ABSTRACT
The Metropolitan Police Act gave authority to the Commissioners to set out specific duties and working methods for the force as appropriate, the printed Police Orders were the mechanism via which this was accomplished. Formulaic in layout, a set of Police Orders issued on a given date during the nineteenth century was usually divided into sections, including: Personnel Updates; Force Policy and Procedure; Legislation concerning police staff; miscellaneous notices; and Appendices. The police orders illustrate the way in which the police of the nineteenth-century mediated between the demands made of them by their superiors and the public and their own operational requirements. Some orders, including the commendations for humanitarian actions and the large amount of money raised by the police for the relief of Bulgarian peasants, demonstrates that policing was far more complex than the blunt tool for the repression of the poor and the working class which many have assumed.
