32. Cockneys and Victorian Cops
London’s cops – the officers of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) – are generally respected and affectionately known as “Bobbies” today. That was not always the case. For decades after the MPS was formed in 1829, many Victorians questioned the very legitimacy of police, and the need for their services. MPS officers had a correspondingly fraught relationship with the public they were sworn to serve. Indeed, throughout much of the nineteenth century, the bobbies were held in low esteem by much of the public. Getting routinely derided and disrespected while they went about trying to stop crime was not the worst of it for early Bobbies. They were also frequently trolled, baited, and attacked for kicks and giggles.
Many Londoners disliked the cops. There was an active anti-police ideology in the Victorian Era, communicated through the radical press, which depicted the new police as an unconstitutional infringement on English liberties. The Bobbies were often referred to as “blue locusts” and “blue idlers”. It reflected a perception that the cops were parasites, excused by their position from honest work, and living off the taxes of honest men.