ABSTRACT
This paper gives a broad picture of the origins of English policemen for the period 1840–1940. It draws primarily on a computerised database constructed from the recruitment, discipline and/or warrant books of a number of rural and urban forces. The evidence shows that, as initially intended, police recruits came mainly from the unskilled and semi skilled working class. However, it reveals rather fewer recruits who can legitimately be described as agricultural labourers’ than the traditional picture suggests. At the same time it points to a much larger number of men with previous military service than is usually supposed. Locally born recruits were more common in rural than urban forces. Irish born recruits came forward in disproportionately large numbers in those cities with significant Irish immigrant populations. The appeal of both locally born men and of former soldiers appears to have varied from force to force, and warns against too much generalisation from a single local experience.
