Though scholars have long sided with the idea of masculinity as a social construct, such thinking has not always been evident.Footnote 1 Indeed, in some cases, masculinity was defined according to a rigid set of measurements. The purpose of the present article is to examine one such instance of a quantified masculinity within the Irish context. Focused on the period 1900 to 1914, the article highlights the case of the Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C.), which had minimum bodily measurement requirements for prospective recruits. As part of the R.I.C.’s entrance requirements, applicants were expected to be tall and to present with broad chests. The underlying logic of these requirements was that a strong and imposing physique was indicative of an efficient officer of upstanding moral character.Footnote 2 At a time of major political and social uncertainty in the early twentieth century, the demands on the R.I.C. varied greatly and the recruitment of policemen capable of deterring illegal activity was especially important.
In seeking to meet the entrance requirements, some R.I.C. applicants took to systems of physical training. The increasing turn towards exercise systems in the early twentieth century was due, in part, to the rise of physical culture in Ireland. Broadly defined, physical culture can be understood as efforts to train the body physically through systems of weight training, callisthenics, military drill or gymnastics.Footnote 3 Part of a worldwide phenomenon which emerged in the late 1890s, physical culture systems could be found across Britain, the United States, and much of the colonial world.Footnote 4 The popularity of physical culture systems and the stringency of the Irish police force's requirements were juxtaposed, quite starkly, for Irishmen within the pages of the Irish Times and the Constabulary Gazette, which both featured physical culture regularly in their columns. Physical culture proved so popular in the Irish Times that the newspaper ran a weekly physical culture column during the opening decade of the twentieth century. For several years, the column's author, J. Maxwell Neilly, writing under the pseudonym ‘Huck Finn’, soothed the fears of anxious Irishmen by informing them how to build their physiques in order to pass the R.I.C.’s entrance requirements. In doing so, Finn and his readership exhibited, quite starkly, prevailing assumptions about what constituted a policeman's physique and what methods were needed to obtain one. Whereas the general interest in physical culture for men tended, according to Michael Budd, to focus on social advancement, aesthetics or sexual attractiveness, the R.I.C.’s engagement with physical culture came to be associated with loftier ideals concerning the force's moral character, bravery and incorruptibility.Footnote 5 Though rarely explicit, articles which discussed the force's character frequently alluded to fairness, sobriety, fidelity and, at times, ‘superior activity’.Footnote 6 A wider societal conception of masculinity was thus appropriated to the R.I.C.
To assess this phenomenon, the article begins by examining historical debates concerning the R.I.C. and recent work on Irish masculinities, as well studies of police and martial masculinities more generally in order to understand how masculinity was understood in relation to the R.I.C. The article next discusses how Irishmen who intended to join the R.I.C used physical culture systems to build their bodies in the hope of successful application. This is done using the Irish Times's physical culture column and ‘ask the expert’ section featuring Huck Finn. Previously unexplored, the sources demonstrate the importance of physical culture for those Irishmen who sought to mould themselves physically into policemen. The article concludes by examining attempts by members of the R.I.C. to align the force with physical culture more generally, thereby illustrating the latter's continued importance for masculinity within the R.I.C. during this period.
I
Formally established in 1822, the Irish Constabulary, later the Royal Irish Constabulary, was Ireland's first formalised national police force.Footnote 7 Prior to the R.I.C.’s establishment, regional police forces had operated in Ireland with varying levels of success.Footnote 8 That such groups often struggled to contain civil and political unrest resulted in the establishment of more formalised forms of policing.Footnote 9 Though initially excluded from Belfast and Derry, the constabulary gained control over these regions by the mid-nineteenth century, meaning that from this period onward only Dublin fell outside its remit. Dublin, or at least an eight-mile radius within the city, was served by the Dublin Metropolitan Police which, unlike the constabulary, was an unarmed force.Footnote 10 From these beginnings, the constabulary became a mainstay in Irish political and social life until its disbandment in 1922 and R.I.C. barracks emerged as prominent features in many Irish towns.Footnote 11 Since Robert Curtis's initial exploration of the R.I.C. in the late nineteenth century, a series of studies have sought to dissect the internal and external politics of the force.Footnote 12
Unlike Curtis's initial study, which proved somewhat hagiographic, later research has had a more enduring scholarly impact. A seminal work in this regard is W. J. Lowe and E. L. Malcolm's 1992 article on the constabulary, which informed several later studies of the R.I.C. Concerned with the constabulary's role within the state, the article traced a shift in the R.I.C.’s relationship with wider society by the end of the nineteenth century.Footnote 13 Historians have also continued to examine the tension between the R.I.C.’s everyday policing work and their role in dealing with Ireland's political upheaval in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Footnote 14 Aside from the conflicts over law in the late nineteenth century, the R.I.C. was faced with the emergence of labour strikes and protests. Moreover, the emergence of both the Ulster Volunteer Force and Irish Volunteers in 1913 placed a heavy burden on the R.I.C. to maintain order. Historians have highlighted the constabulary's role in surveillance, the prevention of domestic strife and the prosecution of acts which targeted the state.Footnote 15 In some histories, the R.I.C. has been presented as an outsider which sought to maintain the status quo, in opposition to other, more politicised, groups.Footnote 16 The intense focus on the constabulary's importance in the Irish context has been challenged by those seeking to position the force within an imperial framework.Footnote 17 Such work has explored the manner in which the constabulary exported its ethos and training system, formally and informally, throughout the British empire.Footnote 18
Historians have also explored the social history of the constabulary. Denis O'Sullivan's The Irish Constabularies, 1822–1922 provides a detailed insight into the R.I.C.’s history on a county-by-county basis.Footnote 19 Elizabeth Malcolm's The Irish policeman, 1822–1922: a life illustrates the manner in which a career in the R.I.C. offered a means of social advancement.Footnote 20 Fergus Campbell drew on the small pool of constabulary senior officers to demonstrate the role of religion and individual connections in the force's promotional structure.Footnote 21 All of these studies have used the R.I.C. as a microcosm of wider social trends in Ireland.Footnote 22 Continuing in this vein, Brian Griffin's study of sporting policemen in nineteenth-century Ireland demonstrated the importance of leisure within the force as a means of diversion, bonding, and training.Footnote 23 Griffin's study was complemented by subsequent work on the constabulary's successor, an Garda Síochána, which displayed its own sporting affinities.Footnote 24 Though recent work on an Garda Síochána has highlighted ideas of masculinity within the force, works on the R.I.C., with perhaps the exception of Griffin, have largely neglected the significance of masculinity.Footnote 25 It is this lacuna that the current article seeks to address.
While historians interested in the constabulary have yet to consider masculinity, studies on Irish masculinity have similarly neglected the R.I.C. Emerging as an offshoot of histories of Irish femininity, early works on masculinity, such as those of Joseph Valente and Patrick F. McDevitt, focused primarily on the relationship between culture and nationalist politics as expressed through the theatre, political arena or sporting field.Footnote 26 The emphasis on politicised forms of masculinity, found primarily within nationalist or unionist groupings in the early twentieth century has tended to dominate such writings.Footnote 27 Historians and other scholars have nevertheless recently placed a much greater emphasis on peer groups,Footnote 28 the physical bodyFootnote 29 and societal discoursesFootnote 30 as contributors to distinct forms of Irish masculinity. Laura Kelly's research on medical students in the early twentieth century, for example, has highlighted the importance of social bonds, institutional influences and distinct professional masculinities operating in Ireland during the period.Footnote 31 Kelly's scholarship complements that of Aidan Beatty, whose wide-ranging study of Irish masculinity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries concerned itself with the role of social discourses in the creation of masculine identities.Footnote 32 While Beatty's work is primarily concerned with nationalist politics, the author nevertheless discussed heightened ideas of masculinity within an Garda Síochána in the late 1920s. Beatty thus explored the training, manuals and discourses used within the police force to create a masculinity distinct to an Garda Síochána.Footnote 33
Masculinity in the R.I.C. has not yet attracted significant attention, but police and military histories more generally have begun to consider the topic. David G. Barrie and Susan Broomhall's edited collection on policing and masculinity represents one of the first efforts to connect the two subjects.Footnote 34 Surveying English and European history, the collection highlights the masculine communities operating within police forces since the eighteenth century.Footnote 35 The contributors explore the constructed nature of idealised police masculinities both mentally and, significantly for this article, physically.Footnote 36 As Matthew McCormick makes clear in his essay, the physical attributes required for policing such as strength and stature have long been emblems for certain kinds of masculinity.Footnote 37 Fundamental to this was the element of training in the form of infantry or military drill, both of which were seen to mould recruits into more masculine figures.Footnote 38 The R.I.C. was no different. Writing in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Fennell commented on the ability of drill instructors within the R.I.C. to ‘knock the edges off’ new recruits and mould them into normative police identities.Footnote 39 The R.I.C. had long recognised the importance of physical attributes amongst its men. Far from a trivial matter, McCormick's study highlights the manner in which physicality is an integral part of a masculine police identity.
Historians of police masculinity have been aided by those interested in martial masculinity. Although studies span across several centuries, the early twentieth century has attracted considerable attention. The British military during this period has been understood by many historians as a breeding ground for a new kind of masculinity predicated on strong bodies forged through discipline and training.Footnote 40 Michael Brown and Paul Davenport have scrutinised the importance of the physical body and its training in conceptions of martial masculinity.Footnote 41 Similarly, several historians have identified both internal and external attributes of normative masculinities.Footnote 42 According to this work, traits such as courage, determination and honesty were seen as integral parts of masculinity but only when combined with overall attributes such as strength, stature and, at times, muscularity.Footnote 43 This is, perhaps, why Roper stressed the importance of both the internal and external traits of masculinity in his examination of soldiers’ autobiographies.Footnote 44 What is clear from such readings and those from other fields is that masculinity is specific to professions, cultures and regions.Footnote 45 Borrowing from Pierre Bourdieu, one could argue that masculinity is field specific, so that the masculine behaviour acceptable within the Royal Irish Constabulary was different from that required in a Gaelic football match.Footnote 46 Within specific fields, scholars have implicitly or explicitly utilised ideas of hegemonic masculinities, whereby one form of masculinity was privileged over other forms.Footnote 47 Police forces welcomed a multitude of masculine subcultures but scholars have cited strong, muscular bodies as the privileged norm.Footnote 48 Although histories of the R.I.C. have yet to examine issues of masculinity within the force in detail, the present article, informed by wider studies on policing and military masculinity, argues that the R.I.C. distinguished itself in its promotion of strong and muscular bodies. Whereas the muscular male physique in wider society was largely associated with ideas of attractiveness and social advancement, it came to be associated with ideas of integrity, character and morality within the R.I.C.
II
Having examined the historiographies of the R.I.C. and masculinity, the following section demonstrates the manner in which Irishmen sought to use physical culture to meet the R.I.C.’s entrance requirement of a thirty-seven-inch chest.Footnote 49 As will become clear, the advice given to men was illustrative of broader ideals concerning masculinity within the R.I.C. Men were not encouraged to build muscle for aesthetic reasons but rather because policemen were expected to be strong and muscular. This ideal of policing masculinity was thus somatic in its foundation and seen as a precursor for upholding the law. Budd has argued that athletic and aesthetic concerns were the prime motivators for many citizens interested in physical culture. While these interests may have informed physical culture within the R.I.C., they took a secondary role to the work itself.Footnote 50 Thus the wider societal underpinnings for male physical culture were adapted to fit within the R.I.C.’s own structure. While many men anonymously subscribed to the prevailing physical culture systems of the era through individual exercises or group classes, this section focuses primarily on the Irish Times’s physical culture column, which ran from 1885 to the end of 1914. Under the pseudonym Huck Finn, J. Maxwell Neilly acted as the Irish Times’s resident physical culture expert, tasked with helping men build their physiques.Footnote 51
Running alongside and subsequently subsuming the Irish Times's gymnastics column, Finn was advertised as a leading physical culture authority. Though tasked primarily with reporting on various physical culture displays around the country, Finn's column and the Irish Times more generally began to target those interested in the R.I.C.’s training. In 1909, the Weekly Irish Times ran a supplement on the R.I.C.’s training. Replete with illustrations, this detailed the force's training and entrance prerequisites. Readers were informed that: ‘So strict is the medical and other examinations that the would-be constable has to pass that for a seemingly very trivial deficiency, such as one-eighth an inch under standard height, or slight deficiency in chest measurement, the applicant would be disqualified.’Footnote 52 The supplement substantiates Kent Fedorowich's assessment that by the end of the nineteenth century the R.I.C. possessed a reputation as a well-organised, well-trained and disciplined body of men, taken by contemporaries to represent the best of Ireland's racial stock.Footnote 53 Returning to the supplement, readers were informed that should a recruit meet the R.I.C.’s measurements, he would ‘first be taught in the proper mode in which to hold his body’, a mode of instruction that would prevent an unwanted stature composed of a ‘slouching gait’ and ‘flat chest’.Footnote 54 Newland has argued that in martial contexts the training of the body is paramount to the creation of force-specific masculinities.Footnote 55 This certainly appears to have been the case within the R.I.C., which, according to the Irish Times, produced men of moral integrity. Physical training was thus linked to a recruit's character. Referring to the physical drill and gymnastics taught to recruits, the newspaper unanimously praised physical exercise's centrality in improving the male physique: ‘The recruit on the conclusion of his training is found to have increased his weight from 12lb. to 14lb. his chest measurement will have increased up 2in., and his stature half an inch. These figures speak for themselves’.Footnote 56 Readers were faced with two distinct messages. First, that the R.I.C. had strict admission criteria and, second, that a potential recruit could use a system of physical culture to effect dramatic bodily change. While the R.I.C. placed a substantial emphasis on mental fortitude, the physique was presented as foundational to moral strength.Footnote 57 The supplement and subsequent articles in the Irish Times reinforced the identity of an R.I.C. man as fit, strong and, most importantly, as morally sound. Unlike the broader interest in physical culture, in which strength was often viewed as a goal in itself, the R.I.C. utilised strength for a definitive purpose.
Within a week of the supplement's publication, ‘Constant Reader’ wrote to the newspaper asking for advice on joining the R.I.C. Informed that his ‘chest measurement was much too narrow’, ‘Reader’ was encouraged to use dumb-bells for twenty-minute bursts three times a day.Footnote 58 This, it was hoped, would remedy his current situation and see him enter the R.I.C. Much to Huck's frustration it appears that ‘Reader’ did not perform his exercises diligently. Less than a month after his first letter, ‘Reader’ re-emerged, dissatisfied with his results. On his return, ‘Reader’ was told curtly to resume his exercises and to continue them for at least six months; beyond this Huck ‘could do nothing for’ him at present.Footnote 59 ‘Reader’ had failed to improve his physique, with the implicit suggestion that he was also incapable of fulfilling the R.I.C.’s requirements for mental discipline and fortitude.Footnote 60 In a different context, Aidan Beatty has found that the failure to meet normative masculinities in Ireland could result in exclusion or ridicule. This appears to have been true also for the R.I.C.Footnote 61 If the ideal R.I.C. man was strong in body and, stemming from this, strong in mind, those who failed to adhere to this ideal were given little sympathy.
In March 1909, Finn responded to ‘Fergus’, whose chest measurement fell just one inch short of R.I.C. requirements. Unlike ‘Reader’, who had seemingly lost Finn's confidence, Fergus was presented as an ideal candidate owing to his discipline and work ethic. He was instructed to perform exercises to increase his chest measurement with a view to obtaining employment in the R.I.C. ‘Fergus’ had recently turned twenty-one years old and was still a relatively young man. His correspondence with Finn suggests that, in line with other countries, the younger generation of men took the greatest interest in physical culture.Footnote 62 Finn's youngest correspondent however appears to have been ‘Gubb’ from Belfast who was in his mid-teens and wished to know what measures could be taken to increase both his height and his chest size.Footnote 63 While men took to physical culture for aesthetic reasons, those examined here did so with the broader aim of proving themselves worthy for police work. At a time when cultural nationalism, as espoused by the G.A.A. or Gaelic League, was heightening attention on the body, young men also proved deeply interested in building their bodies for the R.I.C. Once in possession of this body, and by association the characteristics needed to be an R.I.C. man, a career in the force became a possibility. These men did not question why the R.I.C. valorised muscular physiques as pivotal to police work and police character. Instead they promulgated this association through their repeated correspondence with Finn.
In reading Finn's responses to such men, it is evident that readers’ dissatisfaction was a common motif. When comparing their measurements to the R.I.C. requirements, civilians sought help frequently to add inches to their biceps, chests and even, at times, their height. Quite starkly, the weak male physique signified the abject in these submissions.Footnote 64 The weak physique, as expressed by a lack of muscular hypertrophy or strength, signified the undesirable. Weak physiques were taken as incompatible with police work and character. If, as James McKay, Michael V. Bhatia and Elizabeth Reis suggest, the act of naming is itself inherently political, the language applied to supposed frail physiques revealed a valorisation of the muscular.Footnote 65 Within the R.I.C., strong and muscular physiques were routinely linked to a moral attitude and unshakeable integrity.Footnote 66 In October 1909, Huck noted a letter from a reader in Tyrone who had measurements well ‘below the average’ for the R.I.C. and was simply ‘not satisfied with his physical developments’.Footnote 67 Those writing on the R.I.C. seldom referred to an explicit police masculinity. Instead, the evidence points to an implicit link between physique and overall value to the force.Footnote 68 Rather than an isolated case of dissatisfaction, the readers’ predicament was one Finn believed commonplace amongst ‘hundreds of other readers’.Footnote 69 Throughout his column's run, Finn continually promoted the R.I.C.’s reputation as a fit, strong and respectable group of men. Finn wasted little time on those who failed to meet this ideal. In 1909, he informed a reader using the pseudonym ‘Physical’ that he would not meet R.I.C. standards: ‘For a man 5ft. 10in. a chest measurement of 34ins. is altogether too small … I presume from your description of your chest as “swift chested” that you are what is known as pigeon chested’.Footnote 70 In detailing the requisite exercises needed, Finn offered an important insight into the normative masculine figure promoted by Irish physical culturists. Generally, his advice to correspondents remained consistent. Irishmen were given three primary exercises; first, to develop a large and powerful chest, second, to develop the bicep and triceps muscles of the arms and, third, to develop the upper thighs.Footnote 71 Where such advice differed in relation to the R.I.C. was that it was linked to the force's reputation for upstanding character. Normative masculine ideals for policemen in Ireland did not bifurcate between the physical and mental.
Articles on R.I.C. athletes, which appeared frequently in the Irish Times, included discussion of the men's physical measurements.Footnote 72 This emphasis on physical dimensions was combined with discussions of masculine bodies, codes and behaviours. Muscularity was thus connected to the R.I.C. and taken as indicative of the men's moral strength. Whereas nationalist and unionist groups which emerged in the early 1900s took to physical culture exercises to produce muscular bodies with reference to an overt political cause, the R.I.C. did so to uphold the status quo.Footnote 73 Thus the heavily politicised ‘freedom fighting’ masculinity found by Sikata Banerjee amongst these groupings was absent from the R.I.C.Footnote 74 Finn's reporting on the R.I.C. was predicated on the idea that men needed to develop their strength and develop their bodies. In this logic, a strong body was assumed to reflect a strong man and a strong policeman.
III
Despite occasional complaints that R.I.C. men forgot their physical training once they left the depot, it is clear that for some, exercise was an important part of police life.Footnote 75 Indeed, the early 1900s saw a proliferation of sports and gymnastics within the R.I.C. While cycling and boxing have garnered historians’ attention thus far, efforts were similarly made to position the R.I.C. as a leading authority on physical culture.Footnote 76 This was especially the case in the early 1910s when the force's ability to enforce the peace appeared fragile following the emergence of both the U.V.F. and I.V.F. in 1913, and, of course, the Dublin lock out of the same year.Footnote 77
In the first instance, the training men received upon induction was promoted as of the highest standard. The Irish Times’s Finn regularly praised the results produced by the institution's instructors and, at times, he wrote earnestly of twenty- and forty-pound weight gains among recruits following courses of training.Footnote 78 That the institution's training was considered to be at an elite level, explains the publication of Sergeant G. S. Greene's 1908 physical culture work, The athletes' guide.Footnote 79 Alongside his fellow instructor, P. A. Marrinan, Greene aimed to produce an all-encompassing physical culture work for policemen and the general public. The result, one of the few Irish physical culture monographs, was highly praised in Irish newspapers on publication and appeared at a time when many within the R.I.C. clamoured for reform in training and recruiting.Footnote 80 Greene's work could be viewed as an attempt to associate the constabulary with the relatively new phenomena of physical culture at a time when the force's methods were increasingly depicted as antiquated by its own trainers.Footnote 81
The work itself deviated little from Finn's advice. The book opened with a discussion of deep breathing and gymnastic exercise to provide a basic level of fitness.Footnote 82 As men progressed, exercises involving dumbbells, ropes and parallel bars were introduced to increase the difficulty and encourage additional muscle growth. Greene considered these exercises to be relatively simple; they came directly from the system taught to R.I.C. recruits. To those who doubted their efficacy Greene's retort was unequivocal: ‘Speaking from many years’ experience as an instructor, I may add, that the continued practice of these movements has given to the Irish police as well set up and athletic a body of men as it is possible to find’.Footnote 83 Greene proceeded to highlight the possibility of strengthening behaviour and character through physical culture.Footnote 84 Both inside and outside the R.I.C., the message was clear: the characters and physiques of policemen were developed through strength training. Additionally, Greene positioned himself, and by extension the R.I.C.’s training system, as holistic and effective. Aside from discussing physical culture, The athletes' guide dealt with resuscitation and swimming, two issues of recent concern within the force.Footnote 85 The book concluded with a discussion of boxing by champion R.I.C. boxer P. A. Marrinan, thereby capitalising on the force's sporting successes.Footnote 86 Laura Kelly has shown that within medical student cultures exercise was used to inculcate men into specific ideas of masculine value. In a similar manner, the R.I.C. emphasised that a strong physique was of utmost importance.Footnote 87 The idealised body was demonstrated on The athletes' guide’s front inside cover, depicting a semi-naked Irishman, assumed to represent a typical recruit to the R.I.C. (see figure 1).
G. S. Greene and P. A. Marrinan, The athletes' guide to health and physical fitness: modern physical culture, boxing, deep breathing, swimming and resuscitation (Dublin, 1908), preface.
There was, of course, no one definitive ideal of masculinity within the R.I.C. but rather a series of masculine behaviours and identities competing for respectability.Footnote 88 As was made clear in public, the ideal promoted by Greene, Finn and others, was strong. The constabulary's entrance requirements fuelled this ideal which meant that applicants needed a strong and muscular physique before all else. Police masculinity, in its most dominant form in the R.I.C., was predicated on this idealised physique.
Greene and Marrinan were not the only men interested in amplifying the constabulary's connection with physical culture. Physical culture was also a recurring feature in the R.I.C.’s publication, the Constabulary Gazette.Footnote 89 Running concurrently with Finn's columns, Cyclops's articles for the Gazette signified another attempt to position the R.I.C. in a wider physical culture discourse. Unlike Greene and Marrinan, Cyclops turned towards the British proliferation of physical culture systems for inspiration. Although supposedly sceptical of physical culture's utility, Cyclops spent several years promoting physical culture magazines, works and systems to readers.Footnote 90 In 1903, readers were alerted to the English physical culture magazine, Health and Strength, which featured an article on physical culture in the London Metropolitan Police; Cyclops believed this would be of great interest to readers.Footnote 91 The following year Cyclops commented approvingly on another feature in Health and Strength, this time on muscle development.Footnote 92
Although the Constabulary Gazette did not make it explicit, it appears to have entered into a relationship, either formally or informally, with Health and Strength in this period. In 1907, Health and Strength featured a brief article on the constabulary under the heading ‘Strong men at work’.Footnote 93 The author, John R. Murphy, declared that ‘These giants are a pattern of physical strength and fitness, as well as of law and order to the whole world. They are feared by the transgressor, but they are loved by the people’.Footnote 94 Murphy's praise made clear the importance of strength for policemen. Tellingly, the men were ‘giants’ physically and morally as evidenced by Murphy's claim that ‘they are loved by the people’. In March 1908, Cyclops revealed that Health and Strength had sent him a copy of their annual end of year magazine, which he judged a ‘marvellous sixpence worth’.Footnote 95 Thus began a series of physical culture promotions on the part of Cyclops. Within weeks of his previous endorsement, Cyclops reviewed Jappy Wolff's physical culture work before later delving into a detailed discussion of Eustace Miles's system of physical culture.Footnote 96 By the year's end, Cyclops had graduated from reviewing books to promoting training systems. In October, readers were informed that ‘in these departments [the development of muscular strength] it is now pretty generally admitted that Professor Inch's system of training is the best of the many bests in existence’.Footnote 97 Professor Inch was Thomas Inch, a turn of the century English physical culturist whose fame stemmed from his strength.Footnote 98 Cyclops's promotion of Inch's system, as well as several other works, suggests an attempt to position physical culture at the heart of the constabulary's leisure activities. Though cycling was undoubtedly the most popular outlet for R.I.C. men, Cyclops nevertheless promoted physical culture as a similarly worthwhile pursuit.Footnote 99
Finally, the Gazette promoted physical culture systems more generally. In June 1908, readers were faced with a full-paged advert from Eugen Sandow targeting officers within the R.I.C. Sandow's advertisement echoed the messages from those who came before him. According to Sandow, the most desirable men, and police officers, were strong and healthy individuals.Footnote 100 Police morality, integrity and character were once more linked to a strong physique. Sandow's advertisements were, as D. G. Morais has commented, predicated on a middle-class idea of respectability.Footnote 101 Others advertising in the Gazette used far more explicit images and techniques. In 1911, Thomas Inch included an illustration of a half-naked man as part of his advertising campaign in the Gazette. Readers were informed that Inch would ‘make the strongest of them stronger and the weakest of them strong’.Footnote 102 Though direct advertising from physical culturists, as opposed to the subtler forms exhibited by Cyclops, was rare within the Gazette, it did continue. As late as 1920, during the War of Independence, Monte Saldo attempted to entice Gazette readers to his ‘Maxalding’ system.Footnote 103 Once more this system was said to produce men of strong mind and body. If, as Lander suggested, policing is often associated with strong bodies and strong characters, the R.I.C. was a prime example.Footnote 104
IV
Though Irishmen and women had exhibited an interest in strength and muscle training from the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was not until the early twentieth century that this interest truly entered the popular sphere. Men and women created, joined and supported physical culture clubs, competitions and displays around the country. They bought, sold and traded in dumb-bells, Indian clubs and ‘keep fit’ books produced in Ireland and abroad.Footnote 105 This is the context in which heightened body awareness became a feature of the Royal Irish Constabulary. The focus on the R.I.C.’s height and chest measurements facilitated the establishment of a new particularised form of physical culture within the force which linked muscular physiques to broader ideals of morality and character among policemen. Whereas general interest in male physical culture was often related to attractiveness and mobility, the messages applied to the R.I.C. differed greatly. Within the R.I.C., physical culture was not a leisure activity but rather a foundational training in the development of a police identity and masculinity. As illustrated by the Irish Times, men's individual shortcomings regarding R.I.C. requirements saw them turn to physical culturists such as Huck Finn. Men were defined by their physiques, ranked by their measurements and, at times it seemed, valued solely by these measurements. In this way, a distinct masculine body type was elevated. When men entered the R.I.C., their interaction with physical culture was heightened through the training required of them and through the discourses found within the Constabulary Gazette. Mandatory training ensured that no matter how disinterested they may have been, prospective policemen were forced to train their bodies using physical culture. Furthermore, the training and the focus on bodily measurements ensured that recruits were forced to ruminate on their physiques. Both inside and outside the R.I.C. a specialised form of male body, epitomised by strength, was taken as indicative of an idealised masculine identity. Masculinity within the R.I.C. was thus predicated on the idea that strong bodies were reflective of a strong character. Physical culture became a means of achieving this. Still in its infancy, historians interested in Irish masculinity have only recently begun to explore the possibilities offered by the history of the physical body.Footnote 106 The R.I.C.’s concern with the male body and what it represented highlights the importance of the body in conceptions of masculinity.
