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The social composition of the senior officers of the Royal Irish Constabulary, 1881–1911

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Fergus Campbell
Fergus Campbell*
Affiliation:
School of Historical Studies, Newcastle University
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Extract

In an influential article, William Lowe and Elizabeth Malcolm have argued that the Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C.) became ‘domesticated’ between its formation in 1836 and its disbandment in 1922:

[I]t was naturalised by becoming in its composition more truly representative of the Irish population; it was attached to home as its duties became more routine, more akin to housekeeping than to peace-keeping; and it was tamed because its ability to use force was greatly diminished ... [T]he RIC was by the early years of the twentieth century very much a civil police force, reflecting very accurately in its composition the socio-economic structure of Irish society and in its operations the needs of small, relatively law-abiding, rural communities.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 144 , November 2009 , pp. 522 - 541
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2009

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References

1 Lowe, W. J. and Malcolm, E. L., ‘The domestication of the Royal Irish Constabulary, 1836–1922’ in Ir. Econ. & Soc. Hist., xix (1992), p. 27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Blake, H. A., ‘The Irish police’ in The Nineteenth Century, ix, no. 48 (Feb. 1881), p. 390.Google Scholar

3 Lowe & Malcolm, ‘Domestication of R.I.C, p. 31.

4 Ibid., p. 35.

5 Lowe and Malcolm’s study is based on an analysis of a 10-per-cent stratified sample of all policemen (excluding officers) enrolled between January 1837 and August 1920, and includes ‘slightly more’ than 7,000 individual cases. The period 1837–51 is considered as one decade (ibid., p. 33). See also Griffin, Brian, ‘Religion and opportunity in the Irish police forces, 1836–1914’ in Comerford, R. V.et al. (eds), Religion, conflict and coexistence in Ireland: essays presented to Monsignor Patrick J. Corish (Dublin, 1990), p. 221.Google Scholar

6 Lowe, W. J., ‘Irish constabulary officers, 1837–1922: profile of a professional elite’ in Ir. Econ. & Sot: Hist., xxxii (2005), pp 19–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Ball, Stephen (ed.), A policeman’s Ireland: recollections of Samuel Waters, RIC (Cork, 1999), p. 4.Google Scholar

8 Between 1866 and 1898 the inspector general had the privilege of nominating a third of all cadetships (and he usually used this power to put forward the sons of needy police officers). After 1898 the power of nomination for cadetships was solely in the hands of the chief secretary and lord lieutenant. See Griffin, Brian, ‘The Irish police, 1836–1914: a social history’ (Ph.D. thesis, Loyola University of Chicago, 1991), pp 247–8.Google Scholar

9 In the 1850s, cadets spent between four and five months in training at the depot, but by the early 1900s the training period had been extended to eight months (ibid., p. 269).

10 Ibid., p. 246.

11 Lowe, ‘Irish constabulary officers’, pp 31, 33–4. Lowe, together with his two graduate research assistants (Jessica McLaughlin and Michelle Sheldon), has carried out a study of the records of the 1,220 police officers contained in the R.I.C. officers’ register, and these data form the basis of his article. Table 3 (p. 34) depicts the proportion of Catholic and non-Catholic cadets between 1837 and 1921, which indicates that between 70 and 80 per cent of cadets were non-Catholic, and between 10 and 20 per cent were Catholic. Regrettably, Lowe does not provide either the actual percentages or the real numbers for this table.

12 Ibid., p. 46.

13 Ibid., p. 31.

14 Ibid., pp 22, 32, 33–4, 42, 46.

15 Police officers were first appointed as third-class sub-inspectors (later, district inspectors), and proceeded to second and first class before becoming county inspectors (ibid., pp 40–2).

16 Ibid., p. 42.

17 Ibid., p. 46.

18 Ibid., p. 20.

19 Malcolm, Elizabeth, The Irish policeman, 1822–1922: a life (Dublin, 2006).Google Scholar

20 Ibid., pp 63, 149–50.

21 Ibid., pp 40–1.

22 In his paper at the American Conference of Irish Studies (A.C.I.S.) in June 2001, Lowe concluded: ‘The extension of advancement opportunities based on experience, performance, and merit (démocratisation) [in the R.I.C. officer corps] versus class and connections does not result in what we usually think of as an elite’, and he characterised the R.I.C. officers as ‘respectable professionals’ rather than an ‘establishment elite’: Lowe, W. J., ‘R.I.C. officers, 1879–1922: respectable professionals or establishment elite?’ (unpublished paper delivered at A.C.I.S. conference, New York City, June 2001), pp 19–20.Google Scholar

23 Malcolm, Irish policeman, p. 62.

24 Of 109 officers about whom information is available, 41 (38 per cent) were born in Leinster, 31 (28 per cent) in Munster, 19(17 per cent) in Ulster, and 18(17 per cent) in Connacht.

25 Of the 50 ‘elite’ fathers, 23 (46 per cent) were police officers; 12 (24 per cent) were landlords; 7 (14 per cent) were army officers; 6 (12 per cent) were Church of Ireland clergymen; 6(12 per cent) were magistrates; 2 (4 per cent) were doctors; 2 (4 per cent) were Resident Magistrates; and 1 (2 per cent) was a land agent. There is some overlap between these categories because some fathers held more than one of these positions.

26 Regan, quoted in Griffin, ‘Irish police’, p. 267.

27 Because he confines himself to the R.I.C. officers’ register, Lowe does not identify that a significant number of police officers came from landed backgrounds. See Lowe, ‘Irish constabulary officers’, p. 26.

28 See the discussion of farm size and valuation in Campbell, Fergus, Land and revolution: nationalist politics in the west of Ireland, 1891–1921 (Oxford, 2005), pp 310-11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Of the 15 officers under review who married into landed families, 7 (46.8 per cent) married into estates of less than 499 acres; 4 (26.8 per cent) married into estates of between 500 and 1,999 acres; 3 (19.9 per cent) married into estates of between 2,000 and 4,999 acres; and 1 (6.5 per cent) married into an estate of more than 10,000 acres.

30 Fennell, Rosemary (ed.), The Royal Irish Constabulary: a history and personal memoir (Dublin, 2003), p. 90.Google Scholar

31 Green, George Garrow, In the Royal Irish Constabulary (London & Dublin, [1905]), p. 30.Google Scholar

32 Griffin, ‘Irish police’, p. 268.

33 Quoted in ibid. According to The Times, 25 attended T.C.D.; 9 attended Oxford; 2 attended Cambridge; and 5 were qualified barristers.

34 McBride, Lawrence, The greening of Dublin Castle: the transformation of bureaucratic and judicial personnel in Ireland, 1892–1922 (Washington, D.C., 1991).Google Scholar

35 In 1881, 1 officer had received a degree and 1 a vocational qualification; in 1891, 2 had gained degrees; in 1901, 3 had obtained degrees; and in 1911, 10 had degrees and 1 had a vocational qualification.

36 The position of superintendent, which was analogous to that of sub-inspector, in the various English constabularies, was always held by policemen who had progressed through the ranks rather than by gentlemen commissioned from outside the force (Griffin, ‘Irish police’, p. 281).

37 Ibid., pp 275–6.

38 Royal Irish Constabulary. Report of the committee of inquiry: 1883, H.C. 1883, xxxii, C. 3577, 17, 273.

39 Report of the commissioners appointed … to enquire into the condition of the civil service in Ireland on the Royal Irish Constabulary, H.C. 1873, xxii [C. 831], 99, 229.

40 Ibid., 120, 250.

41 Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police. Appendix to the report of the committee of inquiry, 1914, H.C. 1914, xliv [Cd. 7637], 183, 547.

42 Griffin, ‘Irish police’, p. 269.

43 Ibid.

44 Crane, C. P., Memories of a Resident Magistrate, 1880–1920 (Edinburgh, 1938), p. 17.Google Scholar

45 Garrow Green, In the Royal Irish Constabulary, p. 24.

46 SirNott-Bower, J. W., Fifty-two years a policeman (London, 1926), p. 27 (original emphasis).Google Scholar

47 Quoted in Griffin, ‘Irish police’, p. 272.

48 Quoted in ibid., pp 272–3.

49 VereGregory, R. T., The house of Gregory (Dublin, 1943), pp 151-2.Google Scholar

50 Nott-Bower, Fifty-two years, p. 35.

51 Griffin, ‘Irish police’, p. 296.

52 Crane, Memories of a Resident Magistrate, p. 86.

53 Quoted in Griffin, ‘Irish police’, pp 273–4.

54 Reed recollections quoted in Lowe, ‘R.I.C. officers, 1879–1922: respectable profes sionals or establishment elite?’, p. 11.

55 Garrow Green, In the Royal Irish Constabulary, p. 26.

56 Ball (ed.), A policeman’s Ireland, pp 16, 29–30.

57 Griffin, ‘Irish police’, p. 274.

58 Quoted in ibid., p. 274.

59 Ball (ed.), A policeman’s Ireland, p. 4.

60 Report of the commissioners appointed … to enquire into the condition of the Civil service in Ireland on the Royal Irish Constabulary, H.C. 1873, xxii, [C. 831], 57, 187.

61 Brian Griffin, ‘Religion & opportunity’, pp 223–4.

62 Quoted in Crossman, Virginia, Politics, law and order in nineteenth-century Ireland (Dublin, 1996), p. 156.Google Scholar

63 On the Listowel mutiny of June 1920, see Malcolm, Irish policeman, pp 160–9.

64 Griffin, ‘Religion and opportunity’, p. 224.

65 Of the 24, 21 were recruited as cadet officers; 1 (Heffernan Considine) was recruited from outside the force to become deputy inspector general; and 2 were promoted from the ranks (John Donovan and Michael Hurley). Donovan was a native of Kerry who became a sub-constable in 1833 and a sub-inspector in 1847 (when he was thirty-five years old). Hurley was from Cork and became a sub-constable in 1854, a sub-inspector in 1881 (when he was forty-six years old), and private secretary to the inspector general (Andrew Reed) between 1885 and 1893.

66 Before becoming a cadet, Joshua had spent seven months working as a clerk in the G.P.O. at Birmingham.

67 Hetreed, William, ‘The R.I.C. as a profession’ in The Clongownian, June 1898.Google Scholar

68 Lowe, ‘Irish constabulary officers’, p. 40.

69 Ibid., p. 31.

70 Ibid., pp 41–2.

71 See Campbell, Fergus, ‘Who ruled Ireland? The Irish administration, 1879–1914’ in Hist. Jn., 1 (2007), pp 623-44.Google Scholar

72 Malcolm, Irish policeman, p. 148

73 Campbell, Fergus, The Irish establishment, 1879–1914 (Oxford, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74 Quoted in Mitchell, Arthur, Revolutionary government in Ireland: Ddil Eireann, 1919–1922 (Dublin, 1995), p. 68.Google Scholar

75 Paseta, Senia, Before the revolution: nationalism, social change and Ireland’s Catholic élite (Cork, 1999), p. 103.Google Scholar

76 Garvin, Tom, Nationalist revolutionaries in Ireland, 1858–1928 (Oxford, 1987), pp 48–56.Google Scholar