During the first part of the nineteenth century, London had become the largest city that the world had ever known. To deal with concerns over disorder and crime, and particularly to prevent crime, Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel introduced the Metropolitan Police Act to Parliament. With the passage of this act in 1829, the Metropolitan Police Service—the Met—was created.
The new police officers were sometimes called Bobbies and Peelers after Sir Robert Peel. Colonel Charles Rowan and Ricard Mayne actually organized the new police force from a house at 4 Whitehall Place. The back of this house opened onto the Great Scotland Yard, named for a medieval palace used by Scottish Royalty on their visits to London.
At the time the Metropolitan Police Act was passed, people were afraid that the new police force would be used by the government to spy on them. Under the Act, therefore, the police were to prevent crime and were, in fact, prohibited from investigating crimes that had already been committed.
In 1840, Richard Mayne established a secret group of detectives to do some investigating. Because their work was illegal under the Act, this group had to act in secret. In 1842, these plainclothes detectives were able to come out into the open because of their role in several important cases and the charisma of some of the detectives. One of the charismatic personalities was Inspector Charles Frederick Field who had joined the force in 1829. Jess Blumberg, reporting for the Smithsonian, writes:
“He became good friends with Charles Dickens, who occasionally accompanied constables on their nightly rounds. Dickens wrote a short essay about Field, "On Duty With Inspector Field," and used him as a model for the all-knowing, charming Inspector Bucket in his novel Bleak House.”
Another popular personality was Dick Tanner who solved the mysterious murder of banker Thomas Briggs in 1864. Briggs had been in a locked, first class train car which was empty when it reached its destination. His body was later discovered along the tracks. By the time Tanner had identified the murderer, the murderer was on a boat to the United States. Undeterred, Tanner booked passage on a fast steamer and was waiting for the murderer when he arrived in New York.
By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Scotland Yard was developing and using scientific forensic investigative methods which would become standard throughout the world. These included an emphasis on preserving the crime scene, photographing the crime scene, and the use of fingerprints. In 1903, Scotland Yard acquired its first police car and in 1919 their flying squad was using automobiles to quickly arrive at crime scenes.