ABSTRACT
Face to face with change The motor car was only one of a series of developments which, during the twentieth century, forced changes in policing. From the moment that motor vehicles appeared on the roads it was apparent that they presented a new and distinctive problem for the police. 'Criminals' had been perceived as mobile in the early nineteenth century, and there were concerns that the railways gave them greater mobility; the motor car increased such concerns many times over,1 even though most crime remained petty and apparently local.2 But the police had also, from their creation, been responsible for the smooth running of the streets: the motor car caused far greater problems than the occasional runaway horse, the carter driving without reins, or the 'scorching' cyclist. By the early 1920s chief constables and His Majesty's Inspectors of Constabulary were expressing anxiety about the amount of time now taken up with the supervision of the roads: in 1924, for example, Chichester complained to Dunning that in the county town of Huntingdon 'the only men I have here - with the exception of the Sergeant - have
to be continually on point duty, and with them the work cannot be efficiently done, and ... practically no ordinary patrol duty can take place'.3 The motor car forced an immediate response from the police, but they were much slower in recognising, and grappling with, other, more gradual changes.
