Policemen and Their Moustaches: (Self-)Fashioning Professional Identity in Nineteenth Century Newcastle-Upon-Tyne

Abstract

In April 1861, a local newspaper commented favourably on permission being granted to allow the policemen of Newcastle upon Tyne to wear moustaches, and on the moustaches they subsequently grew. The article demonstrates that these moustaches had an important role to play in the visual construction and performance of social, collective, and professional identities for individual members of the police force in Newcastle in 1861. It suggests that in requesting permission, acting upon it, and in the type of facial hair that they grew, the policemen revealed how they saw themselves, and how they wanted to be seen. This offers an opportunity to hear a voice often excluded from historical narratives, that of the ‘ordinary’ policemen in the provinces, exercising an agency that might be unexpected in the mid-nineteenth century. The article argues that their moustaches enabled Newcastle’s policemen to express a sense of belonging to their local force and their awareness of being part of a larger, nationwide phenomenon, evidence of the development of a police culture with a positive and specifically fashioned self-image. As such, it contributes an unusual perspective on police professionalisation and identity in an important period of change.