Town Police Clauses Act 1847

In 1847, the House of Commons Select Committee on Private Bills presented a report. In 1842 to 1843, the average number of private bills passed was 161, rising to an average of 347 from 1845 to 1846. By 21 July 1847, the House of Commons, 490 petitions for private bills were received that year. Already in place, resulting from early reports by the select committee, new mechanisms were in place to deal more efficiently with private bills.[2]

Noting was that much of the business the House of Commons was dealing with were numerous private bills, which due to the clauses they contained, were essentially public bills. Drawing up private bills to deal with public functions had consequences.[2] The select committee wrote:

..some varying or interfering with the general statute or common law of the country; some, though ordinary in their nature, yet of a perplexing and needless diversity in form; and, finally, some so contradictory and mutually discordant as to render their enforcement impossible, and to make the law doubtful and embarrassing even to those who are professionally versed in it"[3]

To provide uniformity in legislation in different geographical areas, to reduce the number of private bills about public functions, and to reduce expense, the select committee proposed eight public acts, each dealing with a different topic:

• Markets and fairs
• Gasworks
• Public commissioners
• Waterworks
• Harbour, docks and piers
• Town improvements
• Cemeteries
• Police[2]

The police legislation was enacted as the Town Police Clauses Act 1847.

The original Act covered six areas,

• Police regulations and administration
• Obstructions and nuisances, including several significant offences about indecent exposure, indecent acts, and obscene publications
• Fires and administration of fire fighting
• Regulating places of public resort, for example, coffee shops and refreshment house used as meeting places for thieves and prostitutes, places for bear baiting and cock fighting
• Public bathing
• Hackney carriages[4]

Many clauses of the act are still in force; these are provisions dealing with

• Preventing obstructions during street processions
• Prohibiting stage carriages from diverting from a prescribed route
• Powers enabling the building of pounds for stray animals
• Impounding stray cattle, selling them, and unlawfully releasing them from a pound
• A significant number of nuisances and obstructions to the highway
• Violent and indecent behaviour in a police station
• Accidentally allowing chimney fires
• Keeping places for animal fighting, baiting, or worrying them, for example bear baiting and cock fighting
• Hackney carriages[4][5]

The act is still relevant to policing the highway. Many offences in the act relating to nuisance and obstruction in the street, and the act is also a means of regulating road closures for special events.[6]

The law controls the use of fireworks,[7][8] and the wanton discharge of firearms in the street.[8] A significant role is the licensing of hackney carriages.[9] It also prohibits the wanton furious driving of a horse and carriage in the street.[8] A role of the Act is to regulate peoples' behaviour. It remains an offence to be disorderly or insulting in a police station.

Until 2003, the Act was one piece of legislation against prostitution in a range of premises, including hotels.[10] Although superseded by other laws a conviction for indecency, deriving from the Act, is on a list of offences which can be used to identify those who present a risk, or potential risk, to children.[11]

• Local board of health

Town Police Clauses Act 1847 (as enacted)

Town Police Clauses Act 1847 (as currently in force, published on legislation.gov.uk)