Conclusion
The Manchester’s Watch Committee [WC] came into being on the 4 February 1839. Its primary function as directed by the Municipal Corporation Act 1835 was to oversee the running of their new police force via the direction of their Chief Constable, and to report back to the Borough Council. The WC's objective dated 25 April 1839 was:
'The preservation of the property, peace and good order of the Borough whilst imposing as little additional burden on the ratepayer as possible but to stop short of that efficiency would be a more waste of money’[1]
The initial budget was some £19,659 and out of this budget £1,025 (5.21 per cent) was spent on the 'rent of Lock-ups' or their building estate along with an establishment of 343 police officers.[2] By 1901 the WC reported a police estate evaluation of £153,000 along with rents and repairs of £2,950 and a police pay budget of £92,000 prior any Treasury Exchequer grants. The establishment was 1006 police officers.[3]
The findings of this research point to the development of and the constant need to refine the operational buildings of the Manchester Police over the period. It is not the case that stations stay operationally and tactically viable for generations. In fact this is the exception. Police buildings especially those used for the detention of prisoners required regular maintenance and ultimately upgrading or replacement.
Whereas under the old policing regime officers would rent locally and walk to work, a clear operational advantage was seized in the mid century, by providing barrack room accommodation within the larger police station or smaller station house. This ensured the rapid deployment and security of the primary workforce, along with an improved 'esprit de corps'. [4] Conversely, Miller (1977) argues that the police station accommodation designed primarily for the residence of the young bachelor recruits, enabled the Chief Constables to exert a high degree of discipline and control with which they moulded the constables into ‘agents of impersonal authority - free from local or class ties’.[5] The use of barrack room accommodation also avoided conflicts in the often hostile working class districts and the varied corrupting influences, such as cohabiting with females. However, experienced officers, once permitted to marry a suitable partner and rent a home, would struggle on low pay to afford their rents in other than the poorest districts, the same ones they would be policing.
Manchester Council Watch Committee through the mid-nineteenth century replaced its old lock ups and adapted station houses with purpose-built police stations. Centred on the poorest areas of Manchester these buildings provided the essential local bases for the patrolling police officers in the enforcement the law. As the numbers of officers increased so did the size of the police estate. However, the design of these buildings did not mirror the increasingly architectural grandeur of a city, which as Kidd (2006) describes as 'warehouses were built as palaces'.[6] Instead the police stations maintained a high level security from possible rioters with steel shutters and doors, to increased use of extensive iron window bars and high windowless walls. Such measures made stations safe from the threat of attack.[7]
If there was a ‘golden age’ for the development of police stations, the two decades from 1860 mark the most significant changes to the police estate and the building of the largest stations seen in Manchester such as Albert Street PS, Goulden Street PS, Willert Street PS, Newton Street PS and the New Town Hall police department.
[See Police Stations/ 1869-85].
Police Stations were designed as operational buildings first and foremost. Their operational needs to deal with the worst citizens of the impoverished and unsanitary districts of early to mid nineteenth-century Manchester removed any architectural pretensions in design. The buildings were austere, and bastion-like in their presence - Hartwell’s ‘workmanlike Gothic’. [8] They displayed civic authority in the inclusion of the City’s coat of arms and their blue lanterns, the grandest example being Goulden Street, where these took on huge proportions. If civic pride was important here, it was as a fortress or citadel. This was the architecture of civic power rather than pride.
[See Police Stations/ 1860-85 / Goulden Street PS].
This is not to suggest that civic pride was not evident in Manchester’s police however. On the opening of Manchester’s grandest building in 1876 the great and the good on entering the new Town Hall were treated to a tour of the opulent interiors, including a trip to the Chief Constable’s sumptuous office [Fig 18] and the substantial police station and modern cells in the courtyard. Here, the Aldermen and Councillors proudly demonstrated their municipal power and purpose to control and command this most successful of provincial cities.[9]
Just as the new Borough of Manchester grew into a major industrial city, so did the new constables evolve into a proficient police force. From Chadwick's critical 1839 Royal Commission into policing through to DCI Caminada's 1899 optimistic review of police and society, there occurred a wholesale change in the operational needs and ability of the police to function and to impose law and order without military assistance. [10] The latter was important in Manchester which had experienced and never forgot Peterloo in 1819.
Victorian policing was based primarily on constantly manned beats of 30 minutes to three hours to provide a permanent public presence of police officers. Victorian police officers walked their beats and man-handled their prisoners back to the nearby lock-up or station cells. The police building estate was designed and adapted to meet this fundamental operational need. It would be only after the Second World War, when the advent of electrical communication and motorised transport was significantly cheaper and established, before this fundamental local police station system was re-considered.[11]
[1] Manchester Watch Committee Minutes 25 April 1839. [WCM]
[2] Ibid.
[3] WCM 11 April – 15 May 1901.
[4] WCM 27 January 1859.
[5] Wilbur. R. Miller, Cops and Bobbies: Police Authority in New York and London, 1830 – 1870, (London: University of Chicago Press, 1977) pp.25-36.
[6] Alan, Kidd, Manchester, a history, (Lancaster: Carnegie Publishing, 2006)(2nd.ed.) p. 104.
[7] The station Inspector's graphic account of the attack on Oldham Road station reported in the Manchester Guardian 27 May 1843. WCM 17 Oct 1867. 'Iron bars to all windows and fan lights, revolving steel shutters, steel plates to doors and gates, four or five foot height extensions to outer walls'.
[8] Clare. Hartwell, Manchester, (London: Penguin, 2001) pp.288-9.
[9] Reproduction of the opening brochure from the original William Morris Press Ltd. (Manchester: City of Manchester Press, 1977).
[10] J. Caminada Twenty Five Years of Detective Life, (Manchester: Heywood 1901) (Vol.2) pp.500-08.
[11] K. Laybourn & D. Taylor, Policing in England and Wales, 1918 -39: The Fed, Flying Squad and Forensics, (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan 2011) pp.1-3. Manchester police’s use of charabanc motorised units during the General Strike of 1926, ibid p.62.
'The preservation of the property, peace and good order of the Borough whilst imposing as little additional burden on the ratepayer as possible but to stop short of that efficiency would be a more waste of money’[1]
The initial budget was some £19,659 and out of this budget £1,025 (5.21 per cent) was spent on the 'rent of Lock-ups' or their building estate along with an establishment of 343 police officers.[2] By 1901 the WC reported a police estate evaluation of £153,000 along with rents and repairs of £2,950 and a police pay budget of £92,000 prior any Treasury Exchequer grants. The establishment was 1006 police officers.[3]
The findings of this research point to the development of and the constant need to refine the operational buildings of the Manchester Police over the period. It is not the case that stations stay operationally and tactically viable for generations. In fact this is the exception. Police buildings especially those used for the detention of prisoners required regular maintenance and ultimately upgrading or replacement.
Whereas under the old policing regime officers would rent locally and walk to work, a clear operational advantage was seized in the mid century, by providing barrack room accommodation within the larger police station or smaller station house. This ensured the rapid deployment and security of the primary workforce, along with an improved 'esprit de corps'. [4] Conversely, Miller (1977) argues that the police station accommodation designed primarily for the residence of the young bachelor recruits, enabled the Chief Constables to exert a high degree of discipline and control with which they moulded the constables into ‘agents of impersonal authority - free from local or class ties’.[5] The use of barrack room accommodation also avoided conflicts in the often hostile working class districts and the varied corrupting influences, such as cohabiting with females. However, experienced officers, once permitted to marry a suitable partner and rent a home, would struggle on low pay to afford their rents in other than the poorest districts, the same ones they would be policing.
Manchester Council Watch Committee through the mid-nineteenth century replaced its old lock ups and adapted station houses with purpose-built police stations. Centred on the poorest areas of Manchester these buildings provided the essential local bases for the patrolling police officers in the enforcement the law. As the numbers of officers increased so did the size of the police estate. However, the design of these buildings did not mirror the increasingly architectural grandeur of a city, which as Kidd (2006) describes as 'warehouses were built as palaces'.[6] Instead the police stations maintained a high level security from possible rioters with steel shutters and doors, to increased use of extensive iron window bars and high windowless walls. Such measures made stations safe from the threat of attack.[7]
If there was a ‘golden age’ for the development of police stations, the two decades from 1860 mark the most significant changes to the police estate and the building of the largest stations seen in Manchester such as Albert Street PS, Goulden Street PS, Willert Street PS, Newton Street PS and the New Town Hall police department.
[See Police Stations/ 1869-85].
Police Stations were designed as operational buildings first and foremost. Their operational needs to deal with the worst citizens of the impoverished and unsanitary districts of early to mid nineteenth-century Manchester removed any architectural pretensions in design. The buildings were austere, and bastion-like in their presence - Hartwell’s ‘workmanlike Gothic’. [8] They displayed civic authority in the inclusion of the City’s coat of arms and their blue lanterns, the grandest example being Goulden Street, where these took on huge proportions. If civic pride was important here, it was as a fortress or citadel. This was the architecture of civic power rather than pride.
[See Police Stations/ 1860-85 / Goulden Street PS].
This is not to suggest that civic pride was not evident in Manchester’s police however. On the opening of Manchester’s grandest building in 1876 the great and the good on entering the new Town Hall were treated to a tour of the opulent interiors, including a trip to the Chief Constable’s sumptuous office [Fig 18] and the substantial police station and modern cells in the courtyard. Here, the Aldermen and Councillors proudly demonstrated their municipal power and purpose to control and command this most successful of provincial cities.[9]
Just as the new Borough of Manchester grew into a major industrial city, so did the new constables evolve into a proficient police force. From Chadwick's critical 1839 Royal Commission into policing through to DCI Caminada's 1899 optimistic review of police and society, there occurred a wholesale change in the operational needs and ability of the police to function and to impose law and order without military assistance. [10] The latter was important in Manchester which had experienced and never forgot Peterloo in 1819.
Victorian policing was based primarily on constantly manned beats of 30 minutes to three hours to provide a permanent public presence of police officers. Victorian police officers walked their beats and man-handled their prisoners back to the nearby lock-up or station cells. The police building estate was designed and adapted to meet this fundamental operational need. It would be only after the Second World War, when the advent of electrical communication and motorised transport was significantly cheaper and established, before this fundamental local police station system was re-considered.[11]
[1] Manchester Watch Committee Minutes 25 April 1839. [WCM]
[2] Ibid.
[3] WCM 11 April – 15 May 1901.
[4] WCM 27 January 1859.
[5] Wilbur. R. Miller, Cops and Bobbies: Police Authority in New York and London, 1830 – 1870, (London: University of Chicago Press, 1977) pp.25-36.
[6] Alan, Kidd, Manchester, a history, (Lancaster: Carnegie Publishing, 2006)(2nd.ed.) p. 104.
[7] The station Inspector's graphic account of the attack on Oldham Road station reported in the Manchester Guardian 27 May 1843. WCM 17 Oct 1867. 'Iron bars to all windows and fan lights, revolving steel shutters, steel plates to doors and gates, four or five foot height extensions to outer walls'.
[8] Clare. Hartwell, Manchester, (London: Penguin, 2001) pp.288-9.
[9] Reproduction of the opening brochure from the original William Morris Press Ltd. (Manchester: City of Manchester Press, 1977).
[10] J. Caminada Twenty Five Years of Detective Life, (Manchester: Heywood 1901) (Vol.2) pp.500-08.
[11] K. Laybourn & D. Taylor, Policing in England and Wales, 1918 -39: The Fed, Flying Squad and Forensics, (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan 2011) pp.1-3. Manchester police’s use of charabanc motorised units during the General Strike of 1926, ibid p.62.
