John Hindmarsh beats South Australia's commissioners in London by recruiting colony's police in 1838

Governor John Hindmarsh's Adelaide home near the River Torrens in 1837-38. Inset: The police force recruitment posters he had placed around the settlement in April, 1838.
Drawing by Mary Hindmarsh, courtesy State Library of South Australia

On April 19, 1838, recruitment posters were nailed to trees around Adelaide seeking 20 active young men to join a new police force, about to be raised. Governor John Hindmarsh was spurred on in his aim to set up a South Australian police force by a burglary, murder and two attempted murders in the infant settlement in March of that year.

Hindmarsh’s recruitment push preceded moves in June 1838 by the colonisation commissioners in England to employ two experienced London Metropolitan police sub inspectors, James Stuart and William Baker Ashton, to create the South Australian force.

Hindmarsh appointed 21-year-old Henry Inman as commander of his South Australian police force. At least six of 23 young male settlers who’d been sworn in as part-time special constables joined force that was formally started on April 28, 1838, with an authorised strength of 10 mounted and 10 foot constables.

South Australia has the first centrally-controlled police force in Australia and third oldest in the world behind its concept models: the London and Dublin metropolitan forces. South Australia's force was employed full-time and with jurisdiction over the entire colony, Unlike other Australian police, that originally employed localised soldiers or former convicts, South Australia enlisted only volunteers.

Half of the initial South Australian force was to be fully-armed mounted police, the other half unarmed foot police in Adelaide. These distinct branches were accommodated separately: the mounted police in log and mud barracks at North Terrace, Adelaide city, behind the later museum, and the foot police at a police station, called the police office, on the north side of North Terrace, opposite and a slightly east of Holy Trinity Church.

Henry Inman, who’d served as a cavalry officer in wars in Portugal and Spain, bought the horses and equipment for the mounted police and set their high standards.

In November 1838, sub inspectors Stuart and Ashton arrived from the United Kingdom to find the Siuth Australian force already operating. Both then served under Inman.