ABSTRACT
The nineteenth century saw the basis of urban governance in Britain change markedly. This chapter deals with the issue of the legitimacy of the criminal justice system, as seen in the context of an attempt to create an alternative basis for local government in the city. It assesses the attempt by the Sheffield Democrats to take control of the institutions of local government in 1851, through an examination of their statements and activity regarding urban police power and the criminal justice system. This was another manifestation of what David Reeder has described as 'the general reaction in the mid-Victorian period against centralised bureaucratic models and continental precedents'. 2 The political basis for this challenge was the collapse of the national political stage provided by Chartism; the ideological framework was the ultra-localist analysis of English liberty provided by Joshua Toulmin Smith. The Democrats utilized a specifically urban variant of 'Norman yoke' theory to justify a bottom-up democracy, which was offered as an alternative to a centralizing and professionalizing tendency. Their challenge was driven as much by expediency as by theory, and it reveals the limits to political action and the extent to which the Democrats were consciously excluded from police power by the town's Liberal ruling group.
