Why is the police in england called the old bill?
the origins of “The Old Bill” or “The Bill” as slang names for the police. The simple answer is that no one really knows for sure. Over the years at least 13 different possibilities have been proposed, as follows: “Old Bill” was King William IV, whose constables were an early form of police. (It is often said erroneously that he was on the throne when the police were founded. Actually he did not succeed George IV until 1830) The play “The Custom of the Country” written by John Fletcher in 1619 has constables of the watch refer to themselves as ‘us peacemakers and all our bill of authority’. Constables of the watch were sometimes nicknamed for the bills, or billhooks they carried as weapons. Kaiser Wilhelm I of Prussia visited England around the time in 1864 when the police uniform changed from top hat and swallowtail coat to helmet and tunic. Such ‘Prussian militarism’ may have led to the police being nicknamed after the first (and today less remembered) Kaiser Bill. The ‘old bill’ was
