Early Police Firearms - 1860 New!
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 and thereby force the British to give up Ireland in exchange for their withdrawal. On 1 June about 600 Fenians crossed the Niagara River at Black Rock, near Buffalo, in the State of New York, and established themselves in the village of Fort Erie in Canada. In the event the ‘invasion’ was broken up by British troops and Canadian militia 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 in Ireland, were arrested in Manchester. They were being escorted to prison in a horse-drawn police van when about thirty or more 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 (an alternative account which appeared at the time is that Sergeant Brett was looking out through a ventilator that he was trying to close when he was shot – either version could be true). Another police officer was shot in the thigh and a bystander was shot in the foot.
The attack caused a sensation and in the House of Lords on 19 November Lord John Russell (Prime Minister 1846 – 1852 and 1865 – 1866) pointed out that there had been a warning of a rescue attempt, adding that ‘it is surprising that the Government had not provided a sufficient escort of military and armed police to accompany the prisoners in Manchester, and so prevented the lamentable occurrence in which the murder of Sergeant Brett took place’. The Earl of Derby responded by saying that: ‘No doubt there was a telegram from Dublin to Manchester to say that a rescue of the prisoners would be attempted, and that therefore it was desirable that extra precautions should be taken. But those precautions were taken in a very large increase of police in attendance on the van. Certainly no information reached the authorities which led them to apprehend so desperate and bloody an attack.’
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 than 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.
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 (apparently 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. On 12 December there was another warning of a rescue attempt, this time to the effect that: ‘The plan is to blow up the exercise walls by means of gunpowder; the hour between three and four p.m.; and the signal for 'all right,' a white ball thrown up outside when he [Burke] is at exercise’.
This was passed on to the Met but the Commissioner, Sir Richard Mayne, was not in his office at the time. It was therefore Assistant Commissioner Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas Labalmondiere who received the message at mid-day and he directed that Superintendent Gernon was to ‘acquaint the Governor of the House of Detention that information has been received of an intended rescue of the prisoner Burke, to be effected by blowing up the walls of the exercising ground during the hours he is at exercise. Have the external walls carefully examined to ascertain that there has been no attempt to mine, and arrange for strict observation to be kept on them’. When Mayne returned to his office he directed that Gernon should also ‘post a double patrol of two police-constables, and three police-constables in plain clothes, all of whom to be strictly instructed, together with section sergeants, to keep close observation on all persons loitering round the prison walls, and to give immediate information to the inspector on duty at King's Cross [Police] Station should anything suspicious arise’.
All this did not prevent the Fenians rolling a cask of gunpowder up to the prison wall during that afternoon and throwing a ball into the prison to indicate that the escape plan had been put into effect but for some reason the cask did not detonate. When the ball was found by a warder he had no idea of what it was for and so he took it home for his children to play with. The next day the Fenians 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.
In an attempt to explain why the police had failed to prevent the explosion it was reported in the House of Commons that: ‘It appeared that that mode of carrying out the design of which they received information did not strike those who were set to watch the outside of the prison, because the policeman Moriarty walked along by the side of the wall when the cask was there, and nearly all his clothes were blown off in consequence of the explosion. What their attention was apparently directed to was the undermining of the wall. They thought it would probably be blown up from underneath, and had no conception that it would be blown down in the way it really was done’.
The escape plot failed but the arrest of even more suspected Fenians must have caused 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 pistols.
When members of the Bow Street Horse Patrol were incorporated into the Met in 1836 they were allowed to continue carrying their firearms. There is even a report to the Home Office dated 8 August 1852 written by Labalmondiere, at the time the Met’s Inspecting Superintendent, asking for permission to provide them with a means of carrying ammunition.
Click HERE for full document ‘Mounted Branch 1852’
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’ for mounted officers was £2 6s (£2.30) each; for inspectors they were £1 15s (£1.75) and powder flasks were 5s (25p).
Forces outside London also had firearms available. For example when a town-based police force was created in Nottingham in 1836 it had pistols marked ‘Nottinghamshire Police’. Curiously, they were fitted with a spring bayonet secured with a catch.
The weapons would have been muzzle-loaded but there had been major developments in the design of firearms by the 1850s, 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 Robert Adams, of King William-street of the firm of Deane, Adams and Deane.’
It would be unfair to suggest that the Met Commissioner 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 seems to be that they were Adams revolvers on loan from the army.
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. These would have been the first British-made pistols to use breech loading and the design had been patented in 1867 by Robert Adams’s brother, John, who shortly afterward set up the Adams Patent Small Arms Company. 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.
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 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. It is reproduced with permission © IHS Global Limited. Additional material is © Mike Waldren.
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.