Patrick Colquhoun ( ; 14 March 1745 – 25 April 1820) was a Scottish merchant, statistician, magistrate, and founder of the first regular preventive police force in England, the Thames River Police. He also served as Lord Provost of Glasgow 1782 to 1784.
Early life
Colquhoun, a descendant of the Scottish Clan Colquhoun of Luss, was born in Dumbarton in 1745. Orphaned at the age of 16, his relatives sent him to America, setting him up in the lucrative commercial trade in Virginia. In 1766, the 21-year-old Colquhoun returned to Scotland, settling in Glasgow and going into business on his own in the linen trade. Ten years later, with the outbreak of the American Revolution, Colquhoun sided against the rebels and, along with 13 other local businessmen, funded a Glasgow regiment to contribute to the government's war effort.
In 1782 he purchased an estate in the West End (now part of Kelvingrove Park; and built the mansion house, Kelvingrove House (which became the first Kelvingrove Museum in 1875). On 22 July 1775, he married his cousin Janet, the daughter of James Colquhoun, the Provost of Dumbarton. Between 1782 and 1784, Patrick Colquhoun himself served as the Lord Provost of Glasgow. He also founded the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce and Manufacturing during that time, and made himself the first chairman.
In 1787 he is listed on the Committee for the Management of Forth and Clyde Navigation and in the West India Club. He was also Chairman of the Glasgow Tontine.
He was awarded an honorary LL.D. by the University of Glasgow in 1797. In Glasgow he lived in a second floor flat in an ancient tenement on Argyle Street.
Colquhoun was an avid statistician, and collected economic data. He used this information to lobby the government on behalf of the country's industries, particularly cotton and muslin. His findings formed the basis of numerous pamphlets and treatises that he wrote promoting legal reform and business generally. On one occasion, he travelled to Manchester and compiled statistics on the cotton trade. He presented his findings to Prime Minister William Pitt in 1789, but they were not acted upon because of the war with France. These activities brought Colquhoun increasingly into contact with the political sphere and to the attention of government and in 1785 he moved to London to seek a government position, and was appointed Magistrate in the East End.
River Police
By the end of the eighteenth century, merchants from the British Empire's colonies were losing an estimated £500,000 worth of stolen cargo annually from the Pool of London on the River Thames. In 1796 Colquhoun's published A treatise on the police of metropolis and two years later, in collaboration with Justice of the Peace and master mariner John Harriott and utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, he wrote a letter to the London Society of West India Planters and Merchants proposing "the Establishment of a marine Police Office for the prevention of River Plunder". The West India Planters Committees and the West India Merchants agreed to fund a one-year trial and on 2 July 1798, after receiving government permission, the Thames River Police began operating with Colquhoun as Superintending Magistrate and Harriott the Resident Magistrate.
With an initial investment of £4,200, the new force began with about 50 men charged with policing 33,000 workers in the river trades, of whom Colquhoun claimed 11,000 were known criminals and "on the game". The river police received a hostile reception by riverfront workers not wishing to lose their supplementary income. A mob of 2000 attempted to burn down the police office with the police inside. The skirmish that followed resulted in the first line of duty death for the new force with the killing of Gabriel Franks.
Nevertheless, Colquhoun reported to his backers that his force was a success after its first year, and his men had "established their worth by saving £122,000 worth of cargo and by the rescuing of several lives". Word of this success spread quickly, and the government passed the Marine Police Bill on 28 July 1800, transforming it from a private to public police agency. Colquhoun published a book on the experiment, The Commerce and Policing of the River Thames. It found receptive audiences far outside London, and inspired similar forces in places in other countries, notably, New York City, Dublin, and Sydney.