Thames River Police

[3] Merchants were losing an estimated £500,000 (equivalent to £65.4 million in 2025)[4] of stolen cargo annually from the Pool of London on the River Thames by the late 1790s.

[5] A plan was devised to curb the problem in 1797 by an Essex justice of the peace and master mariner, John Harriot, who joined forces with Patrick Colquhoun and utilitarian philosopher, Jeremy Bentham.

[5] With the initial investment of £4,200, they took a lease of premises on the current site of Wapping Police Station and appointed a Superintendent of Ship Constables with five surveyors to patrol the river, day and night.

The river police first received a hostile reception by those dockyard and wharf workers not wishing to lose an illicit income.

Colquhoun's utilitarian approach to the problem – using a cost-benefit analysis to obtain support from businesses standing to benefit – allowed him to achieve what Henry and John Fielding failed for their Bow Street detectives.

Unlike the stipendiary system at Bow Street, the river police were full-time, salaried officers prohibited from taking fees.

[9] The idea of a salaried police as it existed in France was considered an affront to the English ruling class who favoured ad hoc justice, particularly during this century of economic change.

Colquhoun made an economic rather than political case to show that a police dedicated to crime prevention was "perfectly congenial to the principle of the British constitution".