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Australian Ways of Death: A Social and Cultural History, 1840-1918 (review)

VICTORIAN STUDIES authorities were successful in reducing high turnover rates within the force. Between 1860 and 1913, when there was a threefold increase in the size of the force, average turnover rates fell by almost sixty percent, and on the eve of the First World War more than half the force had served the full service term of twenty-five years. The long-term policeman was drawn largely from the ranks of the unand semi-skilled, including agricultural workers from the low-income rural economies of East Anglia and the southwest of England. Such men had much to gain by long-term service in terms of living standards, social security, and status. By contrast, turnover rates were much higher among craftsmen and skilled workers, who had wider occupational alternatives to police work or who came from occupational cultures unused to long-term regimented work. Shpayer-Makov also examines the ways in which recruits were socialized into the force and explores some of the conflicting tensions inherent in police service. The policeman on the beat had to reconcile contradictory instructions in that he was expected to be courteous and detached, and to have an intimate knowledge of his “patch” without being intimate with its inhabitants—although the very nature of police work meant that some policemen were tempted by the attractions of drink, gambling, and prostitutes to do otherwise. Moreover, police duties were generally onerous, the demands of the job were physically and emotionally draining, and constables were particularly vulnerable to ill health and assault, which contributed to discontent (as manifest in the police strikes of 1872 and 1890, and in attempts by the police to unionize) and premature retirement from the force. This in turn inhibited the drive for police efficiency. In order to combat such problems, a paternalistic employment contract, which comprised a range of reward strategies such as steady pay, a system of promotion based on internal mobility, pensions and benefit schemes, and employer-sponsored leisure, was developed by the police authorities, who gradually realised that a more conciliatory labour-relations strategy was the best means to effect a compliant and efficient workforce. These two perceptive and diligently researched studies, replete with useful figures, tables, illustrations, and well-informed notes and bibliographies, add substantially to our knowledge and understanding of the development of English policing during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Taylor’s splendid book is a model of its kind, providing a template for future local studies of policing during the period, while ShpayerMakov sheds new light not only on the Metropolitan Police (whose history already looms large in the historiography of the subject) but also on the history of modern employment strategies and their impact on the working classes. Paperback editions of both books, which would enhance their accessibility to a student readership, would be highly desirable. Roger Swift University College Chester