ABSTRACT
During the first decades of the 19th century the rising tide of national crime and outrage affected the county of Gloucestershire. Gloucestershire constables assisted, for example, in the valuation of land at Westbury-on-Severn in 1677, organised arms and pay for the militia and supervised the care of the pillory at Painswick in the late 17th century, while at Stinchcombe, near Dursley, a list of constables from 1650 shows that they regularly interchanged with the offices of churchwarden, overseer of the poor and parish surveyor. The parish of Dursley is interesting in one further respect of an analysis of policing in the early 19th century; it set up its own police force in 1814 in an effort to improve the good government of the town. The steps taken to improve policing in Gloucestershire by peaceful and propertied classes, who feared a breakdown of order and the many threats to their property, were considerable.
