Patrick Colquhoun

author

Patrick Colquhoun

1745–1820

A Scottish merchant and reformer who helped shape modern policing, he is best known for founding the Thames River Police and for writing influential works on crime, trade, and public order.

1 Audiobook

A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis Containing a Detail of the Various Crimes and Misdemeanors by which Public and Private Property and Security are, at Present, Injured and Endangered: and Suggesting Remedies for their Prevention

A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis Containing a Detail of the Various Crimes and Misdemeanors by which Public and Private Property and Security are, at Present, Injured and Endangered: and Suggesting Remedies for their Prevention

by Patrick Colquhoun

About the author

Born in Dumbarton in 1745, he built his early career in commerce before moving into civic life. He served as Lord Provost of Glasgow and later became a magistrate in London, where he gained a reputation for applying practical, data-minded thinking to public problems.

He is most closely associated with the creation of the Thames River Police, often described as the first regular preventive police force in England. His writing, including A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis, argued that crime prevention should be organized, systematic, and tied to the economic life of the city.

Today he is remembered as an important figure in the history of policing, as well as a merchant and statistician whose ideas linked trade, social conditions, and law enforcement in a new way.