A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis;

£400 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

Sixth edition of this work about the capital's criminal tendencies, including those in the Jewish communities. This work provides a summary of the criminal offences which were commonplace in London in the late-eighteenth century, with suggestions as to remedy the situation. It was written by Patrick Colquhoun and first issued in 1798. Theft and other crimes were problematic for merchants and shopkeepers in London throughout the eighteenth century. Without an organised police force, crime was able to flourish in the city and vast sums of money were lost each year. Colquhoun and his associates, with support from the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, established a private 'river police' to combat these problems. The success of the force persuaded the government to pass an act which made it a public organisation in 1800, one of the first such police forces to be established and which predated Robert Peel's police force by almost 30 years. The sixth edition is one of the most detailed editions of the work. The work contains somewhat antisemitic claims in its chapter XI, discussing the Origins of Crime (pp. 319-321, which also sheds light on the relationships between the different Jewish communities of London at the time): 'Another Cause, and no inconsiderable one, of the progress and increase of the progress and increase of crimes may be developed, by contemplating the deplorable state and condition of the lower order of the Jews in the Metropolis, who are of the society of the Dutch Sy

• Binding: Hardcover

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