ABSTRACT
In the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century preventive policing was largely confined to the growing urban areas where watchmen patrolled the streets at night, calling out the hour and hoping that their vociferous presence would be sufficient to deter any potential criminals. All the resentment which had been directed against the watchmen and Bow Street Runners in the capital was now turned towards this new, and to many, unwelcome, manifestation of the ruling classes’ authority. By the 1840s a clear ebb and flow could the distinguished in the attitudes of the public and press towards London’s police. Suspicion and resentment followed each violent demonstration or riot which the police put down with extreme firmness, while any death of a policeman on duty was inevitably followed by a wave of sympathy and demands for them to be better protected and for firearms to be issued to them for their protection.
