Early Police Firearms - 1860s
Early Police Firearms – The 1860s
Mike Waldren QPM
The Fenian Brotherhood was formed in the 1850s with the avowed intention of freeing Ireland from England’s yoke. In 1866 it drew up a plan to use US civil war veterans to invade Canada, seize the transportation network and thereby force the British to give up Ireland in exchange for their withdrawal. In the event the invasion was a failure but the Brotherhood had no intention of giving up. In 1867 there was a planned Fenian rising in Ireland but this too was doomed to failure.
In September 1867 Thomas Kelly and Timothy Deasy, both of whom had been prominent Fenians in the failed rising, were arrested in Manchester. They were being escorted to prison in a horse-drawn police van when about thirty armed men surrounded the van and took hold of the reins of the horses. The police officers were unarmed and they took to their heels but inside the van was Sergeant Brett. He refused to open the door and when the gunmen failed to force it open, one of them fired at the lock. Unfortunately, it seems that Sergeant Brett chose that moment to look through the keyhole because he was hit in the eye with the bullet entering his brain. Another police officer was shot in the thigh and a bystander was shot in the foot. Although Kelly and Deasy escaped back to the US the police made many arrests and by November five men had been found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. One was pardoned (wrongly identified as taking part) and another had his sentence commuted on the eve of his execution. The other three were hanged on 23 November 1867. Meanwhile two more Fenians, Richard Burke, a colonel during the US civil war, and Joseph Casey, had been arrested and were being held in Clerkenwell Prison in London.
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The outbreak of Irish Republican terrorism on mainland Britain must have caused something close to panic. Going up against men who were ready to use firearms meant that the police were overmatched and they knew it, although some steps were taken to provide officers with a means of protection as was announced by the Illustrated London News on 19 October. Readers were told that: ‘The frequent repetition of murderous attacks on the police in these days of Fenian fury makes it highly expedient that the civil guardians of our peace should be taught how to use more formidable weapons that the truncheon, in case of need, for the purpose of self-defence. Arrangements have, indeed, been made for the instruction of the officers of the Metropolitan Police Force in the cutlass exercise; and a portion of the ground belonging to the Wellington Barracks, St James’s Park, has been placed at the disposal of Sir Richard Mayne. … A squad of twenty or thirty of the police sergeants and inspectors now assemble there daily to be instructed by Inspectors Fraser and Robinson, who have already been initiated in the exercise. The sergeants and inspectors will communicate similar instruction to the constables under their command.’
Quite what use the ‘cutlass exercise’ was against men armed with guns is open to question and fortunately it does not seem to have been put to the test. However, on 12 December two men attempted to free Burke and Casey by rolling a barrel of gunpowder up to the prison wall in Corporation Row. They lit the fuse and retired but when nothing happened they collected their barrel and drove away in a horse and cart. The next day they tried again and this time the resulting explosion not only demolished part of the prison wall but also a large number of private houses. Several people were killed and many more were injured.
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The escape plot failed but the arrest of even more suspected Fenians must have caused Sir Richard Mayne considerable discomfiture. When he created his force in 1829 he did not anticipate it having to deal with such a situation although it had had firearms from the beginning. There are records in the Commissioner’s letter books in December 1829 asking for the purchase of fifty pairs of flintlock pocket pistols and some of the subsequent contracts for police equipment still survive. One dated August 1856 is for the supply of pistols, swords, truncheons, rattles and handcuffs. The cost of ‘pistols with swivel ramrods’ was £2 6s (£2.30) and powder flasks were 5s (25p).
The weapons would have been muzzle-loaded but there had been major developments in the design of firearms by then, not the least of which was the introduction of revolvers. The Great Exhibition of 1851 had featured a variety of firearms but, according to the Illustrated London News again, ‘perhaps none, from their novelty, have had more attention than “revolvers”. … There is a revolving pistol patented by Mr Adams, of King William-street of the firm of Deane, Adams and Deane.’
It would be unfair to suggest that Mayne was unaware of these developments but it was not until January 1866 that he decided to withdraw all the old single-shot muzzle-loaded weapons. A police order directed that: ‘The whole of the pistols, powder flasks, and bullet moulds, now in the possession of Police, are to be sent to Commissioner’s Office [Scotland Yard], on Monday 29th.’ Revolvers were then issued in their place although exactly who made them is unknown. The most likely suggestion is that they were Adams revolvers on loan from the army.
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Whoever the maker was, few officers were familiar with these newfangled revolvers and so, on 20 December 1867, a week after the bomb at Clerkenwell prison, Mayne ordered the start of the first ever official police firearms training. He directed that: ‘Five Constables from each [of ten listed divisions] are to parade on Wormwood Scrubbs [sic] at 11 am, 23rd, to be instructed in Revolver Drill under Inspector Nightingale (A). Each man is to carry his revolver and 10 rounds of ammunition with him.’ To most people Wormwood Scrubs is the name of a prison but to the north of it is still one of the largest areas (200 acres) of common land to be found in London. In 1812 the area surrounding it was completely rural and it was leased to the army for exercise purposes. The Tower Hamlets Militia was given the job of turning it into a cavalry training ground and in 1860 a rifle range was built in the south-east corner.
At 2 o’clock in the afternoon of Christmas Eve 1867 another fifty men, together with a Superintendent and four Inspectors, were required to attend a similar course of training at the same place. On Boxing Day, Inspector Nightingale gave training to forty-two officers at the ‘Museum of Fire-arms [sic], Rye-lane, Peckham at 10.45 a.m.’ and another fifty at the range at Wormwood Scrubs the following day. On 27 December the force was told that: ‘Returns are to be sent in, 28th, shewing [sic] the position or name of place where each Rifle Range or Butts, or other place which would be available for revolver practice is situate on each Division’. Firearms training was to be extended force-wide with the Inspectors who had been trained before Christmas passing on what they had learned to their men.
Between August 1868 and January 1869 a total of 622 ‘Adams Breech Loading Revolvers with boxes for the safe keeping of the same’ were supplied from the Tower of London to 63 police stations in London. According to Adam’s advertising material the City of London police adopted the same weapon at about the same time.
Ten rounds of ammunition were issued with each revolver and, although there are contemporary references to the guns being carried by the police, usually in connection with the guarding of Fenian prisoners, there is no record of any of them being fired in anger. This is probably just as well because it would be 1882 before anyone thought it necessary to draw up instructions on when weapons could be used.
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Mayne died in office on 26 December 1868 while the Adams revolvers were still being distributed. Work started on building the prison in the south-west corner of Wormwood Scrubs in 1875 and the butts of rifle range can still be found today. It is the imposing 20ft-high wall with a grass-covered bank in front of it, neither of which has any obvious purpose, at one end of the running track and car park of what is now the Linford Christie Stadium. It is a safe bet that none of the athletes training there, with their eyes firmly fixed on the 2012 Olympics, realise what an important part it once played in police history.
The original version of this article was published in Jane’s Police Review dated 18 May 2007. Reproduced with permission. © IHS Global Limited.
Were there any developments to do with police firearms in your force/area during this period of history? If so please contact mike.policehistory@yahoo.com.