Introduction

There have always been debates about the ‘purpose’ of the police: about when, where and how police officers should be deployed. However, public debate about the duties of the police, and their broader role in British society, was particularly pronounced during the nineteenth century. This chapter provides evidence of how concerns over poverty and crime were translated into police practice. It demonstrates that while police officers were very often instructed to concentrate on crimes and behaviours most commonly associated with the poor and the working class. These demands were often mediated by their own views and by practical constraints on the operational capacity of the police. Operational police records, while helpful in delineating the range of actions taken by the police in relation to the poor, do not often contain explicit statements about how police officers conceptualized and reacted emotionally to this aspect of their duties.