Mother, what did policemen do when there weren't any motors?’ The law, the police and the regulation of motor traffic in England, 1900–1939

Bibliographic Data

ID8955952
AuthorsClive Emsley (Hong Kong Metropolitan University, corresponding author)
Year1993
Volume36
Issue2
Pages357-381
Publication date1993-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Historical Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-246X • E-ISSN: 1469-5103
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0018246x00019270
OpenAlexW2125829296
LanguageEN
Citations received27
References cited7

The law had always been deployed by the police to regulate traffic, but the development of motor vehicles, travelling at much greater speeds than previous road traffic, constituted a problem of a new dimension. By the early 1920s the use of the law to control motor vehicles was jamming the magistrates' courts and creating friction, hitherto unknown, between the police and the middle classes. The paper explores the way in which, and the extent to which, the criminal law was used to control the motorist in the first third of the twentieth century. It takes issue with the whiggish view of law making, which understands laws as logical remedies for readily identifiable problems; it rejects equally the idea of seeing laws as inspired by class interest. Rather the motor traffic legislation fits better with the concept of the ‘policeman state’ which, according to V. A. C. Gatrell, developed from the late nineteenth century. At the same time the paper suggests that a scapegoat – ‘the road hog’ – was created as the focus for criticism in much the same way that other criminal scapegoats have been established; the offender thus ceased to be a member of society and became an outsider, threatening respectable law-abiding citizens

Control (management · Criminal law · Criminology · Criticism · Legislation · Political science · Scapegoat · Sociology · State (computer science · Computer Science · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Law · Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses

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