Military History Lecture & Dinner

Military History Evening

Thursday, 5 September 2024

Topic: Early SA Policing 1836-1844

Guest Speaker: Mr Maxwell Arthur SLEE OAM JP

This presentation shines a new light on the formative years of South Australia. The establishment and consolidation of Wakefield’s social experiment in the so-called ‘uninhabited lands’ of Southern Australia relied upon the establishment of law, order, and the first centrally controlled police force in Australasia.

In 1838 Henry Inman, a 21-year-old English cavalryman, was given sole responsibility by Governor Hindmarsh to create and then command a police force, at that time a novel idea in itself. The London metropolitan police, the first such service, was only nine years old. Then, when the military was withdrawn in 1838, the mounted police became a fully armed rural force without precedent.