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History of
the Metropolitan Police
By the 18th century, the
centuries old system of keeping the peace, preventing crime
and catching criminals was breaking down. As it relied on
citizens serving in the watch at regular intervals, the
growth of towns and cities, and London in particular, strained
it to breaking point.
In 1748, novelist Henry Fielding
was appointed as a magistrate in the Bow Street court and,
instead of taking bribes as was customary at this time,
he made a number of reforms including appointing six men
to catch criminals. These eventually became known as the
Bow Street Runners. When he retired in 1754 because of ill
health, his brother John took over and continued the reforms.
In 1750 the City of London was subjected to the Gordon Riots,
during which the mobs looted and destroyed property while
the City
Day Watch stood by or openly sympathised with the rioters.
As a consequence, in
1795, a police Bill for London was put before Parliament but,
as it was seriously flawed, it failed to become law. In 1798,
the River Police was formed to stop piracy on the Thames but
London streets were still only policed by watchmen who were
either corrupt or incompetent. Parliamentary committees periodically
looked at the situation over the next 20 years but without
coming up with a solution. Finally, Home Secretary Sir Robert
Peel managed to get the Metropolitan Police Bill through Parliament
and it became law in 1829. This Act excluded the City of London
and a separate City
of London Police Act passed in 1839.
Scotland Yard
Synonymous
with the Metropolitan Police Force, the name Scotland Yard
came from the force's first headquarters. Sir Robert Peel
found an empty house available in Whitehall Place. This
backed on to an alley called Great Scotland Yard and so
the building was soon referred to simply as Scotland Yard.
This house quickly became overcrowded as the Force and its
work expanded.
In the 1870s, the Victoria
Embankment was built alongside the Thames and, as a consequence,
about 30 acres of reclaimed land was available. Originally
an opera house was to be built there but the waterlogged
ground caused huge overspending on the project until it
was eventually abandoned. In the 1880s the Metropolitan
Police bought the land. The new headquarters, called New
Scotland Yard, were designed by Norman Shaw and he produced
an iconic building with granite facing (quarried by Dartmoor
convicts), a turret and an internal quadrangle. It was finished
in 1890 but five years later the force was already outgrowing
it and another building was added, joined to the first by
a bridge.
Although some years later,
a third building was added to the complex, as early as the
mid 1930s, New Scotland Yard was overcrowded, a fact commented
on in the 1935 Commissioner's report. In 1967 the headquarters
again moved. This time to its present building in Victoria.
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