Today’s post takes us further back into the nineteenth century than this blog usually ventures. We step out of the Victorian period and into the last months of the reign of George IV. The newspapers had been reporting the ‘doings’ of the Metropolitan Police Courts for  several years but their coverage was still quite patchy, and there was no systematic attempt to report from all of the capital’s magistrate courts. This report, from Bow Street in March 1830 – the capital’s premier summary court – is of interest because it shows the public and private role of the police courts in the early 1800s. It also mentions the New Police, created by Robert Peel in 1829, who had just started their their dual mission to protect the ‘person and property’ of Londoners and ‘preserve the public tranquility’*.

In the months following the creation of the Met existing parochial policing arrangements seemingly continued in some manner. The Watch were largely disbanded and replaced by the ‘boys in the blue’ but parish constables continued in some places in London as they did outside the capital. These men were possibly amateurs serving the communities in rotation or entrepreneurial thief-takers acting like modern private investigators. One of these of was a man named Wright (we don’t have his first name) who was described as ‘a constable of Chiswick’ by the Morning Post in March 1830.

Wright was summoned to Bow Street to answer a charge of assault. He had allegedly attacked two brothers – George and Charles Ideyman – in an attempt to ‘rescue’ a young woman. When the case came before the magistrate (Mr Minshull) it quickly became clear that this was not a ‘public’ or criminal matter (of theft or violence) but instead a ‘private’ (or civil) one.

Charles Ideyman was in love with a 16 year-old heiress who lived in Chiswick. The girl is named only as Miss Smith and her mother was in court to hear the case and give evidence. Miss Smith was due to inherit £7,000 when she reached the age of maturity at 21 and her parents had very clear ideas about who would be a suitable match for their daughter. They made it abundantly clear to her that Charles Ideyman was not marriage material.

The Smiths did everything they could ‘to prevent the match; but on Sunday evening last [the paper reported] Miss Smith ‘contrived to escape from home, and on the following morning she was married at Chiswick church to [Charles] Ideyman’.

Having lost their daughter (and her marriage value) the Smith employed constable Wright to get her back. He went to the Ideyman family home and demanded access. When he was refused entry he turned violent , punched George Ideyman and:

‘broke down every door in the house with a pair of tongs, and demolished several windows’. When Charles confronted him he too was attacked and so scared was his younger sister that she remained in a ‘precarious state’ for several days afterwards.

Under questioning Wright said he was only doing what he thought was appropriate to fulfil the task he had been sent. He believed he was ‘authorised in adopting the best means he could in effecting his object’.

When the magistrate suggested that it must have been a ‘love match’ Mrs Smith declared that while it was it was ‘in decided opposition to her daughter’s best friends’. She and her husband did not accept the marriage and would never be reconciled to their daughter or her new husband. The Ideyman’s solicitor pleaded for calm and reconciliation. He urged Charles to be good husband to his young wife and added: ‘do not permit any one to widen the breach which you have already been the making of in the family’.

Wright was bailed to appear at the next Sessions of the Peace to answer for the assault. Bail was set at 40s for himself and two sureties of 20s each. Hopefully his employers (the Smiths) stood these. We might hope also that Charles and his bride lived happily ever after and perhaps were even reconciled to her parents. Mr Minshull clearly didn’t think it was any business of his to interfere however.

The footnote to this report of a private quarrel was the appearance in the dock of a ‘miserable-looking man’ named Daniel Hobbs. Hobbs, without even ‘a shoe to his foot’ was brought before Mr Minshull having been arrested the evening before by a constable of the New Police for being drunk. Hobbs had been ‘lying in one of the kennels in the neighbourhood of Long-acre’ [Covent Garden]. He was taken to a watch house (the predecessors of police stations) and searched.

Amazingly he had loads of money on him, including a £50 note and several gold sovereigns. In court Hobbs was recognised as someone who was often found drunk and sleeping rough, sometimes with as much as £400 in his possession. Who was this person and what was his story? Sadly (and typically) the paper doesn’t tell us so you’ll have to make up your own. What these two reports do show is that in 1830 the ‘old’ police and the New were operating at the same time (if not, it seems, side-by-side) as Londoners adjusted to the coming of the professionals and the courts worked out who now had the authority to act as law men and when.

[from The Morning Post, Saturday, March 13, 1830]

*to quote Charles Reith, A New Study of Police History, (1956)