Conquering the British Ballarat: The Policing of Victorian Middlesbrough

Over the period of the reign of Queen Victoria, Middlesbrough--the British Ballarat in Asa Briggs' memorable phrase--was transformed from a rough-and-ready 'frontier' town, with high crime rates and little in the way of policing, into a relatively stable and policed community, with appreciably lower levels of both serious and petty crimes. Crime rates were not reduced significantly until the last quarter of the century, under the Black Country (for example) were the transition came in the third quarter. The 1870s and 1880s were also critical decades in the creation of a stable police force in the town. The causal links between the emergence of a 'professional' police force and the reduction in crime rates is far from straightforward. Recent interpretations have played down the contribution of the police, seeing them more as beneficiaries of wider socio-economic changes. Without ignoring the impact of the diversification of the local economy, rising working-class living standards and the spread of respectability, it is argued that the town's police force (and in particular the rank-and-file men who were most in contact with the local population) played a major role in the conquering of the British Ballarat.