Men on a Mission

One of the most productive areas of recent research in English criminal justice history has been the engagement with the nature and role of violence within English society, and in particular the relationship between violence and masculinity. ¹ In no part of the criminal justice system was violence a more obvious fact of daily life than in policing. As Clive Emsley points out, the confrontation with serious violence was a regular occurrence for policemen in the era preceding the Great War: in 1875 the chief constable of Staffordshire thought policing more dangerous than being in the army, suggesting that hardly a week went by in the Black Country without one of his men nearly being killed. An officer was liable to be hurt every day on his beat and would certainly not go five years without being injured. In Middlesbrough, meanwhile, statistics suggested that a policeman might expect to be assaulted twice a year. ²