Patrick Colquhoun

Patrick Colquhoun ( born March 14, 1745 in Dumbarton, † April 25, 1820 in London) was a Scottish merchant, statistician, politician and diplomat. He is with its harbor police on the Thames as the founder of preventive policing in the UK.

Biography

Colquhoun came from the Scottish Clan Colquhoun of Luss on Loch Lomond from. At the age of 16, he went as an orphan in the American colonies to Virginia, where he received a business education. In 1766 he returned to Glasgow and made off with 21 years as a merchant there in the textile trade with Virginia independently. From 1782 to 1784 was mayor of Glasgow ( Lord Provost ). He founded the local industry and commerce, and has long been her Präses. In 1797 he received an honorary doctorate of the University of Glasgow.

As statisticians and data collectors, he put his political work as a lobbyist for the industry with comprehensive facts and figures. This is evidenced by his numerous publications, which were also partially translated into German. His extensive knowledge closer contact with the government of the Kingdom had him looking and he moved his activities to London, where he also became a member of the Municipal Council in the East End. Here he became aware of the abuses in the harbor where 33,000 port workers were employed, of which he panelist about 11,000 endangered as criminal. In the port of London at the end of the 18th century in the wake of the envelope were lost annually goods valued at more than £ 500,000 by stealing. Initiated by him Port Police, the Thames Riverside Police took 1798 as a private police force with 50 man trial against the bitter resistance of the port workers use on. It was financed by the major foreign trade companies which traded with the overseas colonies of the British Empire. Economic success was so great that this police force was officially adopted at the end of the test year in the summer of 1799 by the Marine Police Bill by the British parliament and continued. Organised by him police force has been a model for similar port police authorities in New York City, Dublin and Sydney.

In 1804 Colquhoun Minister Resident and Consul General of the Hanseatic cities of Hamburg and follow this shortly afterwards, Bremen and Lübeck. He followed the Bremer Henry Heymann, who was also in London Stalhofmeister further and stayed. In the following disputes between the United Kingdom and France, which had occupied the Hanseatic cities from 1806 to 1813, he was responsible for the official and unofficial contacts of the Senate of the three cities to Whitehall and effectively in a very effective manner. As a diplomatic agent, he tried in 1808 to George Canning, the attitude of London to explore one Rheinbund membership of the Hanseatic cities by in spite of the Continental System, a letter from the Hamburg Senate Counsel Doormann brought, on the Canning, however, did not respond. He was new in 1813 bestallt immediately after the end of occupation as an envoy.

His successor as Minister Resident of the Hanseatic towns in London was his son, the Stalhofmeister James Colquhoun († 1855), the grandson of Patrick Colquhoun 1841 first hanse urban d'Affaires at the Sublime Porte.

Works

• , East Indies included About the prosperity, power and resources of the British Empire in every part of the world. German: Nürnberg 1815.