HIS end, when it came, was sadly inglorious. Major James Wemyss, who survived French shot and sabre on the field of Waterloo, collapsed of heat-stroke while out for a stroll in a field at Langley Bridge, near his Durham home.

Accounts suggest several people saw him lying there, but did not raise the alarm and “The Gallant Major”, as he was known locally, was left outside in the rain as night fell. Eventually, The Durham Chronicle reported, he was “found at an early hour in a state of insensibility and only survived his being brought home a few minutes”.

The paper reported that the city was left “startled” by the death of Major Wemyss, who nine years earlier had become the first chief constable of the newly-formed Durham County police force and had since given “the utmost satisfaction to all classes by his mild and steady administration of the important powers confided to him. Under his management the force has become highly disciplined, and ranks with the first rural police forces in the kingdom, for the repression and detection of crime and their general good demeanour”.

JAMES Wemyss was born in Fife, in Scotland on July 14 1789 – the day a Parisian mob stormed the Bastille and set in train a revolutionary chain of events which would shape his life.

Born into a military family, he was commissioned into the Royal Scots Greys in 1810, rising to the rank of lieutenant by the end of 1812 and seeing action throughout the Napoleonic Wars.

In June 1815, he was a senior subaltern at Waterloo when the Scots Greys made what became the most famous cavalry charge in history – until the Light Brigade's charge rewrote history 40 years later.

The Scots Greys' charge broke the attack of the 45th Regiment de Ligne and captured the French eagle, but at a price of 106 dead and 97 wounded, roughly half the regiment.

The day after, Wemyss wrote to his sister in Edinburgh: “I am happy to inform you that we have had a famous battle and licked the enemy heartily – I am one of six officers only that remained upon the field to the last and am happy to say unhurt, although I have had two horses shot under me and balls about several parts of my dress.”

Four days later, he wrote again: "Our Brigade charged the enemy with the utmost bravery. We took a great number of Guns. I myself aparted in disabling some of them as we broke through two lines of the French and took an immense number of prisoners.

“In the very heat of the charge when I was in the midst of hundreds of the enemy’s infantry my very first charger who was a very great friend and favourite was shot under me. I found myself then in rather an awkward scrape for many of the infantry quite near to me were chopping away as fast as they could. I would inevitably have gone to spoil but for one of our men who caught hold of a French horse which I immediately mounted and had at them again. I had another horse wounded under me and during the charge a fellow stuck a bayonet into my cape without hurting me and a ball hit my sabre tasche."

Wemyss was eventually promoted to major before his retirement on a pension in 1826. It would be more than a decade before he was tempted back into public life.

In August 1839, the bill to allow the local justices to establish county police forces as championed by Sir Robert Peel was granted Royal Assent.

Among the first to sign up for a new constabulary was Durham, then a county which included the busy ports of Hartlepool, South Shields, Sunderland and Gateshead as well as the extensive coalfields inland. The growing population was policed by a haphazard arrangement of parish constables, separate police forces which covered Durham City, Sunderland, South Shields, Gateshead and later Hartlepool and volunteer crime-fighting bodies such as the Weardale Association for the Prosecution of Felons.

A meeting of local magistrates was held in November 1839 in the Grand Jury room at Durham Assizes court, where it was resolved to set up a county police force for Durham and appoint a suitable chief constable, with the money-conscious proviso that they could recruit no more than one constable for every 2,000 of the population.

Like many of the new police forces, they turned to a man of military experience to head the new constabulary and at their reconvened meeting on December 10, Major Wemyss was appointed the first chief constable of Durham on an annual salary of £250, plus an expenses allowance of up to £100 a year.

He arrived in the city with his new wife and set about recruiting the police force. The county was divided into four policing districts, not including the independent Durham City, centred on Easington, Chester-le-Street, Darlington and Stockton.

He set up headquarters in Old Elvet in Durham, from where he commanded his force of five superintendents and 60 constables, to keep order in a county of 200,000 people. The first officers were appointed on January 20, 1840, at the start of five weeks of training.

Each was equipped with a truncheon, handcuffs, a lantern, a knapsack, a journal and an instruction book and issued with a uniform: dark blue with silver badges for the constables, a frock coat with black buttons for the superintendents.

The qualifications for the first officers were not particularly onerous: recruits had to be physically fit, at least 5ft 7 tall and be "recommended as of irreproachable Character and Connexions". But once accepted into the force, there were a demanding set of regulations outlined in the General Rules of Conduct and Discipline. Officers were to avoid "squabbles or altercations", each should “keep a curb upon his temper", refrain from being “over-zealous or meddlesome", to use no "improper language", pay all debts promptly, abstain from public houses and marry no one from a family of "reputed bad character".

Perhaps because of the high standards, there appears to have been a high turnover among the early recruits. In April 1840, the chief constable complained: “The difficulty of getting good men is great and also that of keeping them after they have been got. There have been some dismissals, and some resignations which caused a good deal of trouble.” Three months later, Wemyss had one constable thrown out of the force for accepting a bribe.

The new force was met with some suspicion, but appears to have fairly quickly won over the majority. In March 1840, the Durham Advertiser recorded: “It is to be hoped that from the able manner in which they have been instructed to perform the duties of their several offices, the inhabitants will have sufficient reason to be perfectly satisfied with their general conduct and demeanour.”

Later that same year, Wemyss wrote: “In certain districts, where initially the Police had been welcomed with showers of stones, they had won the respect of inhabitants by exercising the powers with which they were invested with judgement, discretion, forebearance and impartiality and they had accrued letters of appreciation from all quarters, while the cost of building certain station houses had been partially met by public subscription.”

Opposition appears to have come from the more rural parts of County Durham, displeased that their rates were being used to pay for policing of the lawless towns and mining districts.

On January 8, 1842, The Times published an article under the headline: "Opposition to the Rural Police in Durham" which reported a petition with 6,400 signatures calling for the "dismissal" of the constabulary which petitioners described as a “great additional burden to the rated inhabitants residing in the rural districts” It went on: “Should it be found requisite for the maintenance of the laws , in the colliery and populous districts, it is only reasonable that such districts should pay for their own protection.”

However, it was not all one-sided. Bishop Auckland doctor George Canney told a Parliamentary inquiry in 1842: “We were in a sad state from drunkenness and disorder until we got the rural police, but now we are quiet and orderly. We are certainly much indebted to them for the good order which they have established “

Wemyss managed to persuade the authorities that his tiny force was insufficient to keep order in a county in which the population rose by 25 per cent in a decade, as immigrants flooded in to work in the growing coalfields and ironworks. Within months, he successfully argued that each superintendent should receive an allowance of 12s 6d each week to maintain a horse, while a new rank of 14 sergeants should be recruited. In October 1845, the force received another 10 constables, followed in 1848 by another 15 – welcome reinforcements but still Wemyss had only 100 men or so at his command.

This force maintained order during the great Northumberland and Durham Miners’ Strike of 1844, which was largely peaceful although there were isolated outbreaks of fighting and Wemyss reported in June of that year that he was unable to supply crime figures for Easington ward. He told justices: “My own difficulties at this moment are much increased by my being deprived of the services of Superintendent Goule who was severely wounded yesterday in apprehending prisoners at Castle Eden Colliery and who is the only officer stationed here.”

His Durham Chronicle obituary praised the chief’s “cool courage and collectedness” and noted the success of the police in the strike. It went on: “Under the trying circumstances of the pitmen’s strike, their activity, courage, zeal, and forebearance were all equally exhibited, and on that occasion the gallant Major was indefatigable, and rendered important services. To those exertions are in a great measure to be attributed the fact that no serious disturbance of the peace took place among that excited and inflammable population.”