Special Guest Blogger: Robert Peel

I was a British Conservative statesman who twice was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was Chancellor of the Exchequer and also Home Secretary twice but i am most remembered as the father of modern British policing, owing to my founding of the Metropolitan Police.
I entered politics at the age of 21 and was considered one of the rising stars of the Tory party and when i was made Home Secretary i decided to have a look at the judicial system.
We still had death sentence for any of the 200 capital crimes back then such as stealing, impersonating a Chelsea Pensioner, scribbling on Westminster Bridge, chopping down a young tree etc and these crimes were going unpunished because juries were refusing to convict because a guilty verdict sometimes meant a shoplifter being taken from the court to a place of execution and thence hanged by the neck until he is dead.
I reduced the number of capital offences to four: murder, treason, arson in a royal dockyard and piracy with violence but maintained leaving the bodies of executed prisoners on the gallows as a warning to others until residents complained that having the rotting corpse of a murderer swinging just outside your bedroom window could have a detrimental effect on house prices and stopped that also.
Then i had my greatest idea, taking the work that was being done by local volunteers and dodgy law and-order enthusiasts to look out for criminals and making them into a professional force and created the Metropolitan Police in 1829.
One thousand constables were introduced on to the London streets to direct tourists to Tower Bridge, tell people the time as well as catching the wrong'uns and i crucially refused to arm them but instead gave them a whistle.
They became known as Peelers and Bobbies and they spread to police forces forming all across the country which became a model for modern policing around the world but I also reintroduced the idea of an Income tax, played a key role in social reforms including reducing working hours for women and children in factories, repealed the Corn Laws and promoted free trade but I may have been a progressive in most things, but the idea of letting Catholics have the vote was clearly going too far and I stepped down from the government and resigned my seat.
I was continually courted by the Conservatives to return to front line politics but i held firm to my beliefs although  may have done better to hold onto the horses reigns because I died when i was thrown from it while out riding. The horse then stumbled on top of me, and I died three days.