Crime and policing in Dublin, Brisbane and London c.1850-1900

Abstract

The aim of this project was to examine the Dublin Metropolitan Police, its history and structure, from the perspective of the men who made up the force, their history and the impact they had on other contemporary policing systems. The comparative approach chosen for this study allowed us to explore the model of urban policing, its efficiency and location within the wider context of the law enforcement framework. The similarities between police forces of Dublin, London and Queensland, both in structure and in the personal experiences of the policeman on the beat, demonstrated the profound influence of the Irish immigrants on the colonial policing system. The study investigated both the character of criminal activity and the awareness of crime and policing systems of Dublin, Brisbane, and London in the second half of the nineteenth century, using a variety of quantitative and qualitative sources. The project compared public attitudes towards crim e and police, and evaluated similarities in criminological settings of the three metropolises. The years between the 1850s and up to 1900 were chosen because they capture the changing environment of the cities, and by extension the police forces. As the century progressed and the urban centres expanded, the demands for more sophisticated forms of policing grew louder. Intermittent structural reorganisations of the respective metropolitan police forces in their entirety followed similar patterns. The comparative approach highlights the progress of these urban policing systems, their ongoing administrative and legal adaptation processes and insight into how these processes evolved in response to changes in their respective socio-economic environments within the overarching context of the British Empire. One of the main arguments of this work has been the influence of Irish migrants on the colonies and most importantly on local police forces. The first and the last sections of this work demonstrated that taken together these respective forces shared common structures, makeup, culture and traditions, and a professional identity. The lasting legacy of the ‘bobby on the beat’ approach to policing has survived to this day.