A Sink of Atrocity: Crime in 19th-Century Dundee by Archibald Malcolm

Author:Archibald, Malcolm [Archibald, Malcolm]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black & White Publishing Ltd.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Fifty-eight Men to Police Dundee

Although this riot was quite extreme, there was no doubt that a uniformed police force was not universally welcomed in Dundee, or indeed throughout the nation. Many believed that the police had been formed to protect the respectable from the unfortunate, or even to keep the poor under control. Having the police dressed in blue uniforms was a deliberate attempt to avoid any resemblance to the military but they were still a disciplined, uniformed body of men whose duty was to enforce laws that often seemed to victimise the underclass. With their long, tailed greatcoats, top hats and hand-held lanterns, the police were quite distinctive and were soon to be a familiar sight in the streets of Dundee.

For all the hostility of many of the population, Dundee’s early police establishment was not large. In November 1824 there was one superintendant, one lieutenant, six sergeants, six men for the day patrol, six men for the night patrol, thirty-six watchmen, one turnkey to look after those arrested and one office keeper. That was a total of fifty-eight men to look after an expanding industrial city with a population exceeding 34,000. There were also the scavengers who cleared the dung piles and the lamplighters who fought the encroaching dark and who were on the official police establishment, but not involved in upholding the law. At that time the police office was in St Clements Lane and, without a dedicated jail, prisoners were held in the top floors of the Town House.

In those early months attacks on the police seemed to be a hobby amongst certain sections of the community. For example, on Tuesday 16th November 1824 a carter named David Morrison was fined five shillings for insulting the new police. The following week two drunken gentlemen strutted through Dundee bullying everybody in the belief that their genteel birth would protect them from justice. The Dundee police thought differently, despite being threatened with dire vengeance when they arrested the more violent of the two. The Police Court agreed with the officers and fined the drunks two guineas. That same week a man set his mastiff on a policeman walking his beat in the Seagate. In January a policeman was escorting a prisoner to the police office when a youth attacked him hoping to rescue his friend. He ended the night in a cell. Later that week the police had to tie up a man named James Wilson who had attacked them, and a carter was fined five shillings for swearing at Sergeant Thomas Hardy. The following week another gentleman was taken to court and fined for what the Advertiser called ‘abusing the watchmen’ while on Thursday 20th January in Baltic Street a man threw a stone at a watchman named David Leslie, who had to be carried to a surgeon. Also on the 20th a seaman in Seagate attacked the watchman on duty there, breaking some of their lanterns. The following week the police court seemed filled with seamen attacking the police.

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