This text is provided by Durham County Record Office

The county police force, excluding borough forces, was the responsibility of the Court of Quarter Sessions and was inherited from the court in 1889. At a meeting held on 7 December 1839, the Court of Quarter Sessions resolved that 'the Constabulary Body as at present constituted in this County is not adequate to the preservation of the peace and security of person and property' and decided, therefore, to appoint an additional force as it was empowered to do under an Act of 1839. The Act allowed the Court to appoint one constable for every thousand inhabitants, but the justices decided for the moment that half that number was sufficient. Accordingly, seventy five constables, five inspectors and one Chief Constable were to be recruited. The Chief Constable was to be paid £250 per annum, the constables eighteen shillings a week minus one shilling a week for their clothing and the inspectors one pound eight shillings a week with the same deduction of a shilling. The first Chief Constable, Major Wemyss, was appointed on 10 December 1839 and the first police force began work in early 1840. Major James Wemyss, an ex-army man, remained Chief Constable until his death in 1848 and was succeeded by Lieutenant Colonel George Francis White who served as Chief Constable until 1902. Colonel White was Chief Constable when the County Council was created and on its creation took over part of the responsibility for the police.


Policemen in the 1840s

After the formation of the County Council, the police were controlled by a standing joint committee consisting of 12 county councillors and 12 justices of the peace. In 1889, Colonel White was paid a salary of £600 p.a. and an annual horse or travelling allowance of £100. He was the head of a force of 555 men including 30 superintendents and inspectors. By 1889, the force had increased nearly seven times since its level of 80 men in 1840. The years after 1889 saw a similar expansion. By 1921 the county force had taken over the independent force in the City of Durham and in 1947 Hartlepool Borough police force was amalgamated into the county constabulary with the result that its total strength at that point was 1,314 officers and men including one woman chief inspector, two women sergeants and ten policewomen. Similarly in 1967, the Sunderland Borough force and in 1968 the Gateshead and South Shields forces were amalgamated with the county force which retained the name of Durham Constabulary. After these various amalgamations, the force consisted of 2, 670 policeman, 132 policewomen, 123 traffic wardens and 485 clerical and technical staff. A further re-organisation came in 1974 as a result of changes in local authority boundaries: a new Durham Constabulary was created to police the present County of Durham. Since the Second World War changes other than those concerned with areas and levels of manpower have taken place. In the immediate aftermath of the war, on 21 January 1946, the Standing Joint Committee accepted a report of the Police Buildings and Post-War Planning Sub-Committee which envisaged a five year programme of capital works, the revival of the mounted police in Durham, the building of extra police stations in Darlington, Castle Eden and Blaydon divisions, and changes in the establishment of the force. At the same meeting, the Motor Car Sub-Committee reported on the purchase and successful use of ten 18 h.p. Wolseley cars as motor patrol cars. The ten cars cost £6,779 15s. 0d. (£6,779.75p). At an earlier meeting in 1945 the decision to purchase Harperley Hall for use a police training college for £2,000 from the late Colonel G.H. Stobart was taken.

Control Room at Durham Constabulary Headquarters

The problem of the inadequacy of the existing police headquarters in Court Lane in the City of Durham was discussed; in 1937 land between the constabulary buildings and New Elvet had been purchased for new headquarters but no plans had been made. The problem of adequate accommodation at headquarters was not solved until the police headquarters building was opened at Aykley Heads in 1975.

The Chief Constable reported on 22 October 1945 the decision to establish a criminal record office and a fingerprint department at headquarters after two officers had gained experience at the West Riding of Yorkshire police headquarters. The increasing sophistication of the methods employed by the police to defeat crime in the county is shown not only by the introduction of criminal records and fingerprint departments in 1945, but also by the appointment of Scientific Aids Officers to every division in 1947 and the introduction of mobile Serious Incident Squads in 1957. The latter are teams of detectives specially trained to deal with such incidents. Since then, traffic controls, police dogs, a fraud squad, stolen motor vehicle investigation units and crime and accident prevention units have been introduced. Sophisticated information systems have also been introduced to assist the increasingly highly trained members of the force. In 1974 the Durham Constabulary was linked to the police national computer and, in 1983, launched its own Dedicated Management Information-based computer.

Co-operation between police and public

The most noticeable development in the force in the years immediately preceding and including 1989 has been a growing emphasis on liaison with, and co-operation with, the wider community. Examples of this development are school liaison programmes and the 220 neighbourhood watch schemes in the county.