1. For general reviews of recent trends in historical scholarship on nineteenth-century policing see, Lane, Roger, “Urban Police and Crime in Nineteenth-Century America,” in Morris, N. and Tonry, M. (eds.), Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 1–43Google Scholar; Monkkonen, Eric, “From Cop History to Social History: The Significance of the Police in American History,” Journal of Social History (Summer 1982), 575CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weaver, John, “Staying on the Straight and Narrow: Recent Books on Violence, Crime and the Question of Order in Nineteenth-Century Urban America,” Labour/Le Travailleur 8/9 (Autumn/Spring 1981/1982), 296CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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3. Silver, Allan, “The Demand for Order in Civil Society: A Review of Some Themes in the History of Urban Crime, Police and Riot,” in Bordua, D. (ed.), The Police: Six Sociological Essays (New York: John Wiley and Sons Inc., 1967), 12–13Google Scholar; Harring, , Policing a Class Society, 248Google Scholar; Carson, , “Policing the Periphery,” 14Google Scholar.

4. See, in particular, Bailey, Victor (ed.), Policing and Punishment in Nineteenth Century Britain (London: Croom Helm Ltd., 1981)Google Scholar; Emsley, Clive, Policing and its Context 1750-1870 (London: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Monkkonen, Police in Urban America, 1860-1920, Chapters 1 and 2; Carson, “Policing the Periphery.”

5. Marquis, Greg, “‘A Machine of Oppression Under the Guise of Law’: The Saint John Police Establishment, 1860-1890,” Acadiensis 16 (1986), 58Google Scholar; Craven, Paul, “Law and Ideology: The Toronto Police Court, 1850-1880,” in Flaherty, D. (ed.), Essays in the History of Canadian Law (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981–1983), Volume II, 248Google Scholar; Katz, Doucet and Stern, The Social Organization of Early Industrial Capitalism, Chapter 6; Fingard, Judith, “Jailbirds in Mid-Victorian Halifax,” in Waite, P., Oxner, S. and Barnes, T. (eds.), Law in a Colonial Society: The Nova Scotia Experience (Toronto: The Carswell Company Ltd., 1984), 81Google Scholar.

6. Marquis, , “‘A Machine of Oppression Under the Guise of Law,’” 77Google Scholar.

7. See, for example, Balbus, Isaac, The Dialectics of Legal Repression: Black Rebels Before the American Criminal Courts (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1973)Google Scholar; Rothman, David, Conscience and Convenience: The Asylum and Its Alternatives in Progressive America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980)Google Scholar. In the Canadian context see, Chan, Janet and Ericson, Richard, Decarceration and the Economy of Penal Reform, Research Report of the Centre of Criminology (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1981)Google Scholar; Hagan, John and Leon, Jeffrey, “Rediscovering Delinquency: Social History, Political Ideology and the Sociology of Law,” American Sociological Review 42 (1977), 587CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Homel, Howard, “Denison's Law: Criminal Justice and the Police Court in Toronto, 1877-1921,” Ontario History 73 (1981), 171Google Scholar.

8. Monkkonen, , “From Cop History to Social History,” 576Google Scholar.

9. Parks, Evelyn, “From Constabulary to Police Society: Implications for Social Control,” in Reasons, C.E. (ed.), The Criminologist: Crime and the Criminal (Santa Monica: Goodyear Publishing Company Inc., 1974), 271Google Scholar; Silver, “The Demand for Order in Civil Society”; Storch, “The Policeman as Domestic Missionary”; Harring, Sidney and McMullin, Lorraine, “The Buffalo Police 1872-1900: Labor Unrest, Political Power and the Creation of the Police Institution,” Crime and Social Justice 4 (1975), 5Google Scholar; Monkkonen, Police in Urban America; Schneider, John, Detroit and the Problem of Order, 1830-1880: A Geography of Crime, Riot and Policing (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

10. See Acheson, T.W., Saint John: The Making of a Colonial Urban Community (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 213–229Google Scholar; Cross, Michael, “The Laws are Like Cobwebs': Popular Resistance to Authority in Mid-Nineteenth Century British North America,” in Waite, P., Oxner, S. and Barnes, T. (eds.), The Law in a Colonial Society, 103Google Scholar; Rogers, “Serving Toronto the Good.”

11. Cross, “‘The Laws are Like Cobwebs,’” 105.

12. Kealey, Gregory, “Orangemen and the Corporation,” in Russell, V. (ed.), Forging a Consensus, 42–45Google Scholar.

13. Masters, D.C., The Rise of Toronto 1850-1890 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1947), 21Google Scholar.

14. Careless, James, “The Rise of Cities in Canada Before 1914,” The Canadian Historical Association, Booklet No. 32 (Ottawa: Love Printing Service Ltd., 1978)Google Scholar.

15. Goheen, Peter, Victorian Toronto, 1850-1900: Patterns and Process of Growth (Chicago: University of Chicago, Department of Geography, 1977)Google Scholar, Research Paper No. 127, 75–77.

16. Dyster, Barrie, “Toronto 1840-1860: Making it in a British Protestant Town,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto (1970)Google Scholar.

17. Cited in Guillet, Edwin, Toronto Illustrated From Trading Post to Great City (Toronto: Ontario Publishing Company, 1939), 38Google Scholar.

18. Cross, “‘The Laws are Like Cobwebs,’” 112.

19. See generally, Houston, C. and Smyth, W.J., The Orange Order in Nineteenth Century Ontario: A Study in Institutional Cultural Transfer (Toronto: University of Toronto, Department of Geography, 1977)Google Scholar, Discussion Paper No. 22.

20. Dyster, “Making it in a British Protestant Town.”

21. Taylor, Conyngham. The Queen's Jubilee and Toronto ‘Called Back’ From 1887 to 1847 (Toronto: William Briggs, 1887), 74Google Scholar.

22. Jarvis, Eric, “Mid-Victorian Toronto: Panic, Policy and Public Response 1857-1873,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Western Ontario (1979), 73Google Scholar.

23. Romney, Paul, “A Struggle for Authority: Toronto Society and Politics in 1834,” in Russell, V. (ed.), Forging a Consensus, 20Google Scholar.

24. Kealey, , “Orangemen and the Corporation,” 60Google Scholar.

25. Cross, “‘The Laws are Like Cobwebs,’” 115.

26. Cited in Kealey, , “Orangemen and the Corporation,” 50Google Scholar.

27. Cited in Rogers, , “Serving Toronto the Good,” 118Google Scholar.

28. Ibid., 120.

29. Ibid.

30. Kealey, , “Orangemen and the Corporation,” 69Google Scholar.

31. Rogers, , “Serving Toronto the Good,” 121Google Scholar.

32. Glazebrook, G.P., The Story of Toronto (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), 88Google Scholar.

33. Masters, , The Rise of Toronto, 80Google Scholar.

34. Craven, “Law and Ideology.”

35. The concern with this latter class is graphically expressed in the Toronto newspaper, the British Colonist in 1857 (cited in Taylor, , The Queen's Jubilee, 145Google Scholar). “Pass where you will, you are beset with some sturdy applicants for alms. They dodge you round corners, follow you into shops, they are to be found at the church steps, and at the door of the theatre. They crowd in the lobby of the post office, assail you on every street, knock at your private residence, walk into your place of business, and beard you with a pertinacity that takes no denial. In this our good city of Toronto, begging has assumed the dignity of a craft. Whole families sally forth and have their appointed round.”

36. See Marquis, Greg, “The Contours of Canadian Urban Justice, 1830-1875,” Urban History Review 3 (1987), 269CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37. Stenning, Philip, “The Role of Police Boards and Commissions as Institutions of Municipal Police Governance,” in Shearing, C. (ed.), Organizational Police Deviance (Toronto: Butterworth and Company, 1981), 161Google Scholar.

38. Ibid., 170.

39. Miller, Wilbur, Cops and Bobbies: Police Authority in New York and London 1830-1870 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 16Google Scholar.

40. See, for example, Haller, Mark, “Historical Roots of Police Behavior: Chicago 1890-1925,” Law and Society Review 10 (1976), 303CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robinson, Cyril, “The Mayor and the Police--The Political Role of the Police in Society,” in Moses, G. (ed.), Police Forces in History (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1975), 277Google Scholar; Walker, Samuel, “The Urban Police in American History: A Review of the Literature,” Journal of Police Science and Administration 4 (1976), 242Google Scholar.

41. Miller, , Cops and Bobbies, 12–16Google Scholar.

42. Stenning, , “The Role of Police Boards and Commissions,” 169Google Scholar.

43. McDougall, A.K., “Law and Politics: The Case of Police Independence in Ontario,” Paper presented to the 43rdAnnual Meetings of the Canadian Political Science Association (1971)Google Scholar.

44. City Council Minutes, Toronto (Toronto City Archives), [Hereinafter referred to as City Council Minutes] 1859, Appendix 7, 83.

45. Ibid., 79-93.

46. Ibid., 82.

47. City Council Minutes, 1859, Appendix 14, 92. These figures are particularly interesting since they contradict the Board of Police Commissioners' preliminary report to Council that only eight members of the existing force had been dismissed. The figure of thirty-four used here was determined on the basis of the nominal role of the Toronto Police Force of 1859 which listed only twenty-six constables with previous experience in the Toronto police force.

48. Denison, George, Recollections of a Police Magistrate (Toronto: Musson Book Company Ltd., 1920), 35–36Google Scholar.

49. City Council Minutes, 1859, 781-782.

50. City Council Minutes, 1859, Appendix 14, 84.

51. Cited in Rogers, , “Serving Toronto the Good,” 124Google Scholar.

52. Minutes of the Meetings of the Board of Police Commissioners (Toronto Police Department Museum), [Hereinafter referred to as Board Minutes], June 2, 1877; November 26, 1879; July 11, 1882; December 12, 1883.

53. Jarvis, , “Mid-Victorian Toronto,” 87Google Scholar.

54. Board Minutes, January 21, 1860.

55. Ibid.

56. Jarvis, , “Mid-Victorian Toronto,” 88Google Scholar.

57. Rogers, , “Serving Toronto the Good,” 130, 136Google Scholar.

58. For example, in 1893, when the Board was informed that several members of the force took part in an Orange procession, the Commissioners took no action other than to direct the Chief Constable to remind the constables of the rules and regulations governing the force and to warn them that further infractions would result in dismissal. See Board Minutes, August 1, 1893.

59. Order Book, Toronto Police Department (Toronto Police Department Museum), [Hereinafter referred to as Order Book], April 21, 1859; March 14, 1859; July 24, 1859; January 25, 1860; December 14, 1860. Until it proved to be totally impractical, constables were even forbidden from talking to civilians while on patrol duty.

60. Annual Report, Toronto Police Department (City of Toronto Archives), [Hereinafter referred to as Annual Report], 1866, 241.

61. Denison, , Recollections of a Police Magistrate, 35Google Scholar.

62. Order Book, June 2, 1859.

63. City Council Minutes, 1869, Appendix 4, 7.

64. Carson, , “Policing the Periphery,” 12Google Scholar; Miller, Cops and Bobbies, 13.

65. Order Book, February 10, 1859.

66. See, for example, the scathing diatribe against the police by the nineteenth-century journalist, Clark, C.S., Of Toronto the Good (Toronto: Coles 1898 [reprint 1970]), 25–26Google Scholar, in which he argued that “… if a policeman gets into trouble and is likely to get overpowered, there is not one citizen in a dozen who would assist him voluntarily. I have seen men thrown into the patrol waggon by a policeman and if the prisoner lifted his head or perhaps did nothing at all he would find a pair of knees on his chest and he would be thoroughly belaboured until he was knocked into senselessness or reason.”

67. As early as 1863, charges including drunkenness while on duty and insubordination began to accumulate against Prince, resulting in the Board temporarily suspending him in 1865. Nevertheless, Prince managed to remain in office for another decade. Jarvis, , “Mid-Victorian Toronto,” 89–95Google Scholar, suggests that Prince's ability to weather the often strong opposition to his tenure was due to the support he received from prominent politicians at the provincial level, as well as most of the city newpapers.

68. Board Minutes, May 13, 1872.

69. Ibid. Reversing their position, the constables pleaded that “they have been guilty of a gross violation of the Rules and Regulations of the Force in their recent actions, that they regret the steps they have taken, that they have no complaints to make against the Chief Constable and other officers, and that if the Board would grant the prayer of their application by reinstating them in their former positions on the Police Force they would in future perform their duties cheerfully and to the best of their ability.”

70. Pearson, William, Recollections and Records of Old Toronto (Toronto: William Briggs, 1914), 163Google Scholar.

71. Rogers, , “Serving Toronto the Good,” 129Google Scholar.

72. Chief Constable Prince resigned in 1874 and was replaced by Major Frank C. Draper who served until 1886 and Colonel Henry J. Grasett who remained in office until the end of the century.

73. The most common charge levied against constables was drunkenness and, in this regard, the Board was particularly adamant in its official position. In one of his earliest orders to the force (Order Book, June 6, 1859), the Chief Constable advised the men that “… drunkenness is so nearly an inexcusable offence of the rules and discipline of the Force and so derogatory to the character not only of the party himself but to the character of the whole Force which must be presumed to be superior to the failing it is so constantly called upon to suppress that scarcely any punishment short of dismissal can be considered an adequate sentence.” In practice, however, it was not uncommon for the Board or the Chief Constable to levy fines on men charged with this offence.

74. These figures are derived from the Annual Reports from 1876 to 1900.

75. Denison, , Recollections of a Police Magistrate, 35Google Scholar.

76. Ericson, Richard, “Rules for Police Deviance,” in Shearing, C. (ed.), Organizational Police Deviance, 97–101Google Scholar.

77. Monkkonen, , “From Cop History to Social History,” 579Google Scholar.

78. Harring, , Policing a Class Society, 34–36Google Scholar.

79. Jarvis, , “Mid-Victorian Toronto,” 76Google Scholar.

80. Stenning, , “The Role of Police Boards and Commissions,” 168Google Scholar.

81. City Council Minutes, 1860, Appendix 70.

82. Jarvis, , “Mid-Victorian Toronto,” 77–79Google Scholar.

83. City Council Minutes, 1861, Appendix 122, 223.

84. City Council Minutes, 1865, Appendix 41.

85. Ibid., City Council Minutes, Appendix 133.

86. Jarvis, , “Mid-Victorian Toronto,” 84–86Google Scholar.

87. Figures on police force size were obtained from the Annual Reports.

88. Nevertheless, the overall absolute increases in police force size over the course of the nineteenth century must be balanced against the trend toward shorter working days, more holidays and the increasing deployment of men to non-patrol duties. In view of these changes in working conditions, it is conceivable that the effective strength of many police forces may actually have declined from the mid to late nineteenth century.

89. See Marquis, , “‘A Machine of Oppression Under the Guise of Law,’” 65Google Scholar; Gurr, Ted, Grabosky, Peter and Hula, Richard, The Politics of Crime and Conflict: A Comparative History of Four Cities (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1977), 712Google Scholar; Hairing, , Policing a Class Society, 76Google Scholar.

90. Annual Report, 1876.

91. Guillet, , Toronto Illustrated, 6Google Scholar.

92. Board Minutes, September 30, 1875; October 2,1875.

93. Annual Report, 1875, 88; Toronto Police Force, A Brief Account of the Force Since its Reorganization in 1858 up to the Present Date (Toronto: E.F. Clarke, 1886), 10Google Scholar.

94. Ibid. Initially the gift was declined by the men but, after some consideration, the Board accepted the money in order to establish a Police Benevolent Fund. Prior to this time, no form of compensation existed for constables unable to fulfill their duties due to injury or sickness. Following a further grant from the Board and financial assistance from the city, a comprehensive benefit fund was formally established in 1880. See Board Minutes, November 11, 1875; Annual Report, 1880.

95. Toronto Police Force, A Brief Account of the Force.

96. Board Minutes, March 12,1886.

97. Morton, Desmond, Mayor Howland: The Citizen's Candidate (Toronto: A.M. Hakkert Ltd., 1973), 49Google Scholar. In the aftermath of the strike, several citizens appeared before the Board to proffer charges of excessive violence against members of the force. The Commissioners, however, dismissed each case, arguing that the “police did only what was their duty under the circumstances.” See Board Minutes, March 16, 1886. As Homel notes, in “Denison's Law,” 176, Police Magistrate and Commissioner Denison despised labour activists and handed out harsh penalties to strikers and supporters arrested during the dispute.

98. Annual Report, 1886, 271.

99. Cited in Toronto Police Force, A Brief Account of the Force, 10.

100. Board Minutes, March 14, 1894.

101. Annual Report, 1887.

102. See, for example, Marquis, “‘A Machine of Oppression Under the Guise of Law’”; Katz, Doucet and Stern, The Social Organization of Early Industrial Capitalism, Chapter 6; Boritch and Hagan, “Crime and the Changing Forms of Class Control”; Thorner, Thomas and Watson, Neil, “Patterns of Prairie Crime: Calgary, 1875-1939,” in Knafla, L. (ed.), Crime and Criminal Justice in Europe and Canada (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 1981), 219Google Scholar.

103. As a result, the police made little distinction among the “dangerous class,” the “working class” and the “criminal class.” To further the ends of crime prevention, the Toronto police lobbied for more broadly defined laws and arrests leading to changes in the vagrancy laws in 1869. Lauding the new law, the Chief Constable stated that the act “if strictly enforced will tend more to the prevention of crime than any act hitherto passed by the legislature.” See Annual Report, 1869, 5.

104. Monkkonen, , Police in Urban America, 4Google Scholar.

105. Calculated from arrest statistics reported in the Annual Reports, 1859 to 1900.

106. Annual Report, 1886.

107. See, for example, Marquis, “‘A Machine of Oppression Under the Guise of Law’”; Haller, “The Roots of Police Behavior”; Miller, Cops and Bobbies.

108. See Clark, Of Toronto the Good; Homel, “Denison's Law”; Armstrong, Christopher and Nelles, H.V., The Revenge of the Methodist Bicycle Company: Sunday Street-cars and Municipal Reform in Toronto, 1888-1897 (Toronto: Peter Martin Associates Ltd., 1977)Google Scholar.

109. See the reminisces of police court reporter, Wodson, Harry, The Whirlpool: Scenes from Toronto Police Court (Toronto, 1917), 122Google Scholar. As one woman repeatedly charged with drunkenness insightly observed: “The only difference between me and Lady Flaherty in Rosedale is that I don't have a powdered flunkey to carry me up to bed when I get drunk.”

110. See, for example, the testimony in the Report of the Commission Appointed to Enquire into the Prison and Reformatory System of Ontario (Toronto: Warwick and Sons, 1891), 698.

111. Annual Report, 1863.

112. City Council Minutes, 1866, Appendix 133, 241.

113. Annual Report, 1867; 1872; Board Minutes, March 16, 1873.

114. City Council Minutes, 1866; Appendix 133, 241.

115. Board Minutes, February 21, 1894.

116. Annual Report, 1913.

117. Annual Report, 1896; see also Annual Report, 1906; 1910; 1911 and especially 1926.

118. Annual Report, 1875. These sentiments express a noticeably different attitude than the position taken by police administrators by the turn of the century. Increasingly the Chief Constable reported that “tramps were a great nuisance at some of the Stations, where they were given a night's lodging. It is scarcely right that these lazy dirty people should not be compelled to earn by work what they get for nothing.” See Annual Report, 1909, 9. These comments reflect the extent to which the police in-stitution felt it had entrenched its position in city government and were consistent with the trend toward a narrower conception of the police mandate, characteristic of North American police forces during this era. See, for example, Monkkonen, Police in Urban America.

119. Annual Report, 1885.

120. Pitsula, James, “The Treatment of Tramps in Late Nineteenth-Century Toronto,” Canadian Historical Association Papers (1980), 451Google Scholar.

121. City Council Minutes, 1892, Appendix C, 93.