Crime-busting coppers, zealous beat bobbies and legendary villains like “Slasher” Wilson... welcome to the criminal underworld of Huddersfield, circa 1850.
Sherlock Holmes would have felt at home in a landscape of racketeering crime bosses, maverick policemen, rampaging gangs, people trafficking and riots.
These larger-than-life characters – all of them real people – populate the latest in a string of books by historian David Taylor. Beerhouses, Brothels and Bobbies delves deep into the evolution of the police force in Huddersfield in the years between 1848 and 1868 revealing not just some remarkable individuals but also some long-forgotten incidents.
Who, for instance, knows of a ferocious anti-police riot that occurred in Honley in 1862? Or that the township’s constable, PC Antrobus, was deemed so officious that he was burnt in effigy and run out of town by locals?
How about Supt John Thomas, a hard-drinking thief-taker whose love of the bottle and gambling – described by the local Watch Committee as “venial peccadilloes” – led to his dismissal.
Mr Taylor, who is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Huddersfield, confessed to being amazed that incidents like the Antrobus drama have dropped from popular memory.
His new book looks specifically at Huddersfield and Upper Agbrigg, moving away from the larger urban areas that have dominated academic research into the subject.
“Most of it has focused on London, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds and so on, very little has been done on medium-sized towns, which were far more common,” he said. “Also, given the importance of the West Riding in terms of the socio-economic and political development of the country, it is amazing that virtually nothing has been written about the area.”
In urban Huddersfield itself, he has uncovered a large amount of information about the often-chequered careers of the town’s first police officers and the pockets of crime and vice that they had to contend with.
His book also describes the career of villains such as ‘Slasher’ Wilson and John Sutcliffe, the “King of Castlegate”, the most notorious street in old Huddersfield, with beerhouses and pubs notorious for prostitution and “barracks” for girls from Lancashire, who were the victims of what would now be known as human trafficking.
Although police did clamp down, the persistence of the problem led to Huddersfield gaining a reputation as “the brothel of the West Riding.”
Beerhouses, Brothels and Bobbies is published by the University of Huddersfield Press, priced £25.
http://unipress.hud.ac.uk/catalogue/books/beerhousesbrothelsandbobbies.php
