Roger Swift offers a straightforward account of the new police force in the city of Cambridge. Provincial Police Reform in Early Victorian England: Cambridge, 1835–1856 adds to a growing number of studies that examine police reform in smaller English cities, widening our knowledge of policing beyond London. As was often the case in local government in the first half of the nineteenth century, police reform in Cambridge was not a smooth process.
The first four chapters contain a narrative of the origins and establishment of the Cambridge police. Cambridge, as a market town and site of annual fairs, attracted large numbers of people to its streets, ensuring it had its share of petty crime. The development of Cambridge's police resembles what historians have found elsewhere. Dissatisfied with the older system of unpaid parish constables aided by a night watch, Cambridge city fathers established a new force, led by a veteran of the London Metropolitan Police. Yet this force developed in a peculiar local political and administrative context. Before parliamentary reform, Cambridge was a Tory pocket borough, controlled by the Duke of Rutland. Tory influence continued to dominate after 1832 and so the two MPs who sat for the University were usually Tories. But parliamentary and municipal reform enacted by Liberals opened the opportunity for local reform. Liberals gained control of the Cambridge city council from 1836 to 1841 while Tories held sway from 1841 to 1847. The Liberals took advantage of the Municipal Corporations Act (1835) to appoint a new watch committee and created the new force, with twenty-seven men and a former Metropolitan Police officer as superintendent. Swift deftly threads the reader through the ways local party politics and the desire for fiscal restraint limited the size and effectiveness of the reformed force.
Swift also guides the reader into the maze of town and gown—the disputes between the city of Cambridge and the university. Swift's account of how the city and university sparred over policing is a strength of the book and a unique feature of Cambridge's experience. Keeping the queen's peace in the face of a powerful, influential, and wealthy institution that brought hundreds of young men into the city's jurisdiction was daunting. However, various ancient charters and statutes gave university authorities the power to police its own. University proctors and their officers patrolled the streets. Students who broke the law or violated university regulations were taken up by proctors and disciplined by their colleges and the university. The vice chancellor had final disposition of any disputes.
At times, the university's policing system and that of the city authorities clashed, and the resulting encounters could be truly bloody. Town and gown did not always agree on how to police perennial problems like prostitution and public drunkenness. In the 1840s, the city police failed to find either the perpetrators or the silver plate worth between £400 and £500 stolen from Peterhouse. Students fought with city police and residents, and resulting arrests led to student retaliation. One witness noted, “the gownsmen threw glass bottles on to the townsmen's heads, and water and stones, which so enraged the townsmen that they went to all the Colleges and smashed the windows to pieces” (66).
As Swift explains, city leaders deplored robberies from colleges and street fights as much as university authorities. But their key grievance was the failure of the university to pay part of the cost of the new force. The university had earlier agreed to pay one-quarter of the police budget but had paid nothing. Liberal and Tory city officials had negotiated with the university to little avail but in 1847, a settlement seemed close. In return for £600 a year, the university would approve all appointments to the police force; watch regulations were subject to approval by the vice chancellor and heads of colleges. But the university senate voted it down, forcing the city to reduce the size of the force from thirty-three to twenty-three. The budget problems of town and gown over policing were not resolved until the 1850s. The university finally agreed to pay a share of the costs of policing and named five members of the university senate to the watch committee. The city named the other ten committeemen. Authority over the city police remained with the watch committee and local magistrates.
In the second half of Provincial Police Reform, Swift focuses on the men of the Cambridge force and the kinds of crime and criminals they confronted. As did other forces, the Cambridge police walked a fine line between the demands of their middle-class employers and the expectations of humbler people. By the 1850s, Swift argues, “the permanence and legitimacy of the new police presence were largely unquestioned by ‘respectable’ opinion in Cambridge” (139). But the working-class police officers knew not everyone agreed with the standards of order set for the police by the respectable—complaints and assaults were still part of a policeman's lot when he got caught between the respectable and the less respectable.
Swift makes good use of city and country records regarding the structure and personnel. He uses newspaper accounts deftly to trace the changing reputation of the police and its leadership. However, Swift does not discuss the pre-1836 system at length. It would be interesting to know if the parish system showed evidence of earlier experiments. Were Cambridge parish constables amateurs, chosen from among householders? Or did some make it a profession and use reformed methods? Swift also leaves the reader wanting to know more about the tension between city and university over policing, especially from the university perspective. For that reason, it is disappointing that Swift does not list any university records in his bibliography.
