1. Dr Guy Woolnough
24 High Street, Burton in Lonsdale. LA6 3JU Phone : 01524261878 07791704441
g.woolnough@keele.ac.uk , guy.woolnough@btinternet.com, http://guywoolnough.com,
http://guidowoolnough.wordpress.com, @GuyWoolnough, @GuidoWoolnough
Current posts: Teaching Fellow (Criminology), Keele University, School of Sociology and
Criminology, full time.
Examiner and examination reviser, OCR exam board. (Part-time role)
Education:
PhD at Keele University: Thesis: The Policing of Petty Crime in Victorian Cumbria. Supervisors: Prof.
Barry Godfrey, Dr Helen Wells. Dept. of Criminology. (Abstract on page 3)
Lancaster University, 2006-2008. MA (Regional History) with distinction.
S Martin’s College, Lancaster.1972-3. PGCE, with merit.
Bristol University, 1968-1971. BA (Hons) History, Politics and Economics. 2.1
Whitgift School South Croydon, 1961-1967.
Teaching experience:
 Teaching Fellow, Keele, 2014 to date.
o I have created and delivered seminars in the MA Criminology programme, Agency
or Structure? Applying Gidden’s structuration theory to everyday policing;
o Every week I have created and delivered undergraduate tutorials: 2nd year, Crime
and Justice in a Global Context, Policing and the Police, and Working for Justice; 1st
year, Criminal Justice: Process, Policy and Practice, Investigating Crime:
Criminological Perspectives, Murder and Psychology and Crime.
o I mark and grade student assignments, essays and exam papers, in every module
taught.
o I am supervising 3rd year dissertation students.
o I achieved outstanding ratings in the student evaluations, December 2014.
o In April, I shall be leading a student exchange to Ball State University, Indiana.
 Latin teacher, part time, Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School, 2008 to 2014.
 Leading undergraduate seminars, Keele University, 2010-11, University of Liverpool, 2012.
 Exam marking (2000-2009) and reviser for exam questions: GCSE History and Humanities, to
date.
 Education consultancy and project management. Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School:
Leading Edge Project, 2005/6; Regenerating Lancaster, with Lancaster City council, 2008.
Cumbria Archives Service: Life on the Edge. Oct 2006, Moving Minds Project, Sept 2007.
Their Past, Your Future. Sept 2009.
 Full time secondary school teacher. Head of department of history, 1973-2005.

2. Research experience:
My research interests include:
 Policing and petty offending at the grass roots level. Discretionary policing.
 The structuration of policing.
 Policing as a cultural phenomenon. The policing of fairs, Gipsies, vagrants, Cumbrian sports,
blood sports. Plebeian religious groups, including Primitive Methodists, Salvation Army and
Temperance, Cumbrian tourism.
For Cumbria Archive service:
 Oral history: the home front in Cumbria. (Moving Minds and Their Past, Your Future.)
 Petty offenders in Victorian Kendal.
Published academic articles (peer reviewed)
 Blood sports in Victorian Cumbria: policing cultural change, Journal of Victorian Culture,
Sept 2014 (abstracts on following page)
 Whitehaven News, Westmorland Gazette. Oct 2011, two entries in Dictionary of Nineteenth
Century Journalism, ProQuest, http://c19index.chadwyck.com/marketing/aboutdncj.jsp
 Dealing with outsiders: policing rural Westmorland, 1856-1900 Dec 2011, Inspire Journal of
Law, Politics and Societies, v. 6 (1) http://inspirejournal.wordpress.com/issues/6-1-
summer2011/
Other articles:
 ‘Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.’ Using external support, local history and a
group project. Sept 2006, Teaching History, 124, pp37-45
 Occasional articles for the Westmorland Gazette, 19th century policing: four to date.
Academic articles submitted for publication:
 Policing the Irish in Victorian Cumbria, following the conference at Northumbria, (detailed
below)
 Policing Brough Hill Fair, 1856-1900: protecting Westmorland from urban criminals, following
the conference at Southampton, September 2013. (detailed below)
Academic papers delivered
Since 2009, I have presented papers at twenty two academic conferences. I have given talks to
eleven non-academic groups, mostly local or amateur history groups. Academic papers presented
in 2013-15:
 Policing Morals in Victorian Cumbria, Open University ‘Policing Morals’ Seminar, 6 Feb 2015.
 Blood Sports in Victorian Cumbria: policing cultural change. Presented at Keele University,
School of Sociology and Criminology, Seminar series, 28 Nov 2014.
 Policing Drunkenness in Cumbria, 1856-1901 British Crime Historians’ Conference, Liverpool,
Sept 2014.
 Blood Sports in Victorian Cumbria: policing cultural change. Social History Society Annual
Conference, Northumbria, Newcastle. Apr 2014.
 Policing Drunkenness in Cumbria, 1856-1901 Public Drinking in the Nineteenth Century
Conference, Centre for Romantic and Victorian Studies, University of Bristol, 22nd Feb 2014
 Policing Brough Hill Fair, 1856-1900: protecting Westmorland from urban criminals at the
‘Uneasy Neighbours? Rural-Urban Relationships in the Nineteenth Century' history
conference, Southampton, 20 Sept 2013.

3.  Counting the residuum: bureaucratic management of vagrancy. British Association of
Victorian Studies conference, 29-13 Aug.
 Policing Victorian Cumbria: ‘problems’ with the Irish, 1860-1885, June 2013, Society for the
Study of 19th Century Ireland, conf. Northumbria University.
 Policing Brough Hill Fair, 1856-1900: Cumbrian Identity and Liminality, March 2013, Social
History Society Annual Conference, Leeds.
 Gypsies at Westmorland Fairs, 1850-1900 28 Nov 2012, Criminology Seminar at Keele
University
 Who Controlled the Streets? Policing Kendal in the 1880s. (40 minute version) 29 Sep 2012,
Police History Society conf., Ripon
 'Who Controlled the Streets? Policing Kendal in the 1880s 6-7 Sept 2012, Crime historians’
conference, OU,
 'Sunday Afternoon Policing in a Victorian Town: an exploration of social and cultural divisions'
3-6 Jul 2012, Brit. Criminology Soc. Conf. Portsmouth.
 'Brough Hill Fair: methodology of researching police activity. 15-16 Sep 2011, Criminology PG
conf., Edinburgh Uni.
 'Brough Hill Fair: methodology of researching police activity. 20 Sep 2011, Essex PG Hist. Conf.
 Policing Brough Hill Fair: how the police identified and dealt with problems. 8-9 Sep 2011, PG
interdisciplinary conference, ‘Outsiders’, Salford Uni.
 “A good eye for a thief,” Kendal Police reformed, 1870-1900, 11 May 2011, “Reading and
writing lives” Seminar, Keele,
 Identifying vagrants in the 19th century, 18 Mar 2011, PG conf., Keele “Outsiders” panel.
 Policing Brough Hill Fair, 12 Nov 2010, OU, work in progress seminar.
 Policing the fairs, 14 Jul 2010, Keele PG seminar.
 Plumbing the Depths: policing vagrancy, 25 Nov 2009, PG Conf., Keele.
 Using criminal records to develop a role play exercise for use in secondary schools 18 May
2009, Society of Archivists, Archives for Education and Learning Group Annual Conference,
Engaging Young People in the World of Archives. TNA, Kew.
Non-academic audiences addressed (since mid-2012):
1) School sixth forms:
a) Who controlled the streets? Victorian Kendal. (Sept 2012)
b) Victorian Fairs. (Sept 2013)
c) Cock fighting and prize fighting (Nov 2014)
2) Local History Groups
a) Tracing ancestors in the Criminal Justice system. (Crooklands, Nov 2012)
b) Brough Hill Fair (Melling, November 2013)
c) Who controlled the streets? Victorian Kendal. (Bentham, Jan 2014)

4. Thesis Abstract: The Policing of Petty Crime in Victorian Cumbria
This study presents an innovative analysis of the policing of petty offending and the work the police
in Cumbria: it problematizes conceptions of policing and its history. This study uses the neglected
minutiae of police and court records to deconstruct the role of the police, discretionary policing by
men on the beat, public expectations of the police, and the growth of police bureaucracy, which
then calls into question the idea of a ‘golden age’ of policing. These are the issues that dominate
the contemporary discourses on policing, though this study makes clear that assumptions are made
today that are not supported by the history. The themes of this study are as relevant today as they
were 150 years ago, for this work is interdisciplinary, situated in the social sciences, particularly
criminology and history.
This study examines the police’s role at a time of social, economic and bureaucratic change. It links
the development of police expertise and professionalism with the process of state formation. The
historiography and nature of Victorian policing are tested by this study of Cumbria, a remote and
unique region which was culturally, economically and agriculturally quite atypical of Victorian
England.
The analysis considers the ways in which the police endeavoured to tackle problems: for example,
vagrants, fairs, blood sports, traditional recreations, drunkenness, pick pocketing, violence,
gambling. The ways in which the police defined and targeted outsiders or deviants and how they
identified and dealt with problems on the streets, are central to this study. Discretionary policing,
which is shown to be culturally determined and rooted in the working class cultures of Cumbria, is
the constant theme. Structuration theory provides the approach which allows an understanding of
how policemen, exercising culturally informed discretion, were the crucial agents in the policing of
Victorian Cumbria.
Blood sports in Victorian Cumbria: policing cultural change, Journal of Victorian Culture, Sept 2014
Abstract
This article interrogates the concept of the ‘civilizing process’ by examining cultural change through
a micro-study of the policing of cock-fighting and prize-fighting, two phenomena of popular culture
which moved from being tolerated to being prohibited in the nineteenth century. It uses as its
empirical base the criminal justice system of Cumbria to examine how this cultural change was
negotiated, and shows how ordinary policemen were key to the process.
Cock-fighting and prize-fighting were contests that attracted crowds of men who bet heavily on
the outcome. However, in Cumbria there were important differences of attitude towards these two
activities and their management by the police and courts varied. Prize-fighting was dealt with swiftly
and effectively, whereas opinions were divided on cock-fighting and the practice continued well
into the twentieth century.
Local cultures, it is argued, rather than middle-class opinion at the county or national level,
determined whether these activities would survive, for regional traditions and practices shaped the
effectiveness of the response to prohibited blood sports. It was at the local level where the
elimination or toleration of plebeian sports was negotiated, and in this the police and courts were
crucial as agents of social change.

5. Dealing with outsiders: policing rural Westmorland, 1856-1900. Inspire, Journal of Law. Politics and
Societies. Vol. 6, No. 1, Summer 2011.
Abstract
This article seeks to apply the theory of alterity to the specifics of an historical situation. It will explore
the concept of alterity by examining the policies and actions of the Cumberland and Westmorland
police force in the second half of the nineteenth century. This article will show how the problems
that demanded police attention were defined, and how the force went on to deal with those
problems. By identifying and controlling ‘problem’ people, the police effectively delineated a
boundary and reified a group of ‘others,’ whose only true coherence existed in the minds and
actions of the police. The police activity explored in this article took place at an annual fair, situated
upon a remote uninhabited hill. The very locus of this policing was a heterotopia, a place which is a
non-place, like the airport terminal that is frequented by many and owned by none, a place that
invests even mundane locations and events with the experience of alterity.
Policing Fenianism and Sectarianism: failure and incompetence in Cumbria, 1860-1885 (shortly to
be submitted to the journal Immigrants and Minorities)
Abstract
Policing in Victorian Cumbria not only failed to manage the problems that arose from the Irish
communities, it exacerbated sectarian division and was unable to make any progress in dealing
with Fenianism. This essay builds upon the work of MacRaild and Smith, who have demonstrated
how the Irish communities in Victorian Cumbria differed from those in other parts of England, and
Hickman who explored the idea of Irish ‘imagined communities’.
The agents of the criminal justice system in Cumbria constructed an ‘imagined community’ of
Cumbria which led to an inability to understand or engage with Irish communities and a
consequent mismanagement of Fenianism and sectarianism. The policies of these agents were
operationalized by the police. The poor planning, incompetent tactics and biased procedures of
the magistrates, chief constables, police officers and men are revealed in this study of their
handling of events, in particular the visit to Whitehaven of the demagogue William Murphy (1871),
the handling of a Fenian attack in Cumbria (1884) and the serious Orange riot at Cleator Moor
(1884).
The Cumbrian police had developed methods for dealing with the routine issues of law and order
that were regarded as generally effective in coping with the external threats which criminals and
vagrants posed in a rural region, but were seriously inadequate when applied to policing the
divided Irish communities living in Cumbria. The evidence to support this comes from a careful
reading of police and court records, backed up by an analysis of the debates in Parliament and
the reporting in the press. It has been possible to understand what was happening before, during
and after the incidents, and also to draw conclusions about the attitudes and opinions of the main
actors. The police, magistrates and courts were unable to anticipate problems and failed to resolve
them. This study presents strong evidence of a Fenian ‘outrage’ in Cumbria which was not widely
reported at the time and has escaped the secondary histories.
The authorities’ failure to cope with the problems thrown up by the divisions amongst the Irish
inflamed anti-Catholic prejudices and Catholic anger. Policing was reactive rather than proactive,
and thereby aggravated problems.

6. The essay concludes that the agents of the criminal justice system were blinkered by their own vision
of Cumbria, failed to act appropriately and thereby exacerbated the problems associated with the
Irish communities in Cumbria.
Policing Brough Hill Fair, 1856-1910: Protecting Westmorland from Urban Criminals
The author submitted this chapter upon invitation for inclusion in “Uneasy Neighbours?: Rural-Urban
Relationships in the Nineteenth Century” edited by Barry Sloan and Mary Hammond.
Abstract
Brough Hill Fair, in Westmorland, is the subject of this essay. 19th century fairs allowed the meeting of
town and country: they were open to the honest and to the fraudulent; fairs admitted farmers,
entrepreneurs and criminals, and they offered the fairgoer opportunities, delights and excitement
not routinely available. Fairs were deemed to be on the edge of respectability and they attracted,
interested or alarmed people from every stratum of society. The liminality of Brough Hill Fair was
delineated and regulated by the police, whose methods framed contemporary cultural attitudes.
Ordinary policemen effectively defined, identified and dealt with the outsiders who were deemed
a threat to rural Cumbria.
There are studies of fairs in the later 19th century which analyse their decline, and show them to
have been under attack from moral entrepreneurs. Contemporary critics claimed they were losing
their economic and commercial role, and were no longer proper for an urbanized, industrial age
with expanding forms of ‘rational recreation’. None of these narratives applied to Brough Hill Fair,
which expanded and prospered in the Victorian age and faced no organized opposition. Much of
the historiography of fairs has concerned urban fairs and hiring fairs: the focus has been upon the
way the fair brought rustics and outsiders into town. Brough Hill Fair was very different from city fairs
and from hiring fairs. It appeared to be a very traditional and unchanging rural fair in a remote
location, but was closely implicated in the industrial changes in Britain. Brough Hill at fair time was a
place where industrial Britain came to thinly-populated Westmorland to transact business. The role
of the police was to manage the frictions generated by the interactions.
The primary sources used in the research of this paper derive from the work of the police. The author
has compiled every case arising from the Fair that came before the Petty Sessions from the
inception of the Cumberland and Westmorland Constabulary (1856) until 1910.
The records used allowed a detailed, systematic and accurate description of what Brough Hill Fair
was like: no contemporary published description gives such a clear idea of who attended, what
was going on, or the types of side shows and stalls. This method has led to a micro-study which does
not favour the narratives of the privileged or those in authority, but gives a very clear idea of what
the police were doing, and thereby makes their priorities clear. The police, in their handling of this
fair, contributed to the definition of a discrete Cumbrian culture and helped to shape the region as
an imagined community.
Blogs
http://guywoolnough.com My blogs favour Cumbria and police history, with a cultural bias. I blog
on topics which are current and relevant to my interests. This includes items in the news or on
television, for example programmes such as Ripper Street. I also blog on matters of educational
interest and on cycling. Sometimes two interests combine, as in my blogs about ‘Scorching’.
(http://www.guywoolnough.com/scorching-the-cyclist-menace-of-the-19th-century/)

7. http://guidowoolnough.wordpress.com/ I maintained this blog when I was teaching Latin. Every
week I wrote and posted a news item in Latin, primarily with my students in mind.
Twitter: @GuyWoolnough and @GuidoWoolnough. I use twitter to support my blogs and to network
with the academic community.