Appendix CASE ONE - Collection Point® | The Total Digital Asset ...

Sir Augustus Stephenson and the Prosecution of Offences Act of 1884 203
cattle thieves. 6 These rewards were not payable in the event of acquittals
and bore no relationship to the actual cost of prosecution. The first
example of an allowance from public funds to cover the actual cost
of prosecution was an Act of 1752 (25 Geo. II c. 36) which permitted
the successful prosecutor of a felony to recover 'a reasonable amount of
compensation for his expenses' from county funds. Subsequent legislation,
and most notably Bennet's Act of 1818 (50 Geo. Ill c. 70) extended this
principle to cover failed prosecutions, allowances to witnesses and costs
incurred at preliminary investigations. This shift from the private purse to
the local rates, even if occasionally helped by the Crown, was not popular.
In 1836, following a parliamentary inquiry into local rates, it was agreed
by a vote of the House, rather than an Act of Parliament, that half of
the reasonable expenses of prosecuting felonies might be recovered from
the Exchequer. A decade later, in 1846, this compromise was extended
to cover the full cost. Not only did such a concession require an annual
vote but it left a long list of excluded offences including many of rising
concern to the society of early Victorian England, including conspiracy
to obtain by false pretences, keeping disorderly houses and libel. It was,
nevertheless, not these exclusions which exercised early Victorian lawreformers
but the lack of equity and the inefficiency of the prosecutorial
system.
When, in 1856, a Select Committee reported on a proposed Bill to appoint
a public prosecutor the prevailing system was criticized in roundly utilitarian
terms. Lord Brougham declared in his evidence: 7
The existing law is by no means as effectual as it ought to be: the duty of prosecution
is usually irksome, inconvenient and burthensome. The injured party would often
rather forego the prosecution than incur expense of time, labour and money.
Entrusting the conduct of the prosecution to a private individual opens a wide
door to bribery, collusion and illegal compromise.
The law laid no onus on either the Crown or the individual victim
to prosecute a criminal offender although both had been, in different
senses, the victims of that offence. On the other hand it was open to
any private individual to prosecute and, under the legislation referred
to above, for courts to award expenses. It was this 'privilege' which
permitted the emerging police authorities progressively to assume the
role of prosecutor in the 1840s and 1850s. It was an uncertain expedient
which depended heavily on the resources of the local police authority.
In the relatively well-organized Metropolitan area the Home Office itself
disposed of an extensive police force. By 1860 there were more than two
policemen to every 1000 of London's population, a Criminal Investigation
6 Ibid., appendix.
7 'Report of the Select Committee to whom the subject of the Prosecutions Bill was referred . . .'
(May 1856), iii, Parl. Papers, vii (1856).