Patrick Colquhoun

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Patrick Colquhoun

Patrick Colquhoun (born March 14, 1745 in Dumbarton , † April 25, 1820 in London ) was a Scottish businessman, statistician, politician and diplomat. With his port police on the Thames, he is considered to be the founder of preventive policing in the United Kingdom.

biography

Colquhoun came from the Scottish clan of the Colquhouns from Luss on Loch Lomond . At the age of 16 he went to the American colonies in Virginia as an orphan and received a commercial training there. In 1766 he returned to Glasgow and at the age of 21 started his own business there in the textile trade with Virginia. From 1782 to 1784 was Mayor of Glasgow ( Lord Provost ). He founded the local Chamber of Commerce and Industry and was its President for a long time. In 1797 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow .

As a statistician and data collector, he backed his political work as a lobbyist for the economy with comprehensive facts and figures. This is evidenced by his numerous publications, some of which have also been translated into German. His extensive knowledge led him to seek closer contact with the government of the kingdom and he moved his business activities to London, where he also became a member of the magistrate in the East End . Here he became aware of the grievances in the port, where 33,000 dock workers were employed, of whom he classified around 11,000 as being at risk of criminal activity. At the end of the 18th century, goods worth over £ 500,000 were lost annually through theft in the port of London.

The police boat Patrick Colquhoun of the Metropolitan Police in Wapping, put into service in 2004

The port police initiated by him, the Thames Riverside Police , began operations in 1798 as a private police force with 50 men on a trial basis against the bitter resistance of the port workers. It was financed by the large foreign trade companies that traded with the overseas colonies of the Empire. The economic success was so great that this police force was taken over by the state and continued at the end of the probationary year in the summer of 1799 by the Marine Police Bill of the British Parliament. The police force he organized became a model for similar harbor police authorities in New York City, Dublin and Sydney.

In 1804 Colquhoun became Minister- Resident and Consul General of the Hanseatic cities of Hamburg and, shortly thereafter, also Bremen and Lübeck . He succeeded Heinrich Heymann from Bremen , who was and remained stalemate in London. In the following disputes between the United Kingdom and France, which held the Hanseatic cities from 1806 to 1813, he was responsible for the official and unofficial contacts of the three cities' senates to Whitehall and was very effective. As a diplomatic agent in 1808, he tried George Canning to find out about London's position on the entry of the Hanseatic cities into joining the Rhine Confederation by delivering a corresponding letter from the Hamburg Senate Syndicate Doormann, to which Canning did not respond, despite the continental blockade . After the occupation ended in 1813, he was immediately reappointed as envoy.

His successor as Minister-Resident of the Hanseatic Cities in London was his son, Stalhofmeister James Colquhoun († 1855), and his grandson Patrick Colquhoun became the first Hanseatic Chargé d'affaires at the Porte in 1841 .

Works

  • About the wealth, power, and resources of the British Empire in every part of the world, including the East Indies. German: Nuremberg 1815.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Colquhoun, Patrick
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish businessman, statistician, politician and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH March 14, 1745
PLACE OF BIRTH Dumbarton
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1820
Place of death London