Page 23 - Top Cover Issue 7

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POLICE HISTORY SERIES HISTORY

Mike Waldren QPM looks at a timeline of Policing and Firearms 1822

This issue we look at 1785 - 1828

The Bow Street Foot Patrol in London
1787 1793 1813 is augmented by a Day Patrol. All its

In the Burgh of Carlton The Bristol Bridge Riots. The Sergeant of the night watch, personnel are armed with a
in Glasgow weavers are Commissioners of Bristol Samuel Prestow (London), is shot truncheon and a cutlass and some
refused an increase in wages Bridge are allowed to impose a and killed trying to arrest Thomas 1816
and so they strike with toll to keep the Rhodes, an escaped lunatic who have pistols. By 1829 it will have an
large crowds taking to the bridge in repair. The time-limit believes that he is destined to bring The Spa Fields Riot. After a meeting in establishment of twenty-seven.
streets. They are burning a on the toll expires but the peace to the world and is armed Spa Fields in London rioters break into
number of webs of cloth Commissioners try to extend with two pistols. Although charged a gun shop in Skinner Street and steal
when the 39th Regiment it. There are riots 1793 with with murder Rhodes is found not twenty fowling pieces, a musket, two
of Foot arrives and the people forcing their way across guilty on the grounds of insanity at blunderbusses and ten pairs of pistols.
soldiers are ordered by and refusing to pay resulting the Old Bailey and is returned to They then march towards the Tower of
Glasgow magistrates to fire in the Hereford militia being St. Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics. London intent on replicating the 1789
into the crowd. Three men called to restore order. That storming of the Bastille. They are stopped
are killed and many injured. evening there is more rioting by constables and a party of the 9th Light
and soldiers open fire into the Dragoons. The trial of the ringleaders
mob. Eleven people are killed later collapses at the Old Bailey with only
and about eighty injured. John Cashman being convicted of theft.
He is sentenced to death and executed in
1817.

1792 1805 1815 1820 1828

Joseph ‘Jumping Joe’ Owing to an increase in The Dartmoor Massacre. After The Cato Street Conspiracy. The Bow Street Magistrate, Upwards of 200 smugglers, members of
Lorrison (so nicknamed reported highway robberies the Anglo-American war (1812- Richard Birnie, and a party of twelve of the ‘Bow Street Patrol’, the ‘Little Common Gang’, many armed
because of his dexterity a centrally funded Bow 1815) a large number of American with Captain Fitzclarence and a party of the Coldstream with bludgeons and firearms, assemble at
at jumping onto carts and Street Police Horse Patrol prisoners- of-war are still being Guards, attempt to arrest Arthur Thistlewood and others in Galley Beach near Bexhill in East Sussex to
throwing the contents to is introduced to operate on held, in appalling conditions, in a loft over a stable in Cato Street in London for plotting to land 300 gallons of brandy and 300 gallons
his associates) is arrested the main roads to an outer Dartmoor prison at Princetown in overthrow the government. During the melee, shots are fired of ‘foreign Geneva’ (gin). They are seen by
and charged with robbing perimeter of up to twenty Devon. They expect to be released by the conspirators and by the patrol. Two of the patrol are members of the Coast Blockade Service
James Dixon of his money miles from the centre of but the British Government refuses wounded and another, Richard Smithers, is killed with a sword. who, after summoning reinforcements from
and a watch. 1792 He is the London. Members to allow it until it sees confirmation Thistlewood manages to escape but he is arrested by the patrol the Martello tower on Galley Hill, chase the
convicted at Guildford are issued with a uniform of the peace treaty being ratified by without incident the next day. Five men including Thistlewood smugglers inland. The Battle of Sidley Green
Assizes in Surrey, sentenced together with a sabre the United States Senate. A group are executed outside Newgate prison. a blockade man, Charles Collins, is hit on
to death and executed and a pistol as a personal of prisoners try to break through the head with a ‘long bludgeon’ and killed.
on Kennington Common. appointment. By 1829 it a wall (telling the guards that they Two other blockade men, Jeremiah Higgins
According to the Newgate will have an establishment want to recover a lost ball because and Peter Welch, are found by a surgeon of
Calendar he has ‘been of sixty. they, the guards, refuse to do it) and the blockade to be ‘critically wounded’ and
tried near thirty times for the commandant, Captain Thomas a smuggler, Timothy Smithurst, is shot and
various offences; once for Shortland, suspects that the killed. After an investigation lasting several
the murder of a watchman, prisoners are planning a mass break- months by principal officers from the Bow
and though acquitted, from out. He rings the alarm bell and Street public office eight men, William
the evidence not being drummers beat to arms. Soldiers, Bennett, James Foord, Henry Miller, Thomas
sufficient, was in general possibly without orders, fire into a Miller, Edward Shoesmith, John Spray,
supposed to be guilty’. The crowd in a courtyard. Seven men are Stephen Stubberfield and Spencer Whiteman,
‘watchman’ is yet to be killed and another sixty wounded, are charged with smuggling offences.
identified. thirty of them seriously.