Cambridgeshire

Police

History

Notes

Policing Peterborough

| Overview | Liberty Quarter Sessions | Before 1857 | Liberty Police | City Police | Combined Police | History written 1979 | Improvement Commissioners | Chief Officers | Premises | What's Missing? | Notes and Queries |

CHIEF OFFICERS

The chart below was published by the Cambridgeshire Constabulary in October 1979.

EARLIER SENIOR OFFICERS

THE CITY

IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS (1850-1874).

Superintendents of the Night Police.

*William Wakelin 1850 - resigned April 1851
*Peter Van Der Aa 1850-1856
D. Smith 1857 - resigned Jan 1858
* This was at first apparently a joint appointment. Peter Van Der Aa was the son of a Norman Cross prisoner of war who was paroled in 1798 and released in 1800 when he married Lucy Rose at Peterborough.

D.Smith was, before his appointment to Peterborough, Superintendent of the police in the Chipping Norton Division of the Oxfordshire Constabulary.

The County Police force was established by Act of 1856. Henry Lambert Bayly, Chief Constable of Northamptonshire, was appointed in January 1857 as Chief Constable of the Soke or Liberty of Peterborough. The night police Superintendents were thereafter sometimes referred to as Deputy Chief Constables. The first re-appointment after Smith was a lieutenant in the Suffolk Militia).

Charles T.R. Bidwell Edwardes 1858 - resigned 1869 (d.28 Jan 1896 aged 70)
William Brooke 1869 - 1871 (probably to 1874).

In 1874 Peterborough was granted its Charter of Incorporation which established the City Council. Later in the same year they appointed their own Chief Constable, and the appointment of a Superintendent/D.C.C. ceased.

THE LIBERTY.

The senior officer at the Gaol & Sessions House in Thorpe Road was an Inspector (the date of the first appointment has not been researched, although it may coincide with the 1856 Act); the name of the post also seems to have been subject to variation or change, and by the 1890's was also known as the Superintendent.

Inspectors.

William Preston 1857 - 1866
William Brooke 1867-1869
Joseph Scotney c.1868 - c.1886 (post vacant in 1867).
Christopher Blackman c.1886 - c.1910 (d.April 1924 age 73)
William Slaughter c.1910 - 1921
David Hamps April 1921 - retired June 1931. (Last post holder).

If the Inspectors had a predecessor it may have been the "High Constable of the Liberty"; this post was abolished as from 1 Jan 1870 by Act of 1869, but the post-holders at that date were entitled to keep the title until they died. The last two were :-

John Wiggin * 1820 - d. Nov 1862 (aged 82)
(*date of appointment not confirmed but in post by 1820)
George Bristow 1863 - d. Feb 1875

This page was last modified: 06 October 2025, 10:43

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