POLICE INTEREST. A FINE VICTORIAN SILVER TESTIMONIAL TABLE SNUFF BOX

POLICE INTEREST. A FINE VICTORIAN SILVER TESTIMONIAL TABLE SNUFF BOX, cast and applied with emblematic rose, thistle and shamrock border and thumbpiece and engraved with vignettes, mask and strapwork, the underside with a watermill and church, 9.5cm w, by Rawlings & Summers, London 1847, 9ozs 5dwtsThe inscription to the underside of the lid reads: Presented to Mr W E Fairbrass Inspector Division A Metropolitan Police by John Grieve and above Two Hundred other Special Constables as a testimony of their esteem in consideration of his Volunteer services in the protection of life and property on the 24 April 1848. Along with reimbursement of the expenses he incurred in defending himself against the unjust prosecution of Mr Charles Cochrane from which he was triumphantly acquitted.The months of April and May 1848 witnessed weeks of high tension and political unrest centred on London as tens of thousands of Chartist demonstrators staged meetings and marches. So alarmed was the Government and many others at the real prospect of riot or even insurrection, particularly as a tide of revolution was sweeping across Europe, that 100,000 Special Constables were recruited. The military was also deployed in numbers and ready to intervene at a moments notice.Charles Cochrane (1807-1855) was a radical and prominent agitator on behalf of the poor, founding in 1846 The Poor Man's Guardian Society. Inspector William Edwin Fairbrass was born in Whistable, Kent in 1806 and died at Middlesborough, North Yorkshire in 1876, having retired from the Metropolitan Police between 1853 and 1855.