Their lot is not a happy one.

Just look what they have to wear.

Pity the modern police officers patrolling the Queen Street Mall on a hot summer’s day, lugging around their belts full of assorted law enforcement goodies – comms, tazers, pepper spray, truncheons and the like. All the better to be prepared for a turbulent populace.

At least the modern uniform is practical – dark blue overalls and solid walking boots, with light caps. There are some interesting variants, in particular the figure-hugging trousers/jodphurs inflicted on motorcycle police in the early 2000s. These seemed designed to be unforgiving, particularly for officers recently deployed from more sedentary pursuits.

But no misery could be equal to that experienced by the officers sworn to uphold the law in early Moreton Bay. Still under the control of administrative masters in temperate Sydney, and influenced strongly by policing garb in the Mother Country, the local plod had to maintain order whilst wearing layers of thick, scratchy wool.

The Windmill Reporter was, of course, right across this sartorial outrage, and gave his opinion in April 1849, under the headline “Horrible Torture.”

HORRIBLE TORTURE.

Recent events in the United Kingdom – paltry as they may be in themselves – have demonstrated the great value of a faithful and efficient police. I have heard of some rewards having been bestowed upon the immediate actors in those stirring scenes; and have rejoiced that, as the Battle of Waterloo was not without its accompanying rewards, the late microscopic battles have also gained laurels for the victorious peelers.

I was gradually approaching to a state of great admiration, even for the Moreton Bay branch of the body police; and had entertained serious thoughts of patronising them. But what a shock has been given to my sympathies! As my friend Snooks says, “ev’ry feeling has been shaken.” I have seen the new uniform for the Brisbane police; I have set it up, in my mind’s eye, on a subject; I fitted it in the imagination on the Chief Constable; I have fancied that I saw his glowing frontis leaning over a parapet of glazed leather, with his unexceptionable corpus encased in a Witney blanket coat, dyed blue; but all would not do. I found it impossible to believe that any man in such burlesque attire could be a hero. You know that my ideas are discursive, and therefore will not be astonished at my dreaming that I saw the chief starting off, in full twig, to execute a particular service.

I fancied his vain attempts to appear cool and composed, when he was perspiring from every pore by reason of being fully committed to the blanket attire. I saw him issue forth, with 14 lbs of wool trousers on his ambulators, and about twice that weight of coat reposing on his diffident shoulders, which sunk beneath the panoply. Panting – puffing – suffocating with the heat, he in vain strove to overtake the offender whom he sought. The wicked delinquent dodged him form corner to corner, often applying one hand to his nose, and turning the handle of an invisible coffee-mill with the other, as if in contempt of the law and its officer.

If the Chief would become absurd in such a dress, what effect would it be likely to have on anybody else? It would be monstrous! And then the hat! Oh, for words to paint my virtuous indignation  at that fearful hat! Why, not content with forming it of the coarsest and thickest felt, they have covered the top with glazed leather!! There is a greatcoat too, with half-a-dozen capes, that out-coachman the driver of an old Edinburgh mail!  All these things are to be worn at Moreton Bay, and the police must pay 3d. a day for the privilege! Here, in a place where the heat is sometimes nearly sufficient to roast a beef steak while an old woman is taking it home on a skewer, the unhappy constables are to be swathed  in flannel, and stiffed up like “Guy’s” on a 5^th of November! An ordinance that offending constables might be steamed to death might receive my support, for it would possess an amusing novelty, but I cannot consent to the innocent being punished with the guilty. If this thing is persisted in, there will be a mutiny in the corps; they can’t stand it – I’ll defy them to do so. What a shame it is that no person will tell the police commissioner the difference in the latitudes of Moreton Bay and the Shetland Islands! If Sir John Franklin should found a colony on the North Pole, it is likely that the police will be compelled to wear the costume of Calcutta. In dangerous times like these, when there are some symptoms of a revolt at South Brisbane, it is ridiculous for the Government to be poling fun at the Police in this manner. They’ll fraternise, depend on it, if there should be a civil war on the other side.

Moreton Bay Courier, Saturday 14 April 1849.