197 years ago today, London's first cops stepped out wearing top hats

Sept 29, 1829. About 1,000 men in blue tailcoats walked out onto London's streets for the first time. The new Metropolitan Police were built to look harmless on purpose: top hats instead of helmets (kept until 1864 so they would read as civilians), a wooden truncheon and a rattle to call for help, no guns, no armour.

Their headquarters was 4 Whitehall Place. Its back entrance opened onto a little alley called Great Scotland Yard. Nobody ever voted to name the force after that alley, and yet it became the name the whole world uses.

Two commissioners ran it, Rowan and Mayne. Plenty of people hated it at first and called it a threat to liberty. The nickname “Bobby” came from Robert Peel, the Home Secretary who pushed the whole thing through.

197 years later, a blue plaque on the Ministry of Agriculture building marks the spot.

Photo: Spudgun67, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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