page_title: History of the British Virgin Islands
section_title: Law and order
hierarchical_section_title: History of the British Virgin Islands / 1672: British colonisation / Law and order
caption_attribution_description: Photograph of the old HM Prison on Main Street in Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands (February 2007)
context_page_description: The History of the British Virgin Islands is usually, for convenience, broken up into five separate periods:
  Pre-Columbian Amerindian settlement, up to an uncertain date
  Nascent European settlement, from approximately 1612 until 1672
  British control, from 1672 until 1834
  Emancipation, from 1834 until 1950
  The modern state, from 1950 to present day
  These time periods are used for convenience only. There appears to be an uncertain period of time from when the last Arawak left what would later be called the British Virgin Islands until the first Europeans started to settle there in the early 17th century, when records of any settlement are unclear. Each of the above periods is marked by a dramatic change from the preceding time period, providing a way to define the history.
context_section_description: Even after British control of the Territory became complete, population infiltration was slow.  Settlers lived in fear of possible Spanish attack, and there was the constant possibility that diplomatic efforts might fail and the Territory might revert to an overseas power (as happened in St. Croix).  Spanish raids in 1685 and ongoing negotiations between the Dutch and the British over the fate of the islands led to them being virtually abandoned; from 1685 to 1690 the population of the Territory was reduced to two - a Mr Jonathan Turner and his wife.  In 1690, there was a relative explosion in the population, which had swollen to fourteen.  By 1696, it was up to fifty.
  From 1678, the British appointed a deputy-governor for the Territory (initially for the Territory and Saba and St. Eustatius, until the latter two islands were returned to the Dutch).  The role was somewhat vague, and had no legislative, executory or judicial powers attached to it.  The deputy-governor was encouraged to appoint a local governor beneath him, though it was common complaint being unable "to gett one that's tolerable fitt amongst them to take the command upon them."  In 1709, Governor Parke observed that "they live like wild people without law or Government, and have neither Divine nor Lawyer amongst them..."
  It was not until 1773 that the Virgin Islands actually had its own legislature.  However early attempts to establish a legislature and organs of government in the Territory are mostly notable for their repeated failures.  The uncertainty of tenure and slightly ambivalent official British attitude to the fate of the Territory influenced the early population - for many years only debtors from other islands, pirates and those fleeing the law were prepared to undertake the risk of settling in the Virgin Islands.  Most references to the islands from occasional visitors comment on the lack of law and order and the lack of religiosity of the inhabitants.
  The Territory was granted a Legislative Assembly on 27 January 1774, however, it took a full further decade for a constitutional framework to be settled.  Part of the problem was that the islands were so thinly populated, it was almost impossible to constitute the organs of government.  In 1778, George Suckling arrived in the Territory to take up his position as Chief Justice of the Territory.  In the event, a court was not actually established until the Court Bill was passed in 1783, but even then the vested interests ensured that Suckling could still not take up his position, and the islands had a court but no judge.  Suckling finally left the islands without ever taking up his post (or ever being paid) on 2 May 1788, impoverished and embittered, due to the machinations of local interests which were fearful of the recourse of their creditors if a court was to be established.  Suckling was forthright in expressing his views on the state of law and order in the Territory - he described the residents of Tortola as "in a state of lawless ferment.  Life, liberty, and property were hourly exposed to the insults and depredations of the riotous and lawless.  The authority of His Majesty's Council, as conservators of the peace, was defied and ridiculed...  The island presented a shocking state of anarchy; miserable indeed, and disgraceful to government, not to be equaled in any other of His Majesty's dominions, or perhaps in any civilized country in the world."
  Almost 100 years after Governor Parke had expressed his views, one of his successors would speak in similar terms.  On his appointment in 1810, Governor Hugh Elliot remarked on "the state of irritation, nay, I had almost said, of anarchy, in which I have found this Colony ..."  Writer Howard, an agent selling a distressed cargo of slaves from a shipwreck in Tortola in 1803 wrote that "Tortola is well nigh the most miserable, worst-inhabited spot in all the British possessions... this unhealthy part of the globe appears overstocked with each description of people except honest ones."
caption: The old HM Prison in Road Town. Used up until 1996, it was built on the site of an earlier prison in the mid 19th century
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