On this day … 29 September 1882

The cost to police the town in the previous year was given as £8,857 4s. 2d. This paid for a 98-strong police force made up of a chief constable, a superintendent, a chief inspector and clerk, a detective inspector, four inspectors, a warrant sergeant, a warrant constable, a sergeant assistant clerk, seven sergeants, three detective constables, and 77 constables.

This represented one officer per thousand residents, the ratio needed if the town was to receive government grants to meet half the cost of the police wage bill.

This was way more than the cost of policing the town in the first half of the century, when, during one period of seven years, the corporation was spending an average of £500 a year on the ‘maintenance and establishment of watchmen, constables, patrol or policemen, within the township of Preston’.

At the end of the eighteenth century, the cost to the corporation was negligible, since most of the cost of the rudimentary police force of those days was met by private contributions. In December, 1798, the corporation agreed to allow five guineas ‘towards the defraying of the expenses of the watchmen for the present winter’.

In 1810, the corporation employed just three policemen (paid a pound a week) to patrol the town during the day. At night, the town was in the care of watchmen, as Hewitson noted in his history of the town:

‘At this time the streets were guarded, at night, by watchmen, who used to shout out the hours and half hours, and announce the state of the weather. At intervals, they ensconced themselves in wooden, sentry-like boxes, which stood on small wheels. These boxes were stationed in different parts of the town to suit the beats of the watchmen.’

The private nature of protecting property in those days can be seen by the agreement some of the inhabitants came to with a Hugh Dewhurst to guard their premises and prosecute offenders. They clearly felt offenders were too easily escaping justice:

‘Whereas, divers thefts, felonies, robberies, larcenies, crimes, and misdemeanours are frequently committed within the borough and town of Preston aforesaid, and the vicinity thereof, and the offenders from various causes have not been prosecuted or brought to Justice …’

A few years later, the corporation involved itself more closely in policing the town, appointing its first police superintendent, a Thomas Walton. Quite how he qualified for the role in not clear, for previously he had been employed as a cotton worker. He had for staff an inspector and five constables.

Walton was paid on a somewhat ad hoc basis, as Hewitson noted:

‘Mr. Walton’s salary would amount, from all sources, to about £250 a year; for, in addition to being superintendent of police, he was the town’s sergeant; he also used to take debtors into custody; had 1s. for every summons which was issued; 3s. 6d. for every warrant executed; and claimed 20s. for each deserter apprehended within the borough.’

The men were not issued with proper uniforms until 1832, until then:

‘… the police wore, on week days, plain clothes; the only official marks upon them being a little red cord, embroidered on the edges of their coat collars, with a small red, heart-shaped figure worked in on one side thereof. On Sundays, … they wore blue trousers with a red stripe down each side. When they wished to raise an alarm, while on duty, they struck or bobbed the flags, stones, or nearest likely substance, with sticks; each being provided with one. These alarm-raisers were made of log wood, had steel ends, and were called “sounding sticks”.’

When the borough force moved into a new police station in Avenham Street in 1832, the men were issued with proper uniforms for the first time, but these were ‘deemed so precious that they were worn on Sundays only’.

Despite the rapidly rising population of the town, the corporation was reluctant to spend money on its police force. By 1850, there were just fifteen policemen: three on duty during the day and twelve at night. This was when the population of the town was around 70,000, a far cry from the one policeman per thousand population the government was insisting on at the end of the century.

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Source
Hewitson’s History of Preston