Patrick Colquhoun
Patrick Colquhoun was a significant figure in 18th and early 19th century Britain, known for his contributions to economics, policing reform, and social theory. Born in 1745 in Dumbarton, Scotland, he faced early adversity as an orphan but later prospered as a merchant after moving to America. Upon returning to Glasgow, he became the city’s Provost and established the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce. Colquhoun was a proponent of Reform Liberalism, advocating for social reform driven by economic principles and scientific methods, which he articulated in his extensive writings.
One of his major contributions was the Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis, where he outlined a systematic approach to policing that led to the formation of a more organized police force in London. His ideas influenced later policing reforms, notably those implemented by Robert Peel, leading to the establishment of the "bobbies." Colquhoun also examined the socio-economic factors behind crime, particularly in his works on poverty and its correlation with social issues. His scholarly approach to social conditions and charity laid the groundwork for modern understandings of social welfare and economic disparity. He passed away at the age of seventy-five, leaving behind a legacy that shaped both policing and social policy in Britain.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Patrick Colquhoun
Writer
- Born: March 14, 1745
- Birthplace: Dumbarton, Scotland
- Died: April 25, 1820
- Place of death: Westminster, London, England
Biography
Patrick Colquhoun was born in Dumbarton, Scotland, in the year of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. He was orphaned at an early age. As a young man, his family sponsored his voyage to America where he learned commerce in Virginia, at that time burgeoning in trade.
Returning to Glasgow just before the unrest in the colonies began, he was an experienced merchant at the age of twenty-one. He soon married the daughter of James Colquhoun, Provost of Dumbarton. Patrick Colquhoun prospered, was elected Provost of Glasgow in 1782, and founded the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce. Extremely wealthy by this time, he purchased part of the Woodcroft estate and built a luxuriant manor and gardens, Kelvingrove.
As an economist and statistician, his position as one of the luminaries of Reform Liberalism in Britain was established in his call for the reformation of social theory based on economic drivers applied with scientific method. He was a prolific writer, and many of the topics of his twenty-seven published works discussed social reform and revisited reasoning for the social condition. His writing drew the attention of the Corporation of London, which prevailed on him to move to London to revamp the police system. The experience as a police magistrate served as his basis for the Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis (1795), which propounds the theory of policing reform he developed, calling for an organized police force.
Colquhoun’s works use economics as a social science to describe the relationship of crime and punishment, poverty as the source of prostitution, and the improvement of the social condition with the betterment of the individual. Colquhoun greatly improved the decrepit and compromised policing of London, and this continued to be his life-long project. Later, Robert Peel’s adoption of Colquhoun’s ideas and methods were reflected in the training of the “bobbies,” nicknamed after Peel.
Colquhoun’s most outstanding work, Treatise on the Population, Wealth, and Resources of the British Empire (1814), is exemplary of his methodology as he demonstrates through statistical theory that poverty drives crime and calculates figures that predict the distribution of income for Britain. In his Treatise on Indigence (1806), he defines poverty and indigence, distinguishing between the two, and deriving social-class theory and a working theory of charity. He received his LL.D. degree in 1795. He died at the age of seventy- five.