Shpayer-Makov, Haia

views updated

Shpayer-Makov, Haia

PERSONAL:

Female.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of General History, University of Haifa, Rm. 1302, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, educator. University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel, professor of history and head of department of history.

WRITINGS:

The Making of a Policeman: A Social History of a Labour Force in Metropolitan London, 1829-1914, Ashgate (Burlington, VT), 2002.

Police Detectives in History, 1750-1950, Ashgate (Burlington, VT), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including Journal of European Studies.

SIDELIGHTS:

Haia Shpayer-Makov is the author of The Making of a Policeman: A Social History of a Labour Force in Metropolitan London, 1829-1914. In the work, Shpayer-Makov examines the role of the London Metropolitan Police (LMP), the first modern police force in Great Britain, as an agency of public employment. Through detailed analysis of department records, memoirs, and periodicals, the author shows how the LMP evolved into a stable, professional workforce governed by a system of formal regulations. As Greg Marquis commented in Labour/Le Travail, "The author argues that despite the working-class origins of recruits, and an initially authoritarian management style, by the time the LMP had grown to 22,000 men in 1914 occupational culture had created a distinct esprit de corps." According to Stanley H. Palmer, writing in Albion, The Making of a Policeman "succeeds on two levels: first, identifying trends among the men in areas like recruitment, promotion, punishment, and pensions; second, exploring the police institution's philosophy and patterns of management. To do both well—weaving statistical with sociological and political analysis—is a major accomplishment of the book." In Victorian Studies, Roger Swift also praised the volume, stating that the author "sheds new light not only on the Metropolitan Police (whose history already looms large in the historiography of the subject) but also on the history of modern employment strategies and their impact on the working classes."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Albion, winter, 2004, Stanley H. Palmer, review of The Making of a Policeman: A Social History of a Labour Force in Metropolitan London, 1829-1914, p. 689.

Labour/Le Travail, spring, 2004, Greg Marquis, review of The Making of a Policeman, p. 323.

Victorian Studies, winter, 2004, Roger Swift, review of The Making of a Policeman, p. 338.