enlightenment (Dundee, 2009), 228–34.

69 See, for instance, Dundee, Perth and Cupar Advertiser, 29 December 1815; 24 May 1816; 22 November 1816; 14 November 1817; 8 December 1820; and 7 November 1822.

70 Ibid., 29 November 1816 and 21 May 1819.

71 As has been examined elsewhere, the Dundee, Perth and Cupar Advertiser used the issue of law and order to discredit the unpopular, self-selecting town council's handling of civic affairs. Barrie, ‘Urban order’, 233.

72 Dundee, Perth and Cupar Advertiser, 29 December 1815.

73 See ibid., 29 November 1816 and 4 March 1824.

74 DCA, ‘Dundee council minute book’, 7 August 1823.

75 For the examples of Inverness and Leith, see ‘Fourth report by her Majesty's Law Commissioners, Scotland, 1839’, 283 and 296.

76 See the evidence and criminal returns presented to ibid., 252–339.

77 Act of Adjournal, 1827 (6 George IV, cap. 23).

78 ‘Fourth report by her Majesty's Law Commissioners, Scotland, 1839’, 257.

79 Ibid., 252–3.

80 J. McGowan, ‘The emergence of modern civil police in Scotland: a case study of the police and systems of police in Edinburghshire, 1800–33’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Open University, 1997), 43.

81 Police regulations had to be frequently reiterated, but abuses continued to go unchecked. For a council's effort to enforce police regulations and the problems encountered, see DCA, ‘Dundee council minute book’, 24 May 1770 and 25 May 1803.

82 A. Alison, The principles of the criminal law of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1833), 58.

83 See the ‘Fourth report by her Majesty's Law Commissioners, Scotland, 1839’, 325.

84 Unless otherwise stated, the remainder of this paragraph is based on information contained in W. W. J. Knox and A. McKinlay, ‘Crime, protest and policing in nineteenth-century Scotland’, in Trevor Griffiths and Graeme Morton eds., A history of everyday life in Scotland, 1800 to 1900 (Edinburgh, 2010), 196–224; Bob Knox, Industrial Britain: work, culture and society in Scotland, 1800–present (Edinburgh, 1999), passim; and W. H. Fraser, Conflict and class: Scottish workers, 1700–1838 (Edinburgh, 1988), 102.

85 For radicalism during the French Revolution, see Harris, Bob, ‘Scottish–English connections in the British radicalism of the 1790s’, in Anglo-Scottish relations from 1603 to 1900, volume 127 (Oxford, 2005), 189–212Google Scholar. For post-war radicalism, see Gordon Pentland, Radicalism, reform and national identity in Scotland 1820–1833 (Woodbridge, 2008).

86 Donnachie, ‘“The darker side”’, 5–24.

87 Baron D. Hume, Commentaries on the law of Scotland respecting crimes (Edinburgh, 1844), 2nd edn, 149.

88 ‘Fourth report by her Majesty's Law Commissioners, Scotland, 1839’, 296.

89 Ibid., 399.

90 For more on this, see Barrie, ‘Police in civil society’, 45–65.

91 F. C. Hill, Crime: its amount, causes and remedies (London, 1853), 134. For more on property crime in industrial society, see Knox and McKinlay, ‘Crime, protest and policing’, 196–224.

92 It continued to have a fairly strong influence in rural areas. Rosalind Mitchison and Leah Leneman, Girls in trouble: sexuality and social control in rural Scotland 1660–1780 (Edinburgh, 1998).

93 Whilst recognising that working-class church attendance was higher than was originally claimed, scholars have continued to stress that barriers excluded large numbers. Brown, C. G., ‘The costs of pew renting: church management, church-going and social class in nineteenth-century Glasgow’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 38, 3 (1987), 347–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Peter Hillis, The barony of Glasgow: a window onto church and people in nineteenth-century Scotland (Edinburgh, 2007), passim.

94 Allan MacLaren, Religion and social class: the disruption years in Aberdeen (London, 1974), chapters 4, 5 and 6. For a critique of this view, see R. Strong, Episcopalianism in nineteenth-century Scotland (Oxford, 2002), passim.

95 ‘Reports of the committee of commissioners of police and minutes of general meetings thereto’ and Caledonian Mercury, 18 July 1805.

96 ‘Eleventh report of the commissioners’, 69.

97 In 1840, Aberdeen Town Council debated whether the fiscal and clerk ought to be paid by the revenue of court fines or rather from a fixed salaried position. The Aberdeen Journal (Aberdeen, Scotland), 15 January 1840. For rural discussions, see ‘Fourth report by her Majesty's Law Commissioners, Scotland, 1839’, 168–80.

98 There was great variation throughout the country. Some burghs, such as Edinburgh, used police officials from the outset to bring forward prosecutions. In others, such as Glasgow, police involvement in criminal prosecutions came later. For the experience of Glasgow, see BPP, ‘Second report from the select committee on police’, 1852–3 [715], XXXVI. 161, 111.

99 These included town officers who aided magistrates and fiscals in investigating crime and preparing prosecutions. ‘Eleventh report of the commissioners’, 72.

100 In Kilmarnock, police commissioners instructed the local police sergeant to bring before the magistrates those who ignore police regulations as considerable sums could be raised by fining the inhabitants as occurs in Glasgow and Paisley. Dick Institute, ‘Kilmarnock police commissioners minute book’, 1809 to 1828, BK/AB/1/2A/1, and 1828 to 1849, BK/AB/1/2A/2, passim.

101 GUL, ‘Observations on the heads of a new police bill for the city of Glasgow; and on the report of the commissioners of police, to the magistrates and town council, 1807’, special collections, 19.

102 ‘A vindication of the observations on the heads of a new police bill for the city of Glasgow, 1807’, 4.

103 ‘Fourth report by her Majesty's Law Commissioners, Scotland, 1839’, 323.

104 For protests and petitions in Dundee, see ‘Dundee police board minute book’, 1824–32, TC/PBM/1, 31 January and 2 February 1825. Similarly, the directors of the Glasgow University lying-in hospital in 1837 complained that police provisions were aimed chiefly at the main streets of the town, neglecting poorer and more obscure districts. S. Oliver, ‘The administration of urban society in Scotland, 1800–50: with special reference to the growth of civic government in Glasgow and its suburbs’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Glasgow, 1995), 113–14.

105 Caledonian Mercury, 18 July 1805.

106 Section 76 of 1805 Edinburgh Police Act (45 George III, cap. 21).

107 ‘Reports of the committee of commissioners of police and minutes of general meetings thereto, 23 February 1807’, 11.

108 Edinburgh Advertiser, 30 April 1805.

109 David Daiches, Edinburgh (London, 1978), 186.

110 Caledonian Mercury, 18 July 1805.

111 The lord president, the lord justice clerk, lord chief baron, lord advocate, dean of faculty, solicitor general, keeper of the signet and senior clerk of session were all general commissioners – along with council representatives and others from public institutions in the city. Scots Magazine 1803, 218–19.

112 ECL, ‘CIVIS, a letter to the Right Hon. Henry Erskine, lord advocate of Scotland, relative to the act of parliament for regulating the police of Edinburgh’ (Edinburgh, 1806), YHV8198, 17753E, 2.

113 ‘A letter from M to the editor, entitled “Parallel between the Edinburgh and Glasgow system of police”’, in the Scots Magazine, 1807, 29, criticises the absolute power with which the superintendent is invested, the obstacles thrown in the way of appeal, and the creation of new and arbitrary offences.

114 ‘Reports of the committee of commissioners of police and minutes of general meetings thereto, 23 February 1807’, 11.

115 ‘A letter to the Right Hon. Henry Erskine’, 6 and 11.

116 Ibid., 17.

117 ‘Report of the committees appointed by the merchant company, incorporations, and several other public bodies in the city of Edinburgh, to consider the effects of the act lately passed for regulating the police of the said city’ (Edinburgh, 1806), 1–36.

118 ECL, ‘A second letter to the Right Hon. Henry Erskine, lord advocate of Scotland relative to the act of parliament for regulating the police of Edinburgh’ (Edinburgh, 1807), YHV, 8198.

119 ‘Reports of the committee of commissioners of police and minutes of general meetings thereto’, 11.

120 Concern was expressed in both civic and legal circles that the superintendent was too independent of the authority of commissioners. See Ibid.

121 ‘A letter to the Right Hon. Henry Erskine’, 29.

122 ECL, ‘Report of the committee appointed at the general meeting of the magistrates, and the different public bodies in the city, to concert measures for obtaining a more efficient system of police’ (Edinburgh, 1812), 1–27, especially 1–3.

123 Under the 1812 Edinburgh Police Act, the police court judges were to be the magistrates and the sheriff depute or his substitutes. ‘The Edinburgh almanack and the Scots register for 1808’ (Edinburgh, 1808), 197.

124 Under the 1812 Act, the superintendent was to be appointed by the lord provost, the lord president of the Court of Session and the sheriff depute of the county of Edinburgh, or any two of them. The Scotsman, 1 February 1817.

125 Ibid., 1 February 1817.

126 ‘Fourth report by her Majesty's Law Commissioners, Scotland, 1839’, 307.

127 The Scotsman, 23 June 1821.

128 Ibid.

129 See The Aberdeen Journal (Aberdeen, Scotland), 4 February 1829.

130 L. Miskell, ‘Civic leadership and the manufacturing elite: Dundee 1820–1870’, in L. Miskell, C. A. Whatley and B. Harris eds., Victorian Dundee: image and realities (East Linton, 2000), 55.

131 ‘Fourth report by her Majesty's Law Commissioners, Scotland, 1839’, 319–40.

132 In reviewing Edinburgh's policing arrangements in 1812, the committee of public bodies reported: ‘it must appear sufficiently obvious, that, for the prevention of crimes, it is not enough that offenders are detected, but that evidence must also be obtained to lead to their conviction; and that this should be accomplished with as much dispatch as possible, in order that the trial and punishment may speedily follow the offence. This laborious, important, and often difficult duty, seems much better adapted to a professional lawyer, holding the permanent situation of Sheriff, than to Magistrates who annually go out of office, and who cannot be possessed of the knowledge or habits necessary for such investigations.’ ‘Report of the committee appointed at the general meeting of the magistrates’, 6–7.

133 Philips, ‘“A new engine of power and authority”’, 171.

134 The third section of the 1875 Sheriff Substitute's Act made provision for Glasgow to appoint a stipendiary magistrate. The 1892 Burgh Police Scotland Act and the 1897 Stipendiary Magistrates Jurisdiction (Scotland) Act extended this right to other burghs. There was, however, no rush to embrace reform. According to Trotter's 1936 Summary justice according to the law of Scotland, the Glasgow central police court was the only urban centre of justice in Scotland to employ a stipendiary magistrate. Thomas Trotter, Summary criminal jurisdiction according to the law of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1936), 489.

135 In the majority of local police acts, police courts were given cognizance to prosecute breaches of statutory police and common laws, including cases of theft, embezzlement, fraud, assault, and wilful imposition, so long as the value of articles did not exceed £10 and the punishment warrant more than a £10 fine or 60 days' imprisonment (the limit most police courts could set, although special statutory powers to impose heavier penalties for certain offences were acquired later in the century). See the ‘Fourth report by her Majesty's Law Commissioners, Scotland, 1839’, 319–40.

136 The Scotsman, 1 February 1817.

137 ‘Fourth report by her Majesty's Law Commissioners, Scotland, 1839’, 323–4.

138 Ibid., 327.

139 Ibid., 252–3.

140 Ibid., 323–4.

141 Douglas Hay, ‘Property, authority and the criminal law’, in Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh and E. P. Thompson, Albion's fatal tree: crime and society in eighteenth-century England (London, 1975).

142 See, for instance, The Aberdeen Journal (Aberdeen, Scotland), 23 December 1829.

143 ‘Fourth report by her Majesty's Law Commissioners, Scotland, 1839’, 287.

144 The Police Intelligencer, or Life in Edinburgh, 11 April 1832, 2.

145 The Aberdeen Journal (Aberdeen, Scotland), 30 December 1840.

146 The Aberdeen Journal (Aberdeen, Scotland), 2 September 1840.

147 Ibid.

148 Edinburgh Advertiser, 27 August 1805.

149 Gray, ‘The people's courts?’, 12.

150 ‘Enumeration of the inhabitants of the city of Glasgow and county of Lanark for the government census of 1831 with population and statistical tables relative to England and Scotland’, by James Cleland (Glasgow, 1832), 112.

151 See, for instance, Anna Clark, The struggle for the breeches: gender and the making of the British working class (Los Angeles, 1995), 259.

152 John Brownlie, writer, Police reports of causes tried before the justices of the peace, and the Glasgow, Gorbals, and Calton police courts, From 18th July, till 3d October, Glasgow, J. Aitken, 1829, held in Mitchell Library, Glasgow, G/364.1, 6–23 July.

153 See, for instance, the inaugural speech of Superintendent Tait to mark the opening of the Edinburgh Police institution. Caledonian Mercury, 18 July 1805.

154 Ibid.

155 ‘CIVIS, a letter to the Right Hon. Henry Erskine’, 2.

156 Caledonian Mercury, 18 July 1805.

157 Ibid.

158 The records for the first half of the century are patchy and often do not include the social profile of the accused. Out of those convicted of crimes in the 1880 Edinburgh Police returns, 725 were employed (531 male and 194 female) and 734 were unemployed (521 male and 214 female). ‘City of Edinburgh constabulary. Return of crimes and offences reported, persons apprehended and cited, and miscellaneous returns connected with the police, for the year ended 31st December 1880’ (Edinburgh, 1881), table number 4.

159 Cited in Farmer, Criminal law, 115

160 BPP, ‘First report of the law commissioners appointed to inquire into the courts of law in Scotland, together with minutes of evidence’, 1868–1869 [4125], 365.

161 Gray, ‘The people's courts’, 7–15; King, ‘The summary courts’; and Davis, ‘A poor man's system of justice?’, 309–35. Working-class use and experience of police courts in Scottish towns will be examined in greater depth in the forthcoming publication, by Barrie and Broomhall, Police courts.

162 ‘Fourth report by her Majesty's Law Commissioners, Scotland, 1839’, 172

163 See The Police Intelligencer, or Life in Edinburgh (Edinburgh), 7 September 1831.

164 On Friday, 23 September 1831, The Police Intelligencer, or Life in Edinburgh reported that ‘A lace weaver was charged with mistreating his wife, a girl about the third part of his age. The complainer said that she had been married only eight months, and that she was quite sick with matrimony. The usage she had experienced during that short interval was so harsh, that she was determined if possible to obtain a separation between them. The Magistrate informed the complainer that the Police Court was not competent to give her redress by separation; but should the charge be proved, he would be bound under a heavy penalty to keep the peace towards her. The case having been gone into, and the charge proved, the defender was required to give caution to £10 to keek [sic] the peace towards the complainer.’ The Police Intelligencer, or Life in Edinburgh (Edinburgh), no. 34.

165 For the impact of police-led prosecutions in England, see Godfrey, ‘Changing prosecution practices’, 171–89.

166 GCA, ‘Glasgow police court records’, B3/1/1, 28 January to 3 July 1813.

167 Farmer, Criminal law, 96–8, also acknowledges this point but argues that reform needs to be viewed also in a positive light as part of a growing preoccupation with procedure and order.

168 Langford, Public life and the propertied Englishman, 207.

169 Gatrell, ‘Crime, authority and the policeman-state’ and Farmer, Criminal law.

170 Philips, ‘“A new engine of power and authority”’, 155–89.

171 This supports one of the findings of Davis, ‘A poor man's system of justice?’, 309–35.

172 ‘Fourth report by her Majesty's Law Commissioners, Scotland, 1839’, 287.