1796 A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis

Description

In a nineteenth century binding, with a crest to the spine of a Phoenix rising from the flames. 

This work was published anonymously, but it was written by Patrick Colquhoun. Patrick Colquhoun was a Scottish merchant, statistician and magistrate who was responsible for founding the first regular preventative police force in England, known as Thames River Police. Following on from the theft of an estimated £500,000 worth of stolen cargo a year from the Pool of London on the River Thames, Colquhoun, along with utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham and master mariner John Harriot, founded the Thames Valley Police. The first year saved an estimated £122,000 worth of cargo and rescued several lives. His work is credit as an important precursor to the 'new' police founded by Robert Peel.

'A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis' discusses in-depth of the police in London at the end of the eighteenth century. At this time, there wasn't a police force as we know them today. Instead, law enforcement was organised by local communities, with the government having no involvement in the policing. The first professional police was the City of Glasgow Police, which was established in 1800. 

For that reason, this is a very interesting work, to see how law enforcement was developed before the establishment of the modern police force. This century was also a time of greatly increased crime in the capital, with poverty quickly rising as London became a much more densely populated city.

In this work, Colquhoun presents problems and issues faced by the police and the public, and offers his solutions.

With the folding table.

This copy has been bound without the half-title cited by ESTC.   ESTC reference no. T99184.  This copy has page 288 misnumbered 88 as called for. 

An influential treatise written by an important figure in police reformation.