‘The police of Liverpool had been a disgrace’: The ‘Old’ Constables and the ‘New Police’

Policing in Liverpool before the arrival of the ‘New Police’ in 1836 has been routinely characterised as one of manifest inefficiency, corruption, and drunkenness with signs of police effectiveness ignored. This revisionist paper argues that the unsympathetic interpretation can be traced to efforts to support reformist policies; a deliberate strategy evidenced by the incorporation of much of the old system into the new force whilst simultaneously disparaging all that had gone before. Considerable continuity between the old and the new is evident in the almost seamless transition of core elements from the old Corporation Police into the Central Police Office of the new Constabulary Force. This paper discusses the effectiveness of all three of Liverpool’s pre-1836 police forces paying particular attention to the Corporation Police and the reappointment of the Georgian town’s criminal investigators to an office that later became the detective department of the New Police. It argues that Reformer pronouncements were shaped by contemporary political considerations rather than accurately representing pre-1836 policing standards. The paper concludes that the incorporation of earlier effective elements into a revised and modernised police organisation was to the credit of the Reformer-controlled council.