Chief officers and professional identities: the case of fire services in English municipal government, c.1870?1938

Ewen, Shane

doi:10.1111/j.1468-2281.2007.00409.x

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…These episodes underscore the reforming potential of newcomers to the force, bringing with them insights gleaned from police experience elsewhere. By contrast, the formation of expert dynasties in municipal services could nurture a pernicious aversion to change in local administration …”

Section: Chief Constables Of Leeds 1823–99 Showing Years Of Servicementioning

confidence: 99%

Local initiative, central oversight, provincial perspective: governing police forces in nineteenth-century Leeds

Churchill

2015

Hist Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article examines police administration as a branch of urban government, based on a casestudy of Leeds between 1815 and 1900. Making extensive use of local government and police records, it takes a longer-term view of 'reform' than most existing studies, and privileges the more routine aspects of everyday governance. It thus provides an original exploration of centrallocal government relations, as well as conflict and negotiation between distinct bodies of selfgovernment within the locality. Previous studies have rightly emphasised that urban police governance was primarily a local responsibility, yet this article also stresses the growing influence of central state oversight and an extra-local, provincial perspective, both of which modified the grip of localism on nineteenth-century government. University of LeedsThe governance of nineteenth-century police forces has long attracted scholarly attention.Many early accounts -habitually referred to as 'Whiggish' histories -tended to portray the provincial forces as ineffectual; lacking sufficient oversight from Whitehall, their potential was dashed under the more-or-less incompetent and corrupt leadership of unaccountable local magistrates and penny-pinching town councillors.2 By contrast, subsequent police historians have offered a more nuanced picture, by demonstrating that local authorities were often instrumental in pioneering new forms of police organisation;rather than opposed to police reform per se, it is now recognised that local governors were anxious primarily to retain control over local forces (and the local resources they consumed). Furthermore, the reputation of the provincial police has been somewhat rehabilitated by these sympathetic scholars; provincial forces were often adequate responses to local problems, rather than pale imitations of the centrally-directed

show abstract

Section: Chief Constables Of Leeds 1823–99 Showing Years Of Servicementioning

confidence: 99%

Local initiative, central oversight, provincial perspective: governing police forces in nineteenth-century Leeds

Churchill

2015

Hist Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Moving upmarket, Kay discusses the Crystal Palace Company's construction of middle‐class villas in Sydenham. Ewen studies the role played by the chief fire officers of Birmingham and Leicester in shaping the profession of fire‐fighting and making fire protection a central function of municipal government. Work on waste has flourished in recent years, and the trend continued this year: Crook (in Journal of Victorian Culture ) examines Victorian attitudes to ‘dirt’, in particular the sewage farming debates between the 1840s and 1870s, while Cooper explores changing fashions for waste disposal in the first half of the twentieth century: after the ‘refuse revolution’ of 1870–1914, the exigencies of total war necessitated a return to earlier practices of salvage and recycling.…”

Section: (V) 1850–1945 Kate Bradley and James Taylor University Of Kementioning

confidence: 99%

Review of periodical literature published in 2008

Pratt¹,

Schofield²,

Healey

et al. 2009

The Economic History Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Chief officers and professional identities: the case of fire services in English municipal government, c.1870?1938

Cited by 2 publications

References 20 publications

Local initiative, central oversight, provincial perspective: governing police forces in nineteenth-century Leeds

Local initiative, central oversight, provincial perspective: governing police forces in nineteenth-century Leeds

Review of periodical literature published in 2008

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About