As with other pillars of the Scottish criminal justice system, the distinctiveness of the Scottish police model from its English counterpart has been widely acknowledged.Footnote ¹ Its historical development, institutional structure, and level of community support have been portrayed as unique in the United Kingdom.Footnote ² Although rarely heralded as a symbol of national identity in the same way as the Church of Scotland or the legal system,Footnote ³ the Scottish police's distinctive customs, traits, and practices have been held up in some studies as a badge of national pride.Footnote ⁴ Often this is for no significant reason other than the fact that police reform in Scotland predated similar developments in England.Footnote ⁵ Municipal police administration has also been depicted as an important symbol of the self-governing nature of Scottish civil society, conferring upon local authorities a wide range of autonomous powers and strengthening their bargaining position with central government in Westminster in London.Footnote ⁶

Others scholars, however, paint a different picture. It has been argued that Scottish and English policing structures and customs increasingly converged in the nineteenth century— more often than not, according to principles and guidelines laid out in London. In older and institutional police histories, this has been accredited to the pervasive influence of the Metropolitan Police.Footnote ⁷ Established in London in 1829, this institution became a template for other countries to follow.Footnote ⁸ In more recent studies, the Metropolitan model has been heralded as the most favored of all urban, civilian policing structures in nineteenth-century EuropeFootnote ⁹ and the standard against which rural forces in England were measured.Footnote ¹⁰ Convergence between Scottish and English practice has also been explained as the product of a growth in state bureaucracy and a burgeoning volume of Home Office directives that sought to impose uniform standards across mainland Britain.Footnote ¹¹ More generally, it has been depicted as indicative of wider institutional change and greater English involvement in the Scottish criminal justice system as a whole.Footnote ¹² According to one scholar, Whig reformers, such as Henry Cockburn, “wanted to make Scotland as much like England as possible.”Footnote ¹³ However, this interpretation has been challenged in recent studies,Footnote ¹⁴ and there were many in nineteenth-century legal circles, such as Sir Archibald Alison, the Sheriff of Lanarkshire, who resented what was perceived to be English interference in Scots law and criminal justice affairs.Footnote ¹⁵

Yet surprisingly, the Scottish police's relationship with English practice and the state over the course of the nineteenth century has never been as closely examined as the abovementioned views would imply, especially from a specifically Scottish perspective. Scholars have, in the main, focused on modern-day comparisons rather than historical ones, or have made only fleeting evaluations between Metropolitan policing principles and those in Scotland.Footnote ¹⁶ They have not analyzed the much more important and pertinent questions of how far civic and rural leaders were able to shape their own policing models and the relationship they had with state representatives in the form of the Lord Advocate in Edinburgh and the home secretary in London. This article seeks to address these lines of inquiry: first, by paying particular attention to whether the Scottish experience of policing, and the models it produced, continued throughout the nineteenth century to be recognizably different from those in England and Wales (where general policing initiatives often applied to both countries). The distinctive course and nature of police development in Ireland, where centrally controlled constabulary forces were established to deal with large-scale disorder and protest, has been well documented and does not call for elaboration here.Footnote ¹⁷ Second, this article uncovers how far the Scottish model continued to be shaped by indigenous influences in the face of bureaucratic state expansion and, third, it assesses how the construction of a new machinery of law enforcement impacted on urban and rural governance. As is shown subsequently, Scottish policing in the first three decades of the nineteenth century took a distinctive course from policing elsewhere in the United Kingdom;Footnote ¹⁸ therefore, the institution's continuing evolution provides an intriguing case study to examine not only Scottish police history, but also issues concerning police typology, metropolitan influence on institutional structures, and the relationship between the center and the localities more generally. Studies of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scottish governance have suggested that Westminster—through a combination of “administrative neglect” and recognition of Scotland's different legal and administrative traditions—was reluctant to become embroiled in the country's affairs. It was, in other words, relatively content to let Scots govern themselves.Footnote ¹⁹ In recognizing that police reform established new administrative structures and power bases, the article adds an important dimension to the historian's understanding of the management of Scottish society and the contribution of lord advocates, the legal profession,Footnote ²⁰ and local elitesFootnote ²¹ in shaping Scotland's policing structures.

Particular attention is given to assessing how far central direction impacted on policing from 1833, when the first general police act for Scotland was introduced, to 1885, when the Scottish Office was established. The Office assumed responsibility for overseeing Scottish affairs, and its impact on governance and policing calls for greater attention than can be given in this article.Footnote ²² The distinctive nature of the urban police model that evolved through local initiatives before 1833, and the indigenous influences behind its creation, have been analyzed in a recent publication.Footnote ²³ Neither requires a great deal of elaboration. Nonetheless, it is important to examine briefly the institution's formative construction in order to contextualize and understand developments later in the century.

Scottish Burgh Policing in its Formative Years, c. 1800 to 1833

In the early 1800s, the lord advocate was the most important representative of the state—defined here as the United Kingdom government and its leading officials—in Scotland.Footnote ²⁴ In addition to being chief public prosecutor, he was largely responsible for administering Scottish affairs. His role included overseeing legislative and legal business and liaising with government in London. Although effectively a government minister and accountable to the home secretary,Footnote ²⁵ the lord advocate enjoyed much autonomy, was based predominantly in Edinburgh, and often made decisions in consultation with opinion in Scotland. He was also a Scot. His position highlights the complexities involved in attempting to distinguish Anglo-central influences from indigenous ones. In 1804, Charles Hope of Granton, the lord advocate (who held the position between 1801 and 1804), alluded to the range of powers that came with the office. In giving evidence to a parliamentary committee of the House of Commons, he remarked: “it may be said that he possesses the whole of the executive government under his particular care. … [Despite the Act of Union] Scotland is still to all intents and purposes a separate kingdom. Its laws, its customs and its manners have undergone no change. In the application of general Acts much local explanation is required, and therefore the Lord Advocate of Scotland must frequently act on his responsibility.”Footnote ²⁶

As Scotland's chief legal officer, the lord advocate had a role in overseeing and scrutinising Scottish police legislation. As with many of their English counterparts, a large number of burghs introduced local police acts long before central government instruction in the mid-nineteenth century. The “police” concept in Scottish towns in this period was similar to that in parts of continental EuropeFootnote ²⁷ and urban America in that it was defined widely as a form of civic administration and closely linked to the growth of public service bureaucraciesFootnote ²⁸ and the control of municipal populations.Footnote ²⁹ The towns that embraced reform tended to be the fastest-growing urban, industrial centers, or burghs with western coastal or port locations, such as Glasgow (1800), Greenock (1801), and Paisley (1806). This was indicative of the fact that police development in urban Scotland was often closely aligned with rural–urban migration, industrial and commercial expansion, and the growth in trans-Atlantic trading. These acts required statutory approval from Parliament, which gave government officials in Edinburgh and London an important role in shaping Scottish police legislation. Although the significance of such enactments in empowering communities has been rightly recognized, it was the center that “enshrined” statutory local initiatives.Footnote ³⁰ The extent to which local action was sanctioned, and indeed often encouraged, by the center and statute law was considerable, which somewhat blurs the lines between the locality and the center.Footnote ³¹ In most cases, influence from senior government representatives in London and Edinburgh was effected by removing or amending clauses in police bills, or by engaging in extensive and protracted dialogue with civic delegates who had been dispatched to London to ensure a bill's safe passage through Parliament.Footnote ³² The Police Bill promoted by magistrates in Glasgow in 1800 (which received royal ascent in the same year) met with much parliamentary opposition: the lord provost acknowledging that he was “obliged to yield or amend” on a number of clauses on the titles of “intendent” and “superintendent.”Footnote ³³ In some instances, influence was more direct. In Edinburgh, the lord advocate, Sir James Montgomery (1804–1806), and Charles Hope, the then lord justice clerk, played an important part, along with other leading professional and business figures, in constructing the city's first Police Act in 1805.Footnote ³⁴

Lord advocates were also often vocal in expressing opinions on the future directions policing arrangements should take. In 1820, following an attempt at armed insurrection by handloom weavers in and around Glasgow, the lord advocate, Sir William Rae (1819–1830, 1834–1835, 1841–1842) remarked: “in maintaining the peace of the country … [the Government] … must look, in the first place, for aid from the Police of the city and county, and … less on the zealous Magistracy now in court…. I hope and trust that every description of Magistrates in this country and city … will exert themselves in the exercise of a vigorous police.”Footnote ³⁵ Shortly afterwards, local magistrates introduced the 1821 Glasgow Police Act. The statute sought to exert control over the population through greater community surveillance and was one of the most innovative and forward-thinking police acts in Britain at the time.Footnote ³⁶ Manpower was extended, ward superintendents were appointed throughout the city, and police commissioners were given additional powers to extend the capacity of summary justice. The intended purpose was, as Rae desired, to use police rather than magisterial resources in order to monitor subversive and criminal activity among the urban population and industrial masses.Footnote ³⁷ It is impossible to determine how many of the Act's clauses were the result of the lord advocate and how many were the result of the troubled economic, industrial, and political events of the postwar years.Footnote ³⁸ What is clear, is that the new police arrangements bore a striking resemblance to the “vigorous” police Rae envisaged.

However, although senior government figures in Edinburgh and London could, and did, influence, amend, and remove clauses, police bills were initiated and framed by local elites themselves. They were not imposed from the center. There were similarities here with developments in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century London, where watching and police reform evolved out of local initiatives stretching over a long period rather than being imposed on reluctant parish bodies from forward-thinking governments.Footnote ³⁹ In Scotland, major decisions were taken in burghs, including whether or not to promote a bill, what powers and services to seek to acquire, how to pay for them, and who should manage them.Footnote ⁴⁰ Reform was the product of ongoing discussion between men of property, often involving not just magistrates and councillors, but a wide array of public, and sometimes landed, interests. These included local guilds, craft organizations, businessmen, and property holders.Footnote ⁴¹ In an era in which local government was vested in the hands of small groups of self-selecting councillors, policing was an important issue in stimulating fairly extensive public discourse on civic, representative, and accountable governance. In many ways, it was the main vehicle, and to some extent a substitute, for expressing discontent with urban management following the declining importance of the burgh reform movement in Scotland during the Napoleonic Wars. Fourteen towns acquired police and improvement acts between 1793 and 1815, with all but three vesting control in the hands of elected police commissions.Footnote ⁴²

The establishment of such commissions was extremely important in creating a new power base for men of property who hitherto had been excluded from, or were on the fringes of, civic administration.Footnote ⁴³ They were important symbols of Scottish civil society in that they allowed communities to play a key role in their own self-government. Their creation was often the outcome of years of political infighting between the middle ranks and self-selecting town councils. In Glasgow, almost 20 years separated the drafting of the city's first police bill and the passing of the 1800 Police Act. Magistrates initially opposed setting up a rival municipal authority that would threaten their own power and status.Footnote ⁴⁴ After failing to acquire statutory police powers in the face of opposition from heritors (landowners) and burgess and trade incorporations, the civic fathers finally agreed to promote a bill that would vest police control in the hands of an elected commission. It was the realization that a new approach to civic administration was required in order to acquire the funds needed to pay for essential municipal services.

When framing local police bills, civic leaders drew inspiration from local improvement legislation that had been acquired in many English towns from at least the mid-eighteenth century. As in England, police affairs were locally controlled and financed. Powers were acquired to pay for lighting, paving, cleansing, and the employment of full-time police and watch forces, reflecting the “police” concept's association at the time with municipal administration for the common good.Footnote ⁴⁵ That being said, there were subtle, and not so subtle, differences between Scottish and English practices and structures.Footnote ⁴⁶ The Scottish system of administration was much more uniform than the English improvement model in that the management of police affairs in the majority of burghs was vested in committees of elected householders. In England, there was greater variation, with appointed officials, town councils and elected representatives being responsible for police management in different parts of the country.Footnote ⁴⁷ Scottish commissions were also much more democratically based than those in England: they had lower property requirements and commissioners were drawn from a wider social grouping. Their representatives were also responsible for a wider range of services than were their counterparts in England, where it was common for statutory powers to be divided among different authorities. According to Edinburgh writer and publisher William Chambers, public officials in England were jealous of the far-reaching powers commissioners in Scotland enjoyed and were keen to acquire them. As he boasted, in 1830, “the Edinburgh [Police] Establishment has been examined as a model of imitation by some English towns, and it might be adopted with salutary effects.”Footnote ⁴⁸ It was a view that was not without substance. In 1828–1829, when considering how best to reform its policing arrangements, the Manchester Improvement Commission sent a delegation to Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, and Birmingham, as these “have the repute of possessing the best regulations on these subjects.”Footnote ⁴⁹ As in London, the policing arrangements in Glasgow and Edinburgh were widely praised, with commissioners in Manchester subsequently adopting many of Glasgow's and Edinburgh's arrangements and regulations.Footnote ⁵⁰

Even senior government figures were not averse to looking to Scotland, although this tended to be fairly rare in the first few decades of the nineteenth century. In giving evidence to the “Select Committee Report on Metropolis Police Offices,” published in 1837, Samuel March Phillips, the undersecretary of state for the Home Department, acknowledged the wide-ranging powers Scottish magistrates enjoyed and recommended that these be extended to England.Footnote ⁵¹ In some of the larger towns, Scottish justices acquired greater summary powers under local police acts, which made provision for the establishment of police courts and charged superintendents with bringing forward public prosecutions.Footnote ⁵² Police forces in England would not take on this role until the second half of the century.Footnote ⁵³ In Scotland, the lord advocate continued to head public prosecutions for indictable crimes, but the increasing involvement of the police in prosecuting offences against local statutory laws was significant in extending the powers and capacity of the judicial burgh machine over which the central state had no direct control.

In Scotland, the legal profession was much more closely involved in investigating crime than it was in England.Footnote ⁵⁴ As Scotland had an office of public prosecution, every reported crime in theory—although the reality was much different—had to be investigated in order for local justices and crown officials to decide whether or not to lay criminal charges.Footnote ⁵⁵ Procurators fiscal filled this role—and, significantly, continued to be responsible for criminal investigation after police forces had been established.Footnote ⁵⁶ On the advice and direction of sheriffs and crown officials, they conducted preliminary inquiries, examined suspects, took witness testimonies, gathered evidence, and prepared reports.Footnote ⁵⁷ The evidence they presented was crucial in determining not just whether cases were prosecuted, but on which charge and before which court.

The reasons behind these distinctive features have been explored elsewhere and can only be briefly mentioned here.Footnote ⁵⁸ They were partly a product of Scotland's rapid rate of urban expansion, which because it occurred later than in England but at a far faster rate, required a more interventionist approach; partly a result of her separate legal and administrative histories, structures, and traditions, which conferred greater financial autonomy on burghs than in England;Footnote ⁵⁹ and partly a product of the country's long-standing commitment to civic tradition, which fostered a strong history of interventionism in the public sphere and a commitment to municipal service. Police and improvement initiatives in neighboring towns often provided the spur to reform. These set new standards and helped produce a “clustered” pattern of adoption. Edinburgh and Leith (county of Edinburghshire) in 1805 and 1806, and Kirkcaldy and Dunfermline (county of Fife) in 1811, were just some of the neighboring towns that acquired police acts within a short period of one another.Footnote ⁶⁰ Far from developments in, or directions from, London providing the template for reform, urban elites were much more likely to borrow ideas from each other. Civic embellishment and local rivalry provided a powerful stimulus and model for reform. In 1812, a “Report of the Committee of Edinburgh Magistrates to Concert Measures for Obtaining a more Efficient System of Police” acknowledged the influence of the Glasgow model on Edinburgh police legislation.Footnote ⁶¹ In this respect, there were similarities with urban America where, according to Monkonnen, cities were much more likely to look at each other for direction rather than to London, once police departments had been established.Footnote ⁶²

Also important was the legacy of Scottish Enlightenment discourse. This provided an intellectual justification and framework for reform in Scottish towns. The writings of leading Enlightenment thinkers stressed not only the need for a strong magistracy to protect private property and safeguard commercial transactions, but also that it was incumbent upon citizens in civil society to engage in civic life to improve their communities.Footnote ⁶³ In his classic study Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), Adam Ferguson argued that allowing men of property to engage in public life was an essential ingredient of political liberty and the development of civil society.Footnote ⁶⁴ Separation of government through public vigor and local action was not only an essential check to despotic rule, but also an important way in which men of property could fulfil their political aspirations and interact with public officials. Although by no means a Scottish invention,Footnote ⁶⁵ the contribution of Scottish philosophers, from Andrew Fletcher (1653–1715), John Witherspoon (1723–1794), Hugh Blair (1718–1800) and, most famously, Adam Ferguson (1723–1816), was to locate such notions of civil society more firmly in civic rather than republican terms and to extend its appeal.Footnote ⁶⁶ “Police” in Scottish towns was an integral component of the civil society envisaged by many of the great Enlightenment philosophers in that it was—in theory, if not always in practice—associated with civic government for the public welfare, order, and prosperity.Footnote ⁶⁷ Police commissions filled this role: they were self-governing institutions that were symbolic of civic association in that they empowered men of property, gave them a voice in civic affairs, and were forums for self-direction. Indeed, as in urban America in the mid-nineteenth century,Footnote ⁶⁸ a common argument among the propertied classes in Scottish towns was that accountable police institutions were an essential check against despotic rule.Footnote ⁶⁹ Whereas in London, where discussions on police often centered on the threat a new model might pose to individual liberty, the police in urban Scotland and America were constructed in keeping with notions of representative government, which did much to allay concerns about the threat the police would pose to liberty.Footnote ⁷⁰

Moreover, it is interesting to note that the famous London police reformer, Patrick Colquhoun, was lord provost of Glasgow in the late eighteenth century at a time when the city was pioneering improvements in policing. Famous for founding the world's first Chamber of Commerce in Glasgow in 1783,Footnote ⁷¹ publishing a Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis (1796),Footnote ⁷² and establishing the Thames River Police in 1800,Footnote ⁷³ Colquhoun was himself a product of, and an important figure of, the Scottish Enlightenment. Although he drew heavily on other influences,Footnote ⁷⁴ a number of his ideas on law enforcement in London (where he moved to in the early 1790s) bore a striking resemblance to the political discourse surrounding police reform in his native Glasgow in the 1780s and early 1790s.Footnote ⁷⁵ His Treatise on Police contained many similarities with initiatives and concepts that were being pioneered and explored in the city, including the recommendation that full-time police officers should be appointed to prevent crime.Footnote ⁷⁶ In other words, Colquhoun's self-proclaimed “new science of policing” was being discussed, debated, and experimented with in Glasgow several years before it made its appearance in Treatise. Footnote ⁷⁷ This was four decades before it was hailed as the defining characteristic of Peel's Metropolitan Police of 1829Footnote ⁷⁸ and the foundation on which police forces in America were, according to some sources, established.Footnote ⁷⁹ Moreover, although Colquhoun's Thames River Police was the result of, and tailored to meet, the specific needs of London's thriving trade, some of the ideas which were embodied in it had their intellectual origins in his native city. As his role in establishing the Chamber of Commerce illustrated, Colquhoun's great passion in his early years in public life was promoting and defending the interests of trade and commerce and suppressing dockland crime, which he argued was having a detrimental impact on mercantile interests.Footnote ⁸⁰ Colquhoun came from an intellectual heritage that was questioning the existing system of law enforcement, criminal investigation, and prosecution; looking at new ways to protect commercial transactions and private property; and which probably had a greater impact on the wider intellectual discourse on policing than has often been acknowledged.

The Scottish police institution, therefore, was influenced, in part, by developments in England, but much more so by specific local needs and indigenous traditions, culture, and philosophy. On the eve of the first general Burgh Police Act in 1833, there were recognisable differences between Scottish and English police and improvement arrangements. Although the Scottish system did not represent the triumph of a new model beyond its own borders, neither was it simply a mirror image of English practice.

General Police Legislation, 1833 to 1857

As in other parts of mainland Britain, Parliament became increasingly involved in framing general police legislation in Scotland (that is, legislation that all eligible burghs were permitted to adopt) from the 1830s. However, the course and pattern of police development in burghs continued to differ from other parts of the British Isles. In England and Wales, the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act compelled incorporated town councils to establish police forces. Scottish towns, however, received no similar mandatory instruction. The 1833 Burgh Police Scotland Act—the first national policing statute relating to the whole of Scotland—was similar to the 1833 Lighting and Watching Act introduced in England and Wales in that it permitted but did not compel authorities to acquire statutory policing powers. Its purpose was to enable civic leaders to respond more effectively to the challenges brought by demographic change and urban expansion by providing a general, legislative framework to acquire and extend powers to fund and administer local services. It also served an important political purpose in that it sought to reduce the promotion of local police acts, which were putting growing pressure on parliamentary time. The issue had been on the political agenda for a few years and drew cross-party support with both the Conservative and Whig administrations introducing Police Bills for Scotland in 1830 and 1832 respectively, both of which failed to receive statutory approval because of, ironically, a crowded parliamentary program.Footnote ⁸¹

The Act provides good examples of the way central government “empowered” local initiative,Footnote ⁸² the important role both the state and the localities played in shaping police affairs, and the complexities involved in untangling the often interwoven threads of Scottish governance. The statute was framed by the lord advocate, and Whig reformer, Francis Jeffrey (1830–1834), but only after fairly extensive dialogue with, and input from, civic leaders in the Convention of the Royal Burghs.Footnote ⁸³ The Convention, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was arguably as important as Parliament when it came to urban administration, not least as it often provided financial support for civic improvement.Footnote ⁸⁴ According to the Convention's minutes, it was “of anxious desire that the 1833 Police Bill be passed into law with as little delay as possible.”Footnote ⁸⁵ This had little to do with the recently introduced 1829 Metropolitan Police Act, which established a full-time police force under the control of two commissioners appointed by the home secretary. Indeed, reform in London drew little comment from civic leaders in Scotland.Footnote ⁸⁶ This was in contrast to England, where the Metropolitan Police increasingly became the model against which existing arrangements were compared.Footnote ⁸⁷ Instead, in Scotland, financial considerations were extremely important in shaping attitudes. The Convention of the Royal Burghs cited the cost of promoting local police bills as a major obstacle to smaller burghs' acquiring statutory police powers to pay for a wide array of municipal services.Footnote ⁸⁸ The 1833 Act was significant in making it easier and cheaper for them to do this by providing a legislative framework to implement. It left it to communities to decide which clauses and powers, if any, to adopt. Between 1833 and 1846, seventeen royal burghs and twenty burghs of regality and barony adopted the Act in full or in part.Footnote ⁸⁹ Just over half of these included watching provisions, with lighting and paving clauses being much more common, highlighting clearly the different path Scottish municipal policing was taking from that of London. Most large towns, however, chose to ignore the 1833 Act in favor of local initiatives. In fact, it did little to change the trajectory of police administration in many parts of the country. Far from Parliament providing the lead, the statute largely built upon earlier local initiatives, both in terms of its powers and constitutional framework. It highlights how closely interlinked local and national statutes often were, and how interaction between the two helped shape wider trends.Footnote ⁹⁰

The absence of compulsory central direction was to have significant implications concerning the evolution of police management over the next few decades. In England, the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act transferred control of the “watching” police in the larger provincial towns to the newly reformed town councils and vested the appointment of chief constables in the hands of the lord chancellor. The Scottish equivalent gave no such instruction. In most burghs, police commissions, elected independently from town councils, continued to coexist with councils for many years after burgh reform, which was partly the result of ongoing suspicion of councillors and the self-governing principles of civil society.Footnote ⁹¹ This was significant, as police commissions often had lower electoral and commissioner requirements than councils. This meant that those from more humble backgrounds were able to exert influence over police management in Scotland longer than was the case in the incorporated towns of England.Footnote ⁹²

However, from mid-century onward, there was a growing tendency in Scottish cities for police commissions to be incorporated into municipal government, often in the face of trenchant and prolonged opposition from commissioners and working-class ratepayers. In 1846, the Glasgow Police Commission, and neighboring ones in Anderston, Gorbals, and Calton, had their powers transferred to Glasgow Town Council. Similar fates befell the police commissions in Dundee and Edinburgh in 1851 and 1856. Interestingly, the example of Glasgow was drawn upon by those in other towns that sought to effect reform, further highlighting how developments in one municipal center influenced developments in others.Footnote ⁹³ Wider social trends and distinctive political influences often lay behind the transfer of power.Footnote ⁹⁴ In the major urban centers, there were concerns among councillors and the upper middle ranks about the political outlook and social composition of commissioners.Footnote ⁹⁵ In Glasgow, the management of police affairs had fallen into the hands of the skilled working class/lower middle class following burgh reform in 1833 and included a number of prominent Chartists.Footnote ⁹⁶ Between 1841 and 1846, merchants and manufacturers—who dominated the Town Council—accounted for only 15% of Glasgow police commissioners. Artisans and small traders accounted for more than two-thirds, and professionals for slightly less than one-fifth.Footnote ⁹⁷ Although the dividing lines between those who supported transferring police affairs to the bourgeois-controlled Town Council and those who did not were more complex than a simple class interpretation suggests, social status was extremely important in shaping attitudes toward the future direction of police administration. According to the Glasgow Herald, “nine-tenths of all the better classes in the community” in Glasgow and its suburbs were in favor of incorporation;Footnote ⁹⁸ the 20,000 petitioners who opposed it were reported as not being representative of men of property. Many from humble backgrounds opposed incorporation on the basis that police commissions in and around the city, which had lower electoral and commissioner qualifications than the respective town councils, provided artisans and small traders with an opportunity to gain a say and foothold in the management of civic affairs. This did much to alienate the large business classes, who increasingly refused to vote in police elections or serve as commissioners if elected.Footnote ⁹⁹

Significantly, incorporation was the result of local pressures and aspirations and not, as was the case in England, central direction. Whereas the state, at various points, intervened with policing arrangements in London, Dublin, Birmingham, and other large British and Irish centers, in Scotland its role continued to be less intrusive and more hands-off. In the late 1830s and early 1840s, for example, government imposed a centralized, Metropolitan-type policing model (in which the home secretary appointed commissioners to manage police affairs) onto Bolton, Birmingham, and Manchester after political infighting among local elites threatened to paralyze police administration.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ The intent was not to centralize per se, but rather to ensure that local disputes would be resolved and radicals would not gain control of police management. However, although control in these affairs reverted back to municipal hands after only a few years, the interventionist approach taken by government contrasted with that taken in Scottish towns, where no direct, Home Office model was ever imposed from London.

However, that is not to say that influence was not exerted in other ways. This was often done in a subtle, and at times, not so subtle manner. In the early 1840s, the Conservative prime minister, and architect of the 1829 Metropolitan Police Act, Sir Robert Peel, contemplated imposing a centralized policing model on Glasgow.Footnote ¹⁰¹ According to local press reports, the intention was to unify policing arrangements over an extended municipal district, including a number of industrial and poor districts that hitherto had been outside existing police boundaries.Footnote ¹⁰² However, the collapse of the conservative power base of the Glasgow Town Council brought the ascendancy of a liberal administration hostile to centralization, and no further action was taken. Although there were some in conservative circles in Glasgow who were sympathetic to the idea of a centralized model, the proposal was unpopular in the wider community because of the threat it posed to local autonomy.Footnote ¹⁰³ Exactly how serious was the threat of government intervention is difficult to gauge. There were many in the Council who believed that government would not have proposed introducing a centralized policing system had it not been for the promptings of the lord provost, James Campbell. As Councillor Lumsden claimed: “the Government never would have interfered but for the great anxiety displayed by his Lordship, and the influence he had made use of to get them to take this measure in hand.”Footnote ¹⁰⁴ However, others were convinced that that central government was considering intervening in the city's policing affairs. As the Glasgow Herald argued in 1843, the Town Council “will not succeed in preventing Government interference otherwise than by uniting their fellow citizens in approval of a practicable general measure of police.”Footnote ¹⁰⁵ What is clear is that the lord advocate, Duncan McNeill (1842–1846), and his predecessor, Sir William Rae, were determined to introduce an extended policing system over the municipality of Glasgow and to disband the directly elected police commissions in Glasgow, Anderston, Gorbals, and Calton.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ As McNeill, fearful that directly elected boards might be unwilling to take unpopular actions, stated: “control of a properly constituted criminal police, particularly the appointment of the Chief Officer, or Superintendent, should not be vested in a large popularly elected body.”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Instead, it should “be managed by two, or, at most, three Commissioners [under his authority], who shall not be subject to popular appointment or control.”Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Leading figures in parliamentary circles were also keen to resolve Glasgow's policing problems. Parliament was becoming increasingly exasperated by bitter political fighting between Council and police leaders in the city and its environs over control of police affairs. In 1843, it threw out a plethora of local police bills from Glasgow, Anderston, Bridgeton, and Calton, with Sir George Strickland, chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Police Bills, warning civic leaders that if they could not resolve their differences and establish an extended, uniform system of police, it would become “the duty of government to intervene and provide one.”Footnote ¹⁰⁹ What is particularly interesting is that this implied threat provoked a backlash based on the principles of civic culture, independence, and sovereignty. As a Town Council memorial in 1843, against the implied threat of centralisation, stated: “In the resolutions of the constituted authorities and public boards, it is decidedly in favour of local enactments emanating directly from the people to be affected, as the best judges of their own requirements: in other words, in favour of the principles of self-government and regulation, and popular representation, and opposed to the interference of the Government in local affairs.”Footnote ¹¹⁰

The controversy surrounding Glasgow's policing arrangements was a good example of the way that the center helped shape the future form of policing in a country that, on first appearance, seemed to have escaped the direct central control that characterized the government's approach to other parts of the British Isles. Not only did it result in policing arrangements being extended over the wider municipality, it also ensured that the lord advocate, Duncan McNeill, got his wish that the management of police affairs no longer be vested in directly elected police commissions.Footnote ¹¹¹ On the other hand, civic leaders resisted his call to transfer control of police commissioners to him, preferring instead to vest control in the hands of local Council representatives. The lord advocate's willingness to defer to local opinion on the issue of centralization was significant, and should not be underplayed. It was indicative of the fact that, as with the management of Scottish society as a whole, London was willing to first let burghs try to resolve their problems themselves. This did much to ensure that the Scottish police model retained many of its distinctive features, especially given the desire of towns to preserve their autonomy and identity.Footnote ¹¹²

In the counties, the story of formative police development was different to that of urban Scotland, and had some similarities with that of England. As in England, national legislation was passed in 1839 that permitted, but did not compel, rural elites to establish salaried police forces, although most counties had taken steps in this direction prior to this date. As with their counterparts in England, the challenges posed by vagrancy, industrial militancy, and rural unrest often provided the catalysts for reform. Commissioners of supply were quick to adopt the 1839 statute with twenty-five counties using the Act's powers within 3 years of it being introduced.Footnote ¹¹³

Although some rural policing ideas were derived from London's Metropolitan Police—not the least because of knowledge transfer with a number of superintendents of county constabulary forces having served in the Metropolitan PoliceFootnote ¹¹⁴—most of its principles were adapted to meet local circumstances. As S.W. Underhill, superintendent of the Berwickshire constabulary, pointed out in 1853 in correspondence with the lord advocate, James Moncreiff (1851–1858, 1859–1866, 1868–1869) over police affairs: “The system, thus arranged by the Superintendents of the counties of Scotland, though somewhat similar to the original [London] from whence it is derived, is by no means uniform to it—the difference is not mentioned as inferring inferiority, but, on the contrary, as challenging equality of efficiency, with the advantage of superior economy.”Footnote ¹¹⁵ There were salient differences in terms of control, powers, and finance between Scottish and English practice. In England, the 1839 County Police Act enabled justices of the peace or quarter sessions to establish police forces.Footnote ¹¹⁶ The cost was to be borne by the general county rate, although the 1840 County Police Act made provision for the introduction of a special police rate for county constabularies that merged with borough forces.Footnote ¹¹⁷ In Scottish counties, commissioners of supply (landowners) were responsible for introducing and overseeing the establishment of police forces. These were to be financed out of a compulsory tax on landed property known as “rogue money.” This was a distinctively Scottish tax that was first introduced in 1747 “for defraying the charges of apprehending criminals, and of subsisting them in prisons until prosecution, and of prosecuting such prisoners for their several offences by due course of laws.”Footnote ¹¹⁸ The 1839 Act extended commissioners' powers to levy this assessment.

As in burghs, county superintendents and police officers were actively involved in the workings of the criminal justice system. Rural elites quickly realized the financial benefits they offered to the distinctive Scottish system of public prosecution. Many counties employed police officers specifically to record witness precognitions (statements) as it was cheaper than employing lawyers.Footnote ¹¹⁹ A common grievance among commissioners of supply and senior police officials was that Scottish rural constabularies did not enjoy the same powers to control vagrancy as did English forces, which led a number of county superintendents to call for a greater degree of convergence.Footnote ¹²⁰ The origins of such differences, as in burghs, lay in the separate legal and legislative traditions of each county. The response to such perceived problems and needs was once again largely determined by local circumstances. More precisely, they concerned vagrancy, and the fear among commissioners of supply that the wandering poor would result in the introduction of compulsory poor law assessment at a local parish level.Footnote ¹²¹ As has been shown elsewhere, police initiatives in one county often prompted reform in neighboring ones, specifically to ensure that vagrants did not burden local poor law and charitable funds.Footnote ¹²² It was further indication that local developments in law enforcement were more important in shaping wider trends than were developments in London.

That the Scottish rural constabulary provisions differed from those in other parts of the United Kingdom was also because senior local figures were given a great degree of autonomy over its future shape and form. The 1839 Rural Police Scotland Act gave the home secretary in London fewer powers over the commissioners of supply than he enjoyed over county justices under the English equivalent.Footnote ¹²³ Although the 1839 Act set out how the new structure of law enforcement was to be financed and who was to control it, there was a great deal of scope for local elites and senior officers to determine exactly what form this should take. Shortly after the Act's introduction in 1839, the Right Honourable Lord Panmure put up a £100 prize, won by John List, superintendent of the Edinburgh County Constabulary, for the best practical treatise on police. Both the competition and List's Treatise on the Rural Police (1843) stimulated great interest in police affairs and resulted in various schemes and proposals being advanced.Footnote ¹²⁴ There were varied opinions, but most preferred control to be vested in the hands of either local justices or local landowners.Footnote ¹²⁵ List enjoyed a large degree of autonomy in determining constabulary provisions in Edinburghshire, and was widely praised by justices and landowners for the important role he played in improving the rural police.Footnote ¹²⁶ As the next section shows, the 1857 County and Burgh Police Scotland Act would continue to leave police affairs in local hands, although it was to have tremendous implications for county governance and the power and status of local elites.

The Rise in Central Direction, 1857 to 1885

The second half of the nineteenth century brought greater central government involvement and direction in police management. In 1852–1853, Parliament conducted its first inquiry into Scottish policing, entitled “Select Committee on Police (Scotland).” This was part of a wider investigation into police arrangements in England, Wales, and Scotland. As in the former two countries, the committee was largely concerned with establishing the expediency of police reform and providing a template for it. Senior government and parliamentary figures, including James Moncreiff, the lord advocate, were charged with framing questions. Evidence was drawn from a range of carefully selected senior police and justice figures who were largely sympathetic to the government's preferred position on the future direction of police affairs: that was, to establish county constabularies, amalgamate them with smaller burgh forces, and set up a more uniform system of practice.Footnote ¹²⁷

The evidence that was presented illustrated the distinctiveness of Scottish police arrangements and the extent of hostility that existed toward a Metropolitan-style system of management. Superintendent List was the only senior police or justice figure to call for police control to be vested in paid commissioners under the authority of the Crown.Footnote ¹²⁸ Others opposed this, stressing both the unsuitability of such a model to the unique structure of Scottish burgh and county government and the groundswell of opinion against it.Footnote ¹²⁹ A few witnesses also pointed to the perceived superiority of certain Scottish practices over English ones. Superintendent Smart of the Glasgow Police, in discussing his role as procurator fiscal in the local court, waxed lyrical about the benefits police-led prosecutions offered for the speedy disposal and punishment of petty offences: “It is a great improvement over the English system; there is no expense in the first place in getting up the case.”Footnote ¹³⁰ Smart had previously served in the Metropolitan Police and was well qualified to draw comparisons between the two institutional structures.

Within a few years, Parliament passed the 1857 County and Burgh Police Scotland Act. This instructed landowners to establish constabulary forces, placed the day-to-day management of police affairs in the hands of police committees (consisting of commissioners of supply, the lord lieutenant, and local sheriffs) and sanctioned home secretaries to draw up rules for the government of each force.Footnote ¹³¹ The regulations enshrined in this statute, which were framed for the most part by the home secretary, Sir George Grey, were important in extending the influence of the state in Scotland and bringing Scottish and English policing practices more closely together. The act was modelled closely on its English and Welsh equivalent, the 1856 County and Borough Police Act. According to Colonel John Kinloch, government's first inspector of constabulary for Scotland appointed under the statute, the rules were “apparently more adapted for the police in England than in Scotland where the procurators fiscal conduct the prosecutions in criminal cases.”Footnote ¹³² The Crown Office recognized that “some change [was] … necessary in order to adapt it to Scotland” although it claimed that these need “not be extensive.”Footnote ¹³³ But Colonel Kinloch gave a different impression, noting that “the rules themselves appear to be framed without sufficient, if indeed any, regard to the circumstances that [exist] in Scotland.”Footnote ¹³⁴ Although the Act instructed committees to manage county policing, sheriffs maintained that, as heads of police, they held supreme authority over its management.Footnote ¹³⁵ As in America, sheriffs in Scotland performed important judicial and criminal duties that they were reluctant to give up.Footnote ¹³⁶ In 1858, Sir George Grey clarified his position: he declared that chief constables, subject to the approval of local justices, were to be responsible for framing regulations for the government of police forces.Footnote ¹³⁷ This ruling extended the influence of chief constables and sheriffs and brought rural policing arrangements more in line with English practice. It was also in keeping with the increasing tendency of lord advocates, under whose authority sheriffs acted, to rule in favour of local justices when it came to police affairs.Footnote ¹³⁸ Not surprisingly, it was bitterly opposed by commissioners of supply. They complained that the constabulary regulations were unsuitable to the structure of Scottish county affairs. Part of their concerns centered on issues of performance and professionalism, but underlying these were fears relating to their own power and status.Footnote ¹³⁹ By the second half of the nineteenth century, the majority of sheriffs and sheriff substitutes, unlike their English counterparts, were autonomous from landed interests. They were full-time professionals, appointed by the home secretary and the lord justice clerk and derived from middle-class, legal backgrounds.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ As the General Meeting of Commissioners of Supply in Dumfries, April 30, 1859, pointed out:

This issue not only struck at the heart of county governance and the authority of commissioners of supply, it was also indicative of the important role the legal profession played in the new police structure and the growing influence of the state-appointed officials in Scottish affairs. Henry Glassford, advocate and sheriff of Lanarkshire, highlighted this in giving evidence to the “First Report of Law Commissioners for the Scottish Law Courts” in 1869. When asked whether he had sufficient power over the Lanarkshire constabulary force, he replied: “I have never found that the Superintendent of Police for the county hesitated for a moment to do what I thought he ought to do with the police.”Footnote ¹⁴² He went on to state that the power to direct the superintendent should not be confined entirely to county gentlemen as they “cannot act upon emergencies; there should be one responsible person, and that person is naturally the Sheriff.”Footnote ¹⁴³ Although he recognized that there was variation throughout the country, the implication was that commissioners' role should be restricted to relatively mundane police matters, such as fixing numbers and arranging salaries, and less on criminal affairs.

Further general police legislation established legislative frameworks for towns to follow. The 1862 Burgh Police Scotland Act made it less expensive for communities to acquire police powers by allowing burghs to adopt only certain clauses rather than whole sections.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Along with the 1850 Burgh Police Scotland Act, it also made it easier for councils to assume responsibility for managing police affairs by reducing from three-quarters to a simple majority the number of votes required from qualified electors to transfer control from commissions.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ Central direction was further extended by the 1892 Burgh Police Scotland Act. This statute repealed all local policing enactments (except Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and Greenock who continued to govern under their own police legislation) and compelled all towns to set up police forces according to standards laid out by the Scottish Office.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ The 1900 Town Council Scotland Act brought police management in all burghs more into line with England by establishing a uniform constitution under the management of town councils. The local initiative, which had been a hallmark of nineteenth-century Scottish civic policing was gradually being eroded.

Central government exerted influence in other ways, too. From 1858 onwards, police forces that were deemed to be “efficient” in terms of manpower and discipline by the newly appointed inspector of constabulary received an exchequer grant covering twenty-five percent of police costs. This proved to be an extremely effective way in which the center was able to mold the future direction of the policing structure as it “allowed the embryo of a centrally organized model of good police administration to develop.”Footnote ¹⁴⁷ From this point onward, it was not uncommon for burgh and county authorities who were contemplating reforming their policing arrangements to write first to the home secretary to request his official approval.Footnote ¹⁴⁸

Furthermore, from the 1850s, there was a significant increase in the number of Home Office directives concerning management and professional standards.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ Prior to that time, such pieces of correspondence had been few and far between, but as the century progressed, there was much greater scrutiny of Scottish police affairs by government officials, especially in counties. This was understandable, as rural elites were, often on key issues, ultimately dependent upon the views of the lord advocate and the home secretary, under whose authority the 1857 Police Scotland Act was enshrined. Much of this was a result of the 1857 statute's vagueness and insufficient attention to detail on matters specific to the Scottish criminal justice system. The Act left many issues unresolved, and senior government officials, mostly in Edinburgh, and to a lesser extent in London, were often called upon to settle disagreements between county elites. It was not uncommon for sheriffs and commissioners of supply to petition lord advocates, home secretaries, or inspectors of constabulary to request that they provide direction or act as arbitrators. The sheer volume of correspondence that was produced between the locality and the center after 1857 indicates that government officials were playing an increasingly important part in shaping the evolving police model.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ Although, as the next section explores, the center was generally in favor of letting local elites resolve issues themselves, it was prepared to impose resolutions when required and tended to favor sheriffs rather than police committees on matters relating to criminal investigation and prosecution. As Carson points out, “where traditional lines of authority clashed with the new framework of control,” they were redrawn “under the increased supervision of the centre,” with government rulings on police issues being an important way in which the state's influence over rural society was extended.Footnote ¹⁵¹

The result was that the Scottish and English police institutions, in some respects, followed a similar path and were brought much more into line with one another. As in other parts of Britain, the general trend in Scotland was toward consolidation and rationalization as counties increasingly assumed responsibility for policing small burghs. Police forces in towns with less than 5,000 inhabitants—which were invariably deemed inefficient by the inspector of constabulary—came under strong financial pressure to amalgamate with county constabularies in order to receive the exchequer subsidy. Between the introduction of the 1857 County and Burgh Police Scotland Act and 1900, the number of Scottish police forces was reduced from over ninety to only sixty-four.Footnote ¹⁵² Rules and regulations for establishing a uniform system of government pay, clothing, and accoutrements, which were framed by the home secretary, brought further convergence.Footnote ¹⁵³

There continued to be some differences both with England and within Scotland itself in terms of who appointed and controlled the superintendent—who increasingly was referred to as the chief constable—but the models were converging in many ways. As in England, superintendents/chief constables increasingly acquired more autonomy as the century progressed, especially after control switched from directly elected police commissions to town council watch committees. Shortly after the Glasgow Police Commission's powers transferred to the local Council in 1846, the watching minutes note that the chief superintendent “is to have charge of the whole affairs of this establishment.”Footnote ¹⁵⁴ It was an intellectual shift that increasingly valued knowledge and expertise over public election. In giving evidence to the 1852–1853 Select Committee on Police, John List, superintendent of the Edinburghshire force, highlighted this: “commissioners are not calculated to have any knowledge of matters of police; in fact, it is their interference which causes the establishment to be not so effective as it otherwise would be.”Footnote ¹⁵⁵

In terms of police function, Scotland and England also moved along broadly similar lines. As in England, the police in Scotland were actively involved in supporting capitalist enterprises, which included policing industrial militancy,Footnote ¹⁵⁶ preventing poaching and protecting private fisheries in the counties,Footnote ¹⁵⁷ and suppressing protest against changing crofting practices in the Highlands.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ “Crofting files,” stored in the National Archives of Scotland, provide a fascinating insight into the correspondence between local sheriffs, senior police officials, crown office representatives, landowners, and estate managers.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ They reveal that the police were frequently deployed, in addition to the military, specifically to prevent cattle theft and disturbance over land rights.Footnote ¹⁶⁰ There were even occasions when local justices appear to have acted specifically on the directions of landed interests concerning criminal investigations. In a report, dated December 3, 1887, on a recent police expedition to Clashmore to quell disturbances, Sheriff Cheyne noted: “I am still of opinion that the Duke's remedy is a civil interdict, but at the same time, in consequence of the strong representations that have been made to me on behalf of His Grace, I have today given directions that a formal precognition should be taken by the Fiscal with a view to its being submitted in due course to the Lord Advocate for his consideration.”Footnote ¹⁶¹ Post-1857 Scotland became more of a “policed state” in the sense that the police were increasingly used to enforce government legislation, not least relating to drinking habits and popular pastimes, which increased the role of the centre in people's day-to-day lives.Footnote ¹⁶² This was significant in highlighting that central government's influence on policing was complex, and more important, than simply letting Scots decide for themselves which legislative clauses to adopt and which to leave out. Although police legislation gave men of property greater scope for governing their own affairs, police forces were also used to buttress the state by controlling and suppressing the political and economic views and interests of many Scots, especially those of more “radical” persuasions.Footnote ¹⁶³ Whereas for some Scots policing provided greater opportunities for autonomy and governance, for others it brought greater interference in their day-to-day lives, just as in England.Footnote ¹⁶⁴

The increasing growth and influence of the state and the rise of a bureaucratic police machine were certainly important in accounting for greater institutional convergence. Many in government circles believed that having a consolidated, uniform system would promote efficiency, facilitate the development of policing as a profession, and enable officers to move from one part of the British Isles to the other without too much difficulty.Footnote ¹⁶⁵ But it would be misleading to view convergence as emanating solely from London according to English principles and practices. Similar trends were evident throughout Europe, and were part of wider international influences that were affecting civic government and law enforcement as a whole.Footnote ¹⁶⁶ In contrast to what has often been implied in other studies, convergence was, by no means, simply about Scottish institutional structures being brought into line with English ones.Footnote ¹⁶⁷ As it had done in the first half of the nineteenth century, Scotland, in some cases, provided the lead, as the police's involvement in bringing forward prosecutions illustrates.Footnote ¹⁶⁸ Furthermore, some of the enthusiasm for greater central involvement in Scottish affairs and convergence emanated from Scotland, especially when there was a financial benefit to be gained. In the 1850s, for example, civic leaders in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen successfully petitioned the lord advocate, James Moncreiff, and the home secretary, Sir George Grey, requesting to be put on the same footing as England and other burghs in relation to criminal investigation and prosecution expenditure.Footnote ¹⁶⁹ They wanted the Crown, as in other parts of Scotland and England, to assume the expense of investigating crime.Footnote ¹⁷⁰

Significantly, however, although leading figures sought greater convergence when it was in their interests, they sought to retain distinctive Scottish practices and procedures when it was not. As is explored more fully in the next section, the nature of burgh police legislation, allied to the instrumental role senior law officials, urban elites, and landowners in Scotland played in shaping the police model, ensured that it retained much of its identity and separate tradition.

Autonomy and Identity

The overwhelming majority of general burgh police statutes in the second half of the nineteenth century continued to be enabling rather than compulsory. It was left to communities to decide for themselves on the most important issues of police, which gave the locality a tremendous amount of say in its future direction and added to the “discretionary armour” of civil society.Footnote ¹⁷¹ Indeed, in some ways, the 1862 Burgh Police Act made central direction more difficult.Footnote ¹⁷² It enabled communities of no more than 700 inhabitants to make building and sanitary byelaws of their own, but empowered no central authority to ensure that regulations were framed or enforced.Footnote ¹⁷³ Not surprisingly, the urban police model was most resilient to change. Unlike in other parts of the British Isles, where “police” increasingly acquired a specialist association with law and order from the mid-1830s, in Scottish burghs it continued to be closely linked with the “common good.” Police commissions in medium and small towns, as in many parts of urban America, continued well into the nineteenth century to oversee the management of a wide array of services relating to public health and civic government.Footnote ¹⁷⁴ Civic leaders and legislators valued municipal services and provisions being framed under the broad remit of “police,” as it was an effective and practical way of acquiring extensive new powers.Footnote ¹⁷⁵

As the second half of the century progressed, a growing volume of circulars from the Home Office in London and the lord advocate in Edinburgh attempted to clarify the “police” concept's meaning and restrict police duties to law and order.Footnote ¹⁷⁶ However, the large number sent illustrates how resilient burghs were to central interference and direction.Footnote ¹⁷⁷ What is particularly significant is that the Home Office was willing to listen, and respond, to the opinions of the localities, even if it meant reversing policies. In 1874, the home secretary, Richard Assheton Cross, amended rules that had been issued the previous year prohibiting police officers from being employed as sanitary inspectors or inspectors of nuisances, on the basis that it would interfere with “the proper duties of police.”Footnote ¹⁷⁸ After opposition from the localities, who were keen to employ their officers in this capacity to reduce costs, the Home Office withdrew its threat to withhold the Exchequer police grant to constabulary forces that continued to do this.Footnote ¹⁷⁹ When it came to prescribing the proper function of police, there was often a greater level of animosity between town and county than the center and periphery, which proved to be a major stumbling block to amalgamation over the second half of the nineteenth century.Footnote ¹⁸⁰

Although government desired a more uniform system of practice, set out rules and regulations, and passed a series of legislation to get Scottish forces to conform to certain standards, the major day-to-day decisions regarding police management and the appointment of officers continued to be taken by police committees and senior officials. As forces were locally rather than state controlled, government could not impose its authority on most day-to-day police matters. Its role was much more one of arbitrator of local disputes or framer of general guidelines rather than of day-to-day manager. In general, the center was reluctant to ride roughshod over burgh and county views and opinions on many issues. It is interesting that even though the inspector of constabulary consistently called from the late 1850s for the abolition of small burgh forces, none were forced to amalgamate with county constabularies until 1929 (with the exception of a few forces in towns with less than 7,000 inhabitants under the 1889 Local Government Scotland Act).Footnote ¹⁸¹ The perceived inefficiency of small burgh forces was often a source of great frustration for county landowners and officials and was a concern for many in government circles in Edinburgh and London, but lord advocates and home secretaries were reluctant to force burgh authorities to amalgamate with county constabularies. This was considered on a number of occasions.Footnote ¹⁸² Letters marked “private and confidential” between the lord advocate and the Earl of Selkirk in 1874 and 1875, reveal that the former considered inserting a clause in police legislation that would enable government to abolish police districts with forces deemed to be inefficient, and annex them to conterminous ones.Footnote ¹⁸³ The correspondence ended after the Home Office requested that the lord advocate return the letters.Footnote ¹⁸⁴ It was a politically sensitive issue that threatened to undermine local rights, and one the center did not want the localities to hear about, for fear of the backlash it would provoke.

Although there were occasions when the lord advocate and the Home Office issued formal orders, they were not always adhered to. In 1859, a memorandum from Colonel Kinloch to James Moncreiff, the lord advocate, revealed that the police committee in the county of Haddington was continuing to use regulations issued in 1840.Footnote ¹⁸⁵ The move toward imposing British-wide standards was a slow process, with considerable variation throughout the country. There often remained great scope for local elites to mold the model themselves through dialogue and debate with lord advocates. The lord advocate's “Correspondence and Papers concerning Police Matters, 1848–81” provide good examples of this.Footnote ¹⁸⁶ They reveal extensive and detailed correspondence among magistrates, landowners, and legal and government officials in Edinburgh and London, from which the new structure of law enforcement evolved. These covered the framing of police legislation to day-to-day issues of police costs, control, and regulations. Scottish police bills, for example, were subject to lengthy consideration, were drafted and redrafted after local opinion had been consulted, and, significantly, were in most cases framed under the direction of lord advocates.Footnote ¹⁸⁷ These records reveal the important role local views and wishes played in shaping national policing statutes and the model that developed, albeit these were generally restricted to leading figures in civic government, rural administration, and legal circles. The main problem, and the one that explains why the center was often forced to make decisive judgements on Scottish policing, was that burgh and county elites often could not agree on what the best approach should be.

Although lord advocates and home secretaries sometimes had to intervene and provide direction over contested issues, it was not unusual for Edinburgh or London to let the localities resolve issues themselves. In the 1860s, the burgh and county police authorities in Caithness became embroiled in an ongoing dispute over the distribution of tax between rural and urban districts and the proper duties of police.Footnote ¹⁸⁸ In 1864, after years of turmoil, Henry Richard Bruce, Liberal member of Parliament for Merthyr Tydfil and undersecretary in the Home Office, in a query over whether the police establishment in Wick had been legally constituted, noted: “it rests with the various local police authorities to put an end to it, and the Secretary of State has not the power to coerce them.”Footnote ¹⁸⁹

The issues of whether superintendents/chief constables should perform the role of procurator fiscal, and whether county procurators could direct chief constables, provide good illustrations of the self-administering approach lord advocates and home secretaries often adopted on police matters. The 1857 County and Burgh Police Scotland Act was largely ambiguous on these issues; a legacy, no doubt, of the fact that it was loosely based on the 1856 County and Borough Police in England and Wales. As a consequence, it was left to the discretion of the localities in Scotland to resolve differences, despite repeated calls from commissioners of supply and sheriffs for clarification and central direction. Sheriffs argued that procurators, who were appointed by local justices and responsible to the lord advocate, should be able to instruct police officers over criminal investigation. In a letter to James Moncreiff, the lord advocate, dated March 22, 1862, Archibald Davidson, sheriff of Aberdeenshire, wrote: “[The fiscal] is a government officer of great antiquity, who is in continuous communication with the Lord Advocate or his deputes with regard to criminal matters—reporting to them, and executing their orders. For the discharge of these duties, he has always had, and must necessarily have, an authority over the police, who are the instruments used by him in the performance of his duties, and must therefore obey his orders.”Footnote ¹⁹⁰ In many counties, fiscals did, indeed, direct constables in this role, which was in keeping with the central place they had long occupied in investigating crime.Footnote ¹⁹¹ In others, however, the practice was resisted. Police committees wanted chief constables to enjoy greater autonomy, free from the influence and direction of sheriffs and procurators.Footnote ¹⁹² By the late 1860s, chief constables were acting as procurators fiscal in eight of thirty-two counties.Footnote ¹⁹³ This caused concern in government circles. In 1869, the inspector of constabulary for Scotland, Colonel Kinloch, objected to this practice on the basis that it was time consuming and detrimental to police business.Footnote ¹⁹⁴

The lord advocate's papers reveal that there were many in the Crown Office who believed that the involvement of chief constables in bringing forward prosecutions was injurious to the public interest. There was concern that police officers could be induced to give evidence to support prosecutions brought by senior officers.Footnote ¹⁹⁵ However, George Young, the lord advocate (1869–1874), after noting that this was a practice that could be convenient and advantageous in some cases but not in others, recognized that there was much disagreement. He resolved that he “cannot lay down or express a general opinion.” Instead, he noted “it is a matter which may in this case at least be properly and with safety to the public interest left to the judgement of county and burgh authorities.” The issue, he resolved, should be decided locally and not referred to the home secretary, as there is no evidence that the public interest has been comprised.Footnote ¹⁹⁶

This willingness to engage with, listen to, and in many cases, defer to, local opinion could, to some extent, be viewed as being the result of administrative neglect. The extent of parliamentary time devoted to policing in London, let alone the whole of England, vastly outweighed that given to Scotland.Footnote ¹⁹⁷ The lord advocate had many legal and governmental roles to fill, and was generally reluctant to become too embroiled in the day-to-day affairs of Scottish government.Footnote ¹⁹⁸ The home secretary in London, meanwhile, was preoccupied with English matters, and was content to leave the administration of Scottish affairs to the lord advocate rather than take much interest in it himself. That being said, the extent of parliamentary scrutiny that local and national police bills received should caution one against overstating the case for English indifference to Scottish matters. Although some bills failed, and others passed, all were given the watchful eye of Westminster. When bills failed to get Parliament's approval, it was usually because local elites could not agree on what was the best approach. In many ways, the approach adopted by the center was in keeping with the prevailing ethos of the time and to that taken in other parts of Britain. As in England, there was strong opposition to centralization, not just in the localities themselves, but also in government circles. The Victorian conceptualization of the state was always a balance between the locality and the center.Footnote ¹⁹⁹ There were nuances in terms of how this differed in practice between Scotland and England, which reflected each country's separate administrative, legal, and cultural traditions, but the principles of state development and its relationship with the localities were moving in broadly similar directions.