The Early Days of Policing in Kent Pt 1.

In Britain it has always been the principle that law enforcement should be exercised by the citizens themselves. Even back in the Dark Ages, an aggrieved party was expected to take direct action against the wrongdoer to recover his property or exact vengeance, possibly with the support of members of his family or tribe.

In the 10th century, King Athelstan decreed that, if a thief fled he was to be: "… pursued to his death by all men …, and whoever shall meet him shall kill him" No question here of a fair trial!

At this time, families were grouped in tens known as tithings one member of each family taking it in turn to act as the tithingman or borsholder and bring offenders before the lord of the manor. Where a crime was committed the citizens had to raise the alarm and pursue the criminal - the system known as "hue and cry" - or face severe punishment. By the 13th century the system had largely evolved into one in which each hundred (ten tithings) appointed a High Constable with Petty (later Parish) Constables responsible to him for the good behaviour of their parishioners.

In parts of Kent, the constable retained the title of borsholder and, all this time, the Parish Constable remained a temporary and usually part-time job. Every householder was liable for duty for a year - even criminals and other unsuitable persons. They were frequently appointed "without their knowledge or consent and decidedly against their will". However, it was possible to delegate and the more affluent appointees merely employed someone else to perform their period of service. They did not always choose wisely and in 1598 some two dozen Cranbrook men were convicted at the assizes for having elected one William Sheafe as the constable, "although they knew him to be an infirm man incapable of discharging the office"

Much has been said and written about the illiteracy and general inefficiency of these constables but it must be remembered that this was in a period in which literacy was something only the fortunate few could aspire to. Nevertheless, a Kent Justice of the Peace, called William Lambarde, was so disturbed by the inefficiency of the parish constables in Kent in the 16th century that he wrote and published a handbook for them, entitled "The Duties of Constables, Borsholders, Tythingmen, and such other low and lay ministers of the peace."

As the townships grew in size, so they needed someone to keep an eye on things at night and so the authorities tended to appoint watchmen whose task was to patrol the street, calling out the hour, the state of the weather and the fact that all was well. With most buildings being of timber construction, fire was a serious hazard - Gravesend was destroyed virtually completely on more than one occasion - and the watchman was also a firewatcher.

This system continued with only minor changes over the years but the turn of the eighteenth/nineteenth centuries was a significant period in English history, which affected Kent like most parts of the British Isles. Although the Revolutions in France and America encouraged unrest and discontent among the poorer classes in England - a situation aggravated by the draconian Poor Law - this was not enough to rouse the phlegmatic Englishman to start a full-scale revolution here. The intermittent war with France had led to galloping inflation so that, even with twice the wages, the working man found himself worse off in 1815 than he had been in 1793. The economic depression was sharply felt in rural Kent.

By this time it was clear that the parish constable and watchman systems could not cope with the burgeoning population and increasing crime and mob violence. There were a number of protagonists for a 'police' force, whose task of preventing and detecting crime would be divorced from that of the administration of justice, but proposals to introduce such a police system were routinely thwarted by powerful vested interests.

And what of the population? What sort of people were the Kentish Men and Men of Kent? The first official census was taken in 1801 and showed the population of the county to be just over 300,000. Most were employed on the land, where they were poorly regarded by their 'betters'. At the end of the eighteenth century, one farmer described them as:

'… being of a race the most low bred and illiterate … [that] do often turn out the most unprincipled and profligate; and though perhaps they may not have attempted the commission of the most atrocious offences, yet in the low arts of deception, the country ploughman is inferior to few'.

So perhaps a better policing system was the answer.