‘Drops in the Ocean’: The Politics and Practice of Policing the West Riding of Yorkshire in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

The article examines the development of superintending constable system in West Riding and argues that system, despite its limitations, was more acceptable successful than contemporary critics many later historians have claimed. Further, it also played an important but overlooked part transition to a county-wide police force following 1856 County Borough Police Act. Rather being on wrong side history, complex evolving pattern policing. Misleading distinctions between ‘old’ ‘new’ policing obscure realities reform which continuities, downplayed by reformers at Westminster, crucial role.